lordubiquitous

Codname Narwhale is GO.

2009-11-30T10:17:41Z

Yes, that's right, our end-of-course project began today. Eight weeks to make a game - two of pre-production, five and a half of production, and a couple of days at the end for our post-mortem.

And yeah, the project's codename is Narwhale.

Why? Long-running in-class joke which we've figured a way of integrating into the final game. Should be fun and enjoyable for everybody. Except maybe our tutor - he has no sense of humour.

Anyhoo, I'm Project Manager. Mostly from no-one else wanting to do it, rather than any aspirations of mine. Actually, I lie - I did covet the position just a little, otherwise I would've been a lot more reticent in my picking it. However, the position isn't finalised - our tutor has to agree to our choices, which will be interesting in my case, as I'm pretty sure he's managed to develop a bit of a grudge against me. Wouldn't surprise me - I'm none too fond of the chap either.

I think we might have to set up a blog for our project once we get production underway. I'll link that through for the curious of you who'd like to look at what we're actually doing. Production is when it gets interesting - for the next couple of weeks we're just writing massive design docs. Fun times.

Lots of things, some awesome, some not

2009-10-14T04:34:25Z

I have nothing to do!

Yes, that's right, I'm on a one-week break from class. I've spent my time pretty much doing nothing - 'cept catching up on sleep, and playing games. I would love to do something productive, like some writing, but I keep stalling before I even begin. It's mildly irritating. So, yes, this has been a pretty lame holiday thus far, due to everyone else I know in NZ still being horrendously busy with university - as their year is just about to wrap up.

Anyhow, let's look at some things that I've been up to of late.

First-off, and most important of all:

The Protomen: Act II - The Father of Death

NEW PROTOMEN CD. It finally arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I've been listening to it a lot since then. It's a step up from their previous CD in terms of audio quality - whereas the previous one had a bit of a garage-band sound to it, this one sounds every bit professional. In terms of how fantastic the songs are. Well. They're fantastic. It doesn't quite have as stand-out songs as their previous CD, but as a whole, it's a incredible piece of work, and superior to the previous one.

In terms of its narrative, it acts as a prequel to The Protomen's first CD - detailing the rise of Dr. Wily, and the fall of Dr. Light. It culminates in Dr. Light's resolve to keep up the fight, and build Protoman, which segues into the first CD. One trait of the album, which helps emphasise the progression of the narrative, is that the musical style changes from a acoustic guitar-laden, Western-sounding theme at the beginning, to a high-tech, synthesiser-based rock opera sound in the middle, which faintly bleeds into the more harsh, electric-guitar driven sound of their first CD by the end of the album.

In other words, it's awesome. If you're interested in it at all, you should have a listen to the first track: here.

Team Fortress 2

Another thing that has been keeping me busy and entertained, is my clan (Ju1cy), and its involvement in various competitive ladders and tournaments. We do fairly well, though consistency tends to be an issue - we often have people not able to show, due to real life commitments or internet issues, so even though we kind of have a core team of players, we don't get to play together as a solid group as often as we would like. Our last scrim was hindered drastically by our Ventrilo server throwing a hissy-fit a couple of minutes after the game began, cutting our communication to near-zero. The final score was an ugly 4-1. Our single point came during the few minutes when our Ventrilo server decided that it would work, before cutting out again. Shows how important communication is for solid teamwork.

Still, we have a bunch of fun, and mayhaps soon one of our members will cut together an e-peen boosting frag vid that we can show off to people. Good times, good times.

Death Note

After a discussion with Tim about anime, he convinced me that I needed to watch Death Note with great expediency. He was right, of course. I know I'm late to the bandwagon on this, but it's a fantastic anime, even if the second half doesn't quite measure up to the first. I'm always keen for stories that involve intelligent megalomaniacs trying to take over the world. Especially with the astounding amounts of Xanatos Gambits that go down.

Pool Game

So, for MDS, we had to code up a game of pool (8-ball), for the culmination of our maths section. Everybody in the class hated this project. Coding the game itself was a simple task, it was just a matter of endlessly fiddling with the collision detection mechanics to try get it working right.
I underestimated the amount of work this task would take, and kinda left a lot to the last minute (as in, a lot), which meant that last Thursday night I got all of thirty minutes of sleep. Good times, good times.
I got it into a working state by the time we had to submit it, so I'm not too bothered about it. Will be glad so long as I scrape a pass. There's only one obvious bug in my code that I can think of. It's pretty obvious - the balls sometime clip into the cushions, and zoom along them, popping back onto the table at one of the pockets, and traveling at a ridiculous velocity. It's rather amusing to see, but not quite realistic.

Counter-Strike: Source - Jailbreak

Something I was only just introduced to a couple of days ago, jailbreak mode for CS:S is a bunch of maps which have the terrorists acting as prisoners, and the counter-terrorists as prison wardens. It's pretty crazy. It involves the CT's ordering the T's around, and getting them to do silly activities, while trying to keep them under control. The T's follow along, so they don't get shot, and try to stage a rebellion at any chance they can get.

Basically, I imagine someone looked at the Stanford Prison Experiment, and said: "That would be lots of fun in Counter-Strike!"

And, well, it kinda is. The CT's are forbidden from just randomly shooting prisoners (freekilling), as there are admins on the server at pretty much all times, who will either kick you, or make you a T. Instead of being prison wardens, the CT's are more like.. well... kindergarten organisers, if you armed all kindergarteners with a knife and a thirst for blood.

The usual path of things will go something like this:
1. Cells are opened, T's are ordered to stand on a line for a gun check. (Some of the cells have pistols in them). Any T's who are moving during the gun check, or disobey orders, or essentially do anything to merit it, are shot. This isn't so much out of: "Hehe, killing prisoners is fun", but more: "Need to cull the numbers, otherwise it's too unmanageable to play games."
(Most of the times I've been on, there have been around 20-40 T's, and 5-11 CT's)

2. Once gun check is over, games are played until the T's are whittled down to a single man - all losers are shot.
Games tend to be one of the following: races, trivia, Simon Says, tell a story/sing a song, or an activity that has been coded into the map. (Soccer, diving, dodgeball, castle battles, basketball, boxing, water polo, etc).
Yep. Kindergarteners. With knives. And some of the worst attitudes you'll see outside of an actual prison (we are talking about CS:S players here).

3. Once there's one T left, he can challenge the remaining CT's to various duels - Knife Fight, Shot for Shot (take turns shooting at the other person), or Deagle Toss (throw your gun as far as you can. The person who throws the furthest wins).

Yeah. It's crazy. But often hilarious. The best of both worlds. If both worlds also involved racial epithets and nude sprays.

List of Interesting Links:

Hilarious rap song by CCP (the company who makes EVE Online). Icelandic rap ftw.

Two (one, and two) interesting articles about the largest mall in the world. It's in China, and nigh-deserted.

First person on the moon could've been a woman? I am disappoint.

Steampunk-ish web series? Might wanna keep an eye on this.

Also, as xkcd pointed out: Toy Story is older than my brother. Very weird and scary.

MENTLEGEN

2009-10-06T06:02:38Z

Tarnish notte the majesty of my TOWER of HATS.

MEGACANO

2009-09-07T06:23:05Z

It.

Is.

DONE!

(<insert favourite rejoicing profanity here> YEAH!)

MEGACANO: One day remaining

2009-09-05T15:05:28Z

That's right. MEGACANO is due in at 5:00pm tomorrow. Mondays truly are dire things. I'm in pretty good shape though - didn't get as much done today as I would've liked, thanks to a couple of hours wasted due to irritating shenanigans involving libraries (the computer code kind, not the full-of-books kind). Fortunately, the stuff I have left on my to-do list from today, after some brief experimentation, I've found that it shouldn't take me longer than an hour to do. The items I have assigned for Sunday all look doable in their respective time-frames.

So, yep. Everything's good on that front.

In other news, I got two hours sleep the night before last, and thirteen hours last night. Oh man, that's good stuff.

It's been a busy week, what with both MEGACANO needing to be worked on, and the presentation due Friday. Don't ask me how the latter went. The way they choose to assess things annoys me GREATLY. In a synopsis, I managed to blow the presentation part of the marking by describing something as: "Awesome as... shit," as my brain wasn't able to keep up with the speed my mouth was talking (due to the obscenely constrictive 7-minute limit, which I, or anyone else (as far as I know), didn't manage to stay under). Means I can get a maximum of 80%. Lovely.

Also, I tried to go to sleep an hour ago. As you can see, it's not working out too well. Brain is absolutely refusing to shut off. It's also refusing to think about code, which is vastly irritating, as it means I can neither be productive (sleep), or be productive (work).

Alsoalso, after reading Jim Rossingol's magnificent retrospective about his time in EVE Online (which everyone should read because it's fascinating and awesome), I'm getting a seriously bad gaming it to play it, but I'm stuck in the weird situation of my brain also realising that it doesn't have nearly the time nor effort to dedicate to the game, and countering all desire I have to play it. Which leaves me in the situation of not wanting to play anything. Though, providing all goes well, I may be able to get a similar fix when Chris brushes off his Freelancer CD, and we manage to get the beautiful thing working with multiplayer. Last time we tried, there were serious Vista-related issues, but now we have the wonderful salve-for-any-network-wound that is Hamachi.

Fingers crossed.

I, like Garfield, hate Mondays

2009-08-31T12:34:39Z

I was supremely grumpy today - probably due to the poor sleep I managed to get over the weekend. Certain members of my family think it's greatly amusing to go upstairs and jump on the floor above my room, as punishment for my not going to sleep at a reasonable hour. Har har.

Anyhow, it also didn't help that I found a couple of game-related things on the internet today, both which irked me greatly.

First-off, is some new info about Alpha Protocol - a spy-based RPG in the vein of Bond or Bourne - which is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment. This is the studio behind KotOR II, and NWN2 + MotB. They don't really have a reputation for producing anything but over-ambitious, flawed games, which means that a new release is a cause of excitement, as they might just produce a game which doesn't trip over itself. Some of this faith is founded in the basis that they have Chris Avellone on staff - a man who has a fine reputation in the gaming industry, considering he penned the entire script for the impressive Planescape: Torment.

Unfortunately, the info which cropped up in an interview with the senior producer on Alpha Protocol, Ryan Rucinski, doesn't sit very well with me at all. It paints an incredibly chauvinistic view of the game - the main part that I find despicable being that there's an achievement for "getting", as he puts it, all the women in the game.

There's an articulate and intelligent synopsis on the issue with this over here. Ergh.

A smaller issue I have with the interview, is the comment Ryan Rucinski made about Chris Avellone:

"Chris Avellone doesn't do 'goo goo' stuff," Rucinski said, referring to the chief creative officer at the development studio. "Sometimes he'd be like, 'No guy would say that!'" That included a scene of Thornton crying. Rucinski said that people around the office were like, "That sucks, he's crying, I don't like this guy anymore."

The more I read over that, the more it sounds like a comment taken out-of-context, but even still, it doesn't really give me any hope for the game in terms of engaging content, and it mires my perception of Chris Avellone a bit. Doesn't sound at all like the same fellow who wrote Planescape: Torment, and compiled the Fallout Bible. Disappointed.

The other item of note was that I finally got around to watching the gamescom footage of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Looks kinda "meh". I'm still not sold on the visual style - their "stylised realism" - as all the characters look just a little too much like they're made of plastic. That, and the weirdly disproportionate figures look a little unnatural. I know that it's essentially trying to achieve visual simplicity of the likes of Team Fortress 2, by focusing on bright, bold textures, rather than detailed models, because it's a much more scaleable system, and is able to run on older hardware without losing too much visual quality.
But, they just haven't quite captured it. See:

Yes, I took that specific picture for a reason. Mostly also to complain about the pseudo-barbie-doll thing they have going on for what seems like the default female model. Sigh.
Also, what on earth is the point of those shoulder pads? Silly uniform designers.

Anyhoo, those are my quibbles for the day. I've got a TF2 scrim to play in, and a critique to format up, and then I should probably get some sleep. I have a secret plan - I'll pretend to ignore it, and then I will pounce on it, and pin it down before it realises what's going on. Mwahahahahah!

Oh, and as a side-note, if anyone wants to check out what I've been getting up to on weekends: see me get shot in the face!

Ye gods, this is impressive

2009-08-30T20:26:00Z

One of the most amazing things ever and you should watch it now.

Update on the marks situation

2009-08-26T02:47:49Z

We had tutor-student reviews today, which means that my epic letter of displeasure lies abandoned in the dank recesses of my hard-drive, as I gave Steffan an earful about the issues I had with the marking system, and the specific issues with the marking of my paper. It's apparently going to be re-assessed, which is good.

But, I'm still a little irritated at the marking system. My fears were correct in that we're being marked on an 'achievement'-esque system: we have to fulfill a set of requirements to get a certain grade. The problem being, this worked fine previously, as you could resubmit it as many times as you wanted. However, they changed the system for our class, because people who were unable to handle the course kept having their work pile up on-top of them - getting new assignments to hand in, even as the old ones needed to be resubmitted. So, they changed it, but didn't really analyse the implications this would have on the system.

I'm disappointed. I thought I managed to avoid this malarkey by not doing any more NCEA after Level 1. Gah.

What's even more irritating, is the reason that our marks were so late to get back to us - apparently, due to "one member of [our] class," they marks are being held up in some kind of bureaucratic process. I can guess who that person is, and I am ANGRY.

Grrr.

I hate New Zealand

2009-08-25T13:09:28Z

Or, more appropriately, I hate the New Zealand school system. No, hate is too weak a word. I LOATHE it. I loathe it like Fox loathes not cancelling Tim Minear's shows. I loathe it like Activision loathes not sucking the money out of consumers, leaving them as empty, rotting husks. Yeah, I loathe it quite a bit.

What is this loathing focused on of late?

Well, my class finally got back the marks for the first research paper we submitted - way back in June (75 days ago in point of fact) - and my mark was a little lower than expected. Just a little.

Try "51%" on for size. It doesn't really fit, does it - a little long on the legs, a little tight at the hips, a little staunch in the sternum. Uncomfortable. Aggravating.

The paper was marked in three sections - 60% for content, 20% for grammar/spelling/etc, 20% for having your citations formatted properly. Or, at least, that's what they say. The comments I got in the little 'tutor feedback' boxes aren't all that helpful, and don't exactly match. So, that 51% is from the content section. I got D's in the other two, which I assume to be 0%'s.

"Isaac, you sterling fellow," I hear you say, astonished: "But, you can spell, and format, and what?" Well, this was my reaction, at least. The issue being this - Each mark: A, B, C, D, has certain requirements attributed to it, and if you don't meet all of those requirements, you don't get the mark. Seems straight-forward enough. It's what's used in NCEA - our secondary school system - which is why I suspect that they also might use it here. It's the only reason I can fathom for getting 0%'s. Because, the thing is, I do have a handful of mistakes, the problem is, they're concentrated mistakes. And the sections have stupid requirements like: "The work may exhibit three to four missing commas." So, yep, you can miss three to four commas and still get a B. But if you miss five commas, then you cannot get a B. Even if you get everything you need for an A+, you'll still get a C, at the most.

The reason why I think this is the case with my mark, is because of my being marked down in the citations part. My bibliography is perfect. My citations are all perfect, except for one thing. We're supposed to write multiple citations like so: "[1, 2]." However, I failed to realise this, and wrote them like so: "[1][2]." According to our marking criteria, we're allowed "one to two mistakes" in that section. But, because my work is peppered with this one mistake, I get a D. Because that's a requirement for an A, B, and C in those sections.

Yeah, I'm a little irked. I wrote a lovely letter of grievances I have with the marking - both in regards to my situation, and as a whole - and am planning on presenting it to someone more in-charge on the 'morrow (or today, however you want to look at it).

Also, what makes my situation really amusing - guy who got the highest mark in the class (got an A+ in that specific section), ran out of time and never finished his citations. The thing is, all the citations he does have are correct. If you read his paper, you're like: "Dude, there's citations until the middle, and then there's none!"

A+! Gotta love it.

What's even more annoying - I'm pretty sure I made that same mistake on the second research paper too. Cause, well, how was I to know it was wrong if we only just got our paper back?

So many angry words to pick from. So many.

lordubiquitous @ 2009-08-24T02:25:00

2009-08-23T14:49:07Z

It's 2:30 in the am.
I should be sleeping. I have every reason to be sleeping - the main one being that I have to haul my carcass out of bed in the morning at the rank hour of 7. As I'm sure you all will be able to figure out, thanks to a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic, that leaves me with less than four hours, thirty minutes of sleep, if I were to stagger over to my bed right now, collapse on it like a deflated accordion, and sleep.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that will happen. Mostly for one reason and one alone - the reason why I have, up 'til this point, also not been able to sleep (I did endeavour to cross over to the dreamy territories like some sort of Imperial colonisation attempt far earlier tonight, but it did not come to pass). I digress, that aforementioned reason being: I can't. stop. thinking.

Yes. Thinking.

My brain, like some aberrant student of Calvin and Hobbes-ian philosophy is trying to eke every last second of awake time it can, before facing the horrific monstrosities that make up a typical Monday morning (last week it was hours and hours of maths. Indeed. MATHS. ON A MONDAY. I'm pretty sure Satan himself is a little worried at the thought.) And because my brain can't realy do anything much other than think, think it does. At the present time, before I distracted it with this little morsel of productivity, it was trying to solve the conundrums of my future from now 'til when I finally keel over, and every subplot and subpath that may arise from decisions I may make within the next six months. It knows (or should do by now, I have berated it enough), that this is a foolish exercise, for even a supercomputer modeling all the possible permutations and outcomes would not be able to account for the sheer unpredictability that is human existence. But my brain doesn't listen. It soldiers on, doggedly gnawing away at problems, as if sheer persistence will reveal a "path of best fit and most happiness" for the graph it has sketched up of my future. I'd much rather it rocket-jumped itself off to bed, like a far superior soldier, but no such luck.

Obligatory: "SPY SAPPIN' MAH SLEEPTIEM", here.

What makes this whole situation even more unbearable, is that I just suffered through a somewhat terrible weekend, where my body completely rebelled against me, due to severe lack of sleep last week, and refused to function until I spent most of Saturday in bed, feeling like I had just been run over by an ubercharged train. Repeatedly. What a dick. I hate trains.

Well, it looks like the furious output of this blurb to let you all know how much my brain has been assimilated by TF2, or vice versa, and that sleep is off hiding in the corner with The Cloak and Dagger, is pretty much complete. So, it's time once again to run around issuing gouts of spy-checking flame, until I find his be-suited ass, and axtinguish him into a pleasant doze.

I bid you good night!

EDIT: OH LOOK IT'S 2:51AM BY THE TIME I FINISHED THIS. HATE YOU BRAIN.

Blood, Guns, Yelling, and Naps

2009-08-19T12:41:21Z

The title pretty much sums up my day. Also, as of writing this, I should really be in bed. However, my adrenaline levels are a little shot through the roof at the moment, due to the intense nature of NeoTokyo scrims - of which we had two.

I'm a little disappointed with the results - the first one we played a little poorly, losing 4-7. Highlights included me blowing up people with cunningly-placed detpacks, and a sneaky nipplebot cap. Neph, Murm, Jez, and Shadow all played quite well, although we were lacking the pants-wettingly-terrifying Saffron, due to him being at work (PRIORITIESWTF!). Shadow definitely improved int he second game - he's jsut started playing with us for NeoTokyo, so he's still getting used to me yelling out things like:
"Two bulletproofglass, one overpass, two basement. ShadowJezMurm push garage, Chris stick with me - detpacking basement," of which I do at a near constant rate. It's prety impressive the difference it makes when we don't have the nipplebot and I fail at issuing orders/info - it's a situation that can qutie well be metaphored with "headless chickens", or something of that nature.
We performed far better in the second game - pulling out to an early 4-1 lead. However, we managed to screw things up in such epic proportions - including two rounds where we failed to kill any of them - that we only just managed to scrape out a 7-6 win. There was also one round where we basically killed ourselves: Murm threw a nade, which bounced off of Shadow's shoulder, and landed at his feet. The result of which can only be described as SPLATCH.

In other news. I'm severely sleep deprived - enough so that I napped at MDS today. I managed to get about an hour undisturbed with my head on my jacket infront of my computer, before people returned from getting food, and Keegan thought it would be great fun to make loud noises with an inflated Subway bag. That is, until the tutor from a class in the room over complained.
I didn't know we could complain, cause although we can be pretty noisy at times, we're not nearly as bad as the GD (Game Development), artists on the other side of us. I'm convinced they spent the majority of their time on youtube. Slackers :P

In otherother news, I'm making good progress on MEGACANO (my sprite-based game). I have my volcano launching rocks around, and I have objects spawning that it can destroy. This means, tomorow = COLLISION DETECTION.
Oh, what fun. So much fun. Ludicrous amounts of fun.

In yet more news, Chris has introduced me to the wonderful sounds of Pendulum. They make for excellent programming music - upbeat enough without being too distracting, lyrics nonsense enough that you don't need to pay attention to them, and the songs have just the right amount of in-chair boogie.

Here's an example: LISTEN. Just in case you have yet to subject yourself to their auditory awesome.

Now, I desperately need to try (and succeed) to go to sleep. I can get almost six hours if I try hard enough!

District 9

2009-08-15T08:31:50Z

OMFG.

I didn't really know what to expect from District 9, and, talking with friends afterwards, neither did they. It's a slow-burn documentary that morphs into a thriller, which morphs into an action movie, without anyone in the audience being the wiser. It's an astounding piece of filmmaking. I'm pretty sure it holds the record amount of times I've uttered: "HOLY SHIT", during a movie.

Seriously. My mind is blown. KABLOOSHY. *Makes mind-splody action*

What I'm trying to say, is that everyone should go see it RIGHT NOW.

Like.... NOW.

Just a warning. It's pretty brutal and violent and mind-splody. But you should still go see it right NOW!

Sherlock Holmes: Badass Edition

2009-05-21T22:14:34Z

There's a trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes film out: here.

Now, my first reaction was: "That doesn't look very much like Sherlock Holmes." Once I got over that, however, my reaction was the more positive: "That looks awesome." Mostly because it's Sherlock Holmes with hints of dark magic and funky technology and Guy Ritchie (who seems to have somewhat of a fetish for shirtless slow-mo boxing. You're welcome, ladies.)

I suspect this might be a film that would actually have me shell out $15 to see it on the big-screen. I'm a little excited.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (and MDS news!)

2009-04-30T13:22:05Z

Let me begin this with a few stirring and profound words:

I have a tremendous man-crush on Chris Avellone. Just look at that resume of games! Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2, KotOR 2, and the amazing Planescape: Torment. It comes as somewhat of a surprise then, that I only recently got around to playing through Mask of the Betrayer - an expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2. My lack of excitement about it seems rather odd, especially considering that I kept hearing how Mask of the Betrayer had one of the best game stories to grace computer screens in the last few years.

I can say this: it didn't disappoint.

However, I'll get to that point in all due course. First, my experiences with the game.

I loaded up NWN2, and figured that perhaps I should try to play through the main game first, before setting my sights on the expansion pack. I braved the "main character is an orphan with a mysterious past living in an idyllic little village which is spontaneously attacked because of..AHH I CAN'T TAKE THE GENERICNESS ANY LONGER", for about fifteen minutes.

HELLO AND WELCOME TO IDYLLIC VILLAGE NUMBER 325935.

JUST HANGIN' WITH MAH GENERIC BUDS. Check out the "childhood antagonists" with their clubs. And look, a mage and a fighter for companions!

I probably would've slaved away at it for a little longer, except, I broke the game. One of the main storyline quests wouldn't accept that I had completed, and I just couldn't be arsed trying to futz around with fixing it. An "oh well I'm probably not missing much" shrug, and I was off to the expansion pack.

Mask of the Betrayer begins where NWN2 left off - apparently you kill some world-domineering fellow called the King of Shadows, and his fortress starts to collapse, and you black out because of having great big pieces of fortress falling on your face. Damn, I might've missed something cool. Oh well, MotB does a fair job of filling in all the blanks as to what happened in the first game, if you didn't play it through, and I'm sure that if you did, all these would be seen as charming references. Anyhow, beginning.

OOH. MYSTERIOUS. The shard is a woefully generic device from the main campaign, fortunately used to great effect in MotB.

Your character wakes up in a strange room underground, with runes all over the walls, in excessive amounts of pain, and... *hungry*. No, probably not for pancakes, or tacos, or pavlova. This is a hunger that haunts you all through the game. A hunger for...

SOULS.

Yes, that's right. Delicious. Tasty. Nummy souls.

SPOOKY. Ooh, look, there's our first companion. Ms. Amazingly Badass And Awesome.

Anyhow. I got distracted. So. You're hungry. Then a red wizard shows up and mends your wounds, blows up things with her horrendously powerful spells, makes entertaining comments, and eventually - SPOILERS - marries you. Or, at least, that's how it worked in my game. Cause my character was a stud. He's black. That's how it is. Anyhow, this character is Safiya, one of the Red Wizards from Thay (some wizarding place where they act like dicks to each other and you can steal peoples souls and engage in a golem battle arena and mirror puzzles), and she is incredibly badass.

She too has a mysterious secret! It is quite awesome, as with many things in this game.

So, roleplaying games are carried by two things - the strength of their story, and the strength of the characters you can interact with. MotB succeeds admireably in both counts. The cast of companion characters is a diverse and interesting one. After adventuring with a short time with Safiya, you manage to piss off an ancient bear god with all your rampant soul-devouring. Forced by a clan of bitchin' witches, you have to gather up some allies to fight off the bear god. First and foremost amongst these is Gannayev, or Gann-of-Dreams:

He may look a little angsty, but don't let that fool you, he's perfectly capable of seducing the pants off anything that moves.
And blowing shit up. Very important skills to have when you're in a fantasy RPG.

He too is incredibly badass, often burgeoning with wit and ego. I suspect he is by far the coolest of all your companions, as he is able to accompany you when you decide to go jaunting off into dreamland. On one of these voyages you can make him have a competition with a farm-girl's imagined version of himself, to see which Gann - fake Gann or real Gann - loves her more. Yes. He manages to out-talk himself. It's impressive, to say the least. I am, however, too lazy to replay through to find the section for screenshots.

Hrm, angel wings. I wonder if she's religious.... nah.

Kaelyn the Dove has renounced her devotion to Kelemvor, the latest in a long line of gods of death, and is on a religious crusade to bring down the Wall of the Faithless. (Where people who don't believe in gods have their souls absorbed after they die.) The three-companion party limit meant I left her behind a lot of the time. She just wasn't as interesting as the others. Plus, I was too busy getting my flirt on with Safiya to worry about having another woman in the party.

Hey, Okami and a bear had a bastard lovechild!

Okku, god of bears, mauler of faces, scratcher of limbs, kicker of asses, bequeather of punishment, courier of smackdown, priest in the order of saint whupass! Honourable fellow, he's troubled by the rest of his spirit-family because he swears a life-debt to you, after you defeat him and spare him. (Or you can kill him and get an undead construct that is apparently even more badass but I'm lazy and once is enough.)

So, as you see, and interesting and eclectic cast of characters. Now, to continue with the pictorial theme, I will sum up the story in one image. Yes. Just one:

Now, I understand that this is somewhat to be expected. Well, the Planescape side of things, considering Chris Avellone wrote the entire story for that game, it's entirely feasible that elements would overlap. MotB has a wall of souls, Planescape has a tower of skulls. Yes, there's more than that, but I'm just saying that a few uncanny moments of deja vu are to be expected if you've played either of those two games. Nothing wrong with that - Planescape: Torment and Knights of the Old Republic are easily two of the greatest RPGs in the last ten years (only by a smidgen for Planescape. Dec 12 1999!), so, if you're going to rip off of anyone, it's somewhat excusable when they're games of that high quality. I mean ripping off in a good fashion, as the storyline is intriguing and with its own fair share of reveals - albiet ones I guessed previously - even if none of them do manage to catch the "OMGWTF" of KotOR. The setting, characters, and some elements of the plot are fascinating in their uniqueness and oddity, just like Planescape.

It looks like what I'm trying to say is the game is like if KotOR and PS:T had a bastard child. 's pretty damned awesome.

All right. I feel I should spend some time talking about gameplay, since it is still rather important. If I just wanted a story, I should read a novel, right? Anyways, I have mixed thoughts about combat systems in RPGs. I prefer them to be simple, intuitive, rewarding to watch and engage with, and ultimately, not too difficult. You see, RPGs are essentially about the story, and the last thing you want is for the combat to be halting people from experiencing the story. I like challenge elsewhere. In FPS's I'm all about the challenge. The issue is namely that in FPS games, challenges can be overcome by improved skill. In RPG games, challenges are either overcome by grinding up your characters until you out-level the monsters you wish to fight, or intense strategic commandering (I'm okay with this one), or large amounts of theorycrafting, min-maxing, and all sorts of levelling shenanigans to try and optimise your characters to be the best they can be. I've found this last one to be exceedingly prone in the D&D system which the Neverwinter Nights games use.

Fortunately, in MotB, at least half your party will be capable of casting 9th-level spells from the get-go, which all pretty much boil down to this:

Combat boils down to a simple checklist.

1. Are your mages rested? If yes, go to 2. If no, then rest.
2. Unleash the pent-up, face-annihilating POWER.

But hey, it's pretty, it provides plenty of filler between the story sections, and it can be challenging when your casters have blown their load. That's all good in my books. Fortunately, character creation can still provide diversity, as skill checks are used with reckless abandon in the game, providing just that touch of uniqueness to your character through the levelling up screen. My dude was a diplomat to teh extreem. I can't be bothered making screenshots anymore, cause it's late and I have to be up for work and okay fine there.

'splosions on a field!

CONCLUSION.
My, my. Doesn't that look structured 'n' shit. So. I should probably sum up my thoughts and stuff. This has been a terrible rambleview. I was experimenting with a new form (piktuurs!), and they took longer to process than I thought. This writing shtick is difficult.

All in all though, the game was immense fun to play, and very satisfying to read actual well-written game dialogue (OmgwtfHowDidFallout3WinWritingAwardsWhatTheShittingBalls!), even if it did feel a bit deja-vu-y at times. It was a good kind of deja vu - a harkening back to good times of yore.

I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of things that should be said, and doing the game a terrible injustice by doing so. Oh well, I need to sleep. Maybe I'll dream about Chris Avellone... *contented sigh*

Oh, and I got into the Media Design School. Got the call three hours after the interview. I <3 promptness.

An unexpectedly awesome day

2009-04-24T06:52:04Z

I had to drag myself out of bed this morning via a great exertion of will. I'm pretty sure my eyes were still half-shut when I ate breakfast and rode in the car to Northcote Library, to devote myself to another endless day of dullness. I was convinced the day would be terrible. And, for the most part it was: long, arduous, dull, and forgettable, except for one small detail.

I saw him as soon as I walked through the door. All I could do for a moment was stared amazedly. I think the first words out of my mouth were:

"HOLY CRAP IS THAT A LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF A SPACE MARINE?"

It was.

It stood over two metres tall, bolter raised in the right hand, chainsword at rest in the left, frozen in a pose that veritibly exuded awesomeness. I slunk closer, feeling entirely unmanned in its presence. Its helmet's dull green eyes stared fixedly into the ground, as if boring a hole through the library's natty carpet, and into the flimsy earth below. Its breastplate bore the sigil of the Blood Raven - protagonists of the DoW games (it being promotional merchandise for DoWII). Tentatively, I turned to the other librarian. She stood, watching my antics with apparent amusement. I asked the only question a man can ask when faced with such an epitome of manliness:

"...can I hug it?"

The 'y' in the word 'yes' had barely left her lips before my arms were tight around the imposing torso, and my face pressed against the aforementioned sigil. It felt like plastic, and smelled as such, though such realities were far divorced from my mind at this point. I could smell the bolter smoke as it crisped out of the gun, hear the roar of the chainsword as it rent metal and flesh alike, hear the ubiquitous WOOSH-BANG of the rocket-pack-powered jumps into the fray, feel the smooth sheen of the ceramic power armour - soon to be pitted and scarred with battle. After what seemed like both an instant and a lifetime, I unclasped myself from the space marine, and stepped back. The other librarian was laughing at me. I didn't care.

I went through the day as I normally did, though whenever it felt obnoxiously dull and repeditive, I looked over at the space marine - ever imposing, ever awesome - and my day felt a little brighter. Thanks, Mr. Blood Raven Assault Marine. I may not see you again, as I don't work at Northcote that often, and some of the librarians were complaining about your imposing, terrifying, awesome presence. But, wherever you go I will always cherish that moment we had together. We'll always have Pari...Northcote Library.

College Applications Retrospective

2009-04-15T15:00:16Z

I finished collecting college responses last week, after a final fiendish battle through the trecherous pathways and navigational eddies of having-to-actually-call-Gettysburg-and-ask-them-what-was-going-down. Apparently, through the space of notifying me that they had, indeed, recieved my application and would study it forthwidth, and the time they had accordingly decided to relinquish their grasp upon the arcane knowledge of my acceptance status, they had somehow managed to lose a character from my email address. Where this character went, we will never know. Who recieved my notification instead of me, we will also never know, although, since it was another dastardly rejection, I cannot think that it would've caused too much of a kerfluffle. However, the world is a strange place, and someone unwittingly recieving a rejection notice may have pushed them over an edge. Shit may or may not have happened.

But, I digress. I must check my galloping horses of un-helpful tangentness.

Let me just say this: I picked a poorly time to set my sights on America. Because, not long after the tender bud of the concept burst into bloom within my brainpan, shit went down. And when I say shit, I mean the economy. And when I say down, I mean like the Titanic after being holed by a meddlesome iceberg, armed to the very chilly teeth with LASER CANNONS. That was no tearful scrabble over a floating door kind of sinking, that's just a big FWOOOOSH, GLUG GLUG GLUG.

Then, due in some part to the unholy machinations of this world economy, as I am led to believe, application numbers are up. A whole bunch. World-wide. I guess the general collective of humanity realised. "Money is good. People who know more shit get more money. Therefore, university is the place for me!" Of course, to paraphrase Dak'kon (the balls-out-awesome), there's knowing, and there's knowing. I believe I would truly have come to know that shit. Alas, the only loss is theirs.

I believe you will have gathered by now that my applicationary process did not go as swimmingly as I had hoped. The final tally stands as two affirmatives, and five negatives. Unfortunately, the two colleges who saw through my thin veil of ineptitude and batshit insanity of an education, to the fearsome intellect that harboured beyond, were both unable to provide the required funds to make this foolish adventure a possiblity.

To sum all the previous up: "Oh, balls."

However, being of such stout mind as I am, my current mindset is: "Oh well."

Yes, that is correct. I have cast the die and moved a square or two onwards upon my trail to victory. I will admit, I took a little damage when the first pair of rejection notices turned up in my inbox, hawking their miserable message to the nearby emails as they waited for my perusal. But, my mind was quickly diverted to other matters. It only struck me then that my glorious plan could fail. A secondary path should be acquired as expeditiously as could be done. Once again, my mind turned to my first love, who hung about the periphery of my knowledge, waiting for me to realise that we were meant to be together: The Media Design School, and their uberly-intense course in game development.

Even handier - their next admissions are June 8th, which is immensely appealing. For the last few weeks, nay, months, my mind has been wandering around a desert of listlessness, thirsting for something to drive it onwards. My quest for knowledge had been postponed for the duration of what can only be described as work. I must admit, the thrill of watching money hurl itself willingly onto your account balance, in great big fortnightly chunks, is immensely satisfying. The loathesome task of hauling your sleep-deprived carcass out the door every morning, is not. To do it near-purposelessly, is less so. Yes, less than not. So, the June 8th start is seen as a immense boon, one that I eye almost hungrily. Because, kids, learning is fun!

I suppose some of you might point out that if nothing came of these college-application-shenanigans, what was the point of them? Perhaps I am so liberal with my money, that I decided to throw away approximately over a grand for nothing? If you ask that, you are a fool, and I pity you as such. My primary goal I was unable to complete, but even failing it provided a sense of closure. No longer will I second-guess my choice - it may be a forced choice, but it is sitll a choice - to study in New Zealand, as I am able to do it knowing that I explored this pathway as far as it would lead me. I may tick off that section of my map, and contentedly too. Not only that, but the challenge of having to conjure up a means to show the truth of my awesomeness to a foreign entity has provided me with a sense of pride. Because, yes, that shit got done. My doing-of-shit skills have been tested, and found worthy. My blade of shit-doing has been bloodied. You get the picture.

Now, there are some elements of this decision that I will regret. The June 8th start means that I will be unable to send my corporeal presence on tour in America again this year. No doubt that will dishearten one and all. Believe me, it has struck a chord in me too, like an E-flat of gloom, but I will persevere, and vow to make my next expedition across the great Pacific waters to be a longer and mightier one than the last. When, and if I return from that voyage, the face of America will know my impression upon it, and, yea, it will be awesome.

I am still compiling my application for the MDS, the body and soul of which I hope to send out by Friday. That is correct, my cross-continental friends, I am applying for a tertiary education with only a month and a half before it begins. Cause that, my friends, is how we do it. It is much more glorious, and I am pleased to be back to the familiar and sane. Of course, I could be rejected from there, and then that truly would suck, but no matter. I will strive onwards and upwards.

Now, if only I could end my frakking story-writing drought... oh shit, three in the am, I must be up in less than five hours. How much do I loathe you work? So much. So very, very much.

Valve wins again:

2009-04-02T01:01:00Z

Yes, yes, they do.

Assassin's Creed: free running with stabbing. Lots of stabbing.

2009-03-26T13:51:11Z

Then again, I might've been a little bit more prolific on the stabbing than ye average player, probably because it was so utterly satisfying. As was shoving guys off buildings, or jumping off buildings, or jumping off buildings to stab guys in the neck.

I have to say, I wasn't sure whether I'd like Assassin's Creed. It's a very polarising game - people tend to either love it, or hate it. I must say, I'm trending towards the former in this regard. Although it took me a while to figure that out. The game has a fairly poor beginning, as there's a lot going on, and none of it is explained. It then gained a fair cadre of -points for pulling ye old "take away all your cool stuff once the tutorial is over" aka, in this case, "a complete excuse for skill/equipment progression"

Not an auspicious start.

And then I rode around for a horse on a bit. Vaguely entertained by the guards, who seem to have the sole task of enforcing a strict speed limit in the Holy Land. Here's a quick guide:

Walking very sedately: *Ignored*

Mild walk-trot speed: *Ignored*

Trotting: *Wary glances and twitchy swordfingers*

Galloping: "ASSASSIN, GET HIM!" *Multitudinous hordes of guards swarm at you like you just whacked a hornet's nest with the biggest stick known to man. And yes, only assassins break the speed limit. It's true. It's never old Mrs. Paisley who's running late to her crusading cake stall.

Oh, and aforementioned overly-eager guards aren't so overly eager when it comes to actually engaging in combat. In fact, they're quite happy to just circle around you, and wait for someone else to try and hit you. It's very kind of them, because the combat engine is a strange mix. You can only target one opponent at a time, but killing them doesn't take that long.

Typical swordfight, as follows.

Guard: *Attacks*

Altairthebadass: *counterattacks and kills the guard by stabbing him in the face/throat/chest/leg/whatever in glorious cinema-worthy style*

Simple, but a lot of fun to watch. Hee. Stabbing.

Which brings us to our next point. The titular assassinations. But, hold on, you can't just go and assassinate people. Thats' not involved enough! (and would make for a terribly short game). You have to gather all sorts of needless information first by pickpocketing very unobservant people, beating up people who foolishly wander into empty alleyways, running from a to b, collecting flags, breaking stalls, escorting (WTFHATE) people, killing people, killing people, and... that's about all of 'em. Each comes with a rather useless piece of information about your target. Collect enough, and your in-city scout master gives you a big tick in his big book-o'-death, and gives you a feather. Cause feathers are cool.

Now, I'm all for scoping out the joint, gathering information, all that jazz. Especially if it involves stabbing, or jumping off rooftops. There were a lot of complaints when the game was released from the repeditiveness of the information-collecting missions, but I didn't mind them. What I did mind was how utterly useless the information was. "Here's a map of all the guards protecting Mr. Pincushion." Well, gee, thanks. Except I never actually see said map, so that helps me in absolutely no way at all.

I guess one of the issues with the system is that I'm expecting it to be like Thief - where the pre-planned approach is vital. AssCreed is much more about the flow, and just going with it. Leaping around roofs is so much fun, and the penalty for "screwing up" so minor - usually a restart, or just more swordfighting (and therefore more stabbing!) - that perfectionism doesn't factor into it quite as much. So, there's not a lot of extra info they could give you in regards to the targets.

So, you've stabbed a special fellow in the neck. Better get out of their quick, cause of all those guards on your tail. I bet the adrenaline is pounding! Let's have a long sequence of exposition!!

Wait... what?

Yep. Somehow when you stab someone in the neck, they get teleported into some alternate realm where they can exposition as much as they like before they die. (DAMMIT). Though, it was only the first couple of times that this really irritated me. If the characters weren't as interesting as they are, this would be a terrible mechanic, but as it is, the exposition is mainly a huge guilt-trip, as the characters lax lyrical about their belief in what they were doing to be right. Makes you question why you killed them, which is all good in my books.

Oh. Let's see. Voice. It's pretty well-done, for the most part. Our protagonist's american accent grated on me for the first couple of hours, but I got used to it soon enough. I kinda wish they recorded a few more lines for the guards hassling the innocent civilians though. When there's 8+ in a section of the town, and you run past them pretty quickly, and they have less than a half-dozen of unique lines, they tend to repeat them a little. Just a little. Yes, I know you want to cut off that woman's hand for trying to steal, but can you shut up? I'm trying to stab a guy here!

The writing in the game I found was quite well-crafted. I wasn't sure about the whole extraneous sci-fi setting, which I first thought felt a little tacked onto the proper part of the game, but I soon came to enjoy it. It's fairly standard fare, with the characterisations of your targets being the dialogues which raise it above-par. Oh, and yeah, it's way too easy to tell who the big bad is. If you didn't guess it by the time he's all: "DUN DUN DUN, I'M BEHIND IT ALL", I'll be very disappointed in you.

Well, let's wrap things up into some form of a conclusion: It's good. Unexpectedly good. Unexpectedly great, for that matter. I wasn't convinced with the idea of the simplistic movement and other controls, but in practice, they work fantastically well. Animation is top-notch, graphics are fine (though the permenantly 'live-long-and-prosper' look of the low-quality civilians kinda bugged me). It's a solid package. And, for being a AAA title, it makes some interesting design decisions. Kudos to Ubisoft Montreal. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the sequel.

Oh, and for the record, my first reaction to the game being over: "...YOU SUCK."

Yeah, I dislike cliffhangers. But hey, at least it wasn't as bad as Crysis.

Ooh, a free trip to the states!

2009-03-14T19:34:00Z

and a big, fake sword. Worth it?

Watchmen

2009-03-08T07:20:50Z

Needs more squid.

What now?

2009-02-24T10:01:25Z

It's been over a week since Romeo and Juliet wrapped up. No longer do I have to spend 6pm-1am, six days a week, out of the house. I actually have free time. And it sucks.

I have free time, but no motivation to do anything with it. All my life is at the moment is work, and waiting around 'til I hear back from colleges in April. So, pretty much just work. And work isn't all that great. It's fine, but I can't have it being the only thing I do in my day. This apathy is infecting my other activities too. I can't bring myself to play computer games very easily, I just find myself so bored with pretty much everything.

It would be great if I could use all this free time to write, but I can't: no motivation.

What to do? I have no idea.

Six Months

2009-01-31T14:19:09Z

It's been just over six months since Alpha 08.

I felt compelled to look through my photos earlier tonight. It was an odd experience. Usually when looking at Alpha photos, I'm overcome with nostalgia, and all I can think of is: "I wish I were there right now."

However, tonight was different. I breezed through the photos, chuckling and nodding at the memories each evoked, yet I never wished to be back there. It felt like doing so would taint the experience somehow. I'd already been through that moment in life, I didn't need to re-live it again. I accepted the experience as being a fleeting one, acknowledged its awesomeness, and moved on.

It made me feel, well, older.

That's right bitches, next revision of the Isaac OS is here! Now with improved pathfinding and cooler boss battles.

Also, halfway through the season of R&J, officially.

Alsoalso, the Pumphouse Theatre (not us - Shoreside Theatre - the Pumphouse is the organisation that runs the building), got nailed with a $20,000 fine for a resource management breach. Serves them right for booking other shows on at the same time as us. (The reasource management statement for the theatre rules that, due to parking and toilet facilities, there can be only one event on at any one time). It's a good thing they hadn't breached it before - it's a $20,000 fine, or up to 2 years in jail.

Sleep time now.

R&J Update (In a word: fantastic)

2009-01-24T12:38:07Z

166 people in the theatre tonight. I think the maximum it can hold is 180-something, and that's without reserving the front row, so that we don't accidentally smack anyone in the face with the swords being swung about.

So, yeah. Big crowds. They all seemed to enjoy it, even if someone's cellphone did go off while I was lying dead on-stage.

Best part of tonight, however, was aftewards when I was sitting around outside, chatting with Mercutio about acting, and he mentioned how he thought Allie and I were doing great. Now, he has done professional theatre in London, so I judge his opinion to be fairly worth-while. So yeah, that was a definite ego-boost.

R&J Update, and The Illusionist Review

2009-01-18T13:20:01Z

Two out of twenty-five performances done. Well, actually, we only did the opening night, as we were rained out tonight. Alas, the troubles of performing outdoors.

Opening night, however, was fantastic. 142 in the audience (the theatre doesn't hold much more than that - 200 at most, and that's without the front row reserved so we don't hit anyone in the face during swordfights). It's the biggest opening Shoreside has had, crushing the previous record of 94 for King Lear last year.
So, anyways, big audience. Big, responsive audience. We received some pretty thunderous applause at times, especially for the balcony scene, I guess because everyone knows that one. No major screw-ups either. It was almost the best opening night we could've had. Yay for that.

Also: I look damn hot in eyeliner.

Alsoalso: MY GOD DOES THE ILLUSIONIST SUCK OR WHAT. If you have a line of dialogue in your film as plainly *AWFUL* as this: "I saw remarkable things, but the only mystery I never solved was... why my heart couldn't let go of you." YOU SHOULD SHOOT YOURSELF RIGHT THEN AND THERE. GAH. SO BAD. I have no idea how people can even begin to compare that to The Prestige, let alone claim it being better than. It's not even close. That's like saying one of the Star Wars prequel movies is a as good as piece of sci-fi film as Serenity, or Aliens.

Seriously, I think it was almost as bad as Wanted. Perhaps even worse. Yes, definitely worse, cause at least Wanted had a guy being smacked in the face with a keyboard, and the letters spelling "FUCK YOU" as they flew through the air.

Stuff.

2009-01-10T14:01:08Z

Just under a week 'til R&J starts.

Didn't end up submitting to the Dells. Oh well. Puzzlemind will find a home eventually.

Fascinating articles about a strange Russian game: Here, here, and here. Read in order. The authour calls it the "best and most important game that you've never played." Perhaps not quite that, but it certainly sounds like it comes close.

In other gaming news, I bought both Left 4 Dead, and Far Cry 2. I'm not sure which one was 'better'. They're both glorious experiences in their differing fields, one an intense zombie-surviving experience with friends, and the other...
Well, I'm not sure how to describe Far Cry 2. I know it's not for some people - the pacing is weak at times, the overarching plotline seems almost non-existent for a large part of the game, the characters are barely fleshed out, and yet... it has been an experience that I am not likely to forget any time soon. It is a fantastic, thought-provoking piece of art that makes you realise...

No, I can't say what it makes you realise, not yet. Will do once I finish the essay pointing out how it's Heart of Darkness in video game form.

Speaking of Heart of Darkness, I'm retelling it as a short story. With Vikings. And the Kurtzian figure is a woman. It's gonna be glorious.