User:Aichon

About Me

I'm currently a graduate student studying Computer Science at Texas A&M University. Although I'm relatively new to the game, having only joined on August 15, 2009, I've made a solid attempt to delve right in and understand the core mechanics of the game and what it takes to get by in the city. So far, my main character has managed to avoid getting himself killed, but we'll see how long that lasts (especially now that I've put that out there in the open).

In addition to studying aspects of gameplay and the history of the game, I've also taken a liking to editing existing userscripts in order to make my gameplay experience more enjoyable, and will likely continue to do so as I plays the game further. Having never worked with GreaseMonkey before, I'm finding it to be a fun distraction from my graduate research, but I'm not sure that my work is of a high enough quality to be ready for public release at this time. More information on the userscipts that I have edited or created is available later in this document.

Aside from those details, I'm an avid Mac addict and have been using them since the late 1980s. I'm running Mac OS 10.4.11 on an Aluminum PowerBook G4 1.67GHz DL-SuperDrive model. Though it's ancient by modern standards, with an outdated OS, I've intentionally chosen to use them since this is the latest Mac laptop model and the latest OS release that can still run Mac OS 9 games, of which I have quite a few that I enjoy still. Plus, despite its age, it still holds up remarkably well for almost all of my computing needs. When I do have to use a PC, I run Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition on a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 in my research lab. Not the greatest machine, but it works well enough, I suppose. I used to run a quad-core Xeon with 12GB of RAM, but I handed it off to another grad student since my research migrated to a topic that was less computationally intensive.

My browser of choice when on a Mac is currently Safari, simply due to how fast it runs, though in the past I was a big supporter of Firefox (back when it was still called Phoenix, and then later Firebird) and Camino (back when it was called Chimera), though the two of them, in their modern incarnations, are too bloated for my tastes. Google Chrome is far and away my browser of choice on Windows, and I'm hoping it will give Safari a run for its money once it makes its way to the Mac later this year or early next. The userscripts I'm working on, while originally intended for use with GreaseMonkey in Firefox, seem to work relatively well with GreaseKit in Safari, and I suspect they could work well enough in Chrome as well, since there are tools to enable userscripts in that browser as well.

Characters

In regards to my characters, I'm trying to experience all aspects of the game, so I've made characters for each of the, what I perceive to be, three distinct approaches to playing the game. Orison is a pro-survivor character who will likely join up with a group at some point and become a career survivor. Jamie is a pro-zombie character who will likely join a group on the opposite side and become a career zombie, Brain Rot and all. Emma is being played as a Dual Nature character; when she's alive, she supports the survivors, when she's dead, she supports the zombies. Emma likely won't join any groups and will basically be feral, regardless of whether she's alive or dead, wandering from place to place with no primary goal.

Jamie Flynt
Starting Occupation: Zombie Group Membership: None Goals: Not feeling alone without her parents Username: Aichon More details: Urban Dead profile

Emma Flynt
Starting Occupation: Zombie Group Membership: None Goals: Try to locate the members of her family Username: Aichon More details: Urban Dead profile

Orison Flynt
Starting Occupation: Necrotech Assistant Group Membership: None Goals: Finding his wife and daughter while helping others along the way Username: Aichon More details: Urban Dead profile

Currently, Orison is up in the northwest district, Jamie is in the southeast district, and Emma is migrating towards the southwest district since she started off close to Jamie. I intend to have the three of them lead entirely separate lives within the city, though the three of them do share a common back story. Even so, I have little intention of RPing at this time, so while I do have a story for these characters, it generally won't impact the way that they are played in game, aside from what has already been mentioned.

If there are any pro-survivor groups in the northwest interested in having an additional character in your fold, Orison is available and I'm considering my options. Similarly, pro-zombie groups in the southwest that could use a low-level zombie, feel free to contact me regarding Jamie. In previous MMOs I've played, I've been rather picky about the groups that I join, but given the low level of my characters, my inexperience in the game, and the fact that there are only so many options available, I'll probably be far more willing to listen to recruiters than I might have been otherwise.

Current Goals

All three of them are actively working on leveling up. Orison will probably be acting as a medic/reviver in and around Darvall Heights for awhile once he gets the requisite skills, since there seems to be some active conflict occurring there right now. Emma and Jamie, meanwhile, are mostly working on biting and clawing other zombies for XP at the moment. A sad life, but there's not much else they can do.

Userscripts

I have begun editing and creating a variety of userscripts to replicate the functionality of some of the Firefox extensions I've seen. Most of them are just minor aesthetic changes, but several of them greatly enhance the look and feel of the game to such an extent that it is hard to go back after having used them. Currently, these are the scripts I have developed.

Developed from Scratch

1. Urban Dead A-GPS Coordinates: Simply displays the GPS coordinates next to the suburb name above the minimap. Other userscripts provided similar functionality, but I noticed several logic errors in the one I was previously using and also felt that a rather brutish approach was used for parsing the page, when a much nicer one should have been used.
2. Urban Dead AP Recovery Time Indicator: Again, several other userscripts already provide this functionality (and use the same name as well, I believe), but I liked the implementation I saw in one particular Firefox extension, so I adapted it for use as a userscript. It's simple an unobtrusive and stays out of my way. I do like the feature that another userscript offers though, where it can calculate the time down to the minute. I may have to either add that myself, or else use that script instead, since that seems imminently useful.
3. Urban Dead Survivor Aggregator: UDToolbar has a nice feature which, rather than displaying the names of survivors on the minimap, simply displays the number of survivors. I found that approach to be much better, since it declutters the display and lets you get at the useful information quickly. I simply replicated that functionality in a userscript by parsing the list of survivors at your present location, removing any names (or a "...") from the minimap, and then adding the survivor count to the minimap.

Edited from Existing

1. QuickLinks: This userscript was designed to add a new menu bar to the top of the Urban Dead screen from which several contextually useful buttons could be selected. I found the concept to be good, but the space seemed like it was being wasted, so I moved all of the buttons that typically go on the left side of the screen (e.g. Wiki, FAQ, Logout, Settings, etc.) to the menu bar as well. It seems to make the screen much less cluttered, and it puts that space at the top to much better use as well.
2. UDMap: A wonderful userscript that displays two additional minimaps that you can mouseover for information. I modified them to fill up the space at the bottom of the left column better, and then also corrected a slight error in the way that the GPS coordinates were calculated since the display was incorrect in about 10% of cases (I haven't gotten around to submitting the fix to the author yet). I also made a few other modifications to meet my personal taste, such as prioritizing the display of the "You are here" square over existing TRPs and displaying the name of the location next to "You are here" in the tooltip that appears on mouseover.
3. Urban Dead Building State Colourizer: Love this userscript to death, but a few of the colors provided poor contrast against the background, or else "shouted" too loudly at the user when such wasn't necessary. Since I prefer to only be shouted at when necessary, I redid almost all of the colors, stripped the bolding from most of the text, and added an ability to underline text as well. The end result is a userscript that subtly points out information on the screen that is considered useful but not in need of action, while shouting out information that is in need of immediate action on the player's part.

To Do

1. Urban Dead Building State Colourizer: I'd love to make it contextually aware for if the player is a zombie or a survivor at the time. While the doors open and the barricades down might be something calling for red text for survivors, it might be better to have green for zombies. Other similar examples exist. For instance, if a building is already in ruins, zombies don't need to have it shouted at them since it requires no further action on their part.
2. Urban Dead Survivor Table Sorter: UDToolbar had another wonderful feature that allowed it to sort the list of survivors at the current location by their activity. I fully intend to implement this feature at some point, since I found it to be the best feature in UDToolbar. After seeing how easy it was to grab the list of survivors, I'm sure I won't have any trouble implementing a bare bones version in a few minutes' time.