#can’t stop thinking about mechanical linkages now

[sadboi37]

Just went crazy mode about mechanical linkages. How the flip am I supposed to translate this motion on a 2d simulation into the 3d so I can make an actual model ;-;

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s 11 June 2024. Spent the day moving Debbie’s teaching materials to storage. Have no idea what to type. I was thinking about uncountable means uncountably many uncountables. I’m seeing this as Cantor sets, meaning they order but the ordering is 1-0-1 at each step and the 0 fills with more counting. So that maps 1-0-1 counting to this discussion. I’m kinda out of it.

Realized that Boundary and the shift over occurs within aging, within walking and other body use shifts. I noticed that the mental shift in change of gait locks in a bit, and this pairs to the youthful sensation where your mind shifts gait but the body lags because you’re growing or to those times when you moved both effortlessly and with extreme effort. And in age, the problem becomes the energy necessary to change gaits or postures appears higher. Is this true? Let’s think. Have some fun.

I’m sitting on Peters Hill. Tried sitting in the shade but the mosquitoes drove me into the sun. It’s not my fault I’m delicious.

I think the issue is awareness of the body parts so the more the mind establishes perspective, the less the body side controls it. That fits to sexual function, at least in men: the more they become aware of the mechanisms of desire, the less they will tend to connect to the purely physical expression. That would tend to channel toward fetishes, meaning repetitive behaviors that work, which reliably connect to meanings which generate arousal in the mind and the body.

That was very hard to do. Pun not and then intended. It’s almost impossible as a man to see the wiring of arousal and desire. It was and is very difficult to grasp that this shift is not undoable, like you can’t choose to be a happy silly animal when you’re aware. So understanding that shift and the role these perspectives play in society and in relationships is crucial. If they’re to have a chance at crossing the bar.

I can’t count how many hours I’ve spent thinking about this. It dates back to when I was suddenly around unfamiliar girls, ones I didn’t know at all. I’m not saying I knew all the girls in grade school, and certainly not well, but I accepted being around them like part of the ordinary experience. Suddenly there were other girls, and that was arousing because the interactions were so fleeting they remained more abstractions of physical shapes than people, like you were watching them on a TV in your actual life.

Why that response? Because they abstracted that step. So male arousal then is more easily understood because it moves into focus and out. The variations in that cover a lot.

I know this discussion counts really well. Makes chains of reals inverting into 1-0Segments, so there’s a countable of uncountables, so that can be put in 1:1, again treating 2:1 as 1. That also enables linkage over the 1, like the entire counting system of midpoint, etc. we developed.

I’m getting very tired. Did not get much sleep last night. Don’t want to lose the idea about inversion over an Extent and inversion into the 1-0Segment. That comes all the way around to gsParallels, that the underlying definition of parallel lines is they follow an Extent. An Extent is 1Space, so the gsParallels follow, in pairs, along the Boundary which connects the 1Space to the 0Space.

A proof of this is that Triangular has Irreducibles, so the Extent constructs, which means into gsSpace. That means the expression of the Extent is through the szK as the Boundary, meaning we count the szK as 1, not 0Space root2. I visualize the szK as a tube, not as a line, because it is constructed of Bip Ends, except at the corners, where the corner End is the Bip End and the Bip End is the corner.

I need to stop for now.

[moralesispunk]

Study Break

Frankie Morales x Female Reader

Summary - Frankie has been a little stressed since going back to college after retiring from the army. You come up with a little fun to “help” him study.

Warnings - smut. m masterbation. 

Frankie has been a little stressed lately. Okay, maybe more than a little. Ever since deciding to go back to college part time for a mechanical engineering course he's been more worked up than usual.

He was sitting at the desk opposite you while you both worked, his hand having run through his hair so many times it was basically standing on its ends and his other hand clicking his pen as he read and re-read over his flashcards.

“Hey, baby,” you said to get his attention, “maybe you should take a break you’ve been at this for a while now?”

“I can’t. Too much to go over before Friday,” he sighed, leaning his head back against the chair and closing his eyes.

“Frankie, you know all this. You knew all this before you even started the course. You’ll be fine, you know it. Plus, you’ll just burn out if you don’t take any breaks,” you said sweetly, trying to get him to relax even if just for five minutes.

Frankie looked up and offered you a sweet smile before picking his cards back up again and shuffling through them. What you said was true. The course was one he would be able to pass with no studying, or even going to any of the night classes for that matter, but Frankie didn’t test well. With his leg bouncing up and down and hand clicking his pen you came up with an idea for him to relax. 

“How about I help you test yourself?” you asked, slowly standing from your chair and moving to stand behind him, resting your hands on his shoulders and gently massaging the knots out of them.

“Are you sure? You’re not too busy?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowed together. 

“Never too busy for you,” you said, gently placing a kiss to his neck before taking the flash cards from his hand.

“Okay, number 1. How do you define force?” you asked, remaining standing behind him.

“The push or pull of an object as the result of contact with another object,” he said, trailing off towards the end while turning his chair to face you.

“Correct,” you said, leaning and placing a kiss to his lips, “You know this stuff Frankie, say it with confidence.” 

Frankie nodded in response, sitting up straighter.

“Do I get a kiss every time I get one right?” he asked, smirking up at you.

“I think that is as good an incentive as any,” you replied, moving so you were now sitting on his lap with a leg at either side of his thighs, “okay number 2, how do you define power.”

“The rate at which energy is transmitted or work performed,” he answered, more confident this time.

“Very good,” you said, leaning in and placing a kiss on his lips lasting slightly longer than the first before sitting back again, “okay, what is linkage?”

“The connection between two things,” he replied quickly, already leaning in for his kiss.

You chuckled and leaned forward to meet his lips with yours, deepening it slightly as your rocked your hips against his. He moaned into the kiss and just as he grabbed your hips you pulled away, earning a pout from him.

“I’m meant to be helping you study,” you said with a slight smirk, looking down at the next card, “what is to-torque?” 

“Torque,” he said with a nod, “it’s a twisting force that speaks to the engine's rotational force and measures how much of that twisting force is available when an engine exerts itself.”

You didn’t say anything and instead grabbed the back of his neck to bring him into a kiss. He was already hard and desperate to feel you on him in some way and as you pulled gently on his hair he rocked his hips up against yours. You moved yours down against him with his hands firmly on your hips. He pouted as you pulled away against but leaned his head back when you moved your lips from his and along his jaw before reaching his neck, kissing that sweet spot of his. He moaned louder now, his grip tightening on your hips before you stopped to sit up straight.

“Question five I think this is?” you said with a straight face, “what is a compressor?”

He looks up at you, his eyes half shut and needy now as his chest is rising and falling quickly. He wants you back on him quickly but his mind can barely focus on anything other than you and the feeling of your lips on him.

“Its- uh- its a device that compresses gasses,” he says breathlessly.

"Good boy,” you lean forward and whisper into his ear, biting the lobe slightly, as you move your hand down to palm him through his jeans. His head falls back against the chair, eyes now watching your hand over him. 

“Your good boy,” he moans out quietly in response as his hands still grip tightly at your hips but let go when you move to stand.

“Lets take these off shall we?” you whisper, tapping his thighs.

Frankie quickly unbuckles his belt and unzips his jeans before lifting his hips to move his them, along with his boxers, down to his ankles. You sit back on his lap taking his cock in your hand and now pumping it up and down. You lift the cards back up to read the next one.

“What do you measure in joules?” you ask, watching as his mouth falls open.

He doesn’t answer and instead lifts his hips up into your hand in time with your strokes.  Frankie can’t concentrate anymore. All he can think about is the feeling of your hand around his cock and your lips against his neck as you kiss up towards his jaw.

You stop what you’re doing, giving his cock a gentle squeeze, “hm Francisco? What’s the answer?”

“Fuck- ah. El- electrical energy. Please,” he begs, your name falling out of his mouth now repeatedly like his own prayer.

“You’re so smart Frankie,” you whisper into his ear. You stop to lift your hand to your mouth, spitting on it, before going back to stroke him. You know he wont be able to answer any more  questions so place the cards down on the table behind him and give his cock your full attention, “I’m so proud of you, you know that? So smart and studying so hard.”

He moans in response, unable to keep his eyes open any longer as he mumbles your name. His thighs begin to tense under you and he tightens his jaw. You know he’s close so lift his t-shirt up and kiss along his jaw.

“You’re such a good boy, Frankie,” you coo and with that he turns his head to the side, kissing you deeply as he cums over your hand and his tummy. You work him through it until his head rests in the crook of your neck, unable to take any more. You give the side of his head a quick kiss before sitting up straight.

“Why don’t we go for a shower and get you cleaned up?” you say as you lift your hand to your mouth to lick it clean.

He moans at the sight before leaning in to kiss you deeply. He could taste himself on you but that was something you loved about Frankie, he didn’t care. He just wanted to feel you on him.

“I think that sounds a fantastic idea,” he whispers into your ear as his hand slowly trails up your thigh before moving across to the other thigh, making your breath catch in your throat.

He moves his hands around to your bum and gives it a soft slap, making you laugh, before you stand and take his hand to lead him to the shower where you definitely both enjoy taking a break from work. 

[hopkins47greenwood-blog]

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[bleachanimefan1]

Turtles Forever Part 73

Across The Universe

Raph pulled a panel off from his bike and drilled in the bolts. "There, that oughta lighten the load," he climbed onto the bike.

"That's a die cast aluminum frame," Casey called out, next to Raph with his bike as well. "It's already light."

"Well now it's 18 ounces lighter, giving this Shell Cell a death of the edge," Raph commented. Casey took the drill from his hands.

"You're dreaming, after I tweak the throttle response on this baby, you'll be spitting it's dust for a week," he bends down to work on his bike, but Raph grabs the drill back from him.

"Not after I lighten the shift linkage," he replied. Casey took the drill back again.

"Not after I modify the compression ration by 3 percent."

The two glare at each other then turn back towards their bikes, working on them. Raph glances over his shoulder at Casey. "Hmm, compression ratio. Good idea."

Then the whole lair started to rumble. "What the shell?" Raph and Casey see a bright light not too far off coming the main room of the lair.

"Casey, stay here!" Raph ran off, meeting with Mona who was staring along with everyone else as a portal floated above them.

"Master Splinter, what's going on?" Leo questioned, as Donnie rushed in.

"We've seen that kind of energy before," he pointed out, and as soon as he did, the ultimate ninja emerged from the portal.

"Drako!" Splinter exclaimed.

"And the Daimyo's son," Leo finished. "This is what we've told you about, Master Splinter. They've merged somehow, combined together."

"All into one ugly package," Raph commented as he walked into the room, squinting his eyes from the bright light. Mona had rushed in along with him, after putting Elizabeth down for a nap when she heard the commotion as well.

"We told you we would return," the Ultimate ninja declared. "We told you we would have our revenge!"

"Revenge this, whack bag!" Raph yelled running to them, spinning his sais. The Ultimate ninja used the time scepter freezing Raph in midair as he jumped to kick. He grabbed Raph with his tail, throwing him into the pillar.

"As if you could simply fight us! We control time and space with Lord Simultaneous time scepter! We are unbeatable," the ultimate ninja declared.

"Someone quick!" Donnie called as everyone jumped at the ultimate ninja to stop him. "Grab the-" He shoots out another blast of energy freezing everyone.

"Now we will have our vengeance," Drako said. The Daimyo's son glared, looking at Leo.

"Leonardo, destroy him first!"

"No, we agreed. The rat first then the Daimyo, your father," Drako answered, looking at Splinter.

"Then Leonardo." The Daimyo's son replied.

"They will pay, all of them." Drako declared.

"Yes, all of them will learn the meaning of suffering across time and space!" All Raph saw was a bright light before he found himself falling. He landed on the ground with a thud. Raph groaned as he stands up rubbing his head. He looks around to find that he wasn't in the lair anymore. He was in the middle a desert on some strange alien planet.

"Where the shell am I?" he asked himself, panicking. "Master Splinta! Leo! Mona! Wait a minute, where's that Drako ninja freak? He had the time scepter and...and where'd that bozo send me?" Then Raph hears a revving sound not to far off in the distance with a smoke trail following behind it.

"What the?"

A couple of bikes jumped up from a rocky slope, now the heading straight towards him.

One of the bikes notices Raph on the screen. "Falcon, someone's on the track!" A girl with blue hair reported.

"Hoooollllly sheeell!" Raph shouted, running away. The the bikes managed to miss Raph but one spirals out of control and crashed. Raph stops and looks at the bike. He walked over to it.

"What's the big idea?" Raph demanded. "Cant' you see I'm walking here?! Huh?" He sees two of the riders are injured and jumped down from the bike. "Hey, you guys okay?"

"Not for long," Falcon groaned. Then a pack of four legged hairy creatures jumped out and started to charge towards them.

"Uh oh, I take it these freaks aren't friends of yours?" Raph commented, nervously. Falcon struggled to stand up.

"We gotta get out of here!" he crawled over to the bike, pressing a button. The bike stands back on it's own and Falcon picked up his partner, turning to Raph. "Can you ride?"

"Can I ride?" Raph answered, looking at the bike in awe. The pack of hairy creatures were coming closer. Raph helped the two racers back into the bike and hopped on. "Hang on, cuz we are gonna..." he stops, looking at the controls. There were too many buttons, which one was start?"Let's see," Raph presses one but it doesn't work. He tries another, nothing. "Okay, I give up. How the shell do you start this thing?" he began to panic, seeing the beast coming even more closer.

Raph frantically began to press on of the buttons to start the bike. "Come on, come on, start!" Suddenly, lights came on at all the buttons lit up. "Lights, that's good. Now which one is go?" Raph hears a growl coming up from behind him.

"Aw, shell." Raph turned to see the creatures pounce. Raph quickly pressed another button and finally manages to get the bike to start, just as the creatures attacked. He speeds the bike forwards driving up an mountain, over a gap, landing on the other side, safely. Falcon looks back and turns to Raph, who was smiling.

"Not bad."

"Brace man, this is the ultimate challenge. One planet, three days, five racing machines as Race commissioner Morrey has promised, anything can happen on the hostile world Laotora. Just ask Godman Falcon of Team Fitts, whopping apple two minutes behind the others on this day of the USP RA charity race event," the sports announcer announced.

"Rub it in, why don't ya?" Falcon muttered, bitterly.

In the infirmary, an mechanic was holding a part of the bike explaining to Falcon. His navigator rest resting on the bed, with a broken leg.

"And these servos, they burn out. That not good for impellers, they crack. I'll need to be replace. Lois sub-frame, two very bent."

"Can you get the bike on it's wheels by the next race?" Falcon asked the robot.

"Alright, but it's gonna be tight."

Then someone came on the vid comm, revealing an pink alien with a wrinkled face, wearing a blue uniform. "I'm sorry to break this to you, Falcon, without bringing in another team to replace you, Team Fitts is out."

"Commissioner Morrey, you cannot disqualify us!" Falcon argued, angrily.

"You can't ride without a navigator," the commissioner stated.

"But it wasn't our fault!" Falcon protested.

"Let it go, Falcon," his partner called out. "it's just a charity race. It doesn't count towards the championship."

"No, I'm finishing this race even if I have to navigate this bike myself," Falcon stated. Morrey laughed.

"Ha! Then who would be your pilot?" he retorted, pointing a finger at him.

"Hmm," Falcon turns to Raph, who was sitting in a chair. "Him!"

"Me?!" Raph pointed to himself, surprised.

"Him?" Morrey and Falcon partner asked.

"Trust me, he can ride. He's got the balance of a messy machine. Your people, Methania. It's amazing." Falcon explained.

"It's against the rules, but...since this isn't an official USB RA race, I'll make an exception," Morrey answered before cutting off the call.

"Look, I'm sorry you beefed it on account of me," Raph said, standing up. "But, I can't stick around. My brothers, my family, and Master Splinter are probably in trouble. I gotta find a way back home." He had to get back to his daughter and Mona.

"I know, I know, you told me," Falcon told him. "You don't even know how you got here, but now that you jammed me up, you think you're just gonna bail?"

"I'm really sorry, but,...I gotta get home!" Raph replied, and started walking away.

"Wait, Raphael," Methania called out. Raph stopped to listen to her. "Maybe we can help you. My uncle is the premiere subspace temporal mechanics theorist in this sector. If there's a way to get you back, he'll figure it out. We'll take you to him...after the race."

Raph sighed. What other choice did he have? It could be the way to for him to get home...

"Okay, deal. Count me in."

The next morning came, as spectators watched from their seats as the race track was set on an icy terrain.

"Good morning, all beings and life forms. This is Nobby Bloe, bringing you day two live from the crew frozen waste course." Raph, Falcon and the other racers drove out from their starting stations. "The drop-off is complete, racers moving to the starting grid. As for us, we'll be locating to the minister."

Bike 6 drives past Raph, spraying snow on him and Falcon. "Gonna beef it again, Falcon?" the driver mocked.

"Hey!" Raph shouted, then turned to Falcon. "Friends of yours?"

"That's Tripper Nitro and Jag Maggiore of Team Koyoshada," Falcon explained. "Watch out for them, they don't play nice."

"The flag is up, they wait for the signal," the announcer announced. "And..." The light flashes green and all of the racers sped off. "They're off!"

Just as the race had started, Falcon noticed an alert flashing on the screen. "What? I got a nikon already? A 40 foot drop into the ice tunnels."

"Good, I gotta make up for that lousy start," Raph commented and the bikes drop down into the tunnels. Then Falcon gets another alert.

"Got another caution," he explained. "There's subterranean life down here,"

"What is it?" Raph questioned.

"Worms!" Falcon told him.

"What?"

They drive into the dark tunnel while the race cameras followed behind them.

"Worms, Commissioner?" Nobby asked from the ship stadium. "Just how big are these worms?"

"Well, they dug these tunnels, that's all I know," Morrey replied.

"We've got to stop the race!" Nobby was about to press the button to warn the spectators and racers but Morrey grabs his wrist.

"Absolutely not. Ratings are up because this is the most hostile planet we've ever raced. A little danger never hurt anybody," Morrey stated.

"Sounds like you're hoping someone gets hurt," Nobby pointed out.

"Never," Morrey answered. "But, make sure your race cams keep up with the action, just in case."

Back in the tunnels, Raph manages to speed past some of the other racers. He drives up to an three way intersection up ahead.

"Which way? We've got three tunnels ahead," he asked.

"Uh, uh," Falcon looks at the map on the screen. "Middle!" As Raph drives up to the path, a giant worm pops out, lunging at the two racers. Falcon and Raph screamed.

"I mean left!" Raph quickly makes a sharp turn, but now the worm was chasing them, right on their tail. The rest of the other bikes drive into the middle tunnels. Raph tried to steady the bike as he struggled through the icy ground.

"Okay, those ain't your average snake crawlers." Raph commented.

"Somebody should've warned us!" Falcon yelled then bike 6 drove right out in front of them. "Hey, look out!" The bike crashes into Raph and Falcon. The two bike begin to slide out of control.

"I can't hold her!" Raph shouted. "There's no traction! We're going down, Falcon!" Both bikes crash on the ground. Nitro activated his bike's stabilizer's getting back on it's wheels again. "Oh, that jerk Nitro tore the hydraulics when he slammed us! We got no stabilizers."

Raph and Falcon got out from the bike. "Then we gotta lift it ourselves," Falcon replied. Then the two heard the worm growling not too far behind them. It eats the race camera, destroying it.

"Whoa, massive worm alert!" Nobby exclaimed, seeing what had happened. "That thing just ate one of our race cams!" He turned to another camera, seeing the worm. "And it ain't looking good of Team Vincent Koyoshada!" Methania gasped as she watched the race from the infirmary. "They better get their bikes and gear fast!"

Raph and Falcon struggled to push the bike back onto it's wheels. Raph turned to the other racers that crashed into them. "Nitro, give us a hand!" he called out, but the team drove off just as the worm closes in. "Okay, think fast, think fast!" Raph said to himself, looking down at the crack, that the worm created, below his feet. "Where's a trapdoor when you need it? That's it!" Raph takes out his sais and starts stabbing them into the icy floor. "Get on!" He and Falcon hop back onto the bike as the worm began to advance in on them. Raph stabs through the ice once more, and it started to cave in. The bike falls landing back on it's wheels again, but the worm was still chasing after them as well.

"Way to race, Raph," Falcon told him.

Suddenly, Raph begins to phase. "Raph?"

Raph shakes his head as it stops. "Whoa, what was that?"

Morrey stepped out from the elevator, talking on his phone. "No, no, double the moxie. I want tomorrow's race heavily promoted, if you think today is intense, we're gonna send the ratings through the roof! The ad money is gonna flood in."

"What exactly is going on here, Commissioner?" Methania called out, as she walked towards him, supporting herself with a crutch.

"Something bothering you, Methania?" Morrey questioned.

"Giant ice worms?" she demanded.

"That was a surprise to me as well," Morrey told her. "but everyone was aware that this was a harsh planet. And I have your signed wavers to prove it. Now move aside." He brushes past her, walking away.

"I'm sure the race council would like to know that you're turning this event into a death match," Methania threatened.

"Be careful what you say, Methania," the commissioner reminded her. "You might hurt my feelings. And don't forget, you need my approval if you ever want to race again."

Back in the tunnels, Raph sees that there's a jump up ahead. "Give it a gyros on high fret, we've got some maneuvering to do!" he called out.

"Got it!" Falcon answered. "We'll be out of the glacier in five seconds. Better pick up speed."

"Why?" Raph questioned.

"There's a bit of a jump," Falcon answered, sheepishly. "Full throttle, Raph!"

"Already on it!" Raph replied, speeding out of the tunnel over the gap. The worm chases after them as well, as they flew over a giant cavern below them. It plunges down into while Raph and Falcon landed on the other side, now back in the race.

"You'll be relieved to know that we picked up signals from both Teams Koyoshada and Fitts," Nobby reported. "They're on the move, though Falcon is way off course." He hears the doors open and turns to see Methania.

"At least they're okay, huh, Methania?"

"Yes," she walked up to him. "Say, uh, Nobby, we've known each other for a long time. Please tell me the truth. What is the Commissioner up to?"

"What I know and what I can prove are two different things, Methania," Nobby answered.

"I think there's a way to get proof," Methania explained. "but, I'll need your help."

Just outside of the tracks, Raph and Falcon were driving along an icy cliff side. "Come on, Raph, we've got a lot of time to make up," Falcon told him, but something was wrong. "Raph?"

Raph was beginning to phase and he couldn't grab a hold of the bars as he tried to grab them.

"This ain't good!" Raph exclaimed. "It's like I'm fading away!"

"We're drifting, get control!" Falcon shouted.

"I...I can't! I can't grab hold of the bars!" The bike drives off the edge of the cliff and falls down into the deep ravine.

As the bike began to plummet further down, almost touching the bottom, Raph was struggling trying to grab the handles. He suddenly stops phasing and quickly grabs the bars, maneuvering the bike. "Better hang on!" Raph drives the bike over an ice ramp. "Get ready for a little off-road action, Raph style!" It flies over the other racers, landing right in front of them, back on the tracks. "Alright!"

Team Koyoshada watched in shock. "What the?"

"Unbelievable! Somehow, Team Fitts not only got back on course, but they gained the lead! And Team Fitts is first!" The crowd cheered as Raph's and Falcon's bike raced past the finish line, first. Raph drove the bike to the mechanics and he and Falcon jumped off, taking their helmets off.

"What happened to you out there?" Falcon asked.

"I don't know," Raph tried to explain, shaking his head, not knowing either. "It was the same kind of feeling I had when I got here, like...like I was being pulled out of something."

"Oh, you can't abandon me now, we're in a middle of a race!" Falcon argued.

"Hey, it's not I have any control over it!" Raph retorted. The mechanic walked down the stairs heading towards them.

"Racing good, track not so good. Nice that you lived though,"

"Thanks Muk, better check her over top to bottom, she went through a lot." Falcon told him, walking away with Raph.

The robot mechanic looked over at the bike, which was now steaming and blowing smoke. "You think? Alright."

The next race begins to start as it was in a tropical rain forest.

"Good evening, all beings and life forms. And welcome to the third and final race of this planet's racers charity event. Coming to you live from the moonlit rain-forests of Torah." A ship drops down and the racers drove out from the doors as it opened. "And there's the drop off, with sinking sludge pits waiting for them, the last thing these racers need to worry about is the mysterious mutt riders, I hear are cannibals. Good thing Commissioner Morrey has somehow convinced them to allow us passage through their land. The flag is up and they're off!"

The bikes raced through an swampy area, but Falcon notices an alert on the screen. "A caution area. Zero visibility through the sludge pits."

"Zero visibility?" Raph repeated, now driving into an foggy area.

"Instruments only, I'm raising the chasis to great the speed up, we'll make it," Falcon reassured. Raph smirked as they drove past an river. But, unexpectedly to everyone, there was something else lurking the waters, hiding. A couple of strange aliens emerge from it, riding manta ray like creatures, flying towards the riders.

"A new caution," Falcon reported.

"What?" Raph asked.

"The Mud Riders, they're attacking!" The hostile aliens dive down, taking out an team.

Back at the racing stadium, Methania sees the commissioner walking down the hall. "Alright, Nobby, there he is. Keep the race cam on the action, but out of sight." she told Nobby through the cameras and started walking over to him.

"Race cam two online," Nobby said while the cameras followed behind Methania, staying hidden. "And ready to go live, Methania."

"Commissioner!" Methania called out. "Commissioner Morrey!"

"And let's go live to Race Commissioner Tangent Morrey for a few comments," Nobby turned on the camera, recording.

"Why are the mud riders attacking the racers?" Methania demanded.

"How should I know?" Morrey claimed. "They gave us permission to race through here."

"No, they didn't!" Methania argued as Morrey looked down at his phone. "I checked." Morrey turns to her with a look in shock, while the camera still recorded staying hidden. "Their response was no and they threatened retaliation for anyone who dares to invade their forest," Methania held out a contract in front of Morrey's face.

"Where did you get that?!" the commissioner asked, snatching it from her.

"You sent our riders out there, knowing they probably wouldn't survive?"

"Well, look at it this way, they're giving their lives for a good cause," Morrey told her.

"What cause? Your ratings?!" she questioned, angrily.

"Those ratings are going to keep planet racing going for a long time, sweetheart. So we lose a few racers, big deal! They're a dime a dozen, I'll get more and-" However, Morrey stopped when he noticed the race camera hovering above Methania. "Huh? What? The race cam! Um, clearly the mud riders are, uh, acting like savages having changed their minds and attacking our racers. I promise to personally look into it." He walked away, while Methania turned to the camera.

"And I imagine the race council will looking into Commissioner Morrey's plan and racing ethics, but right now, let's check back to our embattled racers."

Raph and Falcon are right in front of Tripper Nitro. "So how are we doing, Falcon?"

"Hustling, Nitro's gaining!" Falcon shouted, seeing Nitro's bike gaining on them. Raph revs the bike and jumps over a ramp. Team Koyoshada catches up and drives right past them.

"See ya at the finish line, losers!" the driver laughed. However, a couple of mud riders were right in their path. One knocks the bike down with their spear. "You we're warned yet you still trespass on our lands, outworlder!" Another one shouted. "Now you will pay!" They began to advance closer towards the two riders, angrily, with spears in hand.

"We have to help them!" Raph said.

"Forget it, you got a short memory," Falcon, argued, shaking his head. "They left us for worm food, remember?" he reminded Raph. Raph stopped the bike and jumps off running towards the two downed riders. "Raph, get back here! What about the race?!" Tripper backs away in fear as one of the mud riders close in on him. Raph jumps in front of him, and quickly takes down all three aliens. He turns to Tripper.

"Get on your bike, now!" Raph yelled.

"Don't have to tell me twice!" Tripper answered, as he ran to his bike, along with his partner, while Raph held back the mud riders. Tripper looks back at him, his navigator as well, confused.

"Why is he helping us?"

"Who cares? We got a race to win." They started up their bike and drove away. Raph manages to take down the last mud rider then runs back to his bike.

"Nitro's taken the lead, you're a fool, Raphael," Falcon complained.

"It was the honorable thing to do," Raph argued, starting the bike and drive off, chasing after the other two riders.

"There's no room for honor in racing," Falcon pointed out.

"Winning without honor is not winning," Raph growled. His eyes widen in surprise not believing his own words that had come out of his mouth. "Jeez, I'm sounding like Leo right now. Glad Mona's not here to hear this."

Raph manages to catch up to Nitro's bike and was now right on his tail. "Finish line is just beyond the farms. First one through the gap cinches the lead," Falcon told him as they managed to gain in the lead.

"And here comes the front runners down to a stretch! It's Team Fitts, No, it's Team Koyoshada! It's..." Raph's bike makes it past the finish line by just an inch. They have won the race! "Yes! Fitts takes the cup in the USP RA charity race event!" Raph and Falcon wave to the cheering crowd.

"Not bad." Falcon commented. Nitro and his partner stop their bike and glare at Raph and Falcon. Tripper throws his helmet down in anger. Raph jumped down from the bike, and Falcon does as well, taking off his helmet. He holds his hand out to Raph, and Raph takes it, shaking it. "Way to win the race, partner."

Raph sees himself beginning to phase again. "H-Hey, it's happening again. It's pulling me away from here."

"Raph, listen, just remember...that if you do anything else in your life, you were once a planet racer. Not everyone can say that."

Raph smiled and places his hand on Falcon's shoulder. "And you remember, race with honor." He finishes and faded away.

"I'll remember, Raph. Winning without honor, that's just not winning." Falcon smiled, and turned to the waving and cheering crowd.

[blog-healthytips]

Health Is A Life

Health Is A Life

We’ve all experienced the crushing agony of a heartbreak, or the deep foundational stress of worrying about how you’ll pay all your bills, or the isolating and bleak reality of a mum or dad or loved one whose health is failing in a way you can’t figure out how to stop — or fix. Life is hard. Now — how hard is all relative … but for most of us, our days are consumed on some level with a pretty significant level of worry. Did you overextend when you bought that house? Is so-and-so gunning for your job? Is it wrong that you secretly and deeply resent your partner because you’re sick of them “never doing anything”?

And how about the real worries — will you have food, electricity, heat, clothing, safety…the worries that consume more people than any of us would care to imagine (The Shriver Report has 1 out of 3 women living ‘on the brink’ — in other words, right smack dab in this reality). For fun — let’s try an exercise marriage counselors use for marriages that are in trouble…they have each of you sit down and write on a piece of paper what matters to you, and what you think matters to your partner. Then they compare the two. And what do you think stands out in stark testament to the current state of the relationship? Pretty much zero overlap. You don’t understand what matters to me, and I don’t understand what matters to you.

Let’s extend that analogy to the healthcare space…picture a typical day for many of us in the health communication space, for example. How are we spending our days? Dreaming up new and more imaginative ways to lecture about the importance of getting a colon cancer screening, or eating well, or taking your blood pressure medication, or getting in for your annual Medicare wellness visit, or…

And a question for those of us working on this stuff. If you turned all that passion and intensity you bring with you to work, and to the task of telling others how to live in a way that complies with HEDIS this or STAR that or [insert any other traditional health quality metric here]…if you turned that lens on yourself — how are you doing? Do you eat the way you should? How’s your weight? Do you sleep the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night? How are you on your preventive screenings — are you up to date? Did you exercise at all in the last week?

Check Also : Healthy A Life

I’d bet the answer to all those questions is “no”. And I’d even go so far as to bet on some level, you (like me) are toiling away in your own private little hell. Most of us are pretty fundamentally lonely. Lost in a world of rapidly increasing communication mechanisms that with all their connecting are still, somehow, leaving us feeling incredibly alone. Alone in a world where it looks like everybody else is doing just fine (‘Check out how happy I am in this Facebook photo!!’) — and we’re the only ones kind of failing at everything.

Let’s compare those two lists — what matters to me as a human, and what matters to the healthcare system. What matters to me is my financial stress, my caregiver stress, my relationship stress, my job stress….and what matters to the healthcare system is checking the boxes on ‘quality’ metrics designed solely around a traditional definition of health.

My dad always told me if you want to start a business, pick a tidal wave that’s happening with or without you…because you’re going to make mistakes and when you do, that tidal wave will pick you up and carry you along with it. The extent to which our lives define our health is a tidal wave — and we can both acknowledge that, and start building products and tools and solutions and movements that meet each of us in the messy reality of our lives, or we can get washed out by that very same enormous and fast moving force.

The literature is clear — when life goes wrong, health goes wrong. Case in point — it’s now estimated that workplace stress alone is causing additional expenditures of between $130 to $200 billion a year — representing 7 to 10 percent of national spending on health care…and even more importantly — 1230000 deaths a year.

Check Also : Healthy Life

There are growing examples of individuals and organizations that get this stuff — and that are fielding solutions to help. Companies like Health Leads (meeting us on the lowest rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy and getting us access to heat, water, safety…), and Iora Health (meeting us squarely where we are and getting us support for our caregiver stress, our divorce, our substance issue…). I recently got to be part of the latest Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneering Ideas Podcast (link below) and in the process learned how broadly this idea is spreading…Dr. Paul Tang of linkAges from Palo Alto Medical Foundation(a project RWJF supports) talks about stress, and its effects — especially on seniors — and what we can do about it. Harvard economist/MacArthur Genius Grant winner Sendhil Mullainathan shares ideas for transforming health and healthcare in a world where ‘attentional real estate’ — given the messy realities of life — is scarce. We double dog dare you to listen here:

Check Also : A Healthy Life

As an industry with a mantra to heal, this is ground zero. We need to expand our definition of health to include life — and take this on not just as our obligation, but as our opportunity to address the fundamental drivers of health. And let’s not stop there. Let’s practice radical empathy with each other, and with ourselves. Let’s do it in the privacy of our homes, and let’s bring that raw authenticity with us to our work. Whatever you do to start acknowledging that health is life — start it now… maybe just by closing your eyes and inhaling a big fat breath of fresh air while reminding yourself, ‘I am not alone in this crazy world, because we all feel alone and on some level we are all crazy — but only in the very best of well-intentioned ways.

[itsworn]

Ask Anything: Easy-Starting EFI

Tom Edison; Milan, MI: Hey, Car Craft! I need some advice on how to make sure I get my new stand-alone EFI system to start and run the first time, as it’s on a new engine. I need to break it in too. The directions are 22 pages long, and while I think I have everything done right, I want to be sure I don’t screw this up. Can you help me out with a straightforward checklist? The engine in my 1967 Chevelle is a 383 with 11:1 compression, AFR 210 heads, Comp Cams 292XFI hydraulic roller cam, a Weiand Team G intake set up for port injection with 80-pound injectors, Holley 1,000-cfm throttle-body, MSD distributor, coil, and box. For the exhaust, I’m using Hooker headers with a Magnaflow 2.5-inch muffler and tailpipe kit. In the back, I have an Aeromotive A-1000 pump and matching EFI regulator with AN8 lines on the supply and return. I carefully followed the wiring diagrams, all the sensors are hooked up, and there is fresh gas in the tank. What am I missing, and what do I do next?

Car Craft: Tom, you told us everything except which stand-alone electronic control unit (ECU) you have, which software, and the types of sensors, specifically the crank and cam sensor. So, like your namesake, Thomas A. Edison, we’ll do our best to get you out of the dark, turn on the lights, and get that small-block shining and that Chevelle flying. The key to a clean start-up and successful tuning is familiarizing yourself with the software interface and getting everything calibrated, tested, documented, and ready to fire up. We’re going give you and all of our readers a step-by-step guide here, but to do that we need to make some assumptions (yeah, we know about assumptions). We’re assuming you will be using a stable, properly functioning laptop computer to manage your EFI system and that you have a way to keep it charged while tuning in the garage and on the road. There is nothing worse than trying to tune EFI on the road with a dying or dead computer. We are also assuming you have downloaded the correct software for your ECU and any computer-controlled accessories like a digital dash, trans controller, or fuel-pump controller. We also recommend having a good timing light, a volt/ohm meter, and the tools for working with your wiring connectors.

You mentioned that you’ll be using an MSD distributor, coil, and ignition box. Just like any build, you’ll want to be sure you have TDC marked on the damper with the factory or an aftermarket pointer. This will help when you need to confirm ignition timing and that commanded timing in the ECU is what’s actually happening at the No. 1 spark plug. Unlike a normal build, you’ll also want to lock out all advance mechanisms in the distributor. For example, on an MSD Pro-Billet distributor, you’ll lock down the mechanical advance by removing the advance components and removing and reinserting the driveshaft with the advance stop bushing pin inserted into a matching hole on the plate. The vacuum advance is locked out with a screw that goes through the mag pickup plate and into the distributor housing. The ECU will take care of all the functions of spark advance and retard that those mechanisms would have done before with far more complete control. You’ll also set up the distributor so the rotor points directly at the No. 1 lug on the cap when the engine is at TDC and tighten the distributor hold down. This is a good time to double-check that your plug wires are following the factory firing order of that Extreme Energy XFI cam. Use new plugs, preferably with a galvanized ground electrode like an AC Delco or NGK, to make plug reading easier. Yes, spark-plug reading is still one of the best ways to know what’s going inside the combustion chamber and what adjustments to make for timing and air/fuel ratio (AFR).

Speaking of AFR, you should have one or two AFR sensors with bungs welded into the collectors of those Hooker headers after the merge. The bungs should be on the top half of the collector tube to avoid condensation damage to the sensor and allow for plenty of space for the sensor pigtail. Be sure you have full-throttle travel on the gas pedal linkage to the throttle-body, just like with a carburetor. With a proper fill level on the oil, a new filter with oil in it, and coolant in the radiator and cooling system, we are set on the mechanical stuff.

So here are the key steps on the EFI side of things. First, switch the ignition to the “on” position only and verify that you can connect to the ECU and that your laptop and tuning software is displaying live parameters and data. You should see readings for coolant temperature, inlet air temp, and throttle position. Next, you’ll configure the fuel-system parameters, including injector size and running the fuel pump to check for leaks and verify that the static fuel pressure is correct. It can be handy to have a little mechanical gauge mounted on the fuel rail—or better, at the regulator—along with a fuel-pressure sensor for the ECU to log fuel pressure. You’ll enter that static pressure, typically 47 to 50 psi into your software. It’s best if it closely matches the nominal fuel pressure that your injectors were rated at for that 80 lb/hr. Ignition is next and you’ll configure the number of cylinders (eight, right?), the reluctor tooth count and type, and the spark outputs. You didn’t specify your crack sensor type or the tooth count, but most current ECUs support four-tooth crank trigger wheels up to 24- or 58-tooth LS-style wheels. You will need to verify the number of teeth, the number of missing teeth in the wheel, and the position of the crank position sensor relative to the position of the wheel and the missing tooth. Our preference is to use at least a 24x wheels (or greater), as they provide a more consistent and tunable signal.

After that, you’ll move through sensor checks: are the coolant (CLT) and air temp (IAT) sensors reading reasonably accurately (ambient temps in your garage). Does the manifold absolute pressure sensor (MAP) show ambient barometric pressure? Note that many MAP sensors will read in metric KPA, where 100 is sea level. Does the O2 or AFR sensor power up and read full lean? Typically, 22 is max lean. Finally, is the battery charged and reading at least 12.5 volts. You’ll want to see the battery at 13.2v or more when the engine is running to ensure adequate current and battery recharging while driving. Most ECUs will not function below 10v, and sometimes folks have problems starting new EFI engines because the starter load pulls down the battery voltage below 10v when cranking. Check the value shown in the tuning software with a reading from your VOM.

Next, you’ll check ECU outputs. With the fuel system disabled (and if it is supported in your software), check for spark output and cranking ignition advance around TDC. This is where having TDC properly marked with your pointer and that known good timing light come in. You’ll likely discover that this engine will want more initial timing than you are used to running, perhaps as high as 20 degrees, and most ECUs will reduce timing (by as much as 15 degrees) during cranking to spin the engine faster for start-up. If you have a fully degreed damper, you can check other cylinders as well to confirm firing order. All of that should be reflected in the timing-light reading. If your system allows it, test-fire the injectors without fuel pressure(!) and the spark disabled (you don’t want to fill the engine with gas!). Remember, spark plus fuel can equal boom!

With the spark and fuel disabled, crank the starter and check for a realistic cranking rpm of 100–200 with a conventional starter, as much as 300 with a gear reduction starter. Finally, make sure you know how to create and view data logs. Try one with the various cranking tests. Now, initiate a log and fire it up. There are a ton of great resources out there for this process. Holley’s documentation is excellent. There are forums for each ECU out there and a fun, educational resource is the RealTuners podcast on YouTube and Facebook. Good luck and let us know how this particular invention works out for you.

This is a sample laptop dashboard configuration for a Holley V4 software interface.

This is a sample start-up, slow-drive data log that shows rpm, MAP, throttle position (TPS), pulse width, battery voltage, two AFR channels, wheel speed front and rear, manifold air temp (MAT), coolant temp (CLT), battery voltage, spark advance, fuel pressure, and crank case vacuum (listed top to bottom). It also illustrates the tremendous information and analytical tools available with EFI and data logging.

Spaced Out

Stephanie Barnes; Phoenix, AZ: Girls read Car Craft too, but at our house, it’s always a question of who gets to the mailbox first. We have a 1971 Torino that we are turning into a modernized all-around performance car with traditional muscle-car looks. We ordered a big disc-brake kit for the front and a smaller setup on the rear. We finally got a really good deal on our 18-inch updated versions of the classic Torq-thrust wheels with BFG G-Force Comp -2s, 255 and 275 sizes. The problem is the front wheels hit the new brake calipers and the way the wheels in the back are sucked in just isn’t what we want. I say we use wheel spacers to get everything to fit and look right, but my husband says running wheel spacers is bad for the front suspension and could cause problems with the axles when we take the car to drags or autocross. We can’t afford to buy different wheels or change the brakes. Can you help us, Car Craft?

Car Craft: Stephanie, we are glad to read that both of you are involved in your Torino restomod project and that you had the gumption to write us with a question that lots of folks wrestle with, as there is a lot of misinformation out there. I don’t know if there is a bet involved, but the short answer is there is nothing wrong with running wheel spacers if you follow some common-sense guidelines. Even NASCAR Cup car teams use spacers to adjust track width for different events. The two biggest issues with spacers are using cheaply made cast products that are neither flat nor concentric and, more importantly, not applying enough torque to the lug nuts! That first issue is pretty obvious. If the spacer doesn’t have truly parallel faces, then you’re bolting on tire wear, vibration, and accelerated wheel or axle-bearing failure. Therefore, it’s important to buy fully machined spacers made on high-quality lathes or mills. Look for runout measurements of 0.001 inch or less. Once that issue is addressed, the second concern is how well the spacer fits the axle. The OEMs typically have wheels that are hub-centric; that is, they are centered by register on the axle or wheel hub. However, many aftermarket wheel makers produce wheels that are lug-centric, which means that the perpendicular straightness of the wheel studs is critical and any spacer needs to be precisely drilled to maintain that squareness. So look for spacers that are drilled for both the bolt pattern and the diameter of the wheel studs you are running. For your Torino, that likely means 5-on-4.5-inch bolt circle with ½-inch studs. When you are installing a properly machined spacer, expect to have to tap it on lightly with a rubber mallet or composite dead-blow hammer to seat it onto the studs. If it won’t go on, inspect the wheel studs to verity that they are all square to the axle/hub face.

As you’ll have gathered, wheel studs are important to this process, so here are some additional guidelines. Knurled wheel studs should always be pressed in or out, not pulled in with washers and a lug nut or beaten out with a ball peen. This ensures that the stud is squarely seated and the head is flush against the hub/axle. Harbor Freight and others have very serviceable 12-ton presses for around $125, and if you don’t have one, you likely know someone who does. Next, be sure that the knurl does not show past the wheel side of the axle flange/hub face. If it does, it can prevent the wheel or spacer from seating properly.

Typically, the single biggest reason folks have trouble with wheels spacers comes from insufficient torque on the lug nuts. It is a common misunderstanding that the wheel studs prevent the wheel from slipping against the axle flange/hub, but this is incorrect. It is the coefficient of friction between the wheel face and the flange/hub face and the clamping force exerted by the lug nut on the stud that keeps the wheel in place. A wheel stud can only bend if the lug nuts are not properly torqued. Adding a wheel spacer between the flange/hub and the wheel does nothing to change this. NHRA rules allow spacers and only require that lug nut thread engagement is equal to the diameter of the stud. This means that super-long studs that stick out through the lug nuts are not required. The NHRA and other sanctioning bodies require the ability to inspect the thread engagement, so use either conventional open-end, taper-style lug nuts or open-end, mag-style lug nuts, such as those from McGard.

What is the right torque amount? For stock Ford-type ½x20 studs installed dry that are Grade 8 equivalent, it’s 120 ft-lb. Specifically for wheel studs, we recommend using either nickel antiseize or a dry film lubricant. Always hand-start the nut on the threads, then run down with an impact or ratchet-style socket and torque to spec with your torque wrench. The lubricated torque spec is 90 ft-lb. If you’ve upgraded to ARP wheel studs, the lubricated spec rises to 110. For those running 7/16 studs, the lubricated spec is 80, and for drag-racing 5/8-inch drive studs, the number is 240! The clamping force on those ½x20 studs is 21,560 pounds per stud!

The last item is how thin or thick can you go with spacers? As long as you have adequate thread engagement and torque the lug nuts properly, up 2 inches of spacer on the rear and 1 inch on the front will not present any significant issues. As a wheel and tire are spaced farther out on the front, the scrub radius will increase making the car more sensitive to bumps and pavement grooves. It will also slightly increase the load on your front wheel bearings. Lastly, as you increase front track, you improve lateral stability, but you may feel a bit more squirm under braking. This is why we suggest no more than 1-inch spacers on the front.

Now you know you can safely solve your brake-caliper interference and stance issues with spacers. As you’ll also now know, it’s always the best idea to use your brake manufacturer’s template (should be available online) to test wheel fitment before mounting them and making them unreturnable.

Wheel spacers come in a variety of sizes, materials, and configurations for bolt pattern and stud diameter. Note that the thinnest spacer shown, 1/8-inch, is made from steel. That is because aluminum that thin can deform under proper lug nut torque settings.

These mag- or shank-style lug nuts from McGard are made from high-quality steel with rolled threads and have a long-lasting hard-chrome finish. They are open ended for inspection by track officials, but also come with easy-to-remove broached hex caps to keep out road grit.

ARP makes these 200,000-psi wheel studs in a variety of lengths, diameter, thread pitch, and knurl sizes. Be sure the knurl does not extend past the face of the hub and that the stud is long enough to provide thread engagement at least equal to the diameter of the stud.

NHRA wheels rule.

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[symbianosgames]

I think we can all agree that there is a difference in how certain games feel to play. There are just certain games that feel "gamier" than others. Just compare playing Super Mario to something like Dear Esther, and I think it's clear that the former feels like it has more gameplay than the latter. What is it that causes this? My hypothesis: the ability to plan.

The more a player can plan ahead in a game, the more engaging that game will feel to play.

Before I cover some evidence of why this is most likely true, I will need to get into some background information. In order to understand why planning has such a prominent role in games, we need to look into the evolution of our species and answer this question: why are fish so stupid?

                                                              ---

This is how the world looks to the average fish:

                        They can really only see 1-2 meters in front of them and often it's even worse than that. This means that a fish can't do much planning. It just reacts to whatever pops up in front of its face; that's really what their lives are all about. If a fish's life was a game, it would be a limited version of Guitar Hero played to random noise. This is why fishing works. Fish don't think like us, they're mainly just driven by hardwired responses.

For a large part of earth's history this was what life was like for organisms. But then 400 million or so years ago something happened. Fish started to move on to land. Suddenly, the view looked more like this:

                         This changed their world. Suddenly it was possible to plan ahead and to properly think about your environment. Previously, smart brains had been a waste of energy, but now it was a great asset. In fact, so important was this shift that it is probably a big factor in how consciousness evolved.  Malcolm MacIver, who as far as I can tell originated this theory, writes about it like this:

"But then, about 350 million years ago in the Devonian Period, animals like Tiktaalik started making their first tentative forays onto land. From a perceptual point of view, it was a whole new world. You can see things, roughly speaking, 10,000 times better. So, just by the simple act of poking their eyes out of the water, our ancestors went from the mala vista of a fog to a buena vista of a clear day, where they could survey things out for quite a considerable distance. 

This puts the first such members of the “buena vista sensing club” into a very interesting position, from an evolutionary perspective. Think of the first animal that gains whatever mutation it might take to disconnect sensory input from motor output (before this point, their rapid linkage was necessary because of the need for reactivity to avoid becoming lunch). At this point, they can potentially survey multiple possible futures and pick the one most likely to lead to success. For example, rather than go straight for the gazelle and risk disclosing your position too soon, you may choose to stalk slowly along a line of bushes (wary that your future dinner is also seeing 10,000 times better than its watery ancestors) until you are much closer."

 To showcase the above, he has the following image:  

                          This images nicely shows the conceptual difference in the processes involved. In one you basically just use a linear process and "react as you go". In the other one you scout the terrain ahead, consider various approaches and then pick one that seems, given the available data, to be the best one. 

It is not exactly the same, but there is a striking likeness to the following image comparing old school and more modern FPS design:

                             I know that this is not a completely fair comparison, but the important point here is that when we look at these two images, it feels pretty clear which of these two designs ought to have the best gameplay. The image on the left represents a more complex and interesting landscape, while the one on the right represent a linear sequence of events. And just like the worlds of a fish compared to that of the world of land animals, this means a huge difference in our ability to plan.

There are other interesting connections with the ability to see far and to plan. Malcolm MacIver replies to a question regarding the intelligence of octopi:

"It’s incredible what being an unprotected blob of delicious protein will get you after eons of severe predation stress. They, by the way, have the largest eyes known (basketball size in the biggest deep sea species). Apparently, they use these to detect the very distant silhouettes of whales, their biggest threats, against the light of the surface. 

The theory is committed to the idea that the advantage of planning will be proportional to the margin of where you sense relative to where you move in your reaction time. It then identifies one period in our evolutionary past when there was a massive change in this relationship, and suggests this might have been key to the development of this capacity. It’s interesting that octopuses and archerfish tend to be still before executing their actions. This maximally leverages their relatively small sensoria. There may be other ways, in other words, for animals trapped in the fog of water to get a big enough sensorium relative to where they are moving to help with planning."

Sight is of course not the only reason for us humans to have evolved our current level of intelligence and consciousness. Other important factors are our upright pose and our versatile hands. Standing up meant that we could see further and allowed us to use our hands more easily. Our hands are the main means with which we shape the world around us. They allowed us to craft tools, and in various ways to change parts of the environment to optimize our survival. All of these things are deeply connected to the ability to plan. Once we learned how to reshape the world around us, our options opened up and the complexity of our plans increased immensely. 

It doesn't stop there. Planning is also a crucial part of our social life. Theory of mind, our ability to simulate other people, is both a reason for and a product of our planning abilities. Navigating our social groups has always been a careful activity of thinking about various paths of action and their consequences. 

Planning also underlies two other phenomena that have been discussed recently on this blog: Mental Models and Presence. The reason why we have mental models is so that we can evaluate actions before we make them, which obviously is crucial to planning. Presence is a phenomenon that comes from us incorporating ourselves into our plans. We don't just want to model what happens to the world, but also to ourselves.

So, to sum things up: there are lots of evolutionary reasons why planning would be a fundamental part of what makes us human. It's a big part of who we are, and when we are able to make use of these abilities we are bound to find that engaging. 

                                                                ---

So this background is all very well, but is there really any good evidence that this is actually a thing in games? Yes - in fact, quite a bit of it! Let's review the ones that I find the most important.

There is a model of player engagement called PENS (Player Experience of Need Satisfaction) which is quite rigorously researched. It uses the following criteria to evaluate what a player thinks about a game.

Competence. This is how well a game satisfies our need to feel competent - the sense of having mastered the game. 

Autonomy. How much freedom does the player have and what options do they have to express it?

Relatedness. How well is the player's desire to connect with other people satisfied?

Measuring how well a game performs on the above metrics has been shown to be a much better indicator of various types of success (sales, how likely people are to recommend the game, and so forth) than simply asking if the game is "fun". 

And, more importantly, two of the above factors are directly related to planning. Both Competence and Autonomy heavily rely on the player's ability to plan. Let's go over why this is so.

In order for a player to feel competent at a game they need to have a deep understanding of how the game works. Sure, there are games where mere reflexes are enough, but these are always very simplistic. Even in most rhythm games there are certain rules that the player needs to learn and understand in order to play well. A big part is also learning the melodies that make up each level. Why? In order to optimally place your inputs (be that fingers or feet) to hit as many beats as possible. All of these aspects boil down to one thing: being able to predict the future.

You see the same thing in most games. You get better at Dark Souls when you understand how monsters attack, how levels are laid out and how your own attacks work. Learning how a world operates and gaining the ability to predict is a cornerstone of competence. Sure, you also need to develop the motor skills to carry out the required actions, but this is almost always less important than understanding the whys and whens of the actions. Simply being able to predict is not enough, you also need to have a sense of what goal you are trying to achieve and then, using your predictive abilities, to carry out the steps required to reach it. Or in other words: you need to be able to plan.

Autonomy is also highly dependent on the ability to plan. Imagine a game where you have plenty of freedom, but have no idea how the game works. Everybody who has booted up a complex strategy game without understanding the basics knows that this is not very engaging. In order for the freedom to mean something, you need to have an idea what to do with it. You need to understand how the game's mechanics behave, what tools are at your disposal, and what goals you want to achieve. Without this, freedom is confusing and pointless.

So in order to provide a sense of autonomy a game needs to not only provide a large possibility space, but also teach the player how the world works and what the player's role in it is. The player needs to be able to mentally simulate various actions that can take place, and then come up with sequences that can be used to attain a specific goal. When you have this, you have freedom that is worth having. It should be pretty obvious that I am again describing the ability to plan. A world in which the player is not able to plan is also one with little autonomy.

Similarly, if the game only features a linear sequence of events, there's not much planning to be done. In order for the player to be able to craft plans there need to be options. This is not the case if only a certain chain of actions is possible. This scenario is a typical example of having no freedom, and unsatisfactory in terms of autonomy.  Again, planning and autonomy are intricately linked.

One could make the case that Relatedness also has a connection with planning. As explained earlier, any social interactions heavily rely on our ability to plan. However, I don't think this is strong enough and the other two aspects are more than enough. Instead let's look at evidence from a different angle.

                        One trend that has been going on for a long time in games is the addition of extra "meta" features. A very common one right now is crafting, and almost all big games have it in some way or another. It's also common to have RPG-like levelling elements, not just for characters, but for assets and guns as well. Collecting a currency that can then be used to buy a variety of items also turns up a lot. Take a look at just about any recent release and you are bound to find at least one of these.

So why do games have them? The answer to that is quite easy: it makes the game more engaging. The harder question is why that should be the case. It can't solely be because it gives the player more to do. If that was the case you would see games adding a random variety of mini games to spice things up. But instead we are seeing certain very specific types of features being used over and over again.

My theory for this is that it's all to do with planning. The main reason that these features are there is because it gives the player a larger possibility space of plans, and more tools to incorporate into their planning. For instance, the act of collecting currency combined with a shop means that the player will have the goal of buying a particular item. Collecting a certain amount of currency with a view to exchange it for goods is a plan. If the desired item and the method in which the coins are collected are both connected to the core gameplay loop, then this meta feature will make the core loop feel like it has more planning that it actually has. 

These extra features can also spice up the normal gameplay. Just consider how you need to think about what weapons to use in combat during The Last of Us. You have some scrap you can craft items from, and all of those items will allow you to use different tactics during combat. And because you cannot make all of them, you have to make a choice. Making this choice is making a plan, and the game's sense of engagement is increased. 

Whatever your views on this sort of meta-feature are, one thing is certain: they work. Because if they weren't we wouldn't be seeing this rise in them persist over such a long time. Sure, it's possible to make a game with a ton of planning without any of these features. But that's the hard way. Having these features is a well-tested way to increasing engagement, and thus something that is very tempting to add, especially when you lose a competitive advantage by not doing so.  

                        Finally, I need to discuss what brought me into thinking about planning at all. It was when I started to compare SOMA to Amnesia: The Dark Descent. When designing SOMA it was really important for us to have as many interesting features as possible, and we wanted the player to have a lot of different things to do. I think it is safe to say that SOMA has a wider range of interactions and more variety than what Amnesia: The Dark Descent had. But despite this, a lot of people complained that SOMA was too much of a walking simulator. I can't recall a single similar comment about Amnesia. Why was this so?

At first I couldn't really understand it, but then I started to outline the major differences between the games:

Amnesia's sanity system

The light/health resource management.

Puzzles spread across hubs.

All of these things are directly connected with the player's ability to plan. The sanity system means the player needs to think about what paths they take, whether they should look at monsters, and so forth. These are things the player needs to account for when they move through a level, and provide a constant need to plan ahead.

The resource management system works in a similar fashion, as players need to think about when and how they use the resources they have available. It also adds another layer as it makes it more clear to the player what sort of items they will find around a map. When the player walks into a room and pulls out drawers this is not just an idle activity. The player knows that some of these drawers will contain useful items and looting a room becomes part of a larger plan. 

In Amnesia a lot of the level design worked by having a large puzzle (e.g. starting an elevator) that was solved by completing a set of spread out and often interconnected puzzles. By spreading the puzzles across the rooms, the player needs to always consider where to go next. It's not possible to just go with a simple "make sure I visit all locations" algorithm to progress through the game. Instead you need to think about what parts of the hub-structure you need to go back to, and what puzzles there are left to solve. This wasn't very complicated, but it was enough to provide a sense of planning.

SOMA has none of these features, and none of its additional features make up for the loss of planning. This meant that the game overall has this sense of having less gameplay, and for some players this meant the game slipped into walking simulator territory. Had we known about the importance of the ability to plan, we could have done something to fix this. 

                                                          ---

A "normal" game that relies on a standard core gameplay loop doesn't have this sort of problem. The ability to plan is built into the way that classical gameplay works. Sure, this knowledge can be used to make such games better, but it's by no means imperative. I think this is a reason why planning as a foundational aspects of games is so undervalued. The only concrete example that I have found[1] is this article by Doug Church where he explains it like this:

"These simple, consistent controls, coupled with the very predictable physics (accurate for a Mario world), allow players to make good guesses about what will happen should they try something. Monsters and environments increase in complexity, but new and special elements are introduced slowly and usually build on an existing interaction principle. This makes game situations very discernable — it's easy for the players to plan for action. If players see a high ledge, a monster across the way, or a chest under water, they can start thinking about how they want to approach it. 

This allows players to engage in a pretty sophisticated planning process. They have been presented (usually implicitly) with knowledge of how the world works, how they can move and interact with it, and what obstacle they must overcome. Then, often subconsciously, they evolve a plan for getting to where they want to go. While playing, players make thousands of these little plans, some of which work and some of which don't. The key is that when the plan doesn't succeed, players understand why. The world is so consistent that it's immediately obvious why a plan didn't work. "

This is really spot on, an excellent description of what I am talking about. This is an article from 1999 and have had trouble finding any other source that discuss it, let alone expands upon the concept since then. Sure, you could say that planning is summed up in Sid Meier's "A series of interesting choices", but that seems to me too fuzzy to me. It is not really about the aspect of predicting how a world operates and then making plans based on that.

The only time when it does sort of come up is when discussing the Immersive Sim genre. This is perhaps not a big surprise given that Doug Church had a huge part in establishing the genre. For instance, emergent gameplay, which immersive sims are especially famous for, relies heavily on being able to understand the world and then making plans based on that. This sort of design ethos can be clearly seen in recent games such as Dishonored 2, for instance [2].  So it's pretty clear that game designers think in these terms. But it's a lot less clear to me that it is viewed as a fundamental part of what makes games engaging and it feels like it is more treated like a subset of design.

As I mentioned above this is probably because when you take part in "normal" gameplay, a lot of planning comes automatically. However, this isn't the case with narrative games. In fact, narrative games are often considered "lesser games" in the regard that they don't feature as much normal gameplay as something like Super Mario. Because of this, it's very common to discuss games in terms of whether you like them to be story-heavy or gameplay-heavy, as if either has to necessarily exclude the other. However, I think a reason there is still such a big discrepancy is because we haven't properly figured out how gameplay in narrative games work. As I talked about in an earlier blog post, design-wise, we are stuck at a local maxima.

The idea that planning is fundamental to games presents a solution to this problem. Instead of saying "narrative games need better gameplay", we can say that "narrative games need more planning".  

                                                              ---

In order to properly understand what we need to do with planning, we need to have some sort of supportive theory to makes sense of it all. The SSM Framework that I presented last week fits nicely into that role.

It is really best to read up on last week's blog post to get the full details, but for the sake of completeness I shall summarise the framework here.

We can divide a game into three different spaces. First of all we have System space. This where all the code is and where all the simulations happen. The System space deals with everything as abstract symbols and algorithms. Secondly we have the Story space which provides context for the the things that happen in the System space. In System space Mario is just a set of collision boundaries, but then when that abstract information is run through the Story space that turns into an Italian plumber. Lastly, we have the Mental Model space. This is how the player thinks about the game and is a sort of mental replica of all that exists in the game world. However, since the player mostly never understands exactly what goes on System space (nor how to properly interpret the story context), this is just an educated guess. In the end though, the Mental Model is what the player uses in order to play the game and what they base their decisions on.

Given this we can now start to define what gameplay is. First of all we need to talk about the concept of an action. An action is basically whatever the player performs when they are playing the game and it has the following steps:

Evaluate the information received from the System and Story space.

Form a Mental Model based on the information at hand.

Simulate the consequences of performing a particular action.

If the consequences seem okay, send the appropriate input (e.g. pushing a button) to the game.

A lot of this happens unconsciously. From the player's point of view they will mostly view this sequence as "doing something" and are unaware of the actual thought process that takes place. But really, this always happens when the player does something in a game, be that jumping over a chasm in Super Mario or placing a house in Sim City.

Now that we understand what an action is, we can move on to gameplay. This is all about stringing several actions together, but with one caveat: you don't actually send the input to the game, you just imagine doing so. So this string of actions are built together in mental model space, evaluating them and then if the results feel satisfactory, only then do we start to send the required input.

                           Put in other words: gameplay is all about planning and then executing that plan. And based upon all of the evidence that I showed above, my hypothesis is: the more actions you can string together, the better the gameplay feels.

It isn't enough to simply string together any actions and call that a plan. First of all, the player needs to have an idea of some sort of goal they are trying to achieve. The actions also need be non-trivial. Simply having a bunch of walking actions strung together will not be very engaging to the player. It's also worth pointing out that planning is by no means the only thing that makes a game engaging. All other design thinking doesn't suddenly go out the window just because you focus on planning. 

However, there are a bunch of design principles that go hand in hand with planning. For instance, to have a consistent world is crucial, because otherwise it isn't possible for the player to form a plan. This is why invisible walls are so annoying; they seriously impede our ability to create and execute plans. It also explains why it's so annoying when failure seems random. For gameplay to feel good, we need to be able to mentally simulate exactly what went wrong. Like Doug Church expressed in a quote above: when a player fails they always need to know why.  

Another example is the adventure game advice that you should always have several puzzles going at once. In planning terms this is because we always want to make sure the player has ample room to plan, "I will first solve this and then that". There are lots of other similar principles that have to do with planning. So while planning is not the only thing that makes a game engaging, a great number of things that do can be derived from it.

  Let's quickly look at some examples from actual games.

                          Say that the player wants to assassinate the guy in red in this situation. What the player does not do is simply jump down and hope for the best. They need to have some sort of plan before going on. They might first wait for the guard to leave, teleport behind the victim, and then sneak up and stab them. When that's done they leave the same way they came. This is something the player works out in their head before doing anything. It isn't until they have some sort of plan that they start acting.

This plan might not work, the player might fail to sneak up on the guy and then he sound an alarm. In this case the plan breaks, however that doesn't mean that the player's plan was totally untrue. It just meant they didn't manage to pull off one of the actions of. If presented properly, players are okay with this. In the same way, the player might have misinterpreted their mental model or missed something. This is also okay as long as the player can update their mental model in a coherent fashion. And next time the player tries to execute a similar plan they will get better at it.

Often this ability to carry out your plans is what makes the game the most engaging. Usually a game starts out a bit dull, as your mental models are a bit broken and the ability to plan not very good. But then, as you play, this gets better and you start stringing together longer sets of actions and therefore having more fun. This is why tutorials can be so important. They are a great place to get away from that initial dullness by making the experience a bit simpler and guiding the player to think in the correct manner about how the game works.  

It's also worth noting that plans should never be too simple to carry out. Then the actions become trivial. There needs to be a certain degree of non-triviality for engagement to remain.

Planning doesn't always need to happen in the long term, it can also be very short term. Take this scene from Super Mario, for instance:  

                         Here the player needs to make a plan in a split second. The important thing to notice here is that the player doesn't simply react blindly. Even in a stressful situation, if the game works as it should, the player quickly formulates a plan and then tries to carry out that plan.

Now compare these two examples to a game like Dear Esther:  

                            There are a lot of things one can like about this game, but I think everybody agrees that the gameplay is lacking. What's harder to agree on, though, is what's missing. I've heard a lot about the lack of fail states and competitive mechanics, but I don't find these convincing. As you might guess, I think the missing ingredient is planning.

The main reason that people find Dear Esther unengaging is not because they cannot fail, or because there is nothing to compete against. It's because the game doesn't allow them to form and execute plans. We need to figure out ways of fixing this.

By thinking about the planning in terms of the SSM-framework we get a hint at what sort of gameplay that can constitute "narrative play": When you form a plan in Mental Model space it is important that the actions are mostly grounded in the data received from Story space. Compare the the following two plans:

1) "First I pick up 10 items to increase the character X's trust meter, this will allow me to reach the 'friendship'-threshold and X will now be part of my crew. This awards me 10 points in range combat bonus."

2) "If I help out X with cleaning her room, I might be able to be friends with her. This would be great as I could then ask her to join us on our journey. She seems like a great sharpshooter and I would feel much safer with her onboard."

This is a fairly simplistic example, but I hope I get the point across. Both of these describe the same plan, but they have vastly different in how the data is interpreted. Number 1 is just all abstract system-space, and the number 2 has a more narrative feel, and is grounded in the story space. When the gameplay is about making plans like the second example, that is when we start to get something that feels like proper narrative play. This is a crucial step in evolving the art of interactive storytelling.  

                                                               ---

I believe thinking about planning is a crucial step in order to get better narrative games. For too long, game design has relied on the planning component arising naturally out of 'standard' gameplay, but when we no longer have that we need to take extra care. It's imperative to understand that it drives gameplay, and therefore that we need to make sure our narrative experiences include this. Planning is by no means a silver bullet, but it's a really important ingredient. It's certainly something that we're putting a lot of thought into when making our future titles here at Frictional Games.

  Footnotes:

1) If anyone has other concrete resources describing planning as a fundamental part of games I'd love to hear about them. Please post about them in the comments if you know any.

2) Steve Lee had an excellent lecture called "An Approach to Holistic Level Design" at this year's GDC where he talked a lot about player intentionality. This is another concept closely related to planning.

[usamotorscycle-blog]

Motoinno TS3 Prototype Test

Motorcycles are about passion mixed with thrills, and when those two ingredients are combined on a good day, everything lines up like a perfect apex. I recently had one of those days, riding an extraordinary motorcycle, right here in little old Australia. That motorcycle is the Motoinno TS3, a wild-looking creature 10 years in development that would not look out of place on a Matrix film set, which, as it happens, is not too far fetched. You see, the inventor of the Motoinno TS3, Ray Van Steenwyk, happens to have over 35 years of experience in film production and 3-D animation, with a list of movies that include Matrix Reloaded, Mad Max Fury: Road, Happy Feet 1 and 2, The Incredible Hulk, Charlotte’s Web, Promethius and many more. Taylormade/Brough Superior Moto2 Racer Taylormade Moto2 Racer Review A self-taught mechanical engineer and lifetime motorcyclist, Ray eventually combined all of his skills to create this masterpiece of motorcycle and mechanical engineering. And it’s a bike I had a special interest in riding too, as the famed Grand Prix mechanic Warren Willing did some work on it before he passed away, and readers familiar with my past know I did my motorcycle mechanic apprenticeship at Willing Motorcycles, with his brother and legendary racer, the late Len Willing. For Warren to have worked on the bike, he must have been really interested in it. What Is This Thing?

At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that this is just another hub-center-steering bike, or even a Bimota Tesi or Vyrus, but on second glance you will see huge differences. By the time you really stop and take it in, you will realize this is an all-new one-off alternative hub-center-steering (HCS) motorcycle. So, why?

Bikes have had telescopic forks for over 100 years, but manufacturers have always been aware of their flaws. We’re familiar with them and understand them. However, like our esteemed Ed-in-Chief’s skating skills, everything can be improved. Duke’s Den – You Can’t Help Getting Older… Forks and the steering system that comes with them present a problem because steering, braking and suspension moments all affect each other. When you brake, the braking forces are put through the suspension, which leads to the suspension being compressed. This in turn limits travel and the ability to ride bumps. We then increase spring rates and damping forces to slow down the dive and offer support on weight shift, however, this then compromises suspension performance. Braking hard also increases the steering angle as the forks compress, and then the opposite on extension, and there are other issues such as stiction and the major one, lateral flex, which can happen mid-corner over bumps or on the brakes, causing the tire contact patch to move away from the steering axis. This can cause wobbles or tank slappers.

All of this causes forces that produce torque around the steering axis, or steering head, which needs to be massive and bulky to cope. That force needs to go somewhere, and that is the rider’s arms, then body, legs, the rest of the bike and more wobbles and weaves result. A steering damper helps but only deflects the forces somewhere else. There are good points with forks, of course. We are all used to the feel of them and compensating for their flaws, and the ability to adjust steering angle on the hop by using more or less braking force into a corner can be great, particularly tightening radius turns, and the feel and feedback we get through a telescopic fork front-end is not only familiar but also intimate as there is very little separating our hands from the front axle. The single biggest advantage of hub-center steering is that it divides steering, braking and suspension functions into three separate moments that do not have an impact on each other. The disadvantage of these funny front ends has been a lack of rider feel and feedback. There has always been a series of linkages separating the handlebars from the steering axis, and each one reduces feedback and introduces the risk of slack. The Motoinno TS3 minimizes this greatly as the ’bars are joined directly to the upper parallelogram swingarm, and that in turn is mounted straight to the steering axis. The donor for the prototype test bike is a Ducati 900SS. What is left of the original machine includes the engine, bodywork, instruments and not much else. The engine is actually standard aside from open pipes and an ECU remap.

The Ducati trellis frame is gone, replaced by a chro-moly sub-frame at the rear, billet CNC sideplates that support it and the footpegs, the engine and the front swingarm. The engine thus becomes a stressed member with both the front and rear swingarms pivoting off it. There are two offset parallelogram swingarms on the front that keep rake and trail geometry constant through suspension travel and also allow the inbuilt Pro-Dive (fully adjustable dial-in anti-dive), while braking forces are directed through the horizontal plane of the lower swingarm to the engine. What this design does is give the TS3 a virtual kingpin that starts at the contact patch of the tire, travels through the hub center along the steering axis and ends above the front wheel. So, if you look at the side-on image of the front of the bike, draw a triangle from the front axle to the pivot point below the front shock, then up to the steering head lower pivot point and back down to the axle, you will see this triangulated strength – thus the TS3 (Triangulated Steering & Suspension System) name designation.

What this does is almost completely eliminate a problem that some other HCS systems and all telescopic forks have, which is oscillation harmonics from the wheel or the kingpin, which is under huge loads. It also eliminates ground clearance issues, which some systems in the past have had due to the size of the front swinging arms they have had to employ. The TS3 system is highly adjustable. Both ends feature a fully adjustable Afco shock, easily accessible, while rake and trail can be massively adjusted from 15º to 24º. For this test, the rake was set to 19º and corresponding trail was 98mm. Ray says the bike’s dry weight is a stunning 161kg (355 lbs), with 52% of it placed on its front end. Unlike other HCS bikes, the TS3 has a tight turning circle using a total steering sweep of 54º, around 25% more than an average bike with a telescopic fork. Wheelbase is a short 1394mm (54.9 inches). Dive under braking can be adjusted via the Pro-Dive system invented by Ray. For my test, 25% dive was dialled in, leaving at least 75% of suspension travel available at all times under hard braking. The wheels are lightweight BST carbon-fibre, and the brakes are standard Ducati 900SS Brembo stoppers. The Ride

Testing a prototype with accuracy takes a lot of experience – you need hundreds of tests under your belt to give real feedback on a prototype. You also have to be prepared to put yourself on the line and push the bike past its limits, ideally without crashing of course, and you have to trust the builder and hope it is all strong enough. You also have the responsibility of not damaging a bike that can often be worth a million bucks and be difficult, or impossible, to repair or replace. Doing all of the above at a dangerous place like Lakeside Park near Brisbane, Australia, just adds another challenge, but this is part of the job I love. I had a test plan in place before I arrived, which was to gently feel my way into the bones of the bike, do a thorough mechanical check over, make any subtle set-up tweaks (very few in the end, in fact only tire pressures), then gradually build to pushing the bike to crashing point but not crashing. I wanted to see how far that front end could be pushed compared to conventional forks as best as possible without having an identical bike on identical tires fitted with forks on hand to do a direct comparison. Instantaneous Confidence

Ray fires the bike into life and I grab a gear and roll out onto Lakeside Park’s short front straight. I’m surrounded by other bikes, which makes me nervous, and there is a no-passing-on-the-first-lap rule. I get a feel for the brakes, steering, engine character and gearbox while trundling along with in the group. As we all round the final corner, I put my head on the tank and hit the go switch. Within two corners my knee is on the ground and I’m feeling like I have been riding this bike for an entire racing season, not the actual two minutes I’ve been aboard. From this point onwards, I know I am in for a good ride. The Motoinno TS3 is more than just pretty CNC work and wild looks. Why am I so comfortable on this bike? The answer is that I am a front-end rider and I always need a planted, solid and confidence-inspiring front end to be able string a good lap together or to have a good Sunday run on the road. A rider who has faith in the front tire can do almost anything on a motorcycle. So I feel good on the bike, a big relief, and can now push on to dig up some info on this invention.

I circulate at the same pace for two more laps to learn more about the feedback and work out where the bumps are. I then push a little harder, first on the brakes, just a little later at a time into the Bus Stop and T2, trying to get a feel for the tire and what the bike does. It feels strange as there is the initial dive, which is comforting and familiar, followed by a sensation that left me wondering if the suspension was actually travelling up and down through its stroke or the track was simply billiard-table smooth. I assure you it is not the latter! For the last few laps of the session, I combine late braking and introduce turn-in into it, again trying to get a feel for edge grip and sidewall compression and how far I can push before losing grip. I also play with lines and discover that regardless of corner entry or turn-in point, if there is a slower rider ahead, I can simply push the bike a bit further over and steer tighter and go underneath any bike I happen to come across.

Exiting the final corner I can choose where I want to be, even hugging the inside all the way around despite carrying incredible mid-corner speed. It is like there is more front tire available in reserve if needed, a bit like insurance. This makes the bike very raceable. It would be fantastic on an opening lap negotiating the pack, darting up the inside, around the outside, anywhere! It would also be a great wet-weather bike, allowing more safety margin. The session ends with some front tire chatter in the long tightening-radius double-apex T2 combo, and no sign yet of any other limitations. After having a lot of experience on the 900SS platform, including racing one in the past, I enter the pits very impressed with the TS3. In fact, I admit I was a little shocked at how well the initial test session went.

I head out for my second session an hour later with a clear set of processes I want to go through to further push the limits of this bike. I begin by simply getting into a rhythm on the bike, which only takes a lap, such is my confidence in the front end. I’m still not getting the familiar communication I get from a telescopic fork and a steering-head, but I do have trust in the front as I have already overcome that purposely over-the-top corner entry: ‘Well, deep breath, here we go if I’m going to crash this will be it’ moment and came out the other side, so kept it at that level from that point. The feel is coming to me, but the tire pressure is too high and causing some feel and chatter problem. Regardless, I now begin to test for lean angle and just how far that front tire can be pushed before it has a little tuck. This is a touchy job and I really don’t want to crash this bike, but I really, really want to know the answer!

I push and lean and push and lean, and there seems to be no end to this limit, then it suddenly tells me to back off – a front fold while leaned over in a corner. It was communicable, there was warning, and I simply did a Marquez and dug my knee in, only with nowhere near the style and grace! I pull back to 90% for the last few minutes of the session and then get another message from the TS3 when the back comes around. I start to get some rear-end drifts, not really slides, but it is a gentle nudge from the back to say, “Hey, I can’t keep up with that front end, my limit comes first, pull it back a notch…” The fact that to get to that point of the rear tire took so much pushing really is testament to the front, and as I roll back into the pits I’m yet again impressed. I would not have got that rear slide with a conventional front end, as the front would have folded before the rear could even get into that situation. Interesting stuff.

After some discussion, we agree to drop the front tire pressure by 3 psi and the rear by 4 psi. This fixes the chatter and transforms the bike. No other changes were required. After a cold drink I head out for a last session on the TS3. The temperature has dropped and there is a cooler breeze. The Ducati 900SS engine feels crisper and cleaner and has a few more horsepower, and I’m wringing it out of this poor motor by revving it beyond where it should be, but it is holding up admirably well, as is the gearbox and clutch. I have already tested the braking capabilities, the braking and turn-in transition, lean-angle behaviour, line changing into, through and out of turns and the high-speed stability, so now it is time to pose for a few photos for a few laps and then ride the Motoinno TS3 like I stole it.

I put my head on the tank, literally, and hold it flat in fifth gear onto the main chute, holding a tight line with ease and therefore using less tire on a corner where often you are just about kissing the Armco on the outside. I then snick sixth just before the Turn 1 kink completely full throttle and touching my boot and the redline just before preparing for the ultra-late braking point for Turn 2. Normally you want to slow but not wash off too much speed into here, but on the TS3 I am able to go really deep, brake hard and still easily get it turned and on line, without losing speed. A quick burst of throttle has the TS3 rolling fast for the second apex and again I easily get the bike turned, tight and not at all near the bumpy outside part of the track, leaving me on the paint on the inside of the apex and ready to accelerate hard towards the Bus Stop. The TS3 simply leaps forward like a wild animal with only a very gentle wiggle of the ’bars.

The Bus Stop entry is where the advantage of the TS3 really shines. I brake as late as I would ever dare. In fact, I squeeze the Brembo lever as hard as I can and still, easily flick the bike left and right into the Bus Stop, on as tight a line as I could on a 125 GP bike. On exit of the Bus Stop I have to wrestle the bike through, however, this is the only part of the lap where the steering geometry settings feel conservative and I am carrying more speed than I would attempt on a conventional bike, making a mess of the exit on this occasion. Accelerating hard down the hill, I recall seeing bikes drifting out to the edge of the track here. Not the TS3. I’m a good few meters off the outside and in fact pass some bikes up the inside before swinging into the fast uphill Hungry Corner, a classic spot for front-end grip losses. Not on the TS3. It remains solid and planted throughout, with no ground clearance issues.

Full throttle up the hill from the apex of Hungry Corner and I run it up the slope of Eastern Loop while braking and turning in. This corner has a habit of sucking you in late and then you either run wide or lose the front. On the TS3 I am able to get in a little hot and uncomfortable but still pull it into the apex here. It was here I was getting some decent rear-end drifting off the turn for the fast run down the hill for the entry to Turn 7, where the lap starts all over again. The dropped tire pressures mean I have a more intimate feel for the front and am getting more acquainted with that each lap. However, it’d take me a bit longer than one day to fully understand the feedback, so right now it is a mixture of trust and experience. Another fun few laps and I decide it is time to give the two-valve a good rest and I head in. A look at the tires reveals I was off the edge of the rear yet had a good few mm left in reserve on the front, which is not unusual, but the next challenge for Ray and team will be getting that rear end to go that little bit further to help get more advantage from the front. However, this is purely from a racer perspective and not required for road or track day applications. Overall, I was very impressed with the TS3 and the positives for me outweigh the negatives so far. That feel on the track would improve with race rubber fitted, and I can’t comment on what the feel would be like on the public roads until I try it.

What were the negatives? Not many. I would like a feeling of more resistance to steering inputs, as I am accustomed to pushing on a bar with a certain amount of pressure and resistance to get a bike turning, whereas the TS3 feels like the front tire is suspended – it is that light – so it did oversteer occasionally when riding on autopilot at the limit. I could feel what I thought was a small amount of flex or movement between the bars and the wheel actually turning, but only during quick changes of direction. The positives are clear, though, with improved braking capabilities, steering behaviour and suspension freedom (it can work unhindered) making this a great ride. The next test will be durability as there are a lot of parts and I would absolutely love to see this adapted to a more powerful bike. It would be something else… Now the question everyone wants to know. Is the TS3 better than a bike with a telescopic fork? I can’t answer that for certain yet. However, on my day, on that track, on that bike, I can confidently say that I would not have been able to take a Ducati 900SS with a conventional front end to the same limits as I could take the TS3 to. Motorcycle Innovation

Inventor of the system, Ray Van Steenwyk, has over 34 years of advertising, feature film and television work to his credit and is skilled in Art Direction, 3-D Animation, Design and Production. He is a self-taught mechanical engineer and is proficient in CAD and motorcycle dynamics, as well as studying all the relevant data on alternate steering and suspension systems that are in print today, all learnt over the many years of bringing the TS3 bike into fruition. Long-time friend, business partner and company director, Colin Oddy, is also a veteran of the TV and film world with a 20-year career as a Producer/Production Manager on scores of TV commercials, corporate and network documentaries and screen credits on feature films and U.S. television productions. He is proficient in sourcing and bringing together valuable production and financial aspects of commercial development. Development The TS3 bike was developed over a 10-year design stage to get the front-end geometry working. In July of 2008, CAD designs and FEA simulations on components were started, and approved CNC parts were then produced through 2009-2010 culminating in the current components being crafted by Brisbane-based CNC fabricator, Gordon Gilmour, to complete the bike in 2011. The bike was finally assembled by Sydney engineer Arthur Spink, whose company MecFX builds all forms of complex machinery for the film and TV industry. Further design improvements were implemented during 2014-2015. Initial track testing of the bike’s new system was started in November 2011, and suspension set-up was conducted by MotoGP race expert and guru, the late Warren Willing, in 2012 to produce a consistent, compliant and stable front- and rear-end platform.

Here’s a set of digital clothes on the Motoinno T3, foreshadowing perhaps what a production version might look like. On-track testing has provided MCI with empirical data that consistently shows the new front-end gives the prototype the ability to enter a corner smoother and faster with a very much reduced flip-flop countersteer action to begin the turn. It has been proven to maintain a greater corner speed with a higher rate of turn for less lean and can be picked up out of a corner faster without running wide either on or off the throttle – all with less input to the bike and less fatigue on the rider. The front end also appears to be immune from front wheel and kingpin oscillation harmonics that can upset normal suspension, including under heavy braking. https://www.motoinno.com.au/ Motoinno TS3 Specifications Engine Ducati 900SS 90º V-twin Desmodromic two-valve per cylinder air/oil-cooled four-stroke, custom air intake and exhaust, re-tuned EFI Displacement 904cc Bore x Stroke 92 x 68mm Compression Ratio 9.2:1 Transmission Six-speed gearbox with dry clutch Chassis Billet CNC machined 6064 aluminum frame and swingarm, chrome-moly sub-frame Rake 15 to 24 degrees variable Trail 3.9 inches to 19 degrees variable Pro-Dive/Anti-Dive variable from zero to 100% Steering Scissor (shear) link hub-center steer Front and Rear Shock Afco T2 custom fully adjustable Wheels BST carbon-fibre wheels Tires Pirelli tires 120/70-17 (front), 180/60-17 (rear) Front Brakes 320mm dual Brembo rotors and four-piston Brembo calipers Rear Brakes Single 200mm Brembo rotor and two-piston Brembo caliper Weight 354.9 pounds wet Seat height 32.3 inches Width 28.0 inches Height 44.9 inches Wheelbase 54.9 inches Click to Post

[symbianosgames]

I think we can all agree that there is a difference in how certain games feel to play. There are just certain games that feel "gamier" than others. Just compare playing Super Mario to something like Dear Esther, and I think it's clear that the former feels like it has more gameplay than the latter. What is it that causes this? My hypothesis: the ability to plan.

The more a player can plan ahead in a game, the more engaging that game will feel to play.

Before I cover some evidence of why this is most likely true, I will need to get into some background information. In order to understand why planning has such a prominent role in games, we need to look into the evolution of our species and answer this question: why are fish so stupid?

                                                              ---

This is how the world looks to the average fish:

                        They can really only see 1-2 meters in front of them and often it's even worse than that. This means that a fish can't do much planning. It just reacts to whatever pops up in front of its face; that's really what their lives are all about. If a fish's life was a game, it would be a limited version of Guitar Hero played to random noise. This is why fishing works. Fish don't think like us, they're mainly just driven by hardwired responses.

For a large part of earth's history this was what life was like for organisms. But then 400 million or so years ago something happened. Fish started to move on to land. Suddenly, the view looked more like this:

                         This changed their world. Suddenly it was possible to plan ahead and to properly think about your environment. Previously, smart brains had been a waste of energy, but now it was a great asset. In fact, so important was this shift that it is probably a big factor in how consciousness evolved.  Malcolm MacIver, who as far as I can tell originated this theory, writes about it like this:

"But then, about 350 million years ago in the Devonian Period, animals like Tiktaalik started making their first tentative forays onto land. From a perceptual point of view, it was a whole new world. You can see things, roughly speaking, 10,000 times better. So, just by the simple act of poking their eyes out of the water, our ancestors went from the mala vista of a fog to a buena vista of a clear day, where they could survey things out for quite a considerable distance. 

This puts the first such members of the “buena vista sensing club” into a very interesting position, from an evolutionary perspective. Think of the first animal that gains whatever mutation it might take to disconnect sensory input from motor output (before this point, their rapid linkage was necessary because of the need for reactivity to avoid becoming lunch). At this point, they can potentially survey multiple possible futures and pick the one most likely to lead to success. For example, rather than go straight for the gazelle and risk disclosing your position too soon, you may choose to stalk slowly along a line of bushes (wary that your future dinner is also seeing 10,000 times better than its watery ancestors) until you are much closer."

 To showcase the above, he has the following image:  

                          This images nicely shows the conceptual difference in the processes involved. In one you basically just use a linear process and "react as you go". In the other one you scout the terrain ahead, consider various approaches and then pick one that seems, given the available data, to be the best one. 

It is not exactly the same, but there is a striking likeness to the following image comparing old school and more modern FPS design:

                             I know that this is not a completely fair comparison, but the important point here is that when we look at these two images, it feels pretty clear which of these two designs ought to have the best gameplay. The image on the left represents a more complex and interesting landscape, while the one on the right represent a linear sequence of events. And just like the worlds of a fish compared to that of the world of land animals, this means a huge difference in our ability to plan.

There are other interesting connections with the ability to see far and to plan. Malcolm MacIver replies to a question regarding the intelligence of octopi:

"It’s incredible what being an unprotected blob of delicious protein will get you after eons of severe predation stress. They, by the way, have the largest eyes known (basketball size in the biggest deep sea species). Apparently, they use these to detect the very distant silhouettes of whales, their biggest threats, against the light of the surface. 

The theory is committed to the idea that the advantage of planning will be proportional to the margin of where you sense relative to where you move in your reaction time. It then identifies one period in our evolutionary past when there was a massive change in this relationship, and suggests this might have been key to the development of this capacity. It’s interesting that octopuses and archerfish tend to be still before executing their actions. This maximally leverages their relatively small sensoria. There may be other ways, in other words, for animals trapped in the fog of water to get a big enough sensorium relative to where they are moving to help with planning."

Sight is of course not the only reason for us humans to have evolved our current level of intelligence and consciousness. Other important factors are our upright pose and our versatile hands. Standing up meant that we could see further and allowed us to use our hands more easily. Our hands are the main means with which we shape the world around us. They allowed us to craft tools, and in various ways to change parts of the environment to optimize our survival. All of these things are deeply connected to the ability to plan. Once we learned how to reshape the world around us, our options opened up and the complexity of our plans increased immensely. 

It doesn't stop there. Planning is also a crucial part of our social life. Theory of mind, our ability to simulate other people, is both a reason for and a product of our planning abilities. Navigating our social groups has always been a careful activity of thinking about various paths of action and their consequences. 

Planning also underlies two other phenomena that have been discussed recently on this blog: Mental Models and Presence. The reason why we have mental models is so that we can evaluate actions before we make them, which obviously is crucial to planning. Presence is a phenomenon that comes from us incorporating ourselves into our plans. We don't just want to model what happens to the world, but also to ourselves.

So, to sum things up: there are lots of evolutionary reasons why planning would be a fundamental part of what makes us human. It's a big part of who we are, and when we are able to make use of these abilities we are bound to find that engaging. 

                                                                ---

So this background is all very well, but is there really any good evidence that this is actually a thing in games? Yes - in fact, quite a bit of it! Let's review the ones that I find the most important.

There is a model of player engagement called PENS (Player Experience of Need Satisfaction) which is quite rigorously researched. It uses the following criteria to evaluate what a player thinks about a game.

Competence. This is how well a game satisfies our need to feel competent - the sense of having mastered the game. 

Autonomy. How much freedom does the player have and what options do they have to express it?

Relatedness. How well is the player's desire to connect with other people satisfied?

Measuring how well a game performs on the above metrics has been shown to be a much better indicator of various types of success (sales, how likely people are to recommend the game, and so forth) than simply asking if the game is "fun". 

And, more importantly, two of the above factors are directly related to planning. Both Competence and Autonomy heavily rely on the player's ability to plan. Let's go over why this is so.

In order for a player to feel competent at a game they need to have a deep understanding of how the game works. Sure, there are games where mere reflexes are enough, but these are always very simplistic. Even in most rhythm games there are certain rules that the player needs to learn and understand in order to play well. A big part is also learning the melodies that make up each level. Why? In order to optimally place your inputs (be that fingers or feet) to hit as many beats as possible. All of these aspects boil down to one thing: being able to predict the future.

You see the same thing in most games. You get better at Dark Souls when you understand how monsters attack, how levels are laid out and how your own attacks work. Learning how a world operates and gaining the ability to predict is a cornerstone of competence. Sure, you also need to develop the motor skills to carry out the required actions, but this is almost always less important than understanding the whys and whens of the actions. Simply being able to predict is not enough, you also need to have a sense of what goal you are trying to achieve and then, using your predictive abilities, to carry out the steps required to reach it. Or in other words: you need to be able to plan.

Autonomy is also highly dependent on the ability to plan. Imagine a game where you have plenty of freedom, but have no idea how the game works. Everybody who has booted up a complex strategy game without understanding the basics knows that this is not very engaging. In order for the freedom to mean something, you need to have an idea what to do with it. You need to understand how the game's mechanics behave, what tools are at your disposal, and what goals you want to achieve. Without this, freedom is confusing and pointless.

So in order to provide a sense of autonomy a game needs to not only provide a large possibility space, but also teach the player how the world works and what the player's role in it is. The player needs to be able to mentally simulate various actions that can take place, and then come up with sequences that can be used to attain a specific goal. When you have this, you have freedom that is worth having. It should be pretty obvious that I am again describing the ability to plan. A world in which the player is not able to plan is also one with little autonomy.

Similarly, if the game only features a linear sequence of events, there's not much planning to be done. In order for the player to be able to craft plans there need to be options. This is not the case if only a certain chain of actions is possible. This scenario is a typical example of having no freedom, and unsatisfactory in terms of autonomy.  Again, planning and autonomy are intricately linked.

One could make the case that Relatedness also has a connection with planning. As explained earlier, any social interactions heavily rely on our ability to plan. However, I don't think this is strong enough and the other two aspects are more than enough. Instead let's look at evidence from a different angle.

                        One trend that has been going on for a long time in games is the addition of extra "meta" features. A very common one right now is crafting, and almost all big games have it in some way or another. It's also common to have RPG-like levelling elements, not just for characters, but for assets and guns as well. Collecting a currency that can then be used to buy a variety of items also turns up a lot. Take a look at just about any recent release and you are bound to find at least one of these.

So why do games have them? The answer to that is quite easy: it makes the game more engaging. The harder question is why that should be the case. It can't solely be because it gives the player more to do. If that was the case you would see games adding a random variety of mini games to spice things up. But instead we are seeing certain very specific types of features being used over and over again.

My theory for this is that it's all to do with planning. The main reason that these features are there is because it gives the player a larger possibility space of plans, and more tools to incorporate into their planning. For instance, the act of collecting currency combined with a shop means that the player will have the goal of buying a particular item. Collecting a certain amount of currency with a view to exchange it for goods is a plan. If the desired item and the method in which the coins are collected are both connected to the core gameplay loop, then this meta feature will make the core loop feel like it has more planning that it actually has. 

These extra features can also spice up the normal gameplay. Just consider how you need to think about what weapons to use in combat during The Last of Us. You have some scrap you can craft items from, and all of those items will allow you to use different tactics during combat. And because you cannot make all of them, you have to make a choice. Making this choice is making a plan, and the game's sense of engagement is increased. 

Whatever your views on this sort of meta-feature are, one thing is certain: they work. Because if they weren't we wouldn't be seeing this rise in them persist over such a long time. Sure, it's possible to make a game with a ton of planning without any of these features. But that's the hard way. Having these features is a well-tested way to increasing engagement, and thus something that is very tempting to add, especially when you lose a competitive advantage by not doing so.  

                        Finally, I need to discuss what brought me into thinking about planning at all. It was when I started to compare SOMA to Amnesia: The Dark Descent. When designing SOMA it was really important for us to have as many interesting features as possible, and we wanted the player to have a lot of different things to do. I think it is safe to say that SOMA has a wider range of interactions and more variety than what Amnesia: The Dark Descent had. But despite this, a lot of people complained that SOMA was too much of a walking simulator. I can't recall a single similar comment about Amnesia. Why was this so?

At first I couldn't really understand it, but then I started to outline the major differences between the games:

Amnesia's sanity system

The light/health resource management.

Puzzles spread across hubs.

All of these things are directly connected with the player's ability to plan. The sanity system means the player needs to think about what paths they take, whether they should look at monsters, and so forth. These are things the player needs to account for when they move through a level, and provide a constant need to plan ahead.

The resource management system works in a similar fashion, as players need to think about when and how they use the resources they have available. It also adds another layer as it makes it more clear to the player what sort of items they will find around a map. When the player walks into a room and pulls out drawers this is not just an idle activity. The player knows that some of these drawers will contain useful items and looting a room becomes part of a larger plan. 

In Amnesia a lot of the level design worked by having a large puzzle (e.g. starting an elevator) that was solved by completing a set of spread out and often interconnected puzzles. By spreading the puzzles across the rooms, the player needs to always consider where to go next. It's not possible to just go with a simple "make sure I visit all locations" algorithm to progress through the game. Instead you need to think about what parts of the hub-structure you need to go back to, and what puzzles there are left to solve. This wasn't very complicated, but it was enough to provide a sense of planning.

SOMA has none of these features, and none of its additional features make up for the loss of planning. This meant that the game overall has this sense of having less gameplay, and for some players this meant the game slipped into walking simulator territory. Had we known about the importance of the ability to plan, we could have done something to fix this. 

                                                          ---

A "normal" game that relies on a standard core gameplay loop doesn't have this sort of problem. The ability to plan is built into the way that classical gameplay works. Sure, this knowledge can be used to make such games better, but it's by no means imperative. I think this is a reason why planning as a foundational aspects of games is so undervalued. The only concrete example that I have found[1] is this article by Doug Church where he explains it like this:

"These simple, consistent controls, coupled with the very predictable physics (accurate for a Mario world), allow players to make good guesses about what will happen should they try something. Monsters and environments increase in complexity, but new and special elements are introduced slowly and usually build on an existing interaction principle. This makes game situations very discernable — it's easy for the players to plan for action. If players see a high ledge, a monster across the way, or a chest under water, they can start thinking about how they want to approach it. 

This allows players to engage in a pretty sophisticated planning process. They have been presented (usually implicitly) with knowledge of how the world works, how they can move and interact with it, and what obstacle they must overcome. Then, often subconsciously, they evolve a plan for getting to where they want to go. While playing, players make thousands of these little plans, some of which work and some of which don't. The key is that when the plan doesn't succeed, players understand why. The world is so consistent that it's immediately obvious why a plan didn't work. "

This is really spot on, an excellent description of what I am talking about. This is an article from 1999 and have had trouble finding any other source that discuss it, let alone expands upon the concept since then. Sure, you could say that planning is summed up in Sid Meier's "A series of interesting choices", but that seems to me too fuzzy to me. It is not really about the aspect of predicting how a world operates and then making plans based on that.

The only time when it does sort of come up is when discussing the Immersive Sim genre. This is perhaps not a big surprise given that Doug Church had a huge part in establishing the genre. For instance, emergent gameplay, which immersive sims are especially famous for, relies heavily on being able to understand the world and then making plans based on that. This sort of design ethos can be clearly seen in recent games such as Dishonored 2, for instance [2].  So it's pretty clear that game designers think in these terms. But it's a lot less clear to me that it is viewed as a fundamental part of what makes games engaging and it feels like it is more treated like a subset of design.

As I mentioned above this is probably because when you take part in "normal" gameplay, a lot of planning comes automatically. However, this isn't the case with narrative games. In fact, narrative games are often considered "lesser games" in the regard that they don't feature as much normal gameplay as something like Super Mario. Because of this, it's very common to discuss games in terms of whether you like them to be story-heavy or gameplay-heavy, as if either has to necessarily exclude the other. However, I think a reason there is still such a big discrepancy is because we haven't properly figured out how gameplay in narrative games work. As I talked about in an earlier blog post, design-wise, we are stuck at a local maxima.

The idea that planning is fundamental to games presents a solution to this problem. Instead of saying "narrative games need better gameplay", we can say that "narrative games need more planning".  

                                                              ---

In order to properly understand what we need to do with planning, we need to have some sort of supportive theory to makes sense of it all. The SSM Framework that I presented last week fits nicely into that role.

It is really best to read up on last week's blog post to get the full details, but for the sake of completeness I shall summarise the framework here.

We can divide a game into three different spaces. First of all we have System space. This where all the code is and where all the simulations happen. The System space deals with everything as abstract symbols and algorithms. Secondly we have the Story space which provides context for the the things that happen in the System space. In System space Mario is just a set of collision boundaries, but then when that abstract information is run through the Story space that turns into an Italian plumber. Lastly, we have the Mental Model space. This is how the player thinks about the game and is a sort of mental replica of all that exists in the game world. However, since the player mostly never understands exactly what goes on System space (nor how to properly interpret the story context), this is just an educated guess. In the end though, the Mental Model is what the player uses in order to play the game and what they base their decisions on.

Given this we can now start to define what gameplay is. First of all we need to talk about the concept of an action. An action is basically whatever the player performs when they are playing the game and it has the following steps:

Evaluate the information received from the System and Story space.

Form a Mental Model based on the information at hand.

Simulate the consequences of performing a particular action.

If the consequences seem okay, send the appropriate input (e.g. pushing a button) to the game.

A lot of this happens unconsciously. From the player's point of view they will mostly view this sequence as "doing something" and are unaware of the actual thought process that takes place. But really, this always happens when the player does something in a game, be that jumping over a chasm in Super Mario or placing a house in Sim City.

Now that we understand what an action is, we can move on to gameplay. This is all about stringing several actions together, but with one caveat: you don't actually send the input to the game, you just imagine doing so. So this string of actions are built together in mental model space, evaluating them and then if the results feel satisfactory, only then do we start to send the required input.

                           Put in other words: gameplay is all about planning and then executing that plan. And based upon all of the evidence that I showed above, my hypothesis is: the more actions you can string together, the better the gameplay feels.

It isn't enough to simply string together any actions and call that a plan. First of all, the player needs to have an idea of some sort of goal they are trying to achieve. The actions also need be non-trivial. Simply having a bunch of walking actions strung together will not be very engaging to the player. It's also worth pointing out that planning is by no means the only thing that makes a game engaging. All other design thinking doesn't suddenly go out the window just because you focus on planning. 

However, there are a bunch of design principles that go hand in hand with planning. For instance, to have a consistent world is crucial, because otherwise it isn't possible for the player to form a plan. This is why invisible walls are so annoying; they seriously impede our ability to create and execute plans. It also explains why it's so annoying when failure seems random. For gameplay to feel good, we need to be able to mentally simulate exactly what went wrong. Like Doug Church expressed in a quote above: when a player fails they always need to know why.  

Another example is the adventure game advice that you should always have several puzzles going at once. In planning terms this is because we always want to make sure the player has ample room to plan, "I will first solve this and then that". There are lots of other similar principles that have to do with planning. So while planning is not the only thing that makes a game engaging, a great number of things that do can be derived from it.

  Let's quickly look at some examples from actual games.

                          Say that the player wants to assassinate the guy in red in this situation. What the player does not do is simply jump down and hope for the best. They need to have some sort of plan before going on. They might first wait for the guard to leave, teleport behind the victim, and then sneak up and stab them. When that's done they leave the same way they came. This is something the player works out in their head before doing anything. It isn't until they have some sort of plan that they start acting.

This plan might not work, the player might fail to sneak up on the guy and then he sound an alarm. In this case the plan breaks, however that doesn't mean that the player's plan was totally untrue. It just meant they didn't manage to pull off one of the actions of. If presented properly, players are okay with this. In the same way, the player might have misinterpreted their mental model or missed something. This is also okay as long as the player can update their mental model in a coherent fashion. And next time the player tries to execute a similar plan they will get better at it.

Often this ability to carry out your plans is what makes the game the most engaging. Usually a game starts out a bit dull, as your mental models are a bit broken and the ability to plan not very good. But then, as you play, this gets better and you start stringing together longer sets of actions and therefore having more fun. This is why tutorials can be so important. They are a great place to get away from that initial dullness by making the experience a bit simpler and guiding the player to think in the correct manner about how the game works.  

It's also worth noting that plans should never be too simple to carry out. Then the actions become trivial. There needs to be a certain degree of non-triviality for engagement to remain.

Planning doesn't always need to happen in the long term, it can also be very short term. Take this scene from Super Mario, for instance:  

                         Here the player needs to make a plan in a split second. The important thing to notice here is that the player doesn't simply react blindly. Even in a stressful situation, if the game works as it should, the player quickly formulates a plan and then tries to carry out that plan.

Now compare these two examples to a game like Dear Esther:  

                            There are a lot of things one can like about this game, but I think everybody agrees that the gameplay is lacking. What's harder to agree on, though, is what's missing. I've heard a lot about the lack of fail states and competitive mechanics, but I don't find these convincing. As you might guess, I think the missing ingredient is planning.

The main reason that people find Dear Esther unengaging is not because they cannot fail, or because there is nothing to compete against. It's because the game doesn't allow them to form and execute plans. We need to figure out ways of fixing this.

By thinking about the planning in terms of the SSM-framework we get a hint at what sort of gameplay that can constitute "narrative play": When you form a plan in Mental Model space it is important that the actions are mostly grounded in the data received from Story space. Compare the the following two plans:

1) "First I pick up 10 items to increase the character X's trust meter, this will allow me to reach the 'friendship'-threshold and X will now be part of my crew. This awards me 10 points in range combat bonus."

2) "If I help out X with cleaning her room, I might be able to be friends with her. This would be great as I could then ask her to join us on our journey. She seems like a great sharpshooter and I would feel much safer with her onboard."

This is a fairly simplistic example, but I hope I get the point across. Both of these describe the same plan, but they have vastly different in how the data is interpreted. Number 1 is just all abstract system-space, and the number 2 has a more narrative feel, and is grounded in the story space. When the gameplay is about making plans like the second example, that is when we start to get something that feels like proper narrative play. This is a crucial step in evolving the art of interactive storytelling.  

                                                               ---

I believe thinking about planning is a crucial step in order to get better narrative games. For too long, game design has relied on the planning component arising naturally out of 'standard' gameplay, but when we no longer have that we need to take extra care. It's imperative to understand that it drives gameplay, and therefore that we need to make sure our narrative experiences include this. Planning is by no means a silver bullet, but it's a really important ingredient. It's certainly something that we're putting a lot of thought into when making our future titles here at Frictional Games.

  Footnotes:

1) If anyone has other concrete resources describing planning as a fundamental part of games I'd love to hear about them. Please post about them in the comments if you know any.

2) Steve Lee had an excellent lecture called "An Approach to Holistic Level Design" at this year's GDC where he talked a lot about player intentionality. This is another concept closely related to planning.