Aaron Maenpaa

Fate Reforged Limited Set Review

With the prerelease coming up next weekend, here's my personal review of Fate Reforged. I'm using the same scale as LSV, and I'm likewise only interested in Limited as that's what I play. Once the rest of his set reviews are up I think I'll follow up with my most over/underrated cards to see where my evaluations are off.

Animations with requestAnimationFrame

Recently I deceided to explore requestAnimationFrame as a way to peer behind the jQuery.animate veil. While you should absolutely use jQuery.animate (or similar) when working on a "real" project, the results were pretty interesting:

function animate(el, properties, duration, done) {
    function map(obj, transform){
        var result = {};
        Object.keys(obj).forEach(function (key) {
            result[key] = transform(key, obj[key]);
        });
        return result;
    }

    function accessor(property) {
        return {
            get: function (el) {
                var value = styles[property]
                if (value === 'auto') {
                    return 0;
                }

                return parseInt(value, 10);
            },
            set: function (el, value) {
                el.style[property] = value + "px";
            }
        };
    }

    var start,
        styles = getComputedStyle(el),
        startingValues = map(properties, function(key, value) {
            return accessor(key).get(el);
        });

    requestAnimationFrame(function step(timestamp) {
        done = done || function () {};
        start = start || timestamp;

        var elapsed = timestamp - start;

        Object.keys(properties).forEach(function (property) {
            var goal = properties[property],
                startingValue = startingValues[property],
                delta = goal - startingValue,
                progress = elapsed / duration,
                bound = (delta > 0 ? Math.min : Math.max),
                value = bound(delta * progress + startingValue, goal);

                accessor(property).set(el, value);
        });

        if (elapsed < duration) {
            requestAnimationFrame(step);
        } else {
            done();
        }
    });
}

Interestingly enough, the actual animation code is almost dwarfed by the code providing the API and fiddling with css properties to make sure they're in the right format.

Design Critique

To evaluate design, you must be impartial. You have to check your personal taste and predispositions at the door and consider whether the work succeeds in solving the problem at hand.

—Bootstrapping Design

Here Jarrod is talking about design reviews in art school... but this resonates with my experience doing code review. One of the rabbit holes it's easy to fall into is picking at stuff you'd have done differently independent of whether or not it would actually make the work better.

Science

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't mislead you into thinking you know something you don't actually know.

—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I occasionally read books about science, pseudo-science, and just generally sorting out what is actually true from what you think is true1... and while those books do a good job of laying out the problem, this formulation really resonated with me... though Nature isn't generally the one doing the tricking.

Hitman: Absolution

Hitman: Absolution is a stealth/action game about the titular assassin wherein you sneak around trying to kill your way through your former employers after going rogue. The engine is ridiculously smooth, and the game is simply bursting with creative ways to kill your targets, though silently garroting them and dragging the body off to a dark corner to dispose of it is probably the most satisfying. The more linear sections that seemed to force direct confrontation were decidedly less enjoyable. I really wanted 15 more levels like The King of Chinatown and unfortunately, there were only really one or two other spots that came close in the rest of the game.