New Year's Resolutions: Improve Habits With an RPG

http://ocdevel.com/node/568

by lefnire • 14 years ago

29 34 14 years ago

ocdevel.com

lampe• 14 years ago

I Love RPG's :) but i dont like todo lists and so on.

I will give it a try maybe it can help me Organreize better :)

ElliotH• 14 years ago

I find with these things that failure discourages me from using the service so I fall off whatever wagon immediately, rather than recording my failure.

Any suggestions for working around that?

lefnire15• 14 years ago

I would say, word all your failures as successes. (+)points for "a day without junk food" instead (-)points for "junkfood". With HabitRPG you can do that by making everything a habit with only "up" enabled - don't use dailies, and make sure your habits have "down" disabled.

Alternatively, if you find compounding failures to be the issue, you can reset your character on HabitRPG (which I do quite frequently) when you're ready to start over.

Iuz• 14 years ago

Pretty cool!

TillE• 14 years ago

Like the concept, but the implementation doesn't really click with me. The ideal for any task-tracking system is to require as little manual overhead as possible. Typing in stuff and clicking boxes is not very appealing. The Chrome extension is a lot more interesting.

Using coins to purchase in-game rewards is a good idea. User-defined rewards, nah. Probably not.

There's too much conceptual overlap between Habits and Daily. I'd get rid of Habits entirely (who really wants "micro-tasks"?), except as an API thing.

If you want to make something exceptionally cool, integrate with RescueTime and Fitbit.

lefnire15• 14 years ago

Thanks for the comment, your advice shows great understanding of the space because I've come to many of those same conclusions only after time.

Indeed, I've found very few people to use custom Rewards, I may discontinue that. The in-game rewards will become more useful when Groups is developed, so you can compete your avatars.

I've come to deem Habits indeed as useful mostly with APIs, and have considered manual Habit entry as temporary until enough services utilize the API, after which I may discontinue manual Habit-entry.

RescueTime and Fitbit are definitely on the horizon, as well as PivotalTracker, Withings, Anki, and more (see http://goo.gl/beQtz)

Dire• 14 years ago

I actually like having my own goals. I'm not too interested in cake but I set a bunch of monetary rewards. $10 spending money, $30, $50 etc. While obviously it cost more gold to buy $30 than $10, if I save up for $30 it doesn't cost as much gold as buying $10 x 3. This is far better motivation than just levelling up in game. It's almost like going out and buying better equipment in real life I guess. I really like my rewards that way so hopefully you don't get rid of custom rewards entirely.

The store items are useful and getting to unlock them is good incentive to keep playing. I'm looking forward to seeing more of that. Keep up the good work.

kentwistle• 14 years ago

I tried to login with facebook but got the following error message "Cannot GET /auth/facebook" then, when trying to visit the homepage I got the error "Cannot GET /"

It seems to be working again but I think I triggered an error 500

lefnire15• 14 years ago

I just started seeing this too. I think I know what it is, and am trying to figure out how to go about fixing it. When someone closes their laptop or turns off their phone before closing the browser tab, it crashes the app. Something with socket.io + connect-mongo in DerbyJS, it's a new bug.

Anyway, 500 indeed - but I'm using nodejitsu/forever-monitor to restart the app when it crashes, so it should come back just fine, you'll just have to refresh and wait a bit. Thanks for pointing this out

unemployed• 14 years ago

https://vimeo.com/13179002 epic win, similar app?

lefnire15• 14 years ago

Very similar. It's a really cool app, too - had I known about it before, I wouldn't have developed C'est la vie.

Pros/Cons: * Epic is only iPhone, Habit is Web & responsive, so will work on all devices. I'm working on a PhoneGap app too. Anyway, I thought EW only on iPhone was lame, since I have Android. * EW is badge-based, and only tracks improvement. Habit is more traditional RPG-style (exp, hp, gp) and tracks both improvements and failure, so it's better for gauging actual progress. ++ for Habit: it's more real, and more comfortable for SNES RPG players. ++ for EW: you won't experience failure anxiety, as @ElliotH mentioned below.

tbirdz• 14 years ago

FWIW: I'll definitely be checking out HabitRPG, and will not be able to use the other app, as I do not have an iPhone, or other smartphone.

Fuzzwah• 14 years ago

I've just got into a really good habit of using trello for everything, I look forward to this having an API so I could look into hooking the two together.

lefnire15• 14 years ago

If any of you develop, Habit has very simple one-method REST: https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg/wiki/API

xiaoma2• 14 years ago

I'm a bit confused by this. How is it an RPG? Whose role do you get to play?

lefnire15• 14 years ago

You're looking at the technical definition of RPG, not the traditional. Didn't play much SNES?

xiaoma2• 14 years ago

I played tons of video games as a kid, and did some table-top RPGs, too! The role playing games I played all involved characters and a story.

Devlin_Donnelly• 14 years ago

I really like the idea of a game designed to help you out with real life.

I am inspired to perhaps create one along these lines myself!

jimfl• 14 years ago

It would be cool to have an external source of quests/bounties, such as user stories to be implemented, trouble tickets to be addressed, etc.

lefnire15• 14 years ago

If you have coding chops, check out the API for that https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg/wiki/API

rembranded6• 14 years ago

I was trying out the app and was randomly clicking on things. Wanted to see what would happen if I lost all my health.

Now it says Game Over, and forces me to buy tokens.

Isn't there some way I can reset the game? The tutorial seems woefully inadequate. I understand, you want to drive more people towards the buy more tokens for money thing, but could you implement a reset account link there somewhere?

lefnire15• 14 years ago

In the works, not trying to trick ya. See https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg/issues/28

rembranded6• 14 years ago

Thanks! You sir, are awesome!

rembranded6• 14 years ago

Wanted to highlight that resetting the account is possible from the death screen, thanks, but resetting does not give me any tokens (I don't even get the default tokens associated with a new account)

Also, I am a bit unclear regarding the whole rewards/tokens system. Is there any way I can get additional tokens without paying for them? To explain myself so as to not sound liek a complete cheapskate, I live in India, and the USD-INR exchange rate isn't exactly favourable.

lefnire15• 14 years ago

HabitRPG Kickstarter (iPhone & Android apps, website bugs & new features): http://kck.st/XoA3Yg

New Year's Resolutions: Improve Habits With an RPG

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