Where have I been

Well I have been here, but working on the Wordpress version of my site which is not ready for primetime yet. In the meantime , a link for you social web thingy people, or book fans, or heck really anyone one. Library Thing Nice place to catalog your library and share it if you want so friends or the world can see your reading tastes.

EA and the word of the day

Was just discussing the buy ou tof Mythic by EA and thought today's word of the day listing was very apt.

venal: capable of being bought; also, corruptible.
copious: large in quantity; also, affording an abundant supply.
autocrat: a ruler with unlimited authority.

Italy

Todays notable visitor to my site was from a place I had to google to locate. Sounds like a nice place to visit. My wife was stationed in Italy for a time. Gotta remember to ask her if she recognizes the location.

Udine - Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Aircraft Carriers

Check the top two links in my digg side bar, couple of totally unrelated Aircraft carrier links. One is to a guy who built a replica of a carrier out of lego blocks, the other is to a carrier that was sunk as an artificial reef down in Florida.

Google again

yet another tool from google, this one (without me reading any info) must be something they just hovvered up with all that IPO money. but there it is, looks kinda nice for another freebie.

Wii

I have not owned a Nintendo game product. I must confess, I went the sega/sony progression. Hoever I have played on their systems and the games tend to rock even tho they have a tad more kiddy feel to them (for the most part) The Iconic games for the Nintendo crowd rock. People WILL buy Wii (this odly named new system) even if it is not called Revolution which was the development "code name" for it. There seems to be some sort of buzz around the net, probably because bloggers like me having nothing else to talk about that the name sucks/doesn't suck is cool is stoopid etc. Lets face it the could have named it Monkey Poo and people would have bought it for $500 and loved it. Conversations about it would have been much more interesting too.

Just posted this idea on Nerfbat's forums.

It would be really interesting to see a game where the indivdual player could build a fighting force as part of his character advancement. The turn based and RTS genre's have added some character advancement to give their games a little more flair. How about a game where as your character advances you gain the ability to comand troops (npc troops) Character advancement would open more command skills and a wider variety of troop types, etc.

Look at a miniature table top game like Confrontation, Warhammer 40K, or Warmachine. All started out as squad based games, then later added mass combat "expansion rules" for large forces.

The potential for this type of game is really pretty amazing, one of the staples is squad vs squad combat. How about a pvp instance where you and an oponent enter a scenario type instance and instead of killing some boss mob the victor wins some tangeable prize at the end, whether it be an exp bonus, a chance a loot table for the scenario, or some title in an inspectable journal, possibly a medal or something. (One of the things I noticed when I beta'd Auto Assault)

Sure something like this has the potential of exploits, several spring to mind right away, would just have to police it with a few mechanics ( I know easier said than done), put lockouts, etc.

Thread at Nerfbat's forums

DRM hassles

For about a year, I have been using iTunes. The program and service are excellent, you can subscribe to pod casts fairly easily and their catalog of music is pretty decent. The Only real hassle is that if you buy a song or album from Apple you have to use itunes to listen to it. The easiest way around it was to burn the songs to CD then rip the CD back to MP3's. There were a couple of software freeware solutions out there but they were clunky as all hell. With iTunes offering video now as well, this program, Tunebite, offers an all in one solution for converting files to a transferable format.

I am probably going to turn moderation back off on my blog, it just takes some of the fun out of posting. I'll just delete any of the crap that pops up.

Free 7-Day Trial Of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach

I usually make my own call on whether or not I watch a movie, prefering to take all interviews with a 5 pound grain of salt. Games the same, try em before forming a final opinion, and with demo's, free trials and beta tests abounding it isn't too hard to give them a go round before coming off the wallet. Well, Turbine, the Uwe Boll (read as Festering Boil) of game producers will at least get me to download and try DDO probably this weekend.

Turbine, Inc. announced today that the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: STORMREACH free 7-day trial is now available for download at http://trial.ddo.com.

Players who participate in this program will receive full access to the game for 7 days free of charge. At the end of the trial, players will have the option of continuing to play DDO, including the characters created during their free 7-day trial time, by purchasing DDO either online or at retail. To participate in the 7-day trial or to find out where to buy DDO, visit http://trial.ddo.com.

Bad Taste?

Ok , I was paging through an interview with a game designer on some site and saw something mildly odd. Every game site has add after add on it, which is fine they have to pay for the content they provide somehow. The add right smack dab in the middle of the article on page one, showed a starving 3rd world kid holding a saucer with milk in it and the caption was "comfort food" and then my eyes moved on to the meat of the article. I flipped the page to page two and the add in the exact same spot was of a rather full figured woman in a bathing suit floating on a rubber raft.. an add for weight watchers.

Just one of those weird (probably unintended coincidences).

Old School Amiga !!

This game rocked back in the old days, only thing that came close on the PC around the same time was the first Prince of Persia
Another World. The link is to a blog that has good screenies and links to the game itself.

Back when this game came out I was in my first "computer" related job selling software for Software Etc. They were a spin off of one of the mall book store companies (brain dead today so I can't remember the name) This game was amazing and we ran the demo of it on one of our display Amiga's all the time. It made the fatter agnes happy.

DDO

I was excited to hear about this game when it was announced. That excitement was on a pretty steady slide the more I heard about what was happening with the game. This is a pretty sober, non inflamitory opinion of what is wrong with the game several weeks after release from a poster at the Fires of Heaven message boards. I'd link to there, but half the crap there is typical board babies screaming at each other.

Like I said earlier, I'm playing this game right now and find it pretty fun.

It really needs about another year of development effort before it could be considered "release ready" though. Why?

- Extreme lack of content. There's about 150 quests total right now, which don't give enough xp to level all the way to 10. Re-running quests is mandatory.

- Lack of solo content.

- Lack of player advancement outside of gear. There's no crafting system for example.

- Difficult character creation process. The player is required to know way too much about the rules to be able to create a character. With no respecs, this is a very bad thing indeed.

- Reliance on instanced content. There is simply no outside world; all the dungeons are instanced, with instant teleportation from the city to the dungeon. The world feels tiny.

Here's the big problem though; the DnD ruleset isn't really designed for an online mmorpg. Many of the decisions that Turbine has made with this game are because of the traditional "flavor" of pen & paper DnD, and that just doesn't translate well into a computer game.



I will say this for DDO ... it's made me want to play the pen & paper version again.

Big Storms

Gonna be a fun day, folks freakin out, spring is here and the storms are coming in harsh today. Supposed to get hail, super cell thunderstorms and tornado action. Also potential flash floods. Hopefully any trees or branches that relenquish their hold and fall to the ground so so without taking out our house or cars.

But, what is the deal with them closing schools early for a little wind and rain? These people close schools around here if someone blows in the principle's ear ffs.

Bookins

Leached this link from the woot daily blog. Bookins touts itself as online books swap. Going to read up on it, and see whats what. I like the idea, might give me an outlet for some junk I have laying around.

Intel Mac Mini item

Ok, unless I suddenly get a boost in income, I doubt I will aquire one of these anytime soon, but the new intel based Mac Mini's are getting a update to their os you can download as a beta client currently that will allow you to dual boot with Windows XP. That is a system that Apple is shipping that will be able to run Windows XP, a Microsoft operating system. The mac mini itself is a pretty cool little box, and being able to dual boot to the Mac OS ( yes I know I flippted that, but I am a windows user )

Library of Dust

It's a reblog of a reblog but still a cool read...

copper cans

The Gang

Here is the gang lead by ...

A Countdown

One of those cases where I had an idea for a game, and someone else made it. Back when the mmorpg stuff was hitting it's stride and developement houses were working on the crop of games coming out after DAOC, I had the idea that a game along the lines of Car Wars/Auto Duel would be cool. Well I got to beta test one incarnation of the game I would have made. The count down has begun for the final release. It would be a great distraction from time to time.