Oddball Update

Since it’s been a long time since I posted anything of any substance here, and because I have some developments in both my work life leisure life to mention, I thought I’d divide today’s post into two parts: Work and Play.

Work

At my day job, things have been great for a while now. I’ve been working on a redesign of one of our websites (a huge ordeal) for a while now, but last week took some time out to create an email newsletter that we plan to distribute to people who have expressed interest (or purchased) one of our larger products. I spent three days on the design, development and preparation of the newsletter’s first issue, and everybody is very happy with it.

Our technical writer was given free reign to develop some content for the issue, and he created some great stuff that’s not at all like the usual, overly-salesy tripe that management normally forces him to churn out. In the past, I’ve pointed out that a newsletter should not be used as an excuse to spam people with advertising about your products, and this time it looks like we’ve learned our lesson. I’m interested to see what the response will be when we send it out in early August.

On the side job front, I’ve scaled my client list way back, to the point where I may soon only have one regular client left. Mostly, this is because I decided to be honest with myself — I don’t really like doing side jobs, nor do I need to do very much on the side to keep things running smoothly. Following the advice of (ironically) one of my past clients, I’ve decided to “be the bad guy up-front” with most of these folks and get tough about what it is I’m willing to do, and for what price. In other words, no more accepting humongous, open-ended projects with massive scope creep.

This “new attitude” came to a head this past week, when I most recently spoke to my very first web design client. I originally built their website back in 2001, and it was the first site I’d ever designed on the side. The client runs a small retail business here in town, and their web portal is equally small, simple and straightforward. I thought the design was good back in ‘01, and it may well have been — at least for my level of experience — but of course, it’s pretty dated by today’s standards. When I heard that the client was moving into a new retail location a few weeks ago, I suggested that we look at doing a full redesign of the website to bring it up-to-date. Some content changes were going to be necessary anyway, so it seemed like a good time to make some easy extra cash for myself.

All was good, until the client and his wife really started to concoct some ideas for what they wanted the site to do. The client’s wife is more familiar with online advertising and website stuff, although when I say “familiar” I mean in the “familiar enough to really screw things up” kind of way. Like the person who would be taken in by a pyramid marketing scheme, she seems to be falling for all of the latest affiliate marketing, link exchange and similar stuff that’s being pushed (largely by spammers) today. In a phone conversation with them last week, I learned that they’d like to convert their small-business web presence to an online community, replete with memberships, message boards, paid subscription content, the ability to edit their web pages in the browser, and more.

The centerpiece of the new site was to be a web-based application which, unfortunately, is beyond my means to develop. And while I can accomplish everything else they requested, I have to admit that it’s not going to happen for anywhere near the client’s original “preferred budget” — which is to say, between $500 and $1,000. Additionally, since I decided I realistically only want to spend a maximum of 8 additional hours a week working on side jobs, I estimated that their new online vision would take me about three months to create. And that’s not to mention how their existing web host isn’t capable of running the new solution, so a change there would also be necessary.

I scrambled around for a while, researching a variety of open-source and prepackaged solutions, trying to find some way to make it all happen. After a few hours of this, I realized that there was no way for me to make all of the client’s requests possible without taking a big risk, expending major time and effort and possibly falling short of the mark, which would make everyone unhappy. So, I decided to get serious and “be the bad guy up-front.”

I drafted a document explaining exactly what I was prepared to offer the client, and what I wasn’t. I separately listed each feature they had dreamed up, along with a line-item price (and an estimated time to completion) for adding that feature to their site. I also explained that the “cornerstone” web application they wanted was outside my scope, and that they would need to contract with a third-party developer to make it happen. With all the other features in place, the total estimate came to almost $2,000. I then explained that if anything presented was unsatisfactory, I recommended contacting a dedicated web design firm here in town to give them a full, front-to-back solution in a more timely manner, and provided several references in that regard.

And you know what? It feels good as hell. After all, I don’t want to take on any job that’s going to be a huge pain in the ass — I already work a full day for another company doing the same stuff, and I value my spare time to explore enhancing and refueling my own creative abilities. I decided to promise only what I could deliver, even if that wasn’t what the client wanted. And I offered it up for a realistic price — a price I might come in below when all is said and done, but in that case, so much the better. Because then, I look like “the good guy” when it matters most.

I think this new strategy and I will get along well. There will be no more unclean waterfowl on my watch, that’s for certain. (Inside joke.)

Play

And now for the leisure-oriented portion of today’s post. I’ve been spending a bit more of my spare time gaming lately, after a long drought in which I never even turned on any of my game consoles. During a recent trip to EB Games, I saw a battered old copy of Battle out of Hell, the expansion pack to the PC game Painkiller, on sale for $20. I’d always regretted not getting the expansion pack, since I liked the original game a great deal, so I picked it up. While I was there, I also saw that a PC version of Resident Evil 4 had been released, and was also selling for only $20, so I bought that as well.

Resident Evil 4 is one of those games that has always enjoyed a lot of praise. Originally released a while back for the Gamecube, and then re-released on the PS2, PC and Wii over the next few years, it combines solid gameplay, a great story and an innovative new camera angle in what has become the best Resident Evil game ever released. Even my friends have sung its praises, but when I bought a used copy of the PS2 version and gave it a try, I found it nothing but incredibly frustrating.

The game is unique in that it thrusts you into a huge challenge early on, a sort of “trial by fire,” so to speak. It places you in a small town somewhere in Europe, which is overrun with brainwashed villagers, all of whom are trying to kill you with farm implements. You are literally up against a whole town, and the epic battle goes on for ten or fifteen minutes — or however long it takes you to kill a certain number of enemies before they eventually give up.

Well, I’m embarrassed to admit that I could never get past that battle. I died over and over again, and frankly wasn’t finding the new “over the shoulder” camera angle innovative as much as irritating. It seemed to create a sense of “tunnel vision” in which I could never quite get a fix on how many enemies were around me. I also found it incredibly hard to aim with the PS2 controller, and vehemently cursed the game’s lack of a strafe (sidestep) function that severely hampered me, an FPS player who’s used to such luxuries. As icing on the cake, the game features no selectable difficulty mode to help you tone things down — that was taken out for the North American release.

In the end, never getting beyond the village battle, I let the game collect dust on my shelf for a while before I traded it back in, along with a handful of other titles, for something else.

Fast-forward to last week, when I picked up the PC version of Resident Evil 4. Surely, I thought, it will be easier to play than the PS2 version. I hate aiming a weapon with awkward gamepad thumbsticks, and I have never hated a controller for this as much as I have hated the PS2 controller (well, with the exception of the original “hamfisted” Xbox controller, but we won’t go there). So, you can imagine my dismay when I got the game home and realized that there was no mouse support. That’s right — you can’t use the mouse at all, as the game simply isn’t programmed to recognize it. Your only choice? Use the keyboard to aim, something I haven’t done since the original Doom, or — get this — plug in a gamepad. RRRRRGGHH!!!

I actually started to get the hang of the keyboard controls, I don’t mind telling you. But more than play the game, I spent most of my time hacking it — one of the benefits of PC gaming titles. With the vast array of Resident Evil 4 PC modifications available online, including everything from super high-res textures to customizable laser sights, I was like a kid in a candy store again. Until I finally got the game modified to where I wanted it, and I realized that I still was having trouble aiming. I am pleased to report, however, that I finally got past the village battle scene — but only because the PC version features an “Easy” difficulty mode, unlike the console releases here in North America. Yeah — I wimped out.

Still not satisfied with this, I decided that I was going to pony up for one more version of Resident Evil 4: the Nintendo Wii edition. According to reviews, it was the ultimate version of the game, and one which made aiming easier by virtue of the Wii’s remote-style controller. Since the Wii uses an infra-red pointing device as its controller, it seemed fairly obvious that aiming a weapon in RE4 would be worlds easier. So I bought the Wii edition of the game and brought it home.

What a difference a control scheme makes. On the Wii, the laser sights on your character’s firearms are replaced by a simple targeting reticle, which indicates where you are pointing your Wiimote on the screen. And whereas earlier editions of the game had built-in “waver,” which attempted to simulate your character’s actual human arms holding the weapon, the Wii edition does away with that — because the player actually is a human, and now the amount of waver in your aim correlates only to how well you have your arm muscles under control.

Apparently I have my arm muscles well in hand, because not only was I able to get past the village battle on normal difficulty (again, the Wii edition does not let you select an easier difficulty mode), I also managed to progress far beyond this point. I’ve been addicted to the game, playing it every night since I bought it. I’ve learned the ins-and-outs of how best to shoot the alien-infested villagers, which weapons to buy and which to pass on, and how to keep Ashley from being carted away by evil henchmen (hint: shoot their legs out from under them as they attempt to carry her off). I’ve been amazed (and disgusted, but in a good way) by the nasty manifestations of the alien presence as it bursts its way out of hapless villagers’ heads, and transforms people into grotesque, monstrous beings. The Wii’s graphics processor isn’t anywhere near as good as my Xbox360’s, but these visuals are stunning nonetheless.

In short, I’m completely hooked.

So I’d like to offer my apologies to Resident Evil 4 for cursing it out on numerous occasions, with the stipulation that I would not, under any circumstances, go back to the PS2 version — or its godawful controller. Nope…the Wii edition is here to stay.

Categorized as Games/Console, Games, Life, Life/Work