Nerdgasm

Taking a break

2009-09-14T15:45:00.002+10:00

245 posts over a period of about 14-15 months? I think I earned a break.

I'll beback later, hopefully with some more nerdy stuff to talk about.

Homeworld 2 mod

2009-09-11T17:27:00.002+10:00

In the past I've discussed what I view as the greatest strength of PC gaming, the ability to Mod the games. Recently I dusted off my Homeworld 2 CD and tried out a few mods for it that hadn't grabbed me in the past. Homeworld 2 was not as successful for me as Homeworld 1, something about the feel of the combat never grabbed me, it felt too short. While the graphics aided in making it feel epic, the speed of frigate-vs-frigate combat removed the feel of the massive ship-to-ship combat.

This is fixed in the Tactical Fleet Simulator mod. Having downloaded and played version 2.6 (or is it 2.7? I'm too lazy to check) I was awestruck at the subtle tweaks in gameplay that made it feel more impressive, immersive and enjoyable. The battles feel a little lengthened, and there are genuine choices made for researching. A minute or two of research in a field will only open up the basic parts of that field (E.G. Researching bomber craft will only give you the basic bombers, you need to put more work into it in order to get the REALLY impressive bombers).

Despite the feel of the battles, and the thought required for research, something I was not impressed with was excess of information. Yes, too much information. I understand they want you to play the mod and get a feel for how it works rather then just have it handed to you, but I sit there just scratching my head at all the information they give me. I don't NEED to know exactly what armament each fighter craft has, and all the acronyms prefixing each type of fighter is just a bit too confusing for me to take in while desperately trying to shore up my fleets woeful inadequacy in an unexpected area.

The mod itself looks beautiful. Aside from only a few small examples, the newly inserted ships (the mod uses all the original-game ships as well) perfectly fit the aesthetic established for their race, and the emphasis the mod adds to missile-combat makes things look beautiful. I have to admit, despite being a beam-man in space combat, the sight of a flight of missiles closing in on a ponderous target and shattering the starboard side of the shipyard just... makes me all moist.

Linked in with the 'too much information' problem is the excess of choice. I went through three stages of appreciation of the large number of individual ship types. First I was overwhelmed, then I was thrilled, then I was... confused. The benefit to the simplistic "This is an Interceptor, it intercepts - this is an anti-fighter frigate, it blows up fighters" approach of the original Homeworld 2 system is that everything's purpose is very clear and undisputed. When I'm designing the final fleet I'll send against my enemy, I become very unsure of what I should put in it. Rather then "Ok, I'll put three Destroyers in here to give me some good firepower I can split up if needed", I'm forced into an indecisive state where I can't work out which of the three Destroyer-like ships I should get. Should I get one of each? Should I specialise? I DON'T KNOW.

It really becomes a situation of "I don't know what to get next", leaving you frozen indecision. There are three classes of anti-fighter fighters, and even knowing that one of them is just an opening "Protect your start base" fighter, I'm left wondering which of the other two I should get. I understand they were trying to simulate actual weapon system development, which goes through several generations of progress and concurrent design, but to me a slight simplification wouldn't go astray.

But, my complaint is already answered. I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but there's a game mode that promises easier ship choice. Yeah, this mod not only provides a new feel of gameplay and new ships, it provides new game modes. A couple really stand out for me. 'Risk', where you only have Frigates and up (except if you choose to allow bombers, which REALLY changes the playstyle). Skirmish, where you have a fleet of ships, no ability to create more, and you've got to outfight the AI (who are in the same boat). Strikers, like Risk but with only fighters and Corvettes.

All in all, give it a look see. Tactical Fleet Simulator.

Others do my work

2009-09-08T16:34:00.002+10:00

Rather then actually have to use my brain and think, I have decided to delegate my work to others for this post. What I actually mean is I've found some amusing websites and will send you there rather then write anything myself.

Some may notice a certain theme passing through these links. Don't pat yourselves on the back, the theme is bleedingly obvious. The theme is "Here are examples of stupid people."

Human beings who have done stupid things.

People with mobile/cell phones who have typed stupid things.

Patrons of businesses who have said/done stupid things.

People with computers who have typed stupid things.

People with functioning genitals who have said stupid things.

There, enjoy the fruits of others labour.

Ideal Space Empire game part 4

2009-09-04T16:39:00.004+10:00

Now, let's talk about the final part of designing the ship. The subsystems, and bringing it all together.

As described in part 3, subsystems are balanced by four requirements. Manpower, energy, space and money. So those will be mentioned in the description of each part I talk about. If these subsections have special requirements, larger-or-smaller variants or improve with research (either automatically or opening up improved versions) I'll mention it.

Crew cabins
Manpower: Adds to your total (amount added depends on size)
Energy: Low drain
Space: Low-medium space (depends on size)
Money: Relatively low cost.
Description: These increase the amount of crew a ship can have. They range from small cabins (designed for corvette class ships) to massive living quarters (designed for destroyers and up). Since it is very difficult for research to make minimal living quarters smaller, these are relatively standard.

Energy generators
Manpower: Low
Energy: Adds to your total (amount depends on research level)
Space: Low space
Money: Moderately expensive.
Description: Most energy generators have a relatively similar size, some may be a little smaller, some a little bigger. The exception would be fighter/corvette generators, which would be smaller versions of the Frigate+ class generators. As research into generators improves, the generator designs both give more energy and cost more. However the generators in place in your designs will not alter, meaning to take advantage of generator research you must regularly update the designs.

Command center/Cockpit
Manpower: Moderate/adds to your total.
Energy: Low drain
Space: Low/moderate
Money: Moderate
Description: The command center is an essential part of the ship, no matter it's class. It determines the maximum amount of manpower and energy the ship can cope with, as well as giving slight bonus' (depending on it's quality) to all the ships abilities (accuracy, damage, speed, etc). Fighters have a different variety, the cockpit. This adds a very small amount of manpower to the fighter, usually just 1 (the pilot), but some larger varieties may add 2, potentially even 3, for fighters with turrets. Obviously command centers/cockpits will increase with research by a small percentage, but the true benefit to research will be to upgrade better varieties, and some more specialised versions.

AI banks
Manpower: Modifies Manpower requirements shipwide.
Energy: Moderate drain
Space: Low
Money: High
Description: AI banks are improved as research in their field improves, but the true benefit to doing the research is opening up even better AI bank designs. These function by reducing the manpower required by all systems by a set percentage.

AI Running
Manpower: Adds to your total
Energy: Moderate drain
Space: Very low
Money: Moderate
Description: While AI banks improve ship running by making things easier for the crew, AI running actively replaces the crew. Levels of research improve the quality of AI, meaning it grants both larger manpower bonus', and a lower penalty at a cost of increased energy requirements. AI running manpower lowers the capabilities of the ship in the same way command centers increase running.

AI Pilot (Fighter/Corvette only)
Manpower: Replaces total
Energy: Low drain
Space: Very low
Money: Low/Moderate
Description: Similar to AI running above, AI pilot is only for Fighter and Corvette class ships. It replaces the cockpit, meaning the ship is piloted by an AI as opposed to a living creature. This frees up more space for other systems, with the penalty that the AI pilot suffers a similar penalty to AI running, and are capable of only basic combat moves. This penalty is lessened with further research into the area.

Corvette/Fighter Hanger
Manpower: Very high
Energy: Low drain
Space: High
Money: Moderate
Description: Fighter and Corvette class ships are the only ship design that do not need to be given a ship drive. Instead a smaller ship engine can be mounted granting reasonable speed, acceleration and maneuverability at a lower cost, at the expense of being unable to move on the battle map. To counter this the Hanger is used. Fighter and Corvette flights are linked with a ship that holds a dock, and wherever the ship goes the fighter/corvettes will follow. This comes at the cost of lessening the capabilities of the ship hosting the hanger. Different types of hangers with different advantages (lessened space, lessened manpower cost, greater ship capacity, etc) will be found through further research. These must be placed on the ship's model in a location that will allow the ships to leave their host.

Ship launchers
Manpower: Low
Energy: Moderate
Space: Moderate
Money: Moderate
Description: The ship dock is different from a ship hanger, although it functions in a similar manner. All they really contain are the ships themselves, meaning pilots cannot enter and leave, nor the required support crews to look after the pilots. This means only AI piloted ships can use these launchers. These are the true benefit of AI pilot ships, since they are easier to contain on a larger ship then Hangers. Research opens up designs that can hold more ships. Similarly to hangers, these must be placed on the ships model.

Repair systems
Manpower: Low
Energy: Low
Space: Moderate
Money: Moderate
Description: A series of automated drones held in the ship that can repair both the ship, or other ships in the same fleet. Research opens up more efficient (and more costly) designs and makes current designs slightly better.

Turrets
Manpower: Low (for individual turrets)
Energy: Low drain
Space: Low
Money: Low
Description: When placed on a ship, a further Mass Driver or Energy weapon of appropriate size can be placed in that turret, greatly widening it's field of fire. Turret turn rate and maximum turn arc is determined by their model, with more effective turrets having higher money, energy and manpower costs then turrets with a slower turn or limited arc. Using the right turret in the right location is crucial to making cost effective ships.

Based on how much I've crapped on so far about weapons and defences, I won't go on about them now.

Well, there you have it. A look at a primary aspect of my ideal game, ship design mixed with a bit of the research. This isn't even touching on ground combat, empire management, racial modifiers on empire management, different styles of combat ship (front on shooting Vs 'ship of the line' style), all that nonsense. Be glad, otherwise this series would go on another twelve posts or so.

Well, that should be all I want to say on this topic for a while. I'm vanishing off until mid next week to do work on my Thesis. Tah.

Ideal Space Empire game part 3

2009-09-03T22:54:00.002+10:00

Now, let's get to the nitty gritty of designing, the actual design.

The basic system used by Galactic Civilisations II works. Each size of shit chassis has a certain number of 'points' of size, and when you add a useful (I.E. Not aesthetic) piece to the ship it takes a certain number of size points. It's the general way it works. Their miniaturisation system was a bit odd, but let's just ignore that.

Upon choosing the size of ship you're going to design, you then get to work within that size limitation to create the ship of your dreams. However there are some limitations.

First off, each useful (not aesthetic) piece you put on the ship will cost at least SOME of the following.

1. Manpower. This is how many people will be required in the ship to keep it operating at peak capacity. Ships will be designed to contain the ideal number of crewmen/women needed to operate parts. Some pieces will need little manpower (Shielding will require only a few engineers to keep it functional) while other pieces may need a great deal (repair systems capable of fixing other ships in the fleet will require a large number of crewmen).

2. Energy. Ships will require energy to run, and individual parts will alter the energy requirements. Ships will need to satisfy this requirement before they can be considered a viable design. As with manpower, some parts will have a higher energy cost then others. Energy weapons and shields will require a large amount of energy, while mass drivers are comparatively energy free.

3. Money. Ships will cost money to produce. Little in life is free, and galactic warfare is no exception. The individual parts put on a ship will increase the cost of the ship as a whole. Some parts will be relatively cheap (armour plating will be mostly pretty cheap) while others - such as high end energy generators - will be quite expensive.

4. Space. Each non-aesthetic piece put on the ship will take a certain amount of space on the overall design, as described above.

So as you can see, designing a ship is a delicate balancing act of energy requirements, manpower requirements and cost, and fitting all that on the ship in question along with the facilities you require.

Now, what haven't I covered? OH YES, engines.

GalcivII had a basic "engine gets better" research system. In this ideal game of mine, though, it's a bit more complex. Keep in mind since there is actual manouvering done in the game, there's more to consider then simple engine speed.

Now, let's consider three different Engine types, just to make things interesting. We'll go soft science, because the alternative is too difficult to work with. Let us consider what they are as a basic idea, coupled with the advantages they would bring in-game. To make things simple, let's say that ships are not allowed Drives of more then one type, but each type has two different engines 'speed' engines and 'maneouver' engines.

1. Inertialess drive. As a basic rule, the reason faster-then-light travel is considered a holy grail of physics is because as you increase in speed, the amount of energy that is required to increase a step further in speed increases. Current understanding is that JUST BEFORE you hit light speed, the amount of energy required to go that final extra step is approximately infinite. The inertialess drive cancels this out and creates a general, flat ratio of energy-to-thrust.

On the game map Inertialess drive ships would move straight. This means they are unable to move through obstacles and must pass ships that may be attempting to block them, rather then go round them. The inertialess drive is relatively easy to maintain (at least compared to other hyperadvanced FTL drives) so cost less manpower, but requires a constant input of energy, so has a higher energy cost.

On the battlemap, the inertialess drive's advantage is that it has a rapid acceleration rate. It may not be faster then other drives, but it can accelerate from a stopping point much quicker. However it's turning speed is not particularly impressive. This is represented in it's 'speed' engine having a high acceleration stat, but it's manouver engine having a relatively higher cost for the same effect, compared to the other drives.

2. Warp space. Another method around the FTL limitation is simply to sidestep physics. Well, I say 'simply', in reality it's an incredibly complex procedure, but once a ship has stepped out of the real world and into the dimension past this one, normal laws of physics as we know them don't apply. A short distance in that dimension could be an incredibly long distance in our own.

In the game map, Warp space means the ship ceases to exist in our reality, travels a distance, then drops back into the reality we know and love in a different location. This means they can sidestep obstacles that may impeed their progress. Inertia drives are VERY complex to maintain, not to mention the task of navigating from one location to another in the other reality, then dropping out in the right spot is incredibly difficult, requiring a large amount of manpower. In addition, the requirements to pass from one dimension to another are very, very energy draining. This is offset somewhat by the slightly lower price of these drives, but mostly in place to make up for the immense ease they have in getting from point A to point B.

In the battle map, the pinpoint maneuverability required in the alternative dimension pays off, as the maneuvering engines are quite effective. However their speed engine has lower acceleration and top speed.

3. 'Jump' drive. While somewhat similar in appearance to the warp drive, the main effect is somewhat different in impact. The warp drive jumps the ship to another dimension to carry on it's travels. The Jump drive actually physically transports the ship from point A to point B without traveling through any of the intervening points. Literal teleportation. Unfortunately these teleportation jumps are limited in distance.

On the game map, the Jump drive is halfway between the two alternatives. It functions by making a series of short jumps, making a number of them over a turn. Though it can be fiddly, the drive can jump around some obstacles if positioned properly. However it does reappear in 'real' space often enough that it cannot bypass everything. The system does not require as much energy as one might assume, but the drives require careful preparation for each jump, meaning it needs a reasonable amount of manpower to operate.

Finally, the battle map shows the real strength of the Jump drive. While it has average speed, maneuverability, and acceleration, it has another strength. Ships equipped with Jump drives are able to physically teleport across the map once per battle. This gives them a definite advantage in tactical moves.

Now, for the final post (hopefully tomorrow) I'll discuss different types of ship subsystems.

Ideal Space Empire game part 2

2009-09-01T23:14:00.002+10:00

First, something I forgot to discuss in the above discussion on research. Defenses.

Galactic Civilizations, which this system is heavily based upon, uses a simple three-for-three method. Lasers are countered by shields, Mass drivers countered by armour, Missiles countered by point defense. Having high protection against one will give you great survivability for that sort of attack, but also a much smaller degree (square root it) of defense against other attacks.

In this ideal game I've got in mind, there is a relatively similar system where each of the areas of protection have their best effect against their counterpart, but this effect is felt differently. Shields would automatically counter a certain amount of damage before 'shorting out', at which point they would have to recharge, with energy weapons only countering as a percentage of their total damage towards that 'short out' phase.

Armour is always effective, but in a manner stolen from the Heavy Gear games, the more damage it blocks, the less effective it is against future attacks (with solid stage mass driver weapons counting as only a percentage of their actual damage against the armour). To be precise, the armour completely ignores a certain amount of damage - meaning it may not take any damage at all - but the amount it auto-reduces is lessened by the amount of health the ship has. This means that a 'fresh' ship with high armour can take a hell of a beating, but once it's a bit more battle damaged then those small fighter attacks become more dangerous.

Missiles, as with the previous post, are the odd one out. Missiles function as normal against shields and armour, but their countermeasure (Missile point defenses, not to be confused with the point-defence turrets mentioned previously, although there could be a little overlap) are an all-or-nothing affair. Large missiles are either shot out of the air, or not, with no middleground. Smaller swarms of missiles may have some shot out of the air while others get into contact. Point defences, for obvious reasons, are useless against Mass Drivers and Energy weapons.

As you might guess from this, while each is more effective against a particular type of attack, it is certainly effective to have a ship possessing two (or even three) types of defenses. Missile defences do seem somewhat uneven, but perhaps this could be countered by giving the missiles higher damage, to provide some incentive to research countermeasures rather then just relying on the shields and armour to see you through. After all, it's a common cliche in space opera that the bombers still launch large missiles. Then again, with guided missiles there is no real concern over fire arcs and turreting. Perhaps missiles could be grouped based on their guiding? Unguided rockets and guided missiles... Hmm, it's a consideration.

Let's consider something I teased around before. Turreting. This links directly in with the ship design process.

Something I wish to consider in the designs of the ship is weapon arcs. In Galciv2 there was no difference where you put the weapon, since in the combat cinematic the weapons would often fire through your own ship in order to follow the line between your ship and theirs. However in a process of designing your own ship for a 3d space-based RTS game there needs to be more consideration for it. Part of the design process of creating your own ships would be weapon arcs. I know it seems needlessly complex, but I believe it would add to your enjoyment of seeing your own ships out in the depths of space.

First off we'll say you've created the basis for your ship (I'll cover things such as engines (which affect speed and manouverability later), life support, fighter decks, extra systems, etc, later) and now you're up to the stage of arming it. Obviously you want to put the heavy guns here... but wait! Do you want to attach it directly?

Instead this system would allow for 'turreting'. With turreting some of the ship design pieces you have access too are turrets. These have their own stats such as 'Maximum turn degree', 'available weapon classes', 'turn speed', 'cost' and 'manpower' (discussed later). These must be weighed up to judge which turrets you want to place where. Point defence weapons (as mentioned in part 1) are automatically turreted so they can just be placed wherever you wish. Heavier weapons (the medium and large weapons) can either be placed flat, in which case they have a very limited arc they can fire in. This may seem negative, but it is far cheaper then turreting, and allows for simpler, more streamlined designs. Alternatively turrets can be used. Turrets capable of full 360 rotation will either be relatively slow in their movement, or VERY costly, and possibly not even able to hold the largest class of weapons.

So in designing ships, the player must weigh up firing arcs. Do they want their ships to be far more expensive but have no 'blind spot'? Or perhaps this is a ship meant for engaging slow vessels and as such it doesn't need to alter it's firing arc much? Maybe the ship itself is highly maneouverable, so it doesn't need particularly impressive/costly turreting systems. Or perhaps the player will return to the 'good ol' days of ships having their heaviest armaments along their port and starboard sides. This way the player knows perfectly well how to arrange the ships in formation so they can fire effectively. As mentioned, Missiles have no fire arcs since they are able to change course in mid flight. This allows them unparralled versatility, but if the enemy has appropriate defences missiles are a very hit-or-miss affair.

All these things must be weighed when creating a ship, along with a vast array of others. What others? I'll explain in more detail in the next post, when I discuss extra systems such as: Engine, Life support, manpower, generators, and even things like docking.

Ideal Space Empire game part 1

2009-08-31T22:59:00.004+10:00

Tonight I'm going to do a blog post that is of no interest to anyone but me. It's discussing an ideal game I have in mind that I am well aware will never happen.

One of my ideal games is a 4X style space-empire sim game (in this case, Galactic Civilisations II) crossed with Total War crossed with Homeworld. The ideal is that you're guiding a space empire in it's development, getting into wars, resolving situations diplomatically, directing trade, etc. One of the major appeals of GalCiv II is the ability to design your own space ships, both aesthetically and functionally. So, let us consider how this 'design your own ship' idea could function in a game like this on a larger scale, especially for use in the RTS parts of the game

The first item to consider is research. The ship cannot be designed until it's associated parts are researched. GalcivII used a three-pronged battle research system where you could focus in either Mass Driver weapons, Energy weapons, or Missile weapons (and their respective countermeasures). While it took a great deal of research points, something I found interesting was how unchallenging it was to research ALL the type of weapons over the course of a long game. Let's consider ideal concepts for this ideal game.

1. Weapon Differentiation.

The different types of weapons should have genuine differences in gameplay and design rather then merely causing different types of damage. Energy weapons and Mass Drivers are relatively similar in function (direct fire weapons). Perhaps the difference between them could come in the direct effect of the weapons, with different 'classes' of energy weapons being better at their respective focuses and worse at areas outside that, while different classes of Mass driver aren't quite as good at their focus, but better at their weak area. Missiles would be different, since most of them would naturally be able to adjust course and target nearly any vessel. However, this higher accuracy would come at the cost of delayed damage.

2. Weapon Classes

Rather then merely putting the exact same weapons on different ships, let's vary it up a little. Fighter, Point-Defence, Medium, Large. With each degree of research, different 'classes' of weapon open up. Let's take Energy weapons as an example.

The player completes X degree of research and has opened up four different types of energy weapon, we'll call these Blaster (fighter class), Laser Turret (Point-Defence class), Laser Cannon (Medium) and Lance (large). The Blaster can be equipped easily on small fighter-class ship chassis very easily, but their lack of power and inability to be 'turreted' makes them poor choices for much larger classes. The Laser Turret is a naturally turreted weapon that can be equiped on all classes of vessel. On a fighter it is very large, taking up most of the space, while large classes of vessel could have dozens dotting them. It's main advantage is against fighter-type vessels, since it naturally has a fast turret, making it ideal to dot around large vessels to defend them from fighters.

The Medium class Cannon is too large for fighters, and only the largest corvette would be able to fit even one. At the cost of increased price and space they can be turretted, allowing them a larger arc of fire on the vessel, in which case their arc must be carefully positioned to allow the player to use them effectively. Finally the Lance would be a very large, very powerful weapon, restricted mostly to very large vessels, and very, very costly to put on anything but a quite restricted turret. These would be the primary armaments of capital vessels.

You can imagine this would be similar with Mass Drivers and Missiles. Larger versions of each would be available, going from anti-fighter missiles/gatling guns as point-defence weapons, all the way up to anti-matter torpedoes/Coil-Cannons as the medium or large weapons. Or alternatively the classes may be different for different research-types of weapons. Missiles may have "Light anti-fighter" as fighter, "Light anti-capital ship" for bomber-types, "Guided seekers" for point-defence, and "Heavy Torpedoes" for heavy capital ship weapons.

Let's go back to the energy weapon examples now. Let us say nowIf the player then researched further down the research tree for this specialisation and has unlocked two further techs. Laser Cannon II and Plasma Blaster. The Laser Cannon II is a relatively simple upgrade of the Laser Cannon tech and would be automatically applied to vessels with the Laser Cannon (possibly at a small fee). However, the Plasma Blaster is a completely new Fighter-class weapon, and new fighters would have to be designed to bring this weapon into battle.

As you see, this makes research very attractive without requiring very regular redesigns of ships. Galciv's "one research opens one better weapon" method worked for it, but for a more hands-on RTS style game it would need to be streamlined a little with different types of weapons that can be used. This means fighters aren't stuck with the same types of weapons

3. Research variety

It was a bit too easy to get THE BEST weapons in multiple areas in Galciv. Maybe instead the players should choose a focus. This would be determined by the first area they begin research. All subsequent research in that weapon area is a little easier, while research in other areas is a little more costly and time consuming. A relatively arbitrary artifical scaling would work. Opening weapon research costs X research units, while researching into a different area costs X1.5, and the final area would cost X2.

Hopefully this would mean that players wanting to specialise in one area can do so, while players wanting different types of weapons (for the advantages each offers) are still able to do so.

Next post: I'll explain what I mean by 'turreting', as I talk about actually designing the ships.

Yeah, sorry this is so dull, pretty much just doing this for me.

Blogpost-words

2009-08-28T20:42:00.003+10:00

You know what I enjoy? A movie that knows precisely what it is and honestly just doesn't give a shit. G.I. Joe is a perfect example of this mentality, it knew from the beginning precisely what it was going for and went for it with the force of a thousand hurricanes. Boobs and explosions. It knew what sort of movie it would be and it didn't try to disguise it.

Today I saw a trailer for a movie I intend to see. It's called... are you ready for this? I wasn't.

Ninja Assassin.

Yeah. It's that open about it. It's name is basically "Guy who kills shit REALLY WELL" It's like if they called Die Hard "Pissed off white dude" or Pulp Fiction "Criminal anecdotes + dead people".

The movie - from what I can tell from the trailer - is about a Ninja who assassinates people until he decides he doesn't want to assassinate people or be a ninja (so really the title should be "Ex-Ninja Assassin" or "I can't believe it's not a Ninja Assassin"). Of course the retirement plan involves killing EVERYONE so he doesn't have to kill again. It had a sharp knife on a piece of chain, lots of swords, and ninja stars that had a rate-of-throwing that could challenge machine guns.

This movie knows precisely what it is, and just goes to do that REALLY WELL. There was no hint of a love story in the trailer (though there will be at least half of one, it's an accepted fact in movies), all there were, were a large number of people getting killed to death. I want to see this movie.

Superhero MMOs - Epilogue

2009-08-25T08:16:00.002+10:00

As a final post on the matters of superhero MMOs, I am now severely 'meh' on Champions Online. I understand I should take everything I read with a grain of salt, everyone has different opinions on what makes games fun, etc etc, but from a read-through of how combat, leveling and gameplay works in the game? It's really not jumping out at me. And perhaps the nail in the coffin is this. I'm not sure if it's ironic that the unofficial character builder is what turned me away, or what.

The truth is I struggle to wring out builds with personality that I would be happy to play from that. They all feel a bit samey to me as I wrestle around the open ended character creation. Let's see, I've made a super-strong tech-suit guy, a sword armed vampire (with 'bite' and 'summon wolves' and everything), a rejig of one of my lesser villains I played in City of Villains, hell, even a beastial werewolf among other things.

It hit me when I looked back at the builds I made. They all centered around a small number of powersets. Tech suit, Might, Martial arts (usually unarmed, occasionally 1 sword), very rarely Munitions (and then only for characterful reasons) and Supernatural. The only character who used none of these was the villain rejig who was a mix of 'Force' and 'Fire'. I have no interest in elemental or sorcery superheroes, and only a minor (it being a secondary thing) at best interest in heroes who's focus in ranged combat. If I play this 'open ended you can make anything with your character' game I'd be missing out on about 2/3rds of the character possibilities, and from the remainder I struggle to put together a really characterful build that is unique enough that it's worth putting in the builder.

I am a major Roleplaying nerd, I need to feel a character I make is not only unique enough that it's unlikely others have made them, but interesting and captivating enough to me that I want to play them. Hell, one of my favourite characters I ever made up back in City of Heroes was a sociopathic super-hero-hunter who did it for sport, then developed an obsession with a superheroine who beat him. That was some fun roleplay.

Well, drifted off the point a little bit, but it's my blog so I can do what I want! Ha! And my audience just have to sit and read the ramblings I go on ab- wait, where are you going, come back!

filler post part X+1

2009-08-23T10:38:00.002+10:00

Short post today. I'm preparing for the first of my 5(or more) interviews I'm doing for my Honours thesis. A tad nervous, but then again she sounded a bit nervous too, so that's all alright then.

I won't really bother with a meaningful post today, since I was just sent a link to this story. It's kinda hard to write when you know full well that nothing you ever do will ever be this cool.

G.I. Joe is an awesome movie

2009-08-20T11:26:00.002+10:00

Having seen G.I. Joe last night, I can honestly say it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with a movie lately. Note, I did not say it was a good movie. It is a decidedly average movie on the good/bad scale. What it is, is fun. Pure, unfiltered, fun.

The best analogy I heard for G.I. Joe (which is a pity, since I heard it from moviebob, the movie reviewer at the Escapist, someone whom I am sincerely unimpressed with, and it always bothers me when I agree with people I don't like) was that it was like the action scenes were designed by a child in a sandbox with access to an unlimited number of G.I. Joe toys. You seriously expect to see the omnipotent hand of a seven year old reach down and move the actors, making the required sound effects with his mouth as he does so.

It is a movie that knows precisely what it is trying to do (entertain) knows precisely who it's target audience is (people who want an entertaining action movie, majoritively guys) and knows precisely how to do this (explosions and arses you could bounce a coin off).

This is a fun movie. It's a movie you rent on blue-ray, go over to your friends place with the huge TV, and watch with about four guys, two cases of beer, and enough popcorn to make a scale replica of the Great Wall of China, complete with soldiers guarding it from the Mongolian hordes. You don't NEED to watch it. You can stand around talking shit, and then occasionally cheering as you see an awesome bit of action.

The movie is like if you asked a 30 year old to come up with a James Bond plot, and a bunch of children to come up with the action scenes, then gave it both to a professional writer along with a bunch of comics and connection to wikipedia and said "make it so".

A great many things about what made this movie so fun were explained when I looked up the director. He's the guy who did all the Mummy movies.

The Mummy movies - magic + superscience - old setting + "in the not too distant future" setting - main smartarse hero + main stoic hero + smartarse sidekick + unironic Ninja + more arse + submarines = X

X = G.I. Joe
X also happens to equal fun.

Yeah, that's the equation of the movie. It WORKS.

Insert pun here about 'Steam'.

2009-08-17T17:16:00.004+10:00

Short post today, I'm buried under a mound of not-doing-much.

I'm going to express an unpopular opinion here: I do not use Steam. I avoid getting Steam put on my computer, and even go so far as to refuse to try the Dawn of War II demo sitting on a DVD in front of me, purely because it requires Steam to be installed.

One reason for my dislike of Steam is the Big Brotherish method of playing it's games. You MUST be on the internet and have Steam running in order to be able to play it's games. That doesn't seem like a massive thing at first, but as well as using computer resources it's also keeping a tab on the games people play. It bothers me that my recreational habits are being poured over by some market research consultant (even though, let's be honest, even without Steam that's probably happening)

The main thing is that it's a DRM method that no one seems to even notice. Starforge gets every nerd's hackles up like there's a large predator in the room, and the "5 install only" methods of some recent games (Mass Effect, which I admit I loved, and Spore, which I'm INCREDIBLY indifferent to) raised more of an uproar then jokes about putting a baby in a microwave.

Steam is a DRM method just the same, which no one even considers because it means they can get games without getting to get up from their chair. I don't mind Digital Rights Management, since I believe people are entitled to payment for their hard work. What bothers me is that if another DRM company tried to do what Valve does (require you to be constantly online to play it, not to mention having a program in the background monitoring your gameplay time) they would be crucified. But because it's part of the store's system and Valve made Half Life, they get away with it.

It just bothers me.

Superhero MMOs part 3

2009-08-14T16:28:00.003+10:00

Champions Online.

I can write the most about this at the moment since I've been reading up a fair bit on it. In the then untitled part 1 I voiced my ethical concerns about looking forward to the game, so here I'll just talk about what excites me about it, and where I've got concerns.

The fighting systems looks interesting and the requirement to use energy building attacks so you can unleash more devastating ones is something that sounds good on paper, but I'll hold off having an opinion until later.

I have to say, my only major concern at the moment is the server system. Rather then having different servers running separate and independent of one another as most MMOs do, CO is using a shard system. Basically there's one massive server and every location in it has a maximum number of players, once that's surpassed the server makes a new location for excess and so on and so forth. While this means it's easy to meet up with friends in game, it's also highly problematic. City of Heroes had plenty of times when some of the servers would go down, and players had to migrate to other servers just to play. Imagine that on a single server, if it went down every single player would be screwed.

Plus I'm a roleplayer, even when there aren't official server designations people try to label servers into types. If I'm roleplaying, I don't want to be bothered by some wanker begging people to power level him and calling them cocks if they don't

But I have to say despite that it looks pretty good. The nemesis system is clever, at level 25 - a little over halfway to max level 40 - you can create a Nemesis using the same system as is used in character creation (with the ability to describe the kind of villain they are, mastermind, thief, psychotic, etc) who is used in generated missions. I have no doubt people will come up with ways to make shit Nemesis for easy experience, but this really gets me going.

The character creation looks impressive. The physical creator looks more in depth then City of Heroes, but I've heard it has less actual costume pieces, at least to begin with. The actual leveling up and power system looks incredible. I'm seriously all goey in my manparts with anticipation. Just reading the half or so mix-and-matchable powersets they've released details on so far has me coming up with dozens of character ideas.

You see, instead of just picking your class and powersets, the game is open-ended in its design. You pick your opening powers from any powerset you want, and later on you earn roles that you can switch in and out of (with four total equating to most MMO class slots - Balanced, Offence, Defence, and Support). Individual powers within the sets have a number of power requirements you need to satisfy, usually just X (a lower number) of powers already from within that set, or Y (a higher number) of powers from outside of that set. A gun-wielding hero can dip into Supernatural and grab Regeneration with immense ease, or a Might-based hero can dip into Battlesuit for technological attacks.

I know I shouldn't be getting any distractions, now that my Honours Thesis is due in two and a half months, but fuck me this looks awesome.

Superhero MMOs part 2

2009-08-11T20:13:00.004+10:00

Let's continue on from this small gem of a post.

As you might guess from that link, this post is about Champions Online. As someone who loves roleplaying games, enjoys roleplaying, but is bored stiff of the usual fantasy cliches, the prospect of a superhero based MMORPG is one that makes me moist.

So to deny the presence of the contenders in this market would be an act of stubbornness that is totally in keeping with my character, but doesn't match with my cool, calm, incorrect self image I've built up about myself. Let's talk about the warriors in this somewhat small ring, discussing their pro's and con's from my entirely selfish perspective.

City of Heroes
Ok, time to be honest. I've played this before, I played it for nearly two years, and in the end I just got bored of it. My main RP character was pretty much dead (at which point I killed him off, for good). It's a good game, and it's the only MMO that kept my attention for long.

It was a good game, it's well established and it's got a solid roleplaying society. However, what killed the character creation for me was the classes. I understand the need for classes in an MMO environment that contains PvP, they make it MASSIVELY easier to balance things, especially in comparison to each other, and it makes it easier for players to work on their playstyle (they know that if they play class X, they should play the game in manner Y). This doesn't mean I enjoy them. I'm not a munchkin or powergamer, I prefer more choices (with the potential for accidently (or delibrately) breaking it) rather then less choices (in order to prevent breakage). Yes, I know it's a very selfish view to take, but it's just my preference. I'd rather have a game with more choices then a perfectly balanced game. This is primarily because I don't play MMOs to be competitive. If I want competition, I play something like Chess or Monopoly where everyone is perfectly balanced already.

DCU Online
DC Universe Online (an MMO based around the DC comic universe, you know, Superman, Batman, etc) is also in the works. It's not going to be ready until much much later, but it's being worked on. Of course, being neither our nor close to release, there isn't a huge amount of info on it. And, I must admit, I haven't been following it closely. I gave it a brief look-through recently after checking out the Champions Online powersets for the fifth time that day.

First impressions are... mixed. It's got some things I like, some things I find a bit tacky/dodgy, and alot of gaps in information. One thing I have to admit admiring is it's method of dealing with loot. Loot is a fact of life in the modern MMO model. You play/grind the game through for two rewards:
1. The gradual, guaranteed reward of experience and levels. This is what makes each individual action worthwhile in the game (at least until you hit max level).
2. The random, unpredictable action of loot. That is what keeps people playing past max level, and punctuates an evening's worth of gaming with a few moments of "hell yeah!" to convince you you're having more fun then you are.

Ahem, sorry, tangent. Anyway, loot. In a superhero game, appearance is everything. In a Fantasy MMO your equipment is MEANT to change your look, it's a primary factor, it's a sign of "hey hey, look at how awesome I am, I've got this sweet loot".

However, like I said, in a Superhero game you want control over your appearance. Superman doesn't look exactly the same as everyone else with the same gear, why should your superhero? So, how does DCUO get around it? Easy, it allows you to toggle on and off which pieces of gear are visible. I think this is a neat solution to the problem, and one I'm going to shout the awesomeness of from the rooftops.

Champions Online
Ya know what, I'm tired. Let's continue this another day. TUNE IN NEXT POST FOR THE ADVENTURES OF COMPLAINY, THE BLOG POSTER.

Taking to the air

2009-08-08T22:59:00.004+10:00

You know what, I am running out of nerdgasm topics.

Dirigibles. You know what they are? Picture a hot air balloon, inflated massively, with a full blown interior, kind of like an airplane. Actually, nevermind that, just watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and you'll see one.

Using my rudimentary knowledge of things (I know a lot about things, just not much about specific things, and a great deal of general things), here is how I piece together the timeline.

Dirigibles are slower then planes, much slower, even when put side by side with directly comparable technology Dirigibles are slower. However, at the time they were around they had much larger carrying capacity.

However, there are two things that screwed with the history of the development of this stuff. Back then there were three methods of traveling between continents. Boats, which were slow and sturdy. Airships, which were a little faster then boats without the risk of dangers at sea. And planes, which were something the public found highly resistable, I mean, they're a tiny metal box with wings that's supposed to somehow stay in the air! That's friggin' mental!

The two events that occured were:

1. The Hindenburg disaster. Happening between World War 1 and World War 2, it showed just how disasterously Airships could go. Everyone on board killed in a firey conflagration of the elements. Yeah, not pleasent, but it was one of the most widely publicised disasters in media history, because the entire thing was RECORDED ON FILM. Seriously, the "Oh the Humanity!" line is common knowledge. So naturally airships got a bit of a bum rap from that.

2. World War 2. Now, in this one, I MAY be speaking out of my ass. I read this somewhere ages ago, and could be wrong, so if I am just call me on it. In World War 2 there needed to be discussion between America and their European based allies. Of course this couldn't be done over morse code or other unreliable messages, so there needed to be steady, reliable transport for the American President to meet with his allies. Airships were out, for obvious reasons. They couldn't use boats, out of fear of German boats intercepting them. So instead they went for an official plane (which, if I recall right, is the origin of Airforce 1 being used as the designation for whatever plane the President is on).

So, having seen their President go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, side to side (sorry, just been watching too much Dr Steel) on a plane, the American public thought "well golly, if the President can use those fan-dangled plane machines, so can we!"

And now, airships are limited only to the friggin' Goodyear Blimp. Screw Godyear, I want to see research put into Airships. If they had as much technological development as planes did, they'd probably still be slower, they'd be much safer, they'd be much more luxurious (more like spacious train travels then cramped airplane confines) and I sincerely doubt they'd use as much fuel. The only major "Holy crap, we're in trouble" factor with Airships is the fact they need to use flammable gasses to lift themselves, but that is something that could be mitigated and possibly even dealt with entirely as a threat. If not for the Hindenburg, rather then Slow Boat -> Fast plane, there could be the middle ground of Slow Boat -> Moderate Airship -> Fast plane

I want an Airship, damnit!

(P.S. Yes, I know there are still some Airships in use, but I much prefer the mental image of them being used as a cheaper, longer, but more luxurious travel alternative then floating advertising).

Mystery Science Theater lives on!

2009-08-04T11:12:00.004+10:00

I sincerely doubt they need the plug, but a couple of months ago, while looking through Zero Punctuation back catalogue, I came across 'Unskippable'.

Quickly, let's backtrack. Before I knew my left hand from my right there were a series of TV shows in America (they never got exported to Australia, I think) called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Through the magic of Youtube, about a year ago I managed to watch what is affectionately called "A shitload" of their episodes. It was great fun, and whenever I watch a bad movie I always now get the urge to give it MST3K commentary (however I imagine my ad-libbed version would be far less amusing. Everything's funnier with robots). The general idea is that three characters sit in the corner of the movie screen (as if you were sitting behind them at the cinemas) and talk smack about the movie. Simple concept, great execution.

Back onto Unskippable, when I stumbled upon this I shouted with joy and thrust my arms in the air triumphantly, as if I had achieved some kind of victory, rather then just randomly found this. Unskippable is MST3K done to game intro CGI movies.

Here's a link to their catalogue.

Something you may notice is that their most recent video is "Metal Gear Solid 4: Part 1". Yes, that's right, they're dedicating five weeks of videos to Metal Gear Solid. I gave up on MGS after the first game, but even I find this stuff hilarious. Mainly because I heard of how bad MGS cutscenes were in the past, but now I can see for myself why they're so bad.

Ultimate showdown of all time

2009-08-02T22:39:00.004+10:00

Having just watched Godzilla: Final Wars, I am left with many questions. Many, many questions, of which I will receive no answers.

However there is one answer I will definitely never receive, which upsets me.

If Godzilla fought Superman, who would win?

I'm trying to imagine it, and it is AWESOME, but I can't picture who wins. Let's try to reason this out. First, the ground rules

1. Godzilla is moving to attack Metropolis, but not there yet, so the fight is happening in a relatively sparse area, but with enough debris around to make it interesting. This means Superman HAS to fight him (to protect the city) but Godzilla can't get an unfair advantage by inadvertently threatening people Superman cares for, thus distracting him (E.G. Lois Lane is in danger... again)
2. Godzilla is pissed at Superman and trying to kill him, rather then just ignoring him and moving on.
3. There are no reinforcements on either side.
4. The story is being written by a neutral party, so no vested interest from either DC or Toho.

GODZILLA:

PROS:
- Enormous Strength. As strong as Superman is, I think current presentation of the man of Steel (rather then the bullshit "I'll spin the earth backwards and reverse time" thing) shows him as incredibly strong, but not Godzilla strong. I would go on record that I think Godzilla is stronger then Superman, and could he get a good grip on him it is entirely possible Godzilla has the strength to crush him to death.
- Radioactive breath. While Superman is probably agile to avoid this while flying, at least once this could be sprung on him as a surprise.
- Immense toughness. Godzilla is ridiculously tough, easily tougher then any other villain Superman has faced.

CONS:
- Slow. While his large gait means Godzilla can move pretty fast, Godzilla would not be capable of the kind of rapid self correcting swing needed to swat a human-sized target in mid air while it's flying. It would be like a human trying to hit a fly. Sure some people can catch them, but it's as much luck as it is skill, and you can swing all day without connecting.
- Large target(s). Superman could never miss Godzilla. He's friggin' massive. More importantly, let's assume that Godzilla, like is the case for all animals ever, has relatively sensitive eyes. Those alone are larger then a human, and as such easy targets for Supe's.
- No Kryptonite. That seems to be the only way to beat Superman these days.

SUPERMAN:

PROS:
- Strength. As I said, I don't think Superman is as strong as Godzilla, that said, he IS very strong. He could easily start using abandoned tanks (or equivalent weigh objects) as projectiles by flinging the damn things at Godzilla, who would have a hard time dodging them.
- Speed. Superman is far, far faster then Godzilla. Godzilla would have a genuinely tough time hitting a flying Superman, either with swinging fists, tail, or radioactive breath.
- Heat Vision. Let me start off by saying I do not believe that Superman's heat vision could hurt Godzilla traditionally. However, a blast of that to the eyes would slow ANY giant Monster down.

CONS:
- Not strong enough. Superman is strong and with a myriad of offensive weapons at his disposal. I do not believe either any of them, or he himself, is powerful enough to take down Godzilla. Hell, I don't even think the Hulk, jumping at full strength at Godzilla's head, punching at full strength on the way through, could knock Godzilla over, let alone Superman.
- Not enough leverage. It's shown in plenty of Godzilla movies the most damaging way to hit Godzilla is to throw him around or knock him down. I honestly don't believe Superman could pull that off. The only way I could see that working is if he, in a matter of seconds, flew past at the same angle and hit Godzilla over and over again on the way past. However, that opens him up to a Radioactive breathing to the face.

Y'see, this is my problem. In the vision I paint above, Superman cannot really hurt Godzilla, while Godzilla cannot hit Superman enough to really hurt him. A full blown stalemate, which is as satisfying as a carelessly abandoned blowjob.

Thoughts on Infamous

2009-07-31T12:40:00.003+10:00

Having finished Infamous twice now, once good and once evil, I have to say that I both love the game, and at the same time I'm disappointed by it.

It is a great game with great gameplay, an enjoyable story, and is a great experience for any gamer. However, my complaint comes from the moral choice system. I have already said in this post what my idea moral choice system for any modern superhero game would be, so I won't go into that.

Infamous's moral choice system makes the common mistake of "Good" or "Evil", no real middle ground involved. However the vast majority of the story ignored which choice you made. The only impact your goodness or evilness had was the power upgrades available (which, of course, is gameplay rather then story), a couple of brief mentions, how the public reacted to you, and one or two cutscenes. The entire rest of the game's story ignores the fact that you're either an asshole or a saint and reacts the same way. The only real story factor that is influenced by your good or evil nature is how your girlfriend reacts to you.

That to me was disappointing. I wanted to feel some kind of difference on my second play through, when the only appreciable change was there were more explosions, evil-side.

Building on the explosion factor and moving in a completely different direction for point 2: Something I found unusual is that the evil side had a genuinely easier time with the final boss fights. Indeed most things, with only one real weakness at all.

You see, the common theme among comparisons between good and evil characters is that good characters get little bonus' to health, healing, etc etc, and evil characters blow shit up. That is followed to the letter in Infamous, with the good upgrades all being about precision attacking and with every hit of your basic lightning bolt attack giving you more energy and health, and all the evil upgrades consisting of "Here is an explosion".

I'm not exaggerating, pretty much every evil power upgrade adds an explosion somehow, or makes a pre-existing explosion more likely to happen and stronger. Basically this means that evil characters do a great deal more damage at the cost of getting less energy and health. However seeing as Infamous takes place in a city chock-full of electricy and you can drain the stuff for health and energy, this really doesn't matter much. In fact, the only time the evil side is weaker then the good side is when there is no electricy to drain, which happens very rarely and usually is only so you feel threatened while getting from point A to point B, rather then actually fighting things.

When I fought the final boss as the good side, precision meant jack shit all since he was genuinely tougher then an armoured truck, and the health and energy boosts are rendered irrelevant by the excessive amount of energy drain power cables conveniently sticking out of the earth. So it took a few goes but I beat him.

Fighting the final boss with the evil side rolls around and suddenly the excessive amount of explosions are ridonkulously useful. In fact I got through the fight in a single go. And I don't attribute this to me being better the second time through, since I don't believe I had appreciatably improved since finishing the game the first time. Apparently being able to stick 7 miniature explosive electrical charges on someone's face was enough to slow them down appreciatably, as opposed to the good option, where I was able to precisely put a single explosive charge in their face, which made them scratch their nose but otherwise had little impact.

Long story short: There needs to be more difference between good and evil for it to really be a selling point for the game. And the game is too easy for evil people.

Logic puzzles in games

2009-07-27T20:20:00.004+10:00

As a long term computer-game-player of various types and genres, it is quite easy to notice patterns that follow in the stories and challenges of various types of game. However there is one precise puzzle I have seen so much that it genuinely bothers me now. Yes, I understand it is one of the few types of mathematical and logical problems that can be represented with ease visually, but the number of times I have seen it renders the puzzle moot and pointless.

This is the puzzle. You have three sections of a vaguely triangular shaped object stacked on top of each other, forming the aforementioned vague triangle. This object is located on a single signifier, usually a pole forming a solid physical anchor for the object (which usually has a hole in the middle to fit the pole). There are two more anchors to one side of this. The player must, without stacking a 'larger' section of the triangle on top of a 'smaller' section, or moving a larger section if there is a smaller section on top of it, transfer the entire object to the far anchor.

Usually there are only three sections, sometimes they try to confuse it with four, but it never makes it harder. Assuming there are three sections, this is the (or maybe just a) solution.
1. Top section to far anchor
2. Middle section to middle anchor.
3. Top section to middle anchor
4. Bottle section to far anchor.
5. Top section to beginning anchor
6. Middle section to far anchor
7. Top section to far anchor

It's a seven step puzzle, and I've done it so many times in various games and other situations that I know the solution off by heart.

Why is this puzzle so common? Like I mentioned before, it is a logic puzzle that can be represented pictorially, without the pictorial representation making it ridiculously easy at first glance.

However this leads me on to a tangentially related point: Where is the decision for logic puzzles in games made? Either a game's designer goes "Shit, we need something to lengthen this point" and tries to come up with something, or there's a meeting somewhere where a large number of men in suits (and, let's be equal opportunity, a small number of women in suits) sit around and debate if there should be a logical puzzle linking point A to point B, and what particular puzzle they should use.

So, what inspired this rant? In the first expansion of Neverwinter Nights, there's a riddle section. I friggin' hate riddle sections. Once you know a riddle, you know it, and you can't unknow it. Riddle sections (just like some logic puzzles) just kill replayability. That one section you spent twenty minutes and three pieces of scrap paper (as well as a lifetime of frustration) is now suddenly gone in a matter of minutes.

Even with a strategy guide, some action and timing challenges can be a pain in the ass. The moment you catch a brief glimpse of a logic puzzle section anywhere on the internet, you get that ONE clue you need to ruin it forever. Yahtzee has quicktime events, I have logic puzzles. They ruin the replay value of the game, they're either breathtakingly, balls-achingly hard or so easy you don't even NOTICE the friggin' things, and worst of all, worst of friggin' all... Actually I can't think of a third thing to neatly round off that rant, but they're bad, ok.

Service-bot based homebrew RPG

2009-07-25T14:40:00.003+10:00

I apologise for the lack of posts. Illness followed by alcohol is my only excuse.

So, as apologies, I share with you this: A homebrew RPG based on small service robots.

As near as I can tell, it's based on a heavily modified Storyteller system (the kind used for Vampire: The Masquerade, and other White Wolf products).

As much as I hate to admit it, this is leagues better then either of the RPG systems I've tried to make. The main reasons is that it has it's niche, and it's doing it well. Plus it's building on pre-existing concepts, ideas and systems, which means it's already been through several decades of trial-and-error before it's even been created.

All in all, despite the fact that most of you RPG players who I've met face to face freak me the hell out, I would play this game if I had the opportunity. It looks awesome and enjoyable.

Super hero MMOs

2009-07-21T21:49:00.003+10:00

Champions Online

As I have mentioned previously, I was a regular player of City of Heroes. Despite knowing it was the right move to abandon the game when I did, I still occasionally feel pangs of longing to return to the pixelated spandex and beat up two dimensional characters, and that's just the PvP (HA HA, I kid, City of Heroes PvP was atrocious).

To those of you not in the know, at one point during the maintaining of City of Heroes, Cryptic, the lead developers, sold the game to NCSoft, the publishers, and went off on their own. Except they didn't, not really, they instead decided to make Marvel Online, a rival Super-hero based MMO from the ground up, using the feedback they'd received about City of Heroes but had been unable to use because of engine limitations.

But then Marvel pulled their sponsorship, so all would be right in the field of fair-play. So Cryptic changed it from Marvel Online to Champions Online, and once more things were not right in the field of fair-play.

So now here I am, stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock? Potentially enjoyable online superhero gaming. The Hard Place? Pain in the arse arbitrary morals. I know I owe NCSoft nothing, they're as much a faceless corporation as Cryptic is. It just bugs me that Cryptic split off to make their own game in the exact same area their previous game is based, using information gained from their previous game. It doesn't feel right or ethical to me.

But holy shit, they have a specially designed pre-conceived character type about Technology Suits. Holy shit. I have a nerdrection.

Futurama recast?

2009-07-19T19:28:00.002+10:00

My apologies, I've been distracted by RL, and so haven't had the chance to put up a good post or two.

In return, here is rage-inducing crap.

Fox is going to recast Futurama in their rebirth of the show.

Yeah. Holy crap, huh?

How they should make a superhero game

2009-07-15T12:39:00.004+10:00

I'm currently playing Infamous, and really quite enjoying it. However there's something sticking out about it to me, best summarised in a Yahtzee quote about the good/evil moral choice system. "It's not letting you roleplay because you're either Cole McNice or Cole McDick."

This stuck in my mind, and linked with something I saw in the past. Reading about people's opinions of Fallout 3, I came across a rather bizarre argument. It was an argument over if the 'evil' main character was that evil, focusing on a particular event where there are a bunch of Ghouls trying to get into an apartment building that's still standing and willing to pay for it, but can't because the evil guy in charge is racist and doesn't like them. Long story short, it's not exactly an ideal result if the Ghouls do get in, but the game judges it to be the 'morally good' choice.

So, all this has festered in my mind like the bacteria currently festering in my throat, the main difference between the two being my throat festerings haven't eventually fermented into a thought-beverage I'm quite content with.

Let's take the following hypothetical scenario. A good developer has created a sandbox Action-RPG superhero game in which your character is a blank slate you fill in, choosing powers, appearance, voice, and most importantly moral choice systems determining his/her heroism/villainy. In my personal view, this game would be so awesome it would leave me forever walking around with an erection, but enough about my blood filled penis, onto the thought-beverage I mentioned.

Some people might say "moral choice system? You just agreed with Yahtzee that those things were pointless!" Yes, I did, but they can be made far, far superior by the introduction of additional axis on the graph, eventually making it into a seven sided pandimensional graph only visible to aliens.

Instead of a simple objective-morality-decided-by-developers-good-evil axis, let's consider what would happen if it were instead to rely upon a number of different axis grouped into three groups: Hero/Villain, Super-powered Perception and Public Perception.

The Hero/Villain side of it is a two axis graph, the up-down axis dealing with Crime-stopping vs Crime-committing, and the left-right axis dealing with life preservation. The more the character stops criminal acts, the further north they drift, while if they commit overt criminal acts (such as robbing a bank) they drift south. The life-preserving axis deals with how willing they are to kill. If they get into fights without killing the other side, they drift to the right, if they show willingness to kill they drift to the left.

Put those two axis together and you get one of four (maybe eight if the game wants to be complex) possible titles for the character. Sociopath (bottom left, someone like Doctor Doom), Burgler (bottom right, someone like Cat Woman), Vigilante (top left, someone like the Punisher), or Hero (top right, someone like Spiderman).

Superpowered Perception, once again divided into two axis. First, the up down axis is the character's scale, ranging from local (Daredevil kind of stuff, helps mostly a small area), through national (deals with stuff that affects a whole country, primarily), all the way up to Interplanetary (deals with stuff affecting one or more planets) with a few more levels in the middle. The Left-right axis is the characters "loner" rating, how willing they are to deal and work with others.

Put those together, and this axis influences gameplay. It alters how often submissions might come to you, how often you might be able to call on help (but have to split any pay off, if you're a villain), and what sort of level your help will be called on. The up-down axis will probably move as the character increases in power.

Finally, Public Perception, again into two axis. The up-down axis is media reporting, while the left-right is public view. The brighter the indicator on the up-down axis, the more media reporting you're getting, while the more north it is the more positive it is. This axis would influence the right-left axis, which is public perception. Public perception is how the normal person on the street sees you. This axis would be easiest for the player to manipulate. Doing alot of good acts in public view increases public view of you, while doing them in front of cameras increases the media reporting of you. Alternatively a rich character could pay for positive media coverage to try and increase their perception. In this way a character like Lex Luthor could be a villain in the first group of axis, by through appropriate manipulation to both the public and the media could be seen as neutral, possibly even good.

All in all, this would be awesome. The first of the groups of axis would influence how good/evil they actually are, from a relatively objective standpoint, the second influences gameplay, while the third influences how accepted they are.

Yeah, I'm excited about this. Hopefully some game designed will read my blog and steal the idea.

New Mechwarrior game - GLEEEE

2009-07-13T09:07:00.004+10:00

Whoops, I've let the blog wither slightly. Not much to report, been quite busy in real life with assignments and uni work.

Here's a follow up on the previous post: A full blown New Mechwarrior Trailer. Be sure to watch it in HD. Ok, let's get a brief blow-by-blow look at it.

Just looking at the beginning, it does look like the Mechs have a sense of size, now. It feels like you're piloting a massive 60 ton behemoth right there in the intro. I'll admit it took me a little while to work out it was a Warhammer. An interesting concept is the use of unmanned drones to gain updates on the battlefield rather then just "Radar does all". The Developers have stated they want to try and give all weights of 'Mech a use, so I imagine light 'mechs will function as scouts effectively.

Despite the Jenner being massively outclassed by the Warhammer, the pilot is worried and makes a point of ducking behind cover. This says alot about how dangerous the combat will be. Plus, I have to admit I'm excited about the damage to the buildings. When the Jenner lands on the building you can see the windows shatter, showing how much pressure the building is under. A good missile launch and it collapses. Not to mention the building the Warhammer used for cover gets damaged by the shots fired at it.

In enters the Atlas. I admit I cheered when I first saw that. The Atlas feels genuinely MASSIVE, and watching it move carries across this feeling. I'll admit I'm disappointed that the Autocannon seems to be a single shot weapon, but what can ya do? The PPCs seem to be a weapon to genuinely fear, a couple of good shots from them and the Atlas is in trouble. Note after the PPCs fire, you can see the barrels glowing red, showing the heat build up. Perhaps most important, watch the Warhammer when it gets hit by an AC/20 shot, it gets knocked around massively. While I could understand the reason for this in Mechwarrior 4, it still bugged me a bit. Still, it'll add another element of difficulty to the game.

All in all, I am excite. I am very excite.

2009-07-09T20:03:00.002+10:00

Oh. Oh god. Oh my god. Oh my god AWESOME.

Mechwarrior 5, maybe? I don't know if it's just an awesome CGI movie someone pumped out, or if it's an actual teaser as the title says, but this is AWESOME.

If you're not aware that I'm a major mech-and-giant-robot fan, you're obviously not a long time reader.

Having seen Transformers 2:

2009-07-06T19:26:00.003+10:00

I'll put a few first-impressions up about the new Transformers movie, rather then an actual review or anything like that. Before I start I'll just say this: Michael Bay, I am disappoint. I say this as a fan of the original Transformers movie you made, I am genuinely disappoint (tense mistake done deliberately). There was so much potential in this movie, and it has been actively squandered. WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. FURTHER WARNING: This was written in bits and pieces, some things may be poorly written.

1. The Underworld/Matrix problem: When you're making a fictional story of any kind in any media format you're asking the audience to suspend their disbelief about the story itself, and accept the presented story as a potential event.

This is rendered impossible when you're openly changing things. You may not think we'll notice, but we do. The NEST General? Yeah, he was in the first movie in the attack on the US base which was declared to have NO SURVIVORS. Maybe this was dealt with in a comic or something, but that does not help us movie goers. All I saw when he came on screen was "Wait, he's meant to be DEAD."

This is only one of a number of things. The whole "Last of the Primes" thing, "Only a Prime can kill me"? If you're going to throw that stuff in, at least EXPLAIN what a Prime is in the movie. In the original movie it was presented that Megatron and Prime were on equal footing, now apparently Megatron is the servant of a more powerful one of Prime's predecessors? You might want to try and clarify things, because the background you added in this movie just didn't mesh with what I could glean from the original movie. It just broke the immersion.

2. In the first movie there was no problem with the humans being the primary characters, it was expected. Excessive Transformer presence would just cost WAY too much to film, plus you needed to make the main character someone we could empathize with easily and understand, I.E. A human.

However, we now KNOW who the Transformers are, and your budget is way bigger so you can have more special effects shots. To me that just screamed "More personality to the Transformers", but instead you went the opposite way. You added more Transformers, the vast majority with absolutely NO personality, and filled even more screen time with humans or - at best - human-scale transformers. Yes, I get that it's good to have enemies it's possible for the humans to defeat, but they weren't interesting.

When we shouted "We want more Transformers in our Transformers!", we weren't talking about quantity, we were talking about Quality. Even those Transformers with previously established personalities (Ironhide and Rachet) were pretty much ignored for the vast majority of the movie outside of scenes where they're shooting stuff. Then the new Autobots introduced (there were new Decepticons introduced, but since they were just dragged in to Numbers-Up the final fight, it's kinda forgivable they're not characterised) were just used to show off new cars you had access to. Who was the dude with wheeled feet and blade hands? He looked awesome, he killed a Decepticon, and he only had ONE line in the entire movie. I didn't even get his name. Ar-Cee was apparently three motorbikes, but we never saw a scrap of personality on her (P.S. Having a human sized Transformer then NOT using her for human-sized interaction? Lost opportunity, just like point 3 mentioned below).

That University guy alongside Sam and Mikhala? Drop him. I have no interest in him having panic attacks. YES, I understand that he's meant to show how most people would react in that situation so Sam is made to look all the braver, but he was annoying, in the story he was pointless. The ONLY thing he did was fail at an attempt to ground how unbelievable the events of the movie are, and point them at the ex- Sector Seven guy. If you removed him, there would be no change. In fact, the movie could potentially be improved by there being more time to add character to more Transformers.

While on this topic, I would be remiss if I did not thank you for adding Jetfire. While his role was reasonably small and his character wasn't INCREDIBLY deep, he is a good example of what the movie needed. He was a newly added Transformer with CHARACTER. It didn't take much, just a couple of scenes showing what he could do, a chance to actually talk, and a return to the screen later on to remind us of him. That's all it took, and you could have made us WANT the Transformers to win.

Final point in this... well... point. The excess of humans is felt nowhere more then in the final fight scene. It didn't feel like Transformers, it felt like US Millitary Vs Decepticons (with the Autobots making an appearance).

3. The Twins. I wouldn't harp on about the 'hilarious' antics they engaged in or the negative stereotypes, I'll summarize my dislike with this: They are a wasted opportunity.

Here we have two relatively small Transformers who have an extended sequence in the company of humans, and yet they have NO personality beyond offensive racial stereotypes. Here was a chance for some actual personality, for some actual character and historical development. Make them smart-ass characters (preferably actually AMUSING ones), but keep in mind these people have been through a civilization-destroying CIVIL WAR. They're going to be hiding scars. This was a perfect opportunity, during their traveling sequences or while they're camping out, for Sam to talk with the twins about Cybertron or the war and learn more about them. HUMANISE them, make us want the Autobots to win for reasons other then self interest. We need to want the good guys to win for more reason then simple "The bad guys will kill us if they emerge victorious."

They could have had genuine personality, so their scene opposite Devestator would be actually be interesting rather then just making me think "just get on to the proper fight". Yes, comic relief is important, but this movie went overboard with reasonably poor attempts at it. Did we need to have scenes of one dog humping another? No. It had no purpose. Did we need to have scenes of Sam getting attacked by transmogrified cutlery and his mother having a breakdown at the house? No. They could have shaved five minutes and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars off the budget by removing those scenes, and possibly used that money/time to add to actually purposeful events in the movie.

4. The Robo-human. Yes, I know it's a "tribute" to the Pretender Transformers, but did it have ANY purpose other then trying to add a quickly forgetable "Is Sam going to cheat" subplot? (SPOILER: It turns out Sam ISN'T going to cheat on his girlfriend. There's a shocking surprise). There were a large number of things like this. Really it was just an excuse to add another hot chick to the movie, and to be honest I found her quite unappealing. If you removed that character from the movie and replaced her with, oh, I don't know, an actual FULL sized transformer, it would seem more interesting and threatening. Her presence didn't add anything to the movie, if anything it detracted. Surely if the Decepticons were capable of making their alternative forms passable as humans, they'd do it for more then Infiltrating a university they have no interest in.

Yes, I know Sam's there so they MUST have interest in it, but if you listen to the dialogue you see she's already at the University for a day or two before Sam arrives, or Sam even knows he has the McGuffin.

5. Optimus Prime power up? Really? Bay, you're moving a bit towards the side of Transformers that's complete crap. I realise the idea of silicon based life having defined 'rules' we can understand is a bit of a cop-out to reference, especially when it's shown they can alter their structure so radically, but the idea of Prime WEARING THE WEAPONS of another Transformer and suddenly becoming more powerful just seems like crap to me.

Just to add insult to injury, that final fight sequence was incredibly badly paced. Optimus comes back, the big bad evil guy teleports in, steals McGuffin, starts end of World, Optimus 'powers up', handles it in a matter of half a minute, relaxes and has a smoke. There was nothing to establish just how fearsome the Fallen WAS aside from people going on about it, and a few fuzzy smack-downs. If you MUST have Prime power up, have Prime try to handle him unaugmented first, to show just how powerful this bastard is. Having Prime suddenly come back with weapons from another robot attached and easily handle

On the topic of Prime, sometime more I want to say. His dramatic sacrifice fight scene was quite impressive to watch, but the end of it was quite poor in my view.

Prime has fought like a Demon against three or four Decepticons for a good couple of minutes to allow Sam the chance to escape. Good! Awesome! That's the Prime we know. Then he dies to a sneak attack from behind by Megatron. No, sorry but it lacks drama. Yes, it establishes that Megatron is a sneaky prick, we know that already though, so it doesn't need establishing. What would be more impressive is Prime fighting like a Demon against the Decepticons present (except Megatron) and emerging victorious but damaged, then an undamaged Megatron kicking the crap out of him. Keep in mind, in the first movie we watched a Megatron recovering from centuries of freezing kick the crap out of Prime, after tearing an Autobot in two. Megatron is meant to be TERRIFYING, the moment the Autobots saw him hanging around in the first one they started shouting about falling back

6. The Fallen is the weakest main villain I've seen in a long time. Despite Megatron seeming all subservient (friggin' MEGATRON being subservient! Actually, to get more personality out of it I would have liked to have seen more push and pull in that relationship, Megatron sees it as a partnership, Fallen disagrees, that sort of thing) the Fallen never seems like a genuine Villain. It's obvious they were going for a Darth Vader/Emperor thing, with Megatron being the Darth Vader fought so often through the series, and the Fallen being the Emperor who's so dangerous at the end. But they missed, it just felt like he wasn't DOING anything. He shows up at the end to be essentially a video-game boss fight and to show how badass Prime is. We've spent all this time supposed to be fearing Megatron, and now this rather unfearsomely designed Robot swans in with his stupid beard and we're supposed to be afraid of him?

When he was beaten (SPOILER: THE BAD GUY DIES) I feel no elation, no joy that the threat is passed. I really feel nothing like that, all I feel is disappointment.

Disappointment. I suppose that's where I'm going with ALL of these points. I was just disappointed by the movie. I had high hopes, and I was let down.

Wow, this ended up alot longer then I imagined.

This blog is dying

2009-07-04T18:17:00.002+10:00

Not really, it's just looking a bit emaciated after I haven't been feeding it the required number of weekly posts. I'm going to continue starving it on account that I'm a lazy prick, but for now have a short post.

JADE EMPIRE

One of the games Bioware have pumped out after I jumped heavily on their bandwagon post-Neverwinter Nights 1, and with the dubious honour of being the one I haven't played. Until NOW, that is.

Let's get one thing out of the way. The character advancement system seems... dull. Like, really, REALLY dull. There's NO meat to it, differentiating between characters isn't easy, since there are only three stats (the all-inclusive 'Body', and the rather baffling 'Mind' and 'Spirit') and the only other customisation is for martial arts styles which is more like generic upgrades. The lack of equippable weaponry and armor is sort of mind-scratchingly bewildering as well.

However, for a game with such dating graphics it's aged well. Like, REALLY well. There's a unifying artistic theme that just strikes the right note. A sort of 'Magi-punk china' feel that just draws you in and immerses you quite well. When one of the Big Bad Evil Guys (The 'Black Hand') violates the aesthetic (he looks like a black clad samurai) he stands out and seems otherworldly, but he still looks like he BELONGS. It's not like dumping a medieval Knight in the middle of a street, as anachronistic artistic styles in a game can sometimes look like.

Although I would like to see ONE RPG where your village doesn't get destroyed. Seriously, if I'm ever in a quiet harmless town and I see a protagonist walking past, I am getting the fuck out of dodge.

Assassin's Creed

2009-07-01T10:11:00.003+10:00

Well, I have been neglecting this lately, haven't I? Don't worry, this isn't all I've been neglecting. E.G. My Honours work.

As I was playing Assassin's Creed, I came to two conclusions

1. I REALLY enjoyed the 'meaningless tasks' in between Assassination missions that everyone else seemed to hate. I might just be weird, though, but I really liked having to pick-pocket information from people, punish guards taking advantage of civilians, etc. Even more fun was when I buggered it up and had to escape.

2. The more important conclusion for this blog: Assassin's Creed could be made into an AWESOME movie.

Sure, the game takes X many hours, and the movie could take up, at best, a fraction of that, but look at what the game is at it's basic level, and you'll see how much of the game would be removed from a movie. Ignoring the boring traveling scenes (they'd be montaged down, at best), for obvious reasons, let's look at what would actually BE in a movie. You'd probably end up with a movie that consists of maybe four sequences of Desmond outside the Animus, along with a couple of quick scenes inside the memories where he is getting confused as to his own identity (along with some soft science reason as to why he is 'controlling' the memories, probably using the explanation of the 'size of the fish that got away changes').

Inside the Animus there would be the initial failure scene that inspires the whole quest, of course. This would be followed by, I'd say, two assassinations, one where he lets arrogance get the best of him and he's wounded in the escape, the other where he is appropriately patient and successfully manages the assassination. In preparation for both of which he learns more about the McGuffin. This is an optimistic guess, in all likelihood the middle of the movie would be one assassination, at best, possibly even none.

The finale of the movie would have the attempted assassination of the big bad guy, that fails because he's smarter then the others involved, but eventually he's killed after a dramatic sword fight. Afterwards he finds out about the traitor using the McGuffin for his own ends inside the Assassin's group, gets the forgiveness of the dude injured in his failure and expertly assassinates the traitor after the revelation of the McGuffin's power. He probably uses the newly forgiving friend to help out (E.G. Gets the friend to wear his costume and approach the guy from the front, getting his attention, while he sneaks round back and knifes him in the bollocks).

... Man, I really want to see that movie now.

Games free-running

2009-06-27T21:22:00.002+10:00

Recently I've had the good fortune of playing three different games that all feature, as a... feature, really, the act of Free-running. This is basically going over and around an Urban environment at great speed by use of acrobatic activities and general agility. For all of them, this free running was a quite important selling point as it allowed rapid transit from point A to point B in an open-world sandbox. When done right, it can alternate between feeling quite relaxing and cathartic, and being a breakneck, fast paced, enjoyable gameplay addition. When done wrong it feels like the game is stretching out the little amount of gameplay present with making you run across the map to do it.

Let's discuss these games on a scale of "semi realistic free-running" to "completely bananas free-running."

Assassin's Creed: Yes. I know I'm about a bajillion miles behind the band wagon. This often happens to me, and it is yet to bother me. Alot of people criticise the repetition of the gameplay, but I'm loving it. Still, I digress from the free-running.

Assassin's Creed is the most realistic (and I believe I stretch the term in saying that) example of Free Running of the three games. Fall far enough and you will get hurt (which gets magically healed over time), you need to find genuine handholds to use to climb (albeit there are LOTS of these handholds all around the place), and it is relatively easy to misjudge a jump when pressed for time (E.G. being followed by three legions of city guard with the intent of face-stabbing you. Whether that's stabbing you in the face, or stabbing you with a face, I haven't decided)

Despite these 'restrictions', it's good fun. Leaping from one side of a street to the other, misjuding slightly and being left dangling by your fingertips from a window, clambering up and continuing on your way adds an element of risk to it all. It feels like a gameplay element rather then just another method of walking from point A to point B. Without considering it you find yourself thinking about the most efficient ways to get to your location, factoring in the speed of climbing up the side of that building versus using the handy ladder on the building across the street, which happens to lead to a hostile archer posted on the roof. It adds another factor to consider that makes the game genuinely more interesting for me.

Infamous: I admit I have only briefly played the game fully, most of my experience is linked with playing the demo (which I believe I got an impressive feel of the free-running from. It's most of what I did in the demo). This is a step along the scale from Assassin's Creed. While in Assassin's Creed you were incredibly fit and agile, none of it seemed genuinely impossible for a sufficiently athletic and trained person to do. Infamous though, has the character step across the threshhold into superhuman territory. It's appropriate, considering the subject matter IS superhuman, but it adds a certain flair to the movement.

However this does sort of work against it a little. The movement is much easier, so in my view it steps it slightly away from gameplay mechanic and moves it towards 'bothersome timeconsuming movement". However, this step is tiny at best and the movement is still incredible. You still need to think a bit (not as much as AC, however) about how you will get from point A to point B, and the game is deliberately designed to make the movement as easy and enjoyable as possible. Try jumping on a very narrow ledge and in the air nudge the movement stick slightly to one side. You'll see the game autocorrect so you land on the ledge rather then plummet. Very handy little device.

So, the final verdict of Infamous movement? Good value, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the full game.

Prototype: Aaaand collapse. To be honest I was, at times, having trouble distinguishing between Prototype and Infamous during development. Both of them had me excited, being third person action-with-RPG-elements games featuring super-powered main characters locked in a quarantined city surrounded by hostiles, both of the main characters using free-running/'Parkour' (as they specify for Prototype, a French art of moving) to get around the city scape. Prototype is on the Banana's side of the scale, exact opposite of Assassin's Creed.

Unfortunately playing Prototype so far has not excited me. It just hasn't been fun. Avoiding most of the gameplay issues and focusing specifically on the free-running, it can be boiled down to one, single issue.

It. Is. Not. Fun. It doesn't feel like a gameplay mechanic about making decisions that help you, it feels like "Hold down shoulder trigger to move". I find myself holding the shoulder trigger which puts you in 'parkour' mode constantly, never releasing the poor abused little thing. Here's an idea of how ridiculously easy the free-running is.

Hold down Parkour button, run at building, run up side of building indefinately. Seriously, that's what happens. It doesn't feel like Free-Running, it just feels... cheap. It's like I'm cheating, or something. Sure, it looks super-powered (which is the point, I know), but it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like an enjoyable side of the gameplay, it feels like a game mechanic you use to avoid having to think about travel.

Currently Assassin's Creed and Infamous are tying for awesome free-running. When I get Infamous I'll be able to decide which works better.

Misread excitement

2009-06-25T14:33:00.004+10:00

God damnit I hate reading things incorrectly.

I read this as "EA combines Mythic and BioWare into making a giant robot RPG"

God. Damn. It.

I want a giant robot RPG now.

P.S. Additional: Russians are crazy.

More SCPs

2009-06-22T22:38:00.004+10:00

Well, I got bored. Here's another one of those SCP things I came up with while I was supposed to be working. Enjoy.

Item #: SCP-829

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedure: SCP-829 is to be kept in a 15 foot by 15 foot contained room at site █. During the regular termination cycle of local class D personnel, one individual is to be placed in 829's containment room for feeding. Two guards are to be stationed in the linked security room at all times to monitor SCP-829 for unusual activity. In the event that one of the three security cameras cease to operate, a single class D subject is to be sent into the room as a distraction while technicians replace the camera. Haste is advised in this endeavour. In the event that SCP-829 escapes, personnel are advised to find suitable hiding locations and make as little noise as possible until the danger has passed.

Description: SCP-829 appears to be a six foot tall male of approximately young-adult age. More precise figures are deemed impossible to determine due to the highly advanced degree of necrosis in SCP-829's body. It is unknown how SCP-829 maintains structural integrity or it's substantial strength, since through the many decaying holes in the subjects skin it is clear the internal organs and structures are experiencing similar decay. Every inch of SCP-829's skin looks like it is in an advanced state of rot, although no leftover skin particles have been recovered from the floor of the containment chamber, implying that the SCP is disintegrating at a molecular, or possibly even atomic level.

SCP-829 appears to be indestructable to common assaults, with its only damage coming from the above mentioned necrosis. Despite repeated attempts during the original containment process SCP-829 appears to be unaffected by fire, and even when doused in petrolium and set alight, the flames only remained present long enough for the fuel to burn away, then dissipated with no obvious damage to the SCP. Large calibre bullets fired at SCP-829 do not seem to impact it. Slow motion cameras showing the bullets ceasing to exist moments before they hit the target. Tests have currently been proposed utilising a melee bladed weapon to see if it can pierce SCP-829's skin, or if it will vanish as the bullets do.

SCP-829 possessed advanced strength, more then capable of applying blunt force powerful enough to break through its containment cell. Of greater interest is what research staff are calling its "decaying touch". If any part of it comes into contact with a human being with a functioning heartbeat, the infected area will begin to decay rapidly. This decay will not stretch beyond the location touched, but touching SCP-829 usually involves it attempting to grapple its intended food, and as such is usually fatal anyway. The use of hazmat and other protective gear either has no effect (for 'thin' protective gear) or very little, as it rips the protection off its target in order to feed. Anything thicker then three milimeters is forcibly removed.

There is no evidence of intelligence beyond that of a very basic animal. When SCP-829 is not feeding, it sits or stands quietly in it's cell, apparently dormant. If an individual enters its cell and it is not already busy feeding it will advance at a moderate walking pace on the victim and restrain them for feeding. If it has not been fed at least once in the previous 43 days (the number was established through unfortunate experimentation) it will attempt to escape from its cell by employing blunt force on the nearest wall until containment is compromised and wandering around in an apparently random pattern until a suitable target has been found. If more targets present themselves after initially feeding it will continue this pattern until no more targets are visible, at which point it will once more fall dormant. If SCP-829 is attacked by an unseen assailant it will attempt to search the area for any sign of targets.

SCP-829's senses are below average for a human being. Tests have determined it can only see things at a maximum of fifty feet away (I would attribute this to the state of decay its eyes are in, but to be honest nothing should be able to see through those eyes - Dr █████), and its sense of smell is about average for a human being. SCP-829's hearing is above average, and apparently it is capable of tracking people to a reasonable degree by sound. This is not supernatural to any extent, as it is about as proficient at this as a reasonable modern day sports-hunter. Unusually, mechanical noises do not bother SCP-829 and it has no reaction to them. For example, the sound of a stick being broken inside SCP-829's cell will attract its attention, but the same sound played through a audio-recorder will provoke no reaction at all. Despite its apparently limited intelligence, current theory is that it is working off learnt behaviour, as is the past few months it has learnt to pay attention when the door of its cell opens (this sound always occurs before feeding).

The feeding process is quite visceral. First, the target is physically restrained by SCP-829's - escape before this point is possible due to the relatively slow speed of 829's pursuit, but after being seized it is considered impossible to escape. Areas where SCP-829's skin touches the skin of its target begin to necrosize immediately, rotting at a highly advanced rate. The second stage involves 829 clamping its jaws down upon the target's neck. It is unknown if this must be done upon the neck, but that seems to be its preference. Once this occurs all systems of the target except the circulatory system and enough of the brain to keep the heart pumping seem to shut down and decay at the same advanced rate. This continues for approximately 20 minutes until the body has decayed to the point it can no longer support the circulatory system, at which point SCP-829 appears to lose interest and discard the remains, which continue their rapid decay. Any attempt to interrupt its feeding process will be ignored. Attacks upon it will be ignored, and attempts to forcibly remove from its target will either be ignored, or result in the hands of the remover suffering advanced decay.

For approximately 40 days after feeding, SCP's rate of necrosis halts, and if it has been fed more then a single human adult in those 40 days it appears to reverse very slightly. Experiments to determine how far this reversal would go were discontinued after forty class-D personnel were used with no results in sight.

SCP-829 was located in the middle of ██████ National Park. Agents were dispatched after reports filtered through of ██ unexplained disappearances in the park over the course of ██ years. SCP-829 was secured with acceptable casualties and transported to site █, where it has remained under the study of Dr █████.

SCPs

2009-06-19T17:18:00.003+10:00

Bored, hungover, tired. So rather then an actual post, I'm just going to come up with some horrible things that would fit into the SCP site I linked to a while back.

Item #: SCP-736

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedure: SCP-736 is to be kept in a locked drawer in the linguistic research offices of site-19, with keys provided only to approved researchers. A record must be kept of SCP-736 being withdrawn, and who is in possession at all times. In the event SCP-736 is found to be missing, all staff leaving the offices will be searched and all fax machines and scanners are to be turned off.

Description: SCP-736 is a number of missing pages from the Voynich manuscript. It is unknown when they were removed from the book. They were retrieved by the foundation during a raid on one Doctor ███ █████ on September 11th 2004, who at the time was believed to have several SCPs in his possession. As most of his collection turned out to be fakes the retrieved 'artifacts' were stored for later processing. During the course of processing the items, SCP-736 was discovered.

SCP-736 is written in the same manner as the rest of the Voynich manuscript, utilising the same writing techniques and raw materials. These pages were originally located at the very end of the manuscript and consisted of the same message written in the original text's unknown language, an arcaic form of German, and a third, unknown language. In a manner similar to the rosetta stone this has allowed foundation linguistic experts to achieve a basic knowledge of both the unknown language, and the language used in the manuscript.

While the translation of the message is spotty at best, currently held beliefs among the linguists who study it is that it is stating the text is classified and for 'elite' eyes only. It is currently unknown who wrote the warning or who the 'elite' allowed to view the text are. Initial research suggested there was a religious connotation in the text suggesting people without authorization who read it were going to be punished by 'the being above', but later translations corrected this, stating that transgressers would be punished by 'people ranked higher then you'. Most alarming about the message is that it identifies the Voynich manuscript as "(Untranslatable)Volume 4: Plants", implying there are at least three other volumes that may potentially exist.

The punishments for those reading the manuscript are quite severe, ranging from simple death, to torture of various forms, to something current translations list as 'rending of the spirit from the body'.

Utilising SCP-736 efforts are underway to translate the rest of the Voynich manuscript, but the work is proceeding slowly. Current speculation says that the manuscript is a list of flora for another planet. There is some description of the planet's sun that makes it sound like type O blue star. Comparisons between the alien flora and plant-life native to earth are often made, suggesting close familiarity with Earth by the writer.

Item #: SCP-758

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedure: SCP-758 is to be kept in a custom made steel container at all times when not being tested. A clamp sits in the box, which is to be used to secure SCP-758 within the box. The clamp is to only be fastened upon the handle of the SCP. Testing on SCP-758 requires special permission from the OS, and any personnel found with SCP-758 in their possession without permission will be terminated as per standard procedure.

Description: SCP-758 looks for all purposes like a three inch long metal nail file. There are hints of rust along the edges, but otherwise it appears to be indestructable by normal means. No major testing has been done to determine the limits of SCP-758's indestructability. All tests upon the construction of the file indicates it is made of normal steel.

When the flat edge of the file is rubbed against any material at all, no matter the hardness or softness of the material, exactly 0.14 centimeters of the material will be destroyed for each stroke of the file. The list of substances this has been tested upon exists in experiment log 758-003, but this destruction seems constant, no matter the substance or the length of the stroke.

Similarly, when the narrow edge of the file is rubbed against any matterial at all exactly 4.89 centimenters of the material will be destroyed with each stroke. Only the portion of material the file directly touches will be destroyed, and it seems to work equally well on organic material and inorganic material.

It is unknown what process is used in the destruction of the materials. Testing reveals that the substance the file is used upon seems to cease to exist upon having the file rubbed against it. This molecular disintegration has no byproduct of any kind (waste products, heat, energy, etc), and there is no indication in the file of what causes this effect.

Of course, Captain America is alive

2009-06-16T19:56:00.003+10:00

Attention Marvel Comics:

Fuck. You.

You're bringing Captain Marvel back already. ALREADY. For gods sake, the dude's not even been dead for three years. This is not a 'sensational plot twist', this is not a brave new move in story telling.

This is bullshit. Seriously, here you have the possibility to make a genuinely bold move in story telling, killing off and LEAVING DEAD a major, major character in your continuity. There is a reason it's known as 'comic book death', because there's never any threat to it. There's no threat and impact when a major hero in Marvel (and DC, to be fair) dies, since most of the time they'll be back with a new set of superpowers.

I read a relatively old issue of the X-Men a while ago which had the following exchange between Beast and an evil interdimensional Beast, as best I can remember.
Dark Beast: Nathan Summers may be of help.
Beast: He is dead.
Dark Beast: Still? The Summer's go back and forth so often I felt I had to make sure.

Your own characters are making fun of the "oh no he's dead how tragi-OH LOOK HE'S MAGICALLY ALIVE" nature of the comic book death. This is how completely undermined the massively horrible tragedy of death is.

Marvel, Too-Long-Didn't-Read version: I don't care if you planned it all from the beginning, bringing Steve Rogers back is a cheap move. Grow some testicles, get some testosterone injected, and have the courage to kill a major character in a dramatic moment and KEEP THEM DEAD.

P.S. If I hear ANY rumours that you're going to bring Uncle Ben back to life, I'm going to make you watch the new Punisher movie until you're crying blood.

Filler post

2009-06-12T23:34:00.003+10:00

Once again, still not able to make a full post, but I suppose I owe you guys SOMETHING.

Ok, here's a link to something that will rip apart your free time.

The SCP foundation (Secure, Contain, Protect). Basically it's an awesome pretend MIB like group who 'procure' items of supernatural or superscience origin that are either too powerful or too dangerous to be entrusted to the world. Just to give you an idea how horrible the place is, all the hazardous work is done by "Class D personnel". Class D is code for "people we got out of the prison system".

Here are a few of my favourites.

Here, wear this, it'll make you healthy, right up until it turns you into a blob of flesh.

Infectious quartz.

Try not to feel 'ick' after reading this.

They can be quite creepy, too.

But they also have a sense of humour.

Sometimes they're downright AWESOME.

And back to creepy.

And the final one for the night.

And, end on something pretty.

From this guy's blog.

No post

2009-06-09T18:43:00.001+10:00

Sorry, once again no posts.

Stressed out of my ballsack with Uni Honours work. By this Thursday I need to finish a Research proposal, then by next Monday I need to have finished a 2,500 word critical review of two books, only one of which I've read. OH DANG.

Gorgeous George

2009-06-06T17:43:00.003+10:00

I shouldn't be spreading this around so much, but...

This is just proof I am a bad person. I am laughing at this man's bad fortune, but honestly he seems to deserve it.

Who is this man? Why is he so obnoxious on TV, and why does he receive so many horrible prank calls?

Say hello to Gorgeous George. Please feel free to look at more of the videos about him.

Basically Gorgeous George is like a TV version of Kyle Sandilands but with poor pronunciation (if you're not Australian, you wouldn't know who Kyle Sandilands is. You are one of the lucky ones). I really should not be laughing so hard at all the prank calls, especially since most of them are just people shouting "fag", but some of them... Some of them just have me crying with laughter. I don't know why, but for some reason hearing Gorgeous George shout at the TV 'Alright, time for another call! Line one, you're ont he air' and be greeted with the sound of a toilet flushing for the fifth time is absolutely priceless.

Oh, and in one of these videos is my absolute favourite prank call line ever.

Caller: Hi George! I've got a question
George: Well I've got an answer.
C: How, how tall are you? Because it's hard to tell while you're sitting down.
G: I'm Six One.... Read More
C: Really!?
G: Yes really.
C: Wow! I didn't know they stacked shit that high.

Upcoming attractions part 3

2009-06-03T12:54:00.003+10:00

1.

Oh shit. This made me nerdgasm so hard I came my god damned SOUL.

Bioware, I take it back, I take it all back. I have had bad experiences with MMOs, they don't mesh well with my playstyle, and KotOR 2 left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but now...

Not only have you turned me from "meh, not sold" on The Old Republic, but you've turned me from a die-hard Jedi player, to the Dark Side.

Seriously, Mr Lucas? Retire. Let Bioware make your movies and TV shows. If you turned that trailer into a 90 minute movie, I would die a happy man.

2. MONKEY ISLAND 5.

What more do I need to say. MONKEY ISLAND 5. Seriously, if you are not already excited, there is something wrong with you, or you were born in the 90s.

Best of all, it's being done by Telltale games. Not sure who they are? They're a collection of ex-LucasArts employees who were around during the hey-day of Point and Click adventure games. They've already released two Sam and Max games.

Like the Sam and Max games, this Monkey Island game will be released episodically. Once a month about a fifth of a game will come out. You can either play them as they come (if the Sam and Max episodes were an indicator, they're good stand-alone), or wait for them all and play it at once.

I'm excited.

Worst segue's ever

2009-06-01T19:10:00.002+10:00

In place of actual geeky content I had to think about, here is a list I came up with in twenty minutes. Enjoy.

These are those conversation segue's that can never lead in a good direction. Seriously, NONE of the possible topics of conversation these can transition to, are good.

1. On the topic of Alpaca's...

2. Oh, speaking of police brutality...

3. Since you mentioned horendous smells...

4. While we're discussing onomatopoeia...

5. Yeah, talking about your stupid habits...

6. On the subject of bad news...

7. While we're talking about how horrible this week has been for you

8. Oh, talking about your dead pets...

9. Hey, talking about shitty remakes of your treasured childhood memories...

10. Now that you mention pregnancy...

11. ... and that scar leads me neatly into this next topic...

12. Oh, as long as the topic of your toothbrush is up, I should let you know....

13. ... and speaking of lawsuits, you remember that dude you pissed off?

Actual posts coming soon.

Slow posts apology

2009-05-30T19:59:00.002+10:00

Due to an influx of work I need to do for my Honours (AKA all the work I should have been doing for weeks suddenly being due soon) this blog is on hold.

I can hear your collective groans of disappointment. Odd, they sound a lot like cheering.

In supplication, here are two of my favourite sites, currently.

They fight Crime.

Texts from last night.

Is it possible to have a ragegasm?

2009-05-27T14:01:00.002+10:00

I understand the suffix -gasm usually indicates great enjoyment, but in this case I'm using it to indicate a MASSIVELY powerful emotion.

Oh god, oh god, WHY.

That is all.

Let us fight to defend Joss Whedon. After all, it's not like he has an entire ARMY at his beck and call, or anything.

Upcoming attractions part 2

2009-05-24T22:53:00.003+10:00

Just something to start you off.

5. The G.I. Joe movie could be great, it could be average, or it could be horrible.

Here's a link to the trailer.

I want to say more, but really there's too little in the trailer to go off, other then one thing.

Adebisi is in it.

6. SHERLOCK HOLMES.

SHERLOCK BLOODY HOLMES NOW HAS A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE.

You know the ONLY reason I have any faith in this? Robert Downey Jnr. If anyone could play the drug addict, eccentric with faulty logic of fakestreet London, it's Mr Downey Jnr.

Actually, I lie. To me it looks pretty impressive. Obviously the movie trailer has focused on the more Hollywoodsy parts (bare knuckle boxing, something Holmes is already considered a master of in the canon), but I would not be surprised if it was reasonably true to the Holmesian styles.

7. Empire: Total War

I won't bother linking it, since honestly I've not really paid it much attention. I shouldn't include it on "upcoming" attractions since it's already released, but it's "upcoming" for me since I don't have it and likely won't get it.

I know, I know, the idea of me not being balls-out excited by a Total War game is sheer lunacy, but the 18th century sucked. You heard me. The only good thing to happen in the 18th century was the creation of the Swashbuckler.

I just can't bring myself to enjoy the warfare of the 18th century. I put it on this list since I'm open to being wowed by the game should I ever play it, but up until that happens I have no interest in trying it out.

8. Overlord 2.

While I never played more then the demo of Overlord 1, I heard good things about it and have been meaning to try and get my hands on it lately. I have to admit I'm quite curious as to the direction the game will evolve in with the upcoming sequel.

It's good to be bad.

You know, I'm running out of things I'm looking forward to, entertainment wise, this year. Man, is that depressing or what. I was foreseeing three parts in this series.

Oh well. Coming up tomorrow, how Hollywood changing beloved cartoons while making movies out of them isn't new. Gasp, shock horror, etc.

The voice of Megatron

2009-05-23T15:35:00.002+10:00

Part two of my 'upcoming attractions' list will be next, for now I am just in awe of a certain man.

What do Megatron, the Mutants in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and literally HUNDREDS of animals in various animated and live action shows/movies have in common?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Welker

This man. Frank. Goddamn. Welker. This man is a god among the voice acting community, and you should learn to pay respect to him.

Seriously, his list of shows and movies he's voiced things for it twice the length of the rest of his wikipedia article. Read it, and marvel at the many, many roles this man has done.

Upcoming attractions part 1

2009-05-20T17:52:00.009+10:00

In my own highly arrogant style, I choose to believe everyone who matters is interested in what I am interested in. So, with that in mind, let's have a look at upcoming things that, I believe, will bring THE AWESOME to the party, or at least have the potential to do so.

1. Dragon Age. No one who has been anywhere NEAR this blog will be surprised by this.

It's a Bioware (tick) made western RPG (tick) focusing on a gritty gothic fantasy (tick) world where the player create their own character (tick) including their origin story (tick) without relying solely upon a 'good vs evil' morality system (tick). Your character is the last hope of the world in an epic struggle against horrific monsters (tick tick), attempting to unite the powers in the region against them, forging your own army to stop the potential destruction of the world as you know it (tick tick tick).

Nothing more to say, really.

2. Infamous/Prototype. I am interested in both of these games, but I have a serious dilemma. Which one do I get? They come out at roughly the same time, and both look great, how do I decide? Let's compare the two.

One is a sandbox open world game where you play a character waking up to find himself with super powers, in a city in chaos. You have to use your powers to find out what happened, all the while jumping, climbing, flying your way around the city and dealing with hordes of enemies, learning new uses for your powers.

The other is a sandbox open world game where you play a character waking up to find himself with super powers, in a city in chaos. You have to use your powers to find out what happened, all the while jumping, climbing, flying your way around the city and dealing with hordes of enemies, learning new uses for your powers.

Oh dear.

That's my problem, dear readers. While I'm sure once I get into them they will play incredibly differently, have different stories, characterisations, options and choices, they just seem too similar at first glance to decide. It really comes down to: Do I want to play a shapechanger with an Assassins Creed hood, or a Lightning thrower in a game with comic book aesthetics?

3. The second Transformers movie. I know the original wasn't anything groundbreaking, it "broke" the original series, all that sort of crap, but I friggin' ENJOYED it. It was a fun movie, I like the way Shia played his character, and I will admit if Megan Fox offered, I would say yes.

Can't embed this one, you'll have to click a link. SHOCK HORROR.

There were alot of things I would like to have seen done differently, but overall it was a decent movie. And now the most important part comes, seeing what they do with part 2. It could go one of two ways.

A) It does the same thing nearly all sequels do, misunderstand what made the first one enjoyable and screw itself over (Matrix 2 springs to mind as an example. THE MATRIX MOVIES ENDED WITH NUMBER 1).

B) It actually does what the behind the scene stuff suggests. Now that the first movie has gotten all of the introduction and backstory out of the way, they can focus the movie more on the actual Transformers themselves.

P.S. Mr Bay, should you stumble across this, please bring back Jazz somehow. I know it'll invalidate the whole "death is permanent" thing all stories should strive for to make it a genuine threat, but it's far preferable to his fate. Seriously, if you wanted Megatron to seem threatening, have him kill Ironhide, not the second smallest Autobot in the team.

4. My marriage to Aysel, the Azerbaijanian entrant to this years Eurovision. Ok, so I don't even know her yet, I can't conceive of a possible world in which I would ever meet her, and the likelihood of a girl as gorgeous as her, who's intelligent enough to know multiple languages being interested in me is very slim, but I've got things in my favour!

Such as....

Well...

Shut up, a man can dream. Sorry Zendulo, you may have been displaced as my dream-girl.

Eurovision Song Contest

2009-05-18T09:59:00.003+10:00

Before I share my night-long commentary on the final of the Eurovision song contest, there are four things I would like to get off my chest.

1. Aysel in the Azerbaijan entry was absolutely gorgeous. A quick wikipedia search revealed she's only turned 20 less then half a month ago. Damnit I feel old now.

2. The German entry was absolutely awesome.

If this entry doesn't make you at least KINDA interested in men, if only for two minutes (until Dita Von Teese shows up), there's something wrong with you.

3. Norway, for most of the voting, was double it's nearest rival. Can I just say that I didn't enjoy the Norwegian entry? No doubt it had it's fans (otherwise it wouldn't have won so convincingly), but I plain didn't enjoy it.

4. Who noticed the voting blocks? That's right, the Eurovision song contest has 'talent' as a secondary consideration at best, the primary consideration being old alliances and grudges between countries. Want to know why Norway won? They had a reasonable entry, and NO ONE DISLIKES THEM.

Now, only my running commentary

7:42
A pair of wires, a giant treadmill, and a pack of adoring women. Wow, last years Russian winner got paid well.
7:45
It seems they saved the 'good' hosts for the finals. It haven't once seen him try to feel her up
7:49
My enjoyment of Lithuania's entrant was ruined when I noticed two things. 1. He has sharp side burns. 2. The piano kept playing when he stood up. ILLUSION BROKEN
7:51
P.S. Lithuania, you gain nothing when using your Eurovision entry to inform the world that your people are flammable.
7:53
Israel, just for getting my hopes up about the possibility of cleavage, then dashing them (damned skin coloured dress sections) I award you nil points.
7:57
The French entrant is gracing us with the little known French dialect of 'phlegmy French'.
8:02
Dear Sweden: A dress should not be described as 'shaggy'. 'Shaggy' should be limited to carpets, dogs and Hanna Barbara cartton characters only
8:05
According to the 'postcards' advertising each country in the Eurovision, the entirety of Europe is populated by breakdancers, skateboarders, and women looking inordinately happy to be crossing the road.
8:08
I was going to list who was off their faces with the Portuguese entry, but it might be quicker to list the people ON their faces. "What do you want the backdrop to look like?" "Take this and draw what you see."
8:29
Call me picky, Russia, but I don't enjoy a 30 foot video screen showing a crying old woman. That may just be me, though.
8:33
And Azerbaijan wins the "most winks in a single performance" with three in three minutes. Oh, and to the dude, if you're singing with a 20 year old and playing a ukulele with an extended neck it does look like you're compensating for something.
8:37
Bosnia's entrant makes me wonder: How much thought goes into the degree of 'scruffy unshaven' look the performers cultivate? Would he have shaven just before the semi's in order to get the right look for the finals, or would he had had the idea look in the semi's, to try and get through?
8:44
Look closely, the Moldovan entrant has "don't panic" written in Moldovan on her left palm.
8:46
If anyone is missing a mop, the Moldovan entrant's backup singer seems to have found it.
8:50
Someone told me the Maltese entrant that a lot of REALLY good female singers are unattractive. She got the equation half right
8:52
The Estonian entrant just confirms it. Violins/string instruments are the new black
9:00
The German entrant has just made me gay. I have no regrets.
9:02
And now they've just brought out a burlesque performer, Miss Dita Von Teese. I'm straight again.
9:04
Turkey: "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong"
9:10
Albania: A second helping of twin midget joker break dancers and a sequined gimp DOES NOT MAKE IT BETTER. Only one word can describe it: Skeeeevy.
9:12
Norway, we've seen you play your violin twice, and twice you've broken your bow. I think you may be doing something wrong.
9:17
I think the Cameraman had a seizure during the Ukranian entry. I don't blame him I nearly had one myself.
9:19
Oh, and a question to the Ukraine: What IS an "anti-crisis girl"? Is it like a "normal day girl"?
9:20
And a big hello to the Romanian entrant! As a side note,t he dancers, choreography and outfits were chosen by the male population of the world aged 18-55
9:28
There are many things that could be said about the UK entrant, so I'll limit myself to one: I think I saw nipple.
9:33
Wow Finland. I didn't realise it was possible to get away with pants and a pair of sleeves. And nothing else.
9:36
Just so you know, Spain, flesh coloured jump suits with glitter is cheating. You're getting me interested for nothing.
10:28
Oh please, don't let the German entrant lose to the UK entrant. For the love of all things nerdy, don't let the Germans be beaten by Malta!
10:59
Oh thank god, Germany beat Malta! I am content with the Eurovision, justice is served.
11:00
Though the Norwegian entry was about as fun as stringing my pubes appropriately and playing them like a violin, and really didn't deserve to win... It's the Eurovision, no one who deserves to win ever wins it.

Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals

2009-05-16T21:44:00.003+10:00

As my first post in the 200s, I decided to go non-geeky and share something with you. During the Semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest I kept a running commentary on facebook, and I would like to share it with you now.

Friday Night
8:17
The Armenian entrant's strategy seems to be "get six women on a bed and set it on fire, that'll win it for us."
8:22
Wow. Just saw one eurovision entrant that looked like one of the women was beaten with an ugly stick, then the second woman was beaten with the first woman.
8:25
Bulgaria's male singer has a higher voice than his female backing singers
8:27
"We've got some horrible dancers! This is bad, how can we improve them?" "Put them on stilts!"
8:30
One of Turkey's female backing singers/dancers obviously called in sick, and they had to replace her with the male dance choreographer in a bad silk shirt.
8:32
Iceland had Neil Patrick Harris' evil twin (in a bad suit) as one of the backing singers
8:33
Macedonia thought Bill and Ted was a serious documentary, and as such based their entrant upon them.
8:37
Romania can't decide if they're ballet or Burlesque
8:42
Just saw the entrant from Finland. It looks like Eminem aged twenty years and forgot how to wear a hat
8:51
Attention Portugal. No one should be that happy to play the Ukulele

Saturday Night
7:50
The Latvian entrant dances like he's worried about snipers taking potshots at him. But I suppose he's a Latvian in Russia.
7:51
Either that or he needs to poo. Or he needs to poo AND is afraid of Snipers
7:54
Serbian entrant. Blond afro, yellow jacket, piano accordion, curly shoes. I want to take the piss out of this entrant, but it already takes so much piss out of itself it should die of dehydration
8:04
The Norwegian entrant had a creepy smile. I think he was a pod person
8:13
The male half of the slovakian entrant looks like he was shagging the work experience girl twenty seconds before going on stage
8:16
It took me twenty seconds to realise Denmark was singing in English
8:25
Slovenia forgot she was meant to come out from behind the parchment and be on stage. "I don't want to go out on stage!" "Oh don't be such a baby"
8:26
Hungary. Oh Hungary, you're not fooling anyone by having three women on stage with you. P.S. Dramatic clothing change is pointless if it's done twenty seconds into the performance
8:31
Azerbaijan: Wow. That backup dancer is... quite manish. Very manish, in fact. I would say more, but she looked like she could beat the crap out of me.
8:34
Greek Entrant: "Quick! Turn up the backing singers and synthesizers! We can still hear the main singer!"
8:41
Moldovan entrant: I wasn't on your side until I saw that your backup singer was holding a stick, then you got me.
8:45
Albadian Entrant: Nikki Webster dancing with a FABULOUS gimp, and the "why so serious" backup dancers
8:53
Half naked Centurion dancers, a giant cog containing a revolving wheel containing a ladder being pole danced around by a half naked woman. It can only be the Ukrainian entrant!
9:00
I am so sorry to all your Dutch people out there. You're being represented by a whale with two turntables and a microphone
9:25
And to make the night more depressing, I just wikipedia'd one particularly striking entrant ((one half of the Azerbaijan duet) and found out she's younger then I am. Bugger.

The Eurovision finals coming up tomorrow night. Stay tuned.

200th post

2009-05-15T10:11:00.003+10:00

Well, let's have a retrospective look at the last 199 posts on this blog, with some of my personal highlights pointed out.

I began the blog with high hopes and little conception of what I would actually focus on. 'Topics of nerdity' was my entire brief to myself. Really, I was writing more to myself then anything (I still am, since my readership on a normal day is somewhere between none and "I came here under the belief there is porn?") This can be seen in posts such as the ill-fated 'character' posts. At the time I was writing a half dozen different things (as opposed to now, when I'm only writing two), and as such making up characters for fun. Looking back, if I could I would do something different there, but I'll leave them there now for archive purposes.

For a long time I was undertaking two regular side-streets to my posts. The "100 things about me" and "Non Sequitor Story" things were an amusing idea, just not really applicable to the nerd theme. While I'm proud of the ones I made up, they didn't really fit into the blog.

Really, I think the first post where I took a tone I would adopt later, was this one.
Computer games need good writers

It's about then I started actually discussing things of interest to fellow geeks. A critique of the story involved in a computer game. From there I went past a few retrospectively embarrassing posts, but over time it slowly tilted towards something I feel fits in better with the nerdgasm theme.

Aside: Hmm, I just realised something, for a blog titled 'nerdgasm', I spend alot more time ripping on nerdy things I dislike then building up nerdy things I like. Meh, geeks are meant to be full of INDIGNANT RAAAGE.

I have to say, the start of my blog actually being what it is today came with this post.
The fifth Random Bag post.
The 102nd post is about the time this blog started actually fitting into the theme I prescribed for it. It started actually describing geeky stuff, occasionally branching out into geeky (failed) attempts at humour.

A few of my personal highlights, posts I really enjoy in retrospect:

Game Designers need marketing training: A look at how the games-industry habit of getting the designers to showcase their games can sometimes backfire. I was happy with this one, since it was a genuine criticism of the presentation of a nerdy passtime.

My first foray into criticising Blizzard: I have fond memories of this for obvious reasons.

My lack of caring about Aeris' death: The post that had me labeled as heartless by a few people I know, but it's the truth. Aeris as a character just annoyed me. Aeris, and Final Fantasy seven in general, just irritated me, and this post gives you a reason as to why.

My first criticism of Obsidian, via their game Knights of the Old Republic 2: As readers know, Obsidian is my Moriaty. Except they don't even know I exist, so maybe they're my Dagon. I dunno, whatever works. This was the start of my public hate-hate relationship with them.

I just like the metaphor I used for the current gaming era, here.

A couple of rare examples of a positive attitude in my posts

Anything else of interest is near enough the front page it should be easily found.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did: E.G. Spent twenty minutes pondering which links are worthwhile, then finished it prematurely so you could get back to playing Playstation.

Here's to another 100 at least.

New Dragon Age footage

2009-05-12T19:00:00.003+10:00

Short post today.

OH GOD!

I nergasmed. Was it good for you too?

Dragon Age is the game I am currently pinning my hopes upon. Why? Because it is Bioware. Bioware are yet to let me down yet. Were Bioware a person, I would love her/him/it, I would marry her/him/it (if necessary eloping to a location in which our love is recognised legally), and I would lend her/him/it a fiver any time it needed it.

Others can keep their Bungie/Halo, their Blizzard/-Craft, and their Rockstar/GTA. For me, it is Bioware/RPG.

P.S. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my 199th post, which means my 200th will be next. I have no idea what to do for this momentous occasion.

Starcraft backstory

2009-05-11T22:05:00.004+10:00

So, I don't enjoy Starcraft. I pretty much actively dislike the game, the universe it's made in, and Blizzard itself is on my "Oh that looks like an interesting concep- ohhh, THEY'RE making it. Nevermind then" list.

Then I was sent a link to 4 youtube videos showing the Starcraft single-player campaign experience. At first, I admit, I was intrigued. It seemed to be presenting the between-mission stuff of the campaign as almost an RPG experience. I then realised it was just a complicated way of giving you choices in the missions and buying stuff in between missions. I still give them credit for doing something other then stock standard boring "click mission, press start, RUSH" stuff, but it's less then I was hoping for on first viewing.

I must admit I applaud the fact that they're putting the story forward as an important part of the single player campaign, it seems to be a staple of Blizzard's games (outside of Wow, of course) that the single player campaign is never seen as 'just filler' despite the fact that Multiplayer is where the -craft games genuinely shine. The -craft games (Starcraft and Warcraft III) are well acknowledged as excellent multiplayer games

Yes, I dislike Blizzard, but not so much that I can see that what they do, they do VERY well. The -craft games of various types are celebrated as tightly balanced RTS' of great variety. When you have two forces of completely different styles that can battle and be considered on equal terms, you have done something right. When you can do that same thing with three or four different forces, you have done something amazingly.

I can see they do it well, I just really don't enjoy the games, and prefer my RTS' to be more about grand sweeping armies then crap 'representative' rushing games with the only consideration given towards 'epic' being an occasional claim to such in the marketing blurb.

Plus, while I appreciate the effort put towards having a good story, I am yet to feel attached to any character ever presented in a Blizzard game. While that could possibly be due to limitations of technology in previous examples, I personally just find Blizzard's characters and story to be on the wrong side of 'annoying'. Their War- characters are a horrible mix of 'dramatic and gritty' and 'high fantasy', and their Star- characters just seemed quite bare. They were a pair of stereotypes mashed together and put in a space setting.

The single thing that bothered me most about the Starcraft story as you played through the single player game? The way the campaigns were structured one-after-the-other. It worked in the sense that it allowed for the grand story to continue in one long arc, but it left out so much. If I wanted to know what happened to the humans after their campaign? Tough, I had to wait until they popped up in the Protoss campaign. Normally this was a niggling factor, but there was one point it really bugged me. The Zerg campaign. Somehow the good guys found a way to kill the super evil immortal alien insect brains. This was completely glossed over how they managed to do this. Thank you Blizzard, I was almost interested.

Wow, this has gone from a tangent. I originally just intended to talk about the Starcraft II video (which I shall not link).

Anyway. Long story short: Story important in video games, even RTS' where it is difficult to do. Kudo's to blizzard to trying an innovative method to get the story across better in the single player campaign even though, by all rights, they could get away with just releasing a multi-player only (with vague skirmish game support) if they wanted.

Duke Nukem

2009-05-10T09:16:00.003+10:00

Scheduled outage: It's been 5 days since my last post. Sorry about that. Just a short post today.

Duke Nukem Forever is no more.

All I can say is 'finally'. I'm not an FPS person, FPS' and me have had an awkward relationship ever since Doom stuffed me in a locker in the prime of my youth, leaving me there for days until I learnt the no-clip cheat and could get my own back by teleporting around his levels and beating up whoever I wanted with god-mode and full ammo.

In general, there is no joke I can make about the fate of Duke Nukem that hasn't been made a thousand times before. This isn't to seem surprising, since the game has been coming out for TWELVE YEARS. Over half my adult life has been spent developing this friggin' game. If they released it and it didn't cure erectile deficiencies in the entire audience and/or AIDs, then they have wasted twelve years of their life.

Twelve Years. That's twice the length of World War 2.

Everything that can be said about the Duke, has been said. There's just one thing I want to know. Where did they get the money? Surely the only way to be paid to make games is to make games. Their investors must have been exceedingly patient to allow them to sit on their asses making balloon animals while they were supposed to be making the game.

Did they really have a job where they just wasted 12 years and got paid for it? If so, bravo. I am mucho impressed, and wish to apply for this job.

Obsidian hates me

2009-05-05T22:33:00.002+10:00

I was planning on posting tomorrow, I probably still will, but I just need to get this off my chest now.

Obsidian, the gaming studio, hates me. "Why?" you ask with the ignorance of only someone not exposed to my rage at this matter can have, "why do you think they hate you?"

These people somehow manage to take the things I enjoy, the games I really enjoy and appreciate in the genre I love...

They take these established, successful and enjoyable intellectual properties, enjoyable intellectual properties I have played through multiple times and lost many'a hour on them. And shit on them.

Exhibit A: Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights was a rather mediocre story (the expansion packs greatly improved upon that) based on the dungeons and dragons ruleset. I became greatly enamored in the ruleset, it was my first exposure to persistant world gaming and roleplaying. I lost many years of my life playing on that thing. It had a powerful, simple to use toolset for creation of your own maps and easy to understand character construction that allows for highly interesting characters of great variety. Even beyond the rather simplistic storylines, the players came up with some incredible scripted modules (groupings of maps that told a story). It was a great game.

Obsidian take over development of Neverwinter Nights 2, and put out a bug riddled game (if I have to cheat just to get a scripted sequence to teleport me like it's supposed to, YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG) with characters I genuinely wanted to throw in a river attached to a bag of kittens attached to ROCKS. And then to turn an insult into a pair of broken kneecaps they... GNARNEHGESUEHW.

I have raged enough about Neverwinter Nights 2 on this blog. You can find it yourself. Gnarhed.

Exhibit 2: Knights of the Old Republic. Yes, some of the characters were annoying, but it was a grand, epic tale of betrayal and conflict in a subtle twist on the familiar Star Wars universe. It was a clever game, it was a well designed game, it was a game I genuinely got into.

Enter Obsidian once more to take all that and smash it against a rock. Then poo on it. With Knights of the Old Republic 2. I have, as well, raged about that in various points on this blog and thus won't repeat myself.

Basically so far out of my two encounters with Obsidian entertainment, they have horribly mangled two games I genuinely enjoy. If they made bad games, I could forgive and avoid them. Lots of companies make bad games, and seem to do as well with them as Obsidian does with it's bad games. But no, they take existing, successful, enjoyable Intellectual Properties, and mangle them beyond repair. They forever taint my memories of the previous, enjoyable games. Instead of "Man, Knights of the Old Republic was a swell game", now my memories are forever "man, KOtoR was a swell game. It's a pity the sequel was so shit."

So what have they done now? What have they done that has earned so much of my ire?

They are making the new Fallout title. Fallout 4.

Goddamnit Obsidian. Goddamnit. There's only so far you can push a man.

The little random bag that could

2009-05-04T18:38:00.003+10:00

The Sociology of 4chan series WILL continue. I shall not be silenced. Rules 1 and 2 are mere guidelines!

But at the moment I've got two random things I want to discuss.

1. I was directed by my brother to the website for Games Paradise in Sydney. A decent shop that's got some less common roleplaying and gaming things (at least in Sydney). Out of idle curiosity I looked at the cost of a Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000 squad box. About $35, expensive, as all Games Workshop stuff is. Out of further idle curiosity I checked out the cost of the same box on the Games Workshop site. $40.

For those of you not mathematically or business-ally inclined, let's work this out. Games Workshop stores in Australia import these things and then deliver them to both stores run by others and their own stores.

In their own stores, the price is marked up from the production costs (in order to make a profit) to $40.

Presumably when the wholesale sell the products to other stores they mark the price up enough to make a profit there, and presumably the store they sell it too marks the price up enough for them to make a reasonable profit as well. Yet this double-mark-up price comes out to be LESS then the official Games Workshop site. Goddammit, GW. Goddammit.

2. Repo: The Genetic Opera. It's a cult movie that has some of signs that it'll be a cult classic, to me. I first took notice when I saw it was a musical about a dystopic future where there are corporate sponsored assassins as a fact of life.

Long story short, the idea is that R:TGO is based in a future where organ failure is a fact of life. To counter this a company grew genetically cloned organs and sold them. Most people could not afford this, but the company (GeneCo) offered a payment plan. The real catch? As long as you meet the (apparently expensive) payments, you're safe. If you miss one? They repossess the organ. Yeah, they cut you open while you're alive and take it out. These are the Repo men. Plus because of the commonplace nature of surgery now, it's become incredibly common and fashionable to have recreational surgery.

Dark, dystopic, musical? Sounds fun so far. So what went wrong?

Well parts of it I genuinely enjoyed. Blind Mag was an interesting character with an incredible singing voice, definately worth a listen to her scenes. The father character (played by Anthony Stewart Head, Giles from Buffy) was quite deep, showing the psychological breakdown of someone who knows they're doing is evil, and originally had good intentions. I ended up rooting for him, even in the scenes when he seemed to break down, becoming a gleeful sadistic maniac, reveling in his duties as a GeneCo Repo-man (SPOILERS), and he has a pretty impressive singing voice.

Other parts of it were just a let-down. The three children of the big-bad-evil-guy had no characters, just gimmicks, and considering how much attention they get I was sitting there waiting for them to bring on INTERESTING characters. An angry-angry business man, a slutty-slutty surgery addicted Paris Hilton, and a face-stealing effeminate party-boy. There, I just saved you a bunch of time.

The main character (Shylow, the daughter of the Repo Man mentioned above) is... a waste of screen time. I understand she's meant to appeal to the emo crowd, she's a sky humble girl oppressed by her horrible situation in life, hence why she's so unassuming and hesitant in most of her singing. That doesn't excuse the fact that I had NO desire to see her come out in front of the movie. She could have been hit by a car twenty minutes before the climax of the film and it genuinely would not have bothered me. Her weak singing genuinely detracted from alot of the songs, and the "I'm a rebellious 17 year old who hates being told what to do by 'the man'!" is just... well it's fucking irritating. Yeah, I get that we're supposed to feel sorry for her since she's ill and can't go out because of her illness. The whole 'princess locked in the tower' thing (not subtle, filmmakers, not subtle), I get that. It doesn't stop me disliking every scene the character's in.

Another part that annoyed me was the character of the Graverobber. In this future world there's an incredibly powerful painkiller/stimulant that allows people to undertake all this surgery. The drawback? It's incredibly addictive. An illegal varient of it can be harvested from dead bodies, so that's the introduction to the Graverobber character. He breaks into graveyards and harvests this drug, then sells it. He functions as the narrator a couple of times, and is described by the wiki-page as "Darkly Charismatic", with an obvious anti-authoritarian streak. He's not.

He comes off as pointless and a deus-ex machina at least once. The vast majority of his songs were weak and sounded like boring narration that was being sung, rather then an actual attempt at lyrics. It took me a while to work out precisely what it was about the character that bugged me, before I put my finger on it. He was a pointless 'Author favourite'. He's played by one of the creators, indicating that writer loved the character, and just happens to show up all over the place, get away with everything he's doing, and be supposedly charismatic. I'm sorry, but even speaking as a person not adverse to recreational drug use, I find it hard to enjoy the presence of someone who makes a living selling HIGHLY addictive (described as such in the movie) chemicals to prostitutes.

Possibly the worst part of the movie? There are a whole bunch of moments that I hope against hope were done in a parodying sense, I really really hope they were meant to be a parody. But when I watch it I just get the sense it was being done because the film makers genuinely thought it was a good idea. Combining rock and opera sounds great, but when you have half naked women cavorting on stage while a conductor sings loudly about getting people to testify at how awesome GeneCo is, I just get the feeling the film-makers were going for a 'modern rocky horror show' feel, rather then attempting to parody attempts to modernise old-school culture and deify economic processes. The latter would be far more effective then the former.

Long story short: If you have the chance to see Repo for free and you've got a boring night in planned, take it up. Don't pay for it until you've seen it at least once to work out if you like it.

Sociology of 4chan Part 2

2009-05-02T17:39:00.004+10:00

I've been really dragged into this, I have to admit finding 4chan and it's anonymity fascinating.

Who IS Anonymous?

That is, without a doubt, one of the stupidest questions ever asked. Yet it's one that people constantly try to answer. A general statement of how uninformed someone is can be found in their answer.

Fox News: Hackers on Steroids (a youtube video of the infamous report).Verdict: Incredibly uninformed.
Skeptobot blog: "A fan base of hormone riddled self aware geeky teenagers and should-know-better twenty somethings" (the blog in question).Verdict: Trying his little heart out, but still uninformed.
4chan: I was about to ask, but I then risked receiving the steely gaze of anonymous. Verdict: I imagine they're the closest to informed, but even they don't friggin' know.

Why are Skeptobot and Fox news so uninformed on this issue? Because it's not something they can really fathom.

Anonymous is not an organised group or a simple 'collection of geeks'. Trying to attribute anything to them, age, race, gender, socio-economic background, is ridiculous because by their very definition THEY DON'T HAVE ONE. In fact, trying to lump them under one singular group and call them a 'their' is a simple fallacy.

The closest definition I can think of at the moment is that they are a collective of individuals. They're united by two facts.
1. They feel no great need for identification
2. They share a similar sense of humour.

Notice that those facts were incredibly flexible.

Some do want to be identified and can be identified (among some particular groups like /TG/, individuals are identified by their produced works, such as drawings or stories), while most are content to have recognition come from enjoyment of what they produce, rather then aimed at them personally.
Often individuals within the group argue over if a single product of the boards can be listed as funny, showing a difference in sense of humour, but if both individuals continue to remain on the board (something impossible to determine) then surely they find the overall humour derived from the board appeasing.

So how can I define a group if their only identifying factors are flexible and their membership is fluid and unprovable.

It's simple. I can't. That's what makes the Anonymous factor so amazing. They are a collective of individuals. The two primary words are 'collective' and 'individuals'.

Collective: The boards give them a uniting purpose and ability to facilitate the actions that get them noticed. It's a factor of self-identity different to the self. By going to the boards one isn't "John Smith, Tech Support", you're anonymous. You become a part of the collective by either tacitly or actively endorsing it's actions (arguing against it's actions is effectively futile, since there is no one debater you can pin down and 'defeat'), with the only option of protest being to quit. This isn't to say that you are subsumed within Anonymous, it just means that any actions you undertake in their name are actions credited to the collective, you can receive no praise or blame.

Individuals: There is no organisational facility attached to 4chan, no leaders to dole out orders or any form of hierarchy. There is NO way to compel 4chan into action other then appealing to its individuals. Creating a good enough idea and posting it on the boards will inspire individuals to act upon it, there is no way to force them to do so. When Anonymous went to 'war' against Scientology, news organisations tried to report it as an organised uprising, but it isn't. Someone on 4chan said "Let's do this", and a collective of INDIVIDUALS agreed with the idea as it stood. There were no orders, people just thought "this is a good idea" and did it. Any action undertaken by 'Anonymous' is NOT the effort of Anonymous, it is the effort of an individual within the collective who appreciates the idea being put forward.

Where Fox News fails in their understanding of this concept is that they assume organisation where there is meritocratic anarchy. There IS no controlling force of Anonymous, and attributing actions to them is impossible, since they are always the actions of individuals under the guise of an identity-less figure.

That is not to say that Anonymous does nothing. It is still a collective, but it is a unique collective in that there is no guaranteed way to be a member other then to receive approval by the individuals that make up the membership. In that fashion 4chan (and other bastions of 'anonymous') are incredible, since they are probably the only group to exist that is only responsible for an action if they admit responsibility. If the collective as a whole decries an action it is not theirs. It may be inspired by Anonymous with an individual seeking acceptance by undertaking the action believing it will be accepted, but if they do not accept an action, it cannot be truly accredited to them. There is no governing body approving actions before they happen, and no way to know what a member of the collective will do before it is done (unless they publically state they are going to do it, a rarity for certain), so attributing actions to them is an incredibly difficult endeavour.

Where Skeptobot's understanding is flawed is in an entirely different direction. The identification of who Anonymous is under age and personality based guidelines. Actually, thinking about it, Skepto-bot may be closer then I initially thought. He may not be stating outright "this is who these people are", rather "this is the image they place to the world". They DO seem like, if you met them in the street, none of them would have ovaries (although a few might have bosom) and most would have what they affectionately term a neckbeard (if you see one of these things in the street, flee).

So, in answer to the question at the top of this post: Who IS Anonymous?

They have no nation, no gender, both genders, no age, no socio-economic background, and no distinguishing features. You CANNOT tell who Anonymous is, because Anonymous is Anyone. Not everyone, not no one, Anyone.

You could go far enough to say that the very question 'Who is Anonymous' is a contradiction.

I so need to write a thesis about this shit.

Sociology of 4chan

2009-05-01T11:23:00.003+10:00

http://twitter.com/basementdad

What is this?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/basementdad.html

4chan decided they want in on the "race to 1,000,000 followers on Twitter", and through some clever scripting they were getting hundreds of (fake account) followers a minute.

If I get into Masters in Sociology, I'm studying 4chan. Seriously, this shit is incredible. It's absolutely fascinating how a system dedicated to the idea of 'anonymous' works. I'm seriously at a loss for words (mostly because I'm hungover) at how amazing I find all this.

It's made even more amazing when you read this:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/4chan-time-moot.html

4chan are like the beta-testers of real life. They just poke shit until it breaks, so people can work out how to fix it.

Edit: Additional: A few people are getting to this post through googling Sociology of 4chan. If you are, this post may interest you more.

Bugger! Forgot a title!

2009-04-27T20:42:00.003+10:00

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/b9de/
Look past the pretty cool accessory and consider where this is leading, and you'll think the same thing I did at first: Virtual Reality can't be far away!

Then I had a reality check.

Let's consider a few basic logistical problems with Virtual Reality.

1. Sensation. VR needs to not only fool sight and sound, or other important sensations like touch and smell. Granted basic VR equipment as presented in movies might work for some (usually a visor that covers the ears), but the presence of external stimuli intruding upon the experience would lend it an awkward status that would destroy suspension of disbelief.

How would they block out outside sensation while allowing more direct examples of sensations like touch and smell? Simple, they'd have to shut off one's interpretation of the outside world and replace it with a new one. This would be INCREDIBLY invasive, has the potential for mismanagement, and leaves open the possibility of unexpected side effects and damage.

2. Collateral issues. You're put in a small 12 foot by 12 foot room and given the latest in VR equipment, touch synthesising fabric, sight, sound and smell generator mask, all that sort of thing. You go into the VR experience, see yourself in an elegant ball room and walk forward... only to smack your face against the wall you can no longer see.

VR needs to not only fool sensation, but fool experience. If you can move your arm through where a fake wall should be, you will see your arm pass through it, but if the fake wall doesn't exist there in real life, then nothing will be stopping you from doing so. So any sort of VR system that they make needs to be able to avoid interaction with the real world that ruins the mystique. Basically it NEEDS to use a Matrix-like system of completely nulling sensation of the outside world.

However, as much as I'd love to try out VR, I couldn't trust anything plugging into my central nervous system, shutting down my conscious interaction with my body and feeding me false sensations. How could I trust whatever private company does it? And even if they are trustworthy (which is likely, to be honest, no company REALLY wants to screw it's customers over. Bad for business) then there's always the risk of the technology having unforseen side effects.

3. Controlled reaction. Related to sensation, but somewhat different. Sensation represents feeling something when, by all rights, it doesn't exist. The sting of a slap, relaxation of a warm bath, or (ahem) other methods virtual reality might be put towards.

Controlled reaction refers to more extreme sensations. How would the body react when told it had been shot? Obviously these sensations would need to be toned down, otherwise it could have an incredibly detrimental effect, as well as potential psychological side effects of disjointed reactions to things that haven't happened. E.G. Feeling the sting of a broken nose well after one has left the VR experience.

This is just one of the other things that means VR NEEDS to be done Matrix style. E.G. You're in the VR, in the experience an A.I. creature punches you. You won't respond physically to the impact, other then possibly being fooled into thinking you've got a bruise. In a Matrix style thing, your in-experience avatar is affected, fooling you into thinking YOU'VE been affected.

Of course, as touched on above, a Matrix-style VR simulation just raises ethical and medical concerns.

Have I thought too much about this? Hell yes. But then again, that's probably what the blog should be named. "I have thought too much about this."

Next post I may talk about Augmented Reality. Fascinating stuff, that.

Edit: Bugger! Forgot a title!

Makari the Gretchin

2009-04-25T17:16:00.005+10:00

Probably my last post about Warhammer 40K, I just need to get this out.

Back in the mythic prehistory of the hobby (during the late 90s) they created an Ork (like an Orc, but IN SPAAAACE) Warboss named Ghazghkull Thraka. He was meant to be the fiercest leader of Orks in known space, and a grand threat to the Imperium of Man.

However Orks, as a race, were more comic then most of the other races. Don't get me wrong they could be very, very dangerous, but predominantly they were comic. They did stupid things, their weapons blew up, all in all it was quite funny.

And to fit in with this image Ghazghkull, despite being a very serious character, had a Gretchin (Goblins IN SPAAACE) Banna wava (banner waver/standard bearer) named Makari. In a fight, Makari was useless. He would be outfought by a normal civilian, and had only a knife to defend himself with. What he did was carrying the banner of Ghazghkull into battle, waving it with all the strength his little arms could muster. How did he survive? He was lucky. Every time he was wounded you'd roll a six sided dice and on a roll of 2 or more he survived, no matter what happened. It's just what he did. Ghazghkull was written as being very fond of Makari, as were most of the other boys, because he was just so damned eager.

I quite liked Makari. He was an amusing concept for a character.

Then Games Workshop changed Orks from "comic relief" to "one of the three greatest threats facing the entire galaxy". And so Makari wasn't needed, so they made up some stupid story about Ghazghkull sitting on him, killing him, and throwing him to a Squig, and not really caring.

Bollocks to that. Screw you Games Workshop. Upon hearing about Makari's fate, I made the following in tribute. I know I'm not a great artist (my excuse is that this was done with a mouse) or a great writer (again, my excuse is that I did this in a rush), but I wanted to share this.

Orks are creatures of war and death. Deprived of it they waste away as other species would deprived a vital part of their diet. It is the slowest and most agonising death an Ork can face. But that is not to say that Orks do not have a kind side, a decent side. A side that allows them to feel fondness of others.
"Oi, Boss, where ya goin'?" asked Graknob, before a sharp smack to the back of the head from one of his fellow Nobs silenced him. Ghazghkull Thraka, greatest Ork Warlord the Orkoid race has ever seen, did not even stop in his plodding steps as he walked away from his main tent in the camp. Some of the boyz had objected to moving the Waaagh off course to visit this small, unknown, out of the way planet. 'Itz already been smashed, why we'z goin' here?' some had asked, but never loud enough for the boss to hear. The Nobz waited for their mega-armoured warboss to be out of earshot before answering the new member of Ghazghkull's retinue.
"'E's off rememberin'" said one, an old Ork named Griksnak who had served their boss for many many years.
"'E can remember jus' fine round 'ere. What's 'e rememberin'?" asked the curious Nob, uncaring of the death-stares he was receiving from his fellow Nobz.
"Think 'bout it dis way, ya git. Us Orks love ta fight, yeah?"
"Yeah, even a snotling knows dat!"
"But da boss keeps sendin' us 'gainst da 'umies. Dis is cuz 'e hates dem. Now, why'd da boss hate 'umies?"
Graknob remained silent for a few seconds, pondering the question he was asked. "Cuz dey got ugly faces?"
The other Nobz just shook their heads. "'E lost someone ta 'em." Graknob looked around, confused. Everyone knew it didn't matter if an Ork died, he just got belched back into another body. He couldn't understand the feeling of loss.

----

Ghazghkull had shed most of his mega armour by the time he got to the top of the hill. Being an Ork, the act of removing armour seemed... unusual, to say the least, but it seemed appropriate to approach this site somewhat vulnerable. After all, he was meeting with the one being he knew would never harm him.
"'ey. Uhh... not sure what's I suppose'ta say 'ere. Jus' wanted tah, y'know, say 'ello. See how ya's was. Dose 'umies who got dat lucky shot off on ya? Yeah, dey dead. 'Dere planet is dead. Got lotsa da bastards. 'Ope dat helps out somehow. Wells... I's be goin', den. I... I misses ya, boy." Ghazghkull Mag Thraka turned and began walking down the hill again, leaving the grave he had been speaking to behind. A grave that simply said:

Makari
Banna Wava

Everyone knew Orks were belched back into another body after they died. Not Gretchin though. No Gretchin could ever replace Makari.

No 40K for me

2009-04-22T21:37:00.002+10:00

Over the past few weeks I've been developing a burgeoning interest in Warhammer 40,000. Specifically in the background, which had such potential to be cool, but does seem to be squandered.

To summarise my feelings about it: I believe Games Workshop is one of the more heartless companies that exist, and a large number of the people who are heavily interested in their products scare me. They are like Dungeons and Dragons fans who have put hundreds upon hundreds of dollars into a single competition for the sole purpose of beating others. Granted I'm sure there are plenty of normal, healthy fans who realise the purpose of a game is not to win, but to play, but the stories I hear (which I acknowledge will be the extreme ends of things) are not ones about normal people.

Never-the-less, in my search for SOME kind of hobby that I can do when I wish (rather then at some scheduled time of week or month) I toyed with the idea of attempting to collect, model and paint an army of these dudes.

I gave up that idea when I checked out how much it would cost.

For those not involved in this particular subculture, wargames usually function by having each unit be worth a particular points value, and players use a set points value to attempt to beat each other. This means that players will strive to collect a particular total points value worth of models. In Warhammer 40,000 (the game I was looking into) a normal points value army to build up to is 1,500-2,000 points. I calculated a sample 1,500 point army that I might use, went to the official site, and checked out how much this would cost.

$750 arse swilling dollars.

Do you have ANY idea how much alcohol I could buy with that?

Screw that, screw that royally.

I'll stick with my other hobby. It only requires 1 hand*

*I speak, of course, of reading. Only need one hand to turn the pages.

Considering GMing

2009-04-20T13:29:00.002+10:00

Nerdtastic. To those who know me and don't wish to tarnish the herculean image you have of me with the nerderific stuff I'm about to sprout, look away.

So my nerdtasticality is springing back.

To those new readers, look back through my archive and, at one point or another, I will have mentioned that I've GMed an internet based PnP RPG. If you have no idea what those acronyms mean, then you're in the wrong place. Though since I'm generous, I'll give them to you.

GMed: Games Mastered. Basically been the referee/storyteller.
PnP: Pen and Paper. Non-computer based, done physically using dice (or other random generators, or imagination if you're a moron), and pens and paper to record results.
RPG: Role Playing Game.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm ashamed of myself, let's move on to the post.

The thing is, I'm not SO ashamed I don't want to give it a try again. I've found a pretty cool RPG system, Silhouette. It's even got a universe I don't mind too much. Next time I'll have to screen my players better, since I had some REAL duds.

1. Quiet girl. Sat around not talking much and wondering why no one dragged her into it
2. Know it all. Demanded to play a randomly complex character, was upset when things didn't revolve around him, and had an irritating habit of doing really, REALLY stupid ideas.
3. Overly eloquent dude. "I reach over and flick the ship into autopilot, then say to (soldier) 'So what happened back there?" THERE! Was that so hard to type! No. You don't need FOUR GODDAMNED LINES to say that! Nor do you need to take five minutes to type it all, slowing EVERYTHING down for everyone else. I went and got lunch MULTIPLE times during your typing.
4. Sex fiend. He seemed WAY too interested in the female characters. I found out later he tried to sollicit cybersex from them out of the gaming sessions. "We should RP out our characters in the background, don't you think?"
5. Hot chick. "What's your character like?" "Haughty hot chick." "Oh....kay. What's their personality?" "Haughty hot chick." "Appearance?" "Haughty hot chick."

I shouldn't be too rough on 5 or 1. They were the only ones I'd make an effort to invite back if I tried again. They were good value.

So what's the appeal of the Silhouette system? I'm pretty sure I've discussed the system before, but what the hell I'll do it again.

Normally games have a dichotomy of success and failure in the dice rolls, with some having 'critical success' or 'critical failure' if you roll exceptionally high and low. Silhouette dice rolling works on 'margin of success/failure'. If you fail by a certain amount, the GM is free to ascribe penalties. Most in-built mechanics require the margin of success. E.G. If you attack someone, the margin of success of the attack then has the weapon used's damage multiplier applied to work out how much damage is done.

At first I was intimidated by the rules. There are ALOT of them, and some of them involve maths I honestly never thought I'd need in life after high school maths. But then I finally realised something: Most of them are pretty optional, or so specific you don't NEED to remember them off-hand.

One problem I do have is the lack of guidelines with the vehicle creation rules. Basically you can make ANYTHING your imagination can come up with. This is good, but when you have NO idea what is normal, what is excessive, and what is lacking, it makes it intimidating. Plus it requires the same over the top maths.

Still, Silhouette system, here I come. Probably in Jovian Chronicles. Who can say no to 20 meter tall giant robots blowing shit up?

How to trail, and how not to trail.

2009-04-17T21:45:00.002+10:00

How NOT to make a trailer.

How to make a trailer.

Notice the difference, studios? The former was a mess of nonsensical action scenes that showed no precise enemy. It presented nothing of the plot other then "there's an enemy, and people want to run but someone says 'there is nowhere to run'". It's a mess, it shows nothing of the movie. This isn't a trailer, or a teaser. It's just clips from the movie so shortened they make no sense.

The latter one, though? The latter one had style. It summarised in brief what the movie was "there are mutants killing everyone, and mankind has been so driven back we're trying to leave earth. But Ron Perlman has a plan to save us, as long as the REAL Punisher is involved." Then whetted our appetite with a few choice action sequences, feelings of drama, and dramatic moments. THIS is a trailer.

Where are they now

2009-04-15T11:52:00.002+10:00

"Where are they now" of viral videos.

Honestly, I had forgotten half of these videos. Some of them I wish I could still forget. I mean... honestly, that resume video? When I first saw that I was CERTAIN it was intended as a parody. But according to this site, it was genuine. What sort of person produced that, looked back at it, and didn't honestly think "holy shit, I am a douche."

The one that makes me most happy in my pants? Afro-Ninja. Not only did it not adversely affect him TOO much (I don't count "not being in Rush Hour 3" as a bad thing, and I have a mancrush on Jackie Chan), but he's turned it around and made it into a decent thing.

While some people seem to think that enjoyment can only be found in viral videos if someone is only suffering negative effects from it, I enjoy it more when the person involved is enjoying it. Numa Numa guy was doing what he REALLY enjoyed doing, and still is. Go you fat bastard, dance your happy little legs off, dance the dance of FREEDOM. Chocolate Rain? That guy's taking someone he's known for and carving himself a life he can enjoy with it. I would shake his hand and congratulate him for being able to root out idiots paying him to do parodies.

And now Afro Ninja. Oh lord, Afro Ninja.

I salute you. I salute you with the fire of a thousand suns.

Go stunt, you awesome stunt man you.

Random Bag appendix

2009-04-12T11:24:00.003+10:00

Short post, preparing for a celebration of drinking.

I'd let them EXTERMINATE me.

Greatest short story EVER. Unsurprisingly written by Asimov.

And finally, a statement of utter shame.

I am reading 4chan, and enjoying it. I even posted something, and was proud when it got alot of positive notice.

Well, enjoy.

Internet epiphany

2009-04-08T20:16:00.002+10:00

It's taken many years (although most of them don't count since I had no knowledge of the subject matter) but I've finally worked out why 4chan is so popular on the internet. As an estimate I'd be willing to say it's far less popular then believed, but it's notoriety is such that if you're a regular internet user and you don't know what 4chan is, you've at least felt the effects of it. Been rickroll'd or seen any of a dozen different memes (including the horrific shock sites) and yes, you've been 4chan'd.

Since learning about it I was heavily against 4chan. But having not visited it I was operating on hear-say, and as such believed them to be a bunch of creepy cultists operating from a mountain-side retreat attempting to cause suffering throughout the world for their own amusement and in the name of their unisex diety 'lulz', utilising a solely male membership in their domination plans with attempts to regress the world to a society from the 1950's, but much more open to porn. While very little of this has been disproven, I have had a startling insight.

4chan operates with a very, very simple premise in place. In some ways it is the ultimate meritocracy, but that I believe is overstating it since you require the 'merits' they believe to be an inherent good. How do they enforce such a meritocracy? Simple. The pure fact that probably 99% of all posts are done by "Anonymous".

One one hand this anonymity means that there is a great deal of stupidity present. People can post whatever they want and be as stupid as they want, and there's nothing but the uncaring nature of the people they're trolling to dissuade them. But dissuade them it does. Trolls are rated (usually quite poorly, working on the concept that the best trolling is the one where they don't realise they're being trolled), and people have more fun with them then the Troll did. But the stupidity is still there.

So what good factor does Anonymity bring in? Simple, there is no social 'clique' to get 'in' with. There are no leaders, since there's no way to identify who's leading and who's not. There is no way to grab attention since no one even KNOWS who is grabbing the attention. There is attention to grab, but it's like the person trying to step into the spotlight is invisible. This removes so much of the social drama that can exist in an internet based community.

And while it must be said this attitude does result in alot of poor taste humour and offensiveness, the fact that the entire group is founded on mutual amusement means that every now and then you just find... comedy gold.

Don't look at me

2009-04-07T14:56:00.001+10:00

Yesterday I read 4chan.

And laughed.

DON'T LOOK AT ME.

Player vs Character skills

2009-04-05T17:24:00.004+10:00

This post is inspired by a forum topic I saw recently, that can be found here.

This plays into a number of different factors in game design.

1. 100% completion requiring one good playthrough, or does it need more? (AKA. Characters who can do everything)

This is something I commonly contemplate. Take a game with RPG elements and alot of them will have skills such as "Conversation", "lockpick", "stealth", "pickpocket", etc etc. Just basic skills that open up new tricks in game. Now there are two ways to deal with this.

The first is that the skills only open up pointless side things that may have some degree of reward for doing so (extra money/experience/items, etc etc). The problem with this is that they then either feel useless (why bother getting them if you can spend that on more fighting instead, since there's so little bonus) or essential (I've got to get my proud knight 'Lockpick', so he can get his hands on that super sword early on). Of course, even if they aren't essential then you will still have to deal with people who want to be able to do everything in one playthrough trying to force the skills into a character not designed to deal with it.

The second is to offer them as alternative pathways. This was done successfully in the Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines: When too many colons are never enough, PC game. Since there were nearly always alternative methods to most things, it meant that two playthroughs with characters of different strengths were nearly always very different. This in turn makes it a successful game in my view. The trouble is that there will always be things you need to fight your way out of, so if you play a heavy combat-only character then those fights go amazingly quickly and easily, and there's very little else you can do. Alternatively if you play a skill-heavy character, suddenly you find yourself in a fight you struggle heavily to come out ahead in.

That leads neatly into my next point.

2. Player ability compared to supposed character ability.

A game that best shows this off, for me, is "Sid Meyer's Pirates!", exclamation mark included. In that game when creating a character you get to choose one of many areas for your character to specialise in. Outside of buying special items, this is the only RPG element in the game, and the only advancement your character can get. The areas of specialisation as basically things like "Swordplay" (better at the swordfight minigame), "Charm" (better at the dancing minigame), etc etc. Most minigames had a specialisation attached.

The trouble is that this led to an interesting situation where the player was best off having their character specialising in an area they were genuinely bad at. The idea of having a specialisation in an area you're bad at just sounds amusing, even if it makes a degree of sense (using the mechanics to make up for a weakness), it just doesn't sound right.

And the concept of player capabilities against character capablilities struggles in a few other senses. If a character is meant to be an elite ranged soldiers (either because that's what the game represents, or it's an RPG where they specialised in that field) it just feels weird that they struggle to kill even basic enemies. But if you 'boost' them up with certain things (such as autotargetting, etc) then it doesn't feel like they're the ones who're expert marksmen.

3. Micromanagement of characters vs faith in computers ability to manage such things.

Moving onto RTS style games, this is something that has bugged me for a while. As someone who loves large scale combat in RTS', micomanagement bothers me. The smallest scale I enjoy is for a single hero in a fight (where he is the ONLY micromanagement I have to do), or readjusting the siege weaponry so they fire at the section of wall I want them to fire at. In a game like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft I have no enjoyment from watching micromanagement win the day over grand strategy.

In the thread linked to, it mentions things like "making specific units throw grenades", discussing if it should be a micromanaged thing, or entrusted to the AI. Personally I would prefer for the AI to use it responsibly then having to trigger it manually every single time I do it. This then raises the problem in that the AI in a vast majority of games is so thick you could favourably compare it with a whale's penis (also known as a Dork). An obvious solution would be to allow the players to set the ability to either be triggered by the player, or the AI.

What'd'ya know, there's a game that does that. Sins of a Solar Empire, one of my favourites.

Writers in games

2009-04-03T19:39:00.004+11:00

Read this. Then come back here.

Go on, it doesn't take long, I'll wait.

Read it? Good. When I showed that to a friend their reaction pretty much summarised my view.

"Accepting your flaws is a good thing. Embracing them is bad."

That's pretty much what the article is about. Yes, it is true that very, very few games have good stories. Halo's story was so laughable I had to treat it as a subtle parody just to play it. Half Life fans seem to have mistaken a 'complex' story with a 'good' one. There are many games that need to learn when to shut up and let us shoot space marines with our magical gun that fires cosmic paperclips. However the tone the (very short) article seemed to take seemed to me like the guy was saying "Well we can't do stories, so let's just keep rendering those three dimensional breasts and swords and cut one off with the other to our heart's content".

To that I say NO I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE WITH YOUR OPINION IN A LOUD TONE OF VOICE.

One one hand I understand what is being said, people need to realise that a game is an interactive medium and so being treated to a visual book is no fun, but stating that developers should stop trying to tell grand stories in their games actually offends me. There are not many of them, but there are some GREAT games out there with great stories. Yes, they are the minority, but they are growing, and they show how possible it is with this medium to tell a grand tale.

You know what fills me with hope? When I hear of game studios hiring professional writers for their epic games. More often then not it doesn't happen, since the game will be the baby of the original head developer (who doesn't realise his story telling ability is often somewhere between an apple and an orange). However there are plenty of cases of games studios hiring writers. Often it seems the writer is hired just for small things (like randomly generated missions in MMOs), but there are also occasions of games with actual authors and professional writers attached.

That leads me neatly into a point I've wanted to bring up for a long time. A while back I stumbled across an epic arguement on a forum about the quality of the story behind the Halo games. One party claiming the writing could be disfavourably compared to being attacked and eaten by zombies, the other party claiming it was inspired by divine sources and milked from the nipple of Aphrodite herself.

Obviously I've already revealed my side in this arguement. The Halo story is as enthralling as a damp rag. The part that really made me laugh was when side one argued about how horrible the story was, side two replied with the following.

"If you read the novels you'll see why the halo story is so awesome."

I've never looked at the Halo novels, I don't know if they are well written, or what. But here we have the subtle collapse of the pro-halo-story arguement. The arguement is that the Halo story is horrifically bad, the Halo story is seperate to the novel. It's like someone saying the Spiderman movies are great because X happened in the comics (I know, not entirely metaphorically correct, but the point stands). The Halo novels are giving the setting and characters to an actual author and saying "What can you do with this, having been given this background information?". When arguing about the quality of a game's storyline, all you can utilise is the game itself.

Now, let's finish on something completely different.

Awwwwww..

Giant robots represented as @

2009-04-01T13:58:00.003+11:00

Edit: Fixed the link.

Holy crap, nearly up to post 200. Only 20 to go, which should only take me a month and a half.

Any of you know what a Rogue-like game is?

Rogue was a game back when graphics were for PANSIES and real men used screens with black backgrounds and a blinking tile showing you where the cursor was. If you needed a mouse you were a WUSS. In that game, your character is represented by a coloured @, your enemies are represented by appropriate letters all the colours of the rainbow (capital letters if they're a -real threat-), and you kill them by moving around with the up, down, left and right keys, then attempting to move into the square the enemies are in. It's like the ultimate in minimalistic gameplay. The true genius of this? Since the gameplay coding can be done predominantly in a VERY short time, that leaves the creators the chance to work on some very, VERY in depth background coding.

With that in mind I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Gearhead. Say hello Gearhead.

Gearhead: Hello.

Thank you. Now what impresses me about Gearhead? Let's ignore for the moment that it's a quite strategic RPG with both personal scale and giant-robot scale combat, or that it's got giant robots in it, or that it's a quite in depth open ended RPG sandbox game. What does it have?

One simple phrase: Every. Play-through. Is. Different.

I don't mean in the sense "Well I used the plasma rifle to kill the bad guy THIS time" sense. I mean in the sense that it randomly generates an overall plot for your character at each juncture. Granted these randomly generated plots may not have as much depth as specifically written ones, but it works. It works REALLY WELL.

Give Gearhead a try. I've attempted number 2, but I actually prefer the Rogue-like system over the poor graphics, personally.

Nunchuck videos

2009-03-30T16:20:00.003+11:00

Not really in a blogging frame of mind right now. So instead you get this.

Even if it is fake, I don't care. More Nunchucks should be given out to the populace. If you're the sort of person to swing it without concern, you DON'T DESERVE TO BREED.

And since Nunchucks and videos were mentioned, I have to include this.

Non-expert commentary

2009-03-28T16:31:00.002+11:00

So, people hear rumours spreading around about how bad a certain example of a type of media is. From there they spread the word, informing others of how horrible it is, relating annecdotes discussing why it should be banned or shunned.

What am I discussing here? Two different events, actually.

1. Mass Effect's nudity

2. Twilight.

I will be the first to say I laughed alongside many'a geek when one of the outspoken critics of Mass Effect laughed off the question "Have you actually played the game" with the response "oh good lord no".

"Ah ha ha, what ignorance!" I spake to myself, content in my own knowledge and superiority.

Probably a year later I read about Twilight and joined in the chorus loudly shouting about how crap it was. A friend asked me "Have you actually read it?", and I barely stopped myself from replying with a hearty "oh good lord no". It took me a second to realise what I was doing. I was doing the exact same thing as others did with Mass Effect, one of my favourite games.

So, am I simply a hypocritical arse?

Oh good lord no.

The primary difference is that I didn't just take word of mouth from a few individuals. I read up about it. I read Twilight book and movie reviews, both positive and negative (although I have to admit, overwhelmingly negative, but that's because they seemed to be the easiest to find). While I have never seen the Twilight movie or read the book, I maintain I am justified in disliking it without having read/seen it. Why is that? Because I basically did the internet equivilent of asking around about it and worked out from the opinions given (positive and negative) what sort of book/movie it was. From there I decided it is not the sort of book/movie I enjoy. In fact it is the sort of book/movie I relegate to the pile "Fucking shit."

Now, finish on a metaphor.

I don't have to eat crap to know it would taste bad. I can just look at it and say "Well, that would taste quite bad based on the smell and visual texture of it." Granted there is the possibility I may be pleasently surprised, and find this is crap from the Francais-monster, which has faeces that tastes like a perfectly cooked croissant with a light dabbing of butter inside, fed to me by a beautiful, scantily clad maiden. It could taste like that, but eating every pile of shit just because there may be nice tasting poo somewhere is stupid.

On the other hand, if someone puts a plate in front of you with something on it, covered in a cloth, and says "Underneath this is shit, don't eat it!", I will likely pull back the cloth to see if it is, indeed, shit underneath.

An awkward metaphor, but it massively increased the number of 'poo' synonyms I've used in this blog.

Fast zombies suck

2009-03-27T11:56:00.003+11:00

Edit: Additional: Unrelated to the below. Remember how I stated "Anyone who can complete the mission 'Occupation of Arteria Carpal' (or whatever it's called) is a freak". I must amend that. "Anyone who can complete that mission without ENORMOUS DIFFICULTY" is a freak. Since I kinda just finished it. With an A rating.

It's taken me months, if not years, but I've finally worked out why no movie with fast zombies has impacted on me as much as slow zombies.

Long term readers (or reader, possibly, this isn't a big blog) know of my fear of zombies. One of the main factors of that fear is the fact that when you get killed by zombies, you don't just die, you get dragged down and torn apart, eaten in front of your dying eyes. A horde of the bastards holding you in place as scrabbling fingernails and teeth rip at your flesh with an inevitable slowness you cannot hold back.

Consider the movies with fast moving zombies, primarily Dawn of the Dead (remake) (note, 28 days/weeks later is a good movie, but it is NOT a zombie movie, reasons later). In that movie we saw almost no one get genuinely pulled down and eaten. There were hints that the stupid security guard had that happen, but even what we saw was more like the savaging of dogs then the relentless feast of the undead. Fast zombies lack one of the primary fears of Shambling zombies, so they just lose points with me. Sure, in a purely practical sense it'd be better to be facing a horde of slow zombies then a horde of fast zombies, but they lack one of the primary fear inducers for me.

Now, as for why 28 days/weeks isn't a zombie movie? Even avoiding the semantical differences of "It's a virus, not the evil undead" (which doesn't work, since plenty of zombie stories rely upon the idea of zombism being spread through a virus), the reason is the effect of the zombification. Zombies have a specific terror-inducing purpose, to devour you. The 'Rage'd in 28 D/W are just there to inflict harm by any means, with the possibility of infecting you. It's more like an out of control riot then a zombie invasion.

Don't get me wrong, great series of movies, just not zombie movies.

4(chan) f's sake

2009-03-25T09:02:00.002+11:00

First off, welcome back to me. Computer is working once more. Yay me, now I can indulge in my addiction to the internet.

D'you like the title? Took me all of twenty seconds to come up with.

First thing's first: 4chan is the arse end of the internet. If you want to understand why the internet is such a disappointment, look at 4chan. They took what could've been a collective database of the accumulated knowledge of the world, and turned it into memes, in-jokes and a collective nest of horrifyingness. 4chan scares me. I take pride in the knowledge I've only visited there twice, and both times I was sent fleeing into the darkest corners of my room, sobbing and rocking back and forth, muttering to myself about lemon parties and girls in tubs.

That said, 4chan, ever now and then, makes utter friggin' gold.

1d4chan.org

I would like to expose you to the "Traditional gaming" wiki within 4chan. While there're some jokes that could use a bit of sophistication, there are some absolutely brilliant parts in it.

The ultimate definition of Warhammer 40,000, taken from their description of Tyranids: "Tyranids will eat everything and shit out grimdark".

Absolutely brilliant parody of that oh-so-common "examples of play" thing used in RPG rulebooks: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Examples_of_Play

Look through it and you'll find other amusing parts.

Something I find amusing? There are a few topics described on there that not even 4chan will mock. Gary Gygax's page, while containing a few examples of bad jokes (all made out of respect) refers to how everyone was affected by the great man's passing. The page on D&D is mostly non-humourous, with only a few jokes thrown in, as if they'd forgotten they were trying to be funny for most of the writing.

No posts for a while

2009-03-22T16:06:00.001+11:00

Due to computer malfunctions (at least that's what I assume it is. My computer went "pft" then refuses to turn on) this blog shall not be updated for a little while. How long? No clue, depends on how long it takes to get it fixed.

Note: I believe I am good at the game Armored Core: For Answer. Not perfect, but good.

With that in mind, if you can complete the mission "Occupation of Arteria Carpals", you are a god damned freak.

That is all.

Narrative stupidity

2009-03-21T12:55:00.003+11:00

People who know me, or long term readers will be familiar with the fact that I have a genuine... I won't say phobia, but in the region, about Zombies. If I watch a zombie movie, I cannot sleep that night. Very little other stuff has that impact on me. Zombies just freak me the hell out. In an effort to combat this I am forcing myself to watch Zombie movies at every available opportunity (in daylight, to minimise the negative effect. Baby-steps fellows, baby steps.).

One of my recent attempts was watching the remake of Dawn of the Dead. A pretty meh movie, and the speed of the zombies actually lessens the impact they have on me, but it made me think of something (stop reading if you don't want spoilers, but this doesn't give away too much, really). I can understand from a narrative perspective WHY the survivors decided to venture out to try and find somewhere safer, it moves the story along beyond "here be living people in the mall, there be dead outside" to a direct confrontation with masses of the living dead which makes for a more climactic finish. It doesn't change the fact the plan is FUCKING STUPID.

Like I said, from a narrative standpoint it makes sense, it moves the story along into something like a peak of action, but it is still completely moronic. They're abandoning a safehouse with food, water and protection (and yes, I do understand that their idea of it being safe has been shaken, doesn't stop the plan being stupid) to attempt to cross through no-man's land in the hope of there being a better safehouse elsewhere. Sorry guys and dolls, but that is completely moronic. They even try to lampshade it by having one of the characters define it in those terms and then agree with it anyway. It doesn't work, it just makes him look like a moron because he knows what's happening but goes along with it anyway.

Their logic is something like this: "If we stay here, eventually we'll probably all be killed. But if we go out there, we'll all have a much higher chance of being killed for a short time, then if we survive in the near future we MIGHT find somewhere safer then we are."

When the narrative requires your characters act like complete idiots, don't expect your audience to not notice. Hell, in the horror genre this is a common occurence.

"What are you doing! Don't friggin' split up!"
"Yeah, great plan, go and check out the dark room by yourself without telling anyone where you're going."
"Why in the name of CHRIST are you leaving the tent without a weapon, despite knowing there's an undead bear trying to eat you!?"

It is Jason's superpower. He inspires idiocy in his victims.

Branching missions

2009-03-18T18:33:00.003+11:00

Often in pre-planned tabletop gaming campaigns or computer games the Games Master/designers will throw in something called "Branching Missions." Despite the name they don't actually have to Branch that much, just have a couple of different options available that change what missions are available later. These have a number of benefits and detriments, that, in lieu of actual intelligent discussion (which is so common around here, end-sarcasm) I will describe in my own painfully inept manner. I mentioned tabletop gaming campaigns but, let's be perfectly honest, I don't have enough experience with that to be able to do anything other then say "in my imagination, while I'm surrounded by my millions of friends, this is how it is." As such it will be completely ignored.

Benefits: Branching missions encourage replayability. If there are five endings to a campaign then you're encouraging players to go through the campaign five times in order to find an ending they like, or alternatively see the wide variety from "here he comes, the hero of the house" to "you couldn't have cocked that up more, could you?"

Take the game that inspired this discussion. The campaign is remarkably short, being finished in two relatively normal gaming sessions, but the promise of three different endings has had me replaying it no less then four times looking for all these different endings and trying to finish all the mission (well, that promise, and the fact that I'm flying around in a gnarly death machine of awesomeness). I've replayed the same missions over and over again. If I am offered hundreds of thousands of credits in the future to destroy another giant rolling fortress bristling with weaponry I'll be treating that request in the same way I'd treat the request to walk the Dogs.

While I didn't play through all the missions in the first runthrough, the gameplay length has been extended like a manhood through the use of clever branching. What should have been done and dusted inside of 48 hours has instead lasted as long as sex being watched over by your Mum, namely, nearly a week of awkward stop-and-go gameplay with a strong sense of disapproval involved.

Detriments: This was touched on briefly above. Take a standard bunch of missions for a game, and arrange them in a linear manner.

Opening cinematic.
Mission 1
Mission 2
Mission 3
Mission 4
Mission 5
Mission 6
Mission 7
Mission 8
Mission 9
Ending cinematic.

If we're generous and assume it'll take an hour to finish each mission, then from opening cinematic from end will take 9 hours of playtime. Now, let's see what happens if the game branches off after level 3.

Mission 1
Mission 2
Mission 3
Mission 4 OR Mission 5
Mission 6 OR Mission 7
Mission 8 OR Mission 9

Let us once more assume it takes an hour, and now suddenly for the same amount of development work you get a game that takes 6 hours, and feels drastically shorter. Unless the player loved every minute of it, they are not going to want to throw down another 6 hours just to see ending two.

Although this isn't fair, since alot of games with campaign missions will have the choice only in major missions, and the ones in the middle being repeated anyway. But this doesn't avoid the problem that unless there's a significant hook, why would the player want to repeat a mission they've already done four times, just trying to get the third ending.

In short: Developers, Branching mission trees are great. They can really add to the feeling that the player has some control over themselves. However if you're going to make the player repeat missions he's done before try to have some other hook in place. For Armoured Core For Answer (still a stupid name) that hook would be, as mentioned before, that I'm flying around in a customisable gnarly death machine of awesomeness. Seriously, a mission doesn't feel the same if the first time you did it you had a pair of laser blades on an agile plane-thing with legs, and the second time you had a tank-like thing with a bazooka the size of something really huge.

Like your mother.

... Man, what a juvenile note to end on.

Penn from Penn & Teller is an alright dude

2009-03-16T14:24:00.003+11:00

What does this post have to do with nerdisms? SFA, but I'm running out of topics and I want to post this.

http://www.youtube.com/user/pennsays

I have only seen a couple of episodes of "Bullshit", the show that (I believe) Penn and Teller made their names in. To be honest, I didn't enjoy the show a great deal when I saw it, but that's not to say watching it was a waste of time. That show was what made me dislike Michael Moore. In general, both Moore and Bullshit have a similar interviewing style. They'll interview people, then when the person say something they'll pause it and put in a voiceover showing them where they were wrong. This is not a good debate, it means the other side has no chance to really respond. Both Bullshit and Moore do this. Bullshit may do differently now, especially since apparently Penn is very rigorous in his research, if the subtitles correcting himself in his videos are any indicator.

But that's not what I'm here to discuss. Check out the above Youtube channel. There's alot of stuff in it I generally disagree with, but at the same time there's plenty I agree with (just like with normal people, it's rare to meet someone you agree or disagree about everything with), but again that's not the point. Penn is quite a celebrity, and I would be willing to say most people I speak to on a regular basis would know who he is, if only vaguely, but the blog technique he's using is basically.... no technique, and it works. In a normal video blog there's usually a degree of editing to make it seem seemless, expressing the maximum amount of information/opinion/entertainment in the minimum amount of time. Penn's style seems to be almost like you're sitting with him on his travels (and he rarely seems to do a video from the same spot twice) and he's expressing an opinion. For a brief moment it's easy to forget he's a celebrity on the other side of the world, it feels almost like a normal person just telling an anecdote.

As likely as I am to disagree or agree with his particular perspective on matters, and as much as I didn't like his TV show, I have to admit I respect the man himself.

Watchmen comparison

2009-03-15T09:51:00.002+11:00

You know what, I was planning out a grand discussion on the comparitive differences between the Watchmen movie and comic, but it's just too hard to do that without ruining the story for people.

So I'll just summarise my thoughts thusly.

1. It is a GOOD MOVIE. It is not a perfect movie, there is alot I would have prefered to see done differently (both to bring it a little closer to the comic, drop things that were completely unnecessary, or just improve the quality of the movie generally).

2. It needed about a third of the songs taken out. Sometimes silence says more then an 80's soundtrack does. It feels to me like the Director paid for the rights to a mess of songs, then thought they wouldn't be getting their money's worth if they didn't use them all.

3. The ending has changed, yes Watchmen fans I know, it sounds like sacrilege. But I will risk your wrath by saying: I Prefer this ending. The one in the comic feels a bit "Hey dude, fuck the what?", whereas this does feel more like a dastardly scheme with the best of intentions.

4. Nite Owl, my previously mentioned favourite character, has more characterisation in this movie. It works well, I think. Plus the actor they got for him did an amazing job in my view. He went from powerless human to powerful masked crusader very smoothly.

5. They did an admirable job of covering all the backstory, I doubt they could have done it better without tacking an extra 30 minutes on an already enormous movie, but still I get the feeling someone who'd never read the Watchmen would be a bit out of their depth.

6. They kinda give away the Silk Specter twist a little early, in my view. Anyone with half a mind could work it out well in advance of it being worked out.

7. The actor playing Rorshach did an admirable job of seeming like a threatening bastard, despite being about 5 foot 6.

8. There are alot of little hints in the movie that they not only paid tribute to some of the miniplots (the news vender and comic reading kid), but probably filmed alot more then they showed with them. I'm looking forward to the extended edition DVD (which according to rumours is going to have the Black Ship plot in it, voiced by the dude who played Leonidas from 300).

Final thoughts? I'd like to see Zack Snyder try to direct something where the entire movie hasn't already been storyboarded for him in a comic. Just for some variety.

Electronics Boutique games is a rip-off

2009-03-13T16:43:00.004+11:00

Just a short post today dealing with something that annoys me.

If you're a fan of Zero Punctuation, or otherwise live here, you may have heard the prices for games in Australia. They're ridiculous. Recent events have brought to my attention that these prices may be majoritively the fault of Electronics Boutique games.

"Ha ha," you snidely laugh, dismissing my proposal without a second thought as the two dimensional Socratic Dialogue rip-off that you are, "what a poorly constructed arguement.

For your entertainment I submit two links.

BAM!

http://www.ebgames.com.au/ps3/product.cfm?id=12939&refer=productsearch

And BAM!

http://dstore.com.au/games/Armored-Core-For-Answer/2732218.html

From $110 Australian to $55 Australian (although to be fair, the Dstore one I ended up buying in the end WAS on special. It was down from $60).

You tug your collar awkwardly and begin sweating like a Walrus under the withering gaze of my arguement. "Well surely," stumbles out of your lips like a drunken hooker, "the shipping cost makes up for the difference."

BAM!

No. The shipping would have been $10 or so. I bought it piggybacking on a friend of mine buying something else there, and they had a special on that weekend wherein shipping was free for two or more items.

Even had I bought it by myself and forked over the shipping, and had it not been on special, that still would've bene a saving of $40. I could get myself half a case worth of beer at my local bar for that. I could buy nearly a full case of beer for that at the bottleshop.

EB nearly denied me a dozen beers. And for that they have my eternal hatred.

And now, just to round things off:

Retraction

2009-03-11T23:24:00.002+11:00

My previous blog post about an obsessional robot seems to be inaccurate. After some suspicion (when I noticed the original article didn't site it's sources) I did a couple of quick Google searches.

Wouldn't'ya know it. The Toshiba Akimu Robotic Research Institute doesn't actually EXIST. Every single google search leads to a copy of that article I linked to. It seems IGN was just making shit up for shits and giggles.

Well played IGN. Well played.

Original article edited.

Mythbusters Vs Prototype this

2009-03-11T20:30:00.002+11:00

I imagine all of you are aware of Mythbusters. The collection of crazy dudes (and ladies) so awesome they inspire many'a nerdgasm. Some of you may also be aware of Prototype This, a new show by the same production company. Essentially PT is similar to MB in that it's about a bunch of eccentric genius' putting their hard earned knowledge to work in creating zany contraptions to prove a point. The difference is that while MB test out the likelihood of a Myth being true, PT use it to attempt to build working prototypes of possible future inventions.

Sounds fun right? Well, having seen a few episodes I feel I am now an expert on the matter and as such can comment in such a way that I cannot ever be disproven.

Prototype This just doesn't have the same degree of appeal for a variety of reasons.

1. Unpolished. This will obviously fix with age, as they settle into their roles and the production team smooth everything out. They'll work out what parts of the procedure work on the show, what parts struggle, and what parts they need to add. As the show goes on, this will be fixed

2. Different challenges. In Mythbusters the joy is seeing the trial and error. They'll spend days building this huge rig, then abandon it when it doesn't work in favour of using something very low tech.

3. The Spectacle. On Mythbusters the excitement of the team is almost palpable, you can feel it and get excited alongside them. Since PT so far seem to be showcasing their inventions for the (altogether too small (again something time might fix)) crowd, and none of them get as excited, it's hard to feel like laughing aloud.

4. The artificial deadline. Mythbusters occasionally mentioned how some things would 'take too long', but they never really set a deliberate deadline outside of specific challenges in which the deadline added to the fun. In Prototype This they set themselves an artificial deadline to add to the rushed feeling, but it never really inspires the excitement they're going for, for me. Instead I just see them all get stressed and rushed and I don't enjoy myself as much. Occasionally the Mythbusters would get down about something not working, but in general it was a feeling of excitement. Prototype this feels like watching people do work.

5. Non-personalities. Maybe it's just because (once more time) we haven't had time to get to know them, but the main people in Prototype this feel too similar, with the only differentiating factor being their haircuts (which is a pretty petty complaint, but come on, these haircuts are just plain scary).

6. EXPLOSIONS. Prototype This are building shit. Mythbusters are blowing shit up. I REST MY CASE.

Ok, a little more detail. Building things is a long and laborious process, meaning the show can only really focus upon one thing at a time, with the entire team working together to build a single item. Mythbusters swapped between several stories at JUST the right pacing. Since you wanted to see where the story went, so you were kept there waiting to see it return, all the while enjoying the next one. Prototype This feels almost like a lecture, keeping to one topic for the whole hour.

EXPLOSIONS.

Crazy robot love

2009-03-10T19:49:00.005+11:00

EDIT: The original article is pretty much a hoax. Check it out, no sources sited, and every single google result for the Toshiba Akimu Robotic Research Institute is a link to a copy of the original article. It MAY be accurate, but I sincerely, sincerely doubt it. For now, be that cool "hard to convince" guy among your friends. I'll leave the original post on my blog in place for archive purposes.

For those of you hoping for something else, this is the WHOLESOME kind of love.

Well, not really.

http://au.gear.ign.com/articles/959/959790p1.html

Wow. Just wow.

Crazy robot love. Were it to ever happen to me, that's a story that I'd have to retell over beer, occasionally sprinkling my performance with shudders of terror, and punctuating my fear of the recollection with a massive gulping of alcohol, before crying into the remains of my schooner.

That is so awesome. Not for the person the robot loves, of course, but for me as a spectator it is incredibly cool. The concept that scientists try to program human emotion into a robot and the first thing they manage is batshit insane stalker. If it continues like this it'll be absolutely amazing.

What happens when they make a robot designed to clean your toenails? Mass amputations.

A robot meant to cut your hair? Genitals removed across the world

The next generation of tickle-me-Elmo will rip people limb from limb.

Japan, can I ask a favour? Can you wait until after I've lived a rich and full life before plunging the world into the Ropocolpyse? Thanks, I owe you one.

Introspective

2009-03-09T19:47:00.002+11:00

Nearly 8 months I've been blogging.

163 posts.

An average of nearly 21 posts per month.

Holy shit and bricks.

Any point to this post? Nope, not really. Just saying that my respect for Jackie Chan is THROUGH THE ROOF: http://www.jackiechankids.com/files/Jackie_Injury_Map_Main.htm

I didn't even know you COULD dislocate your sternum!

Sustainable evil

2009-03-07T16:09:00.003+11:00

In a recent conversation with my brother we remarked upon something that's been bothering me for while. Are you familiar with Dungeons and Dragons? Passingly? Ok, near enough.

In the backstory there's this race of black skinned Elves who are evil (no racial comparisons intended by the designers... hopefully). They are evil pretty much to the last man (although considering how 99.99% of them are evil, there's a surprisingly large number of misrepresented rebels), and as such their society consists of oppression, scheming, political assassinations and vast amounts of "let's fuck over our neighbour and take their stuff". That's all well and good, it provides a good moral reason for the appropriately varied small group of elite warriors and wizards to sneak in and kill them because they're being evil and threatening, and sometimes that's GOOD for a party. No moral considerations, just "bad guys are here, stab their faces in". Oh, and they live in one of the most hostile areas of the world imaginable, where everything wants to eat everything else's faces.

However...

And this is a big BIG however...

As mentioned this is a race of Elves. In common Fantasy one of the normal aspects of Elves is that they breed very, very slowly. Maybe they're so sick of beautiful people they don't get it on much, but in general Elves breed slowly. The only reason the race doesn't die out completely is they're very good at what they do, and so don't die alot.

So a race that constantly kills each other, lives in one of the most hostile lands imaginable, and constantly tries to invade the 'good' surface world... SOMEHOW has a viable population. Call me picky, but this makes no sense. In general if a species is constantly getting picked off, the only way to avoid that is to have LOTS of babies, which it's already established Elves don't do. As an evil race of bastards, this is completely unsustainable.

It is then my brother came up with one of the greatest terms ever.

S.E.R.

Sustainable Evil Race.

A Sustainable Evil Race is one in which the population will never fall below a certain line of sustainable growth, no matter how many of them are killed by "heroic Adventueres" walking in, stabbing them and taking their shit, or the elements, or their environment, or even each other. Orcs and Goblins are normally a good example of this, since there seem to be so many of the bastards you couldn't stop them from showing up, even if you wanted to. Drow and other evil elven-like races? Not so much. Kill a couple and it'd be a genuine blow to the race. Kill an army of races like Kobolds and they'll be up and at'em again in a couple of years.

So, what is required for a sustainably evil race? Let's introduce some faux maths.

B = Birth Rate, how many will be born over a given time period
S = Percent who survive to 'fighting' age, the age they can fight alongside other evil buggers.
E = Environmental dangers, how many will die because of their surroundings over a given time period
I = Infighting dangers, how many will die because of they are all arseholes over a given time period
H = Heroic dangers, how many will die because of "heroes" killing them and taking their stuff over a given time period
L = Locations, how far spread around the world they are

(B x S - E - I - H)^L

An Example or two:

Drow have a low Birth Rate, but most of then survive because of protection by their family. Their environmental dangers are enormous, as is the infighting. Heroes aren't TOO common, but common enough to be a threat. While the Underdark (where they live) is meant to be enormous, it's also meant to be very inhospitable, and as such there aren't too many Drow settlements. As such, it's quite easy to imagine the Drow are NOT a sustainable evil population. If they didn't have as much infighting or heroic encounters it's not hard to imagine they'd have a greater chance of survival.

Goblins breed like rabbit hermaphrodites, alot of them probably die before reaching 'fighting' age because of low resources. They're the bottom of the food chain and bicker among themselves all the time, as well as having enormous problems with huge numbers of threatening heroes. But, and a big but, they are EVERYWHERE. The fact they breed like it's going out of fashion coupled with the fact they're all over the place means the best you can possibly do is wipe out a few tribes, and even then the other tribes will have bred enough in that time to make up for it. Goblins ARE a sustainably evil population.

What's the lesson here kids? If a race is going to have massive infighting, be evil enough to want to invade everywhere, and have major problems with the tough environment, they're going to need to breed enormously just to keep the numbers up. Remember that when you're designing stuff.

I need to play less Armored Core 4

2009-03-06T21:43:00.003+11:00

I've already mentioned my love for the Armoured Core series of games stems from the fact I'm actually GOOD at them. It's one of my few games I can perform at a high level at. Granted I'm not a superhuman as some people seem to be (search for AC4 missions on Youtube, there are some ANIMALS on there), but I can hold my own, and given enough practice and time to design a giant robot I can take out most threats.

Case in point: There is a mission in the game where, in normal difficulty, you and two other Armoured Cores (both of them horribly designed) are up against a force of four elite ACs. You're outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed. It took me a few goes and a bit of tweaking of my AC, but I could beat it in the end. Then after finishing the (very short) game I decided to give the Hard version of this mission a try, since apparently you get special items for doing so. Now just so you know, when you do the hard version of a mission in this game it isn't a matter of "hey hey, enemies have higher accuracy", it's a genuinely redesigned mission with more enemies and less allies. Sometimes it's not much harder (a little extra health on the lone enemy), but other times it's genuinely WAY more difficult. In this case it was the latter.

For this mission I had to take on, by myself four weakened Armoured Cores. That is a BIG deal. It took me nine tries, and three difference ACs, but in the end I finally came up with a design that I believed could do it. First time through this final design (The Sledge MK IV) ripped them apart, barely lowering me to half health in doing so.

I had a minor panic attack when I realised this was the game I was "that" guy for. The one game where I rip through things, while normal people who play it struggle.

Then I pushed it aside and dedicated myself to that which takes up WELL over half the gameplay for me. It's not the actual missions, or the simulation/arena stuff, oh no. It's my holy grail.

Customisability.

Say it with me brothers!

Customisability.

Say it for me sisters, in your sexy voices!

Customisability.

I will grant you, the majority of customisation in AC4 is not truly game-altering, the most you can possibly do is change primary three factors

1. How much you can be shot
2. How fast you jet around
3. What guns you shoot

Other alterations are majoritively cosmetic, with their influences being secondary considerations at best. But still, it's enough for me. Even if it is just window dressing to change my ACs head to another design that looks better and offers 1% better armour, at the cost of 1% extra weight... It's still wonderful.

The reason for that is the ability to look back at that which you create and say, even if it has likely been designed by someone else somewhere in the world:

"This is MY Armoured Core 4 design, my NEXT. There may be other ones like it, but this one is mine."

For me it's like the love a car nut has for his vehicle, constantly tinkering with it and trying to get that LITTLE bit extra out of the little bastard. If I'm being honest with myself, I know the tiny alterations I make barely make an appreciable difference, but when I start up a mission with a rejigging of an old design I always think to myself "ahh, that's better". Or starting up a mission with a brand new design my first thought is to categorise the flaws and ponder how I can iron them out.

The game gives points called "FPS" points, which can be used to tweak certain statistics of the giant robot, making some parts of it perform better. Each of these provides a percentage based boost, that in playable terms probably makes almost NO difference by themselves, but throwing 50 or so into one stat can really help. So why, oh why, do I agonise over where to play that last miserable five points? It makes NO difference.

That's customisability for you. It turns a relatively geeky player into an obsessive/compulsive nutcase.

P.S. Yes, I know there are plenty of people out there who are animals at the game who could rip me a new one, but I haven't met them, and I imagine if I do meet them I'll feel like I need a shower afterwards. I'm the best player of the game I've encountered in my (admittedly) limited experience, so in my little world I'm far, FAR too good at the game to be healthy.

P.P.S. Next post I'll ramp up the nerd value by discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition.

"Perfect" writing

2009-03-04T21:43:00.003+11:00

I got into a debate very recently about defining 'perfect' writing. It stemmed from a friend telling me fanboys are panning the new Watchmen movie, to which I replied that didn't matter, since I wasn't a fanboy. From there it got into a point where I stated a fan will acknowledge something as masterfully done, a fanboy will insist it is perfect.

To call anything done by humankind perfect is to do the word an injustice.

Perfection is an unattainable goal, one that should still be sought for by people attempting to create things, but still completely unattainable. Nothing will ever be perfect, and if I ever meet a writer who is willing to say they think a piece of writing they did was perfect and nothing they could do would ever improve upon it, I would say they are a lazy writer rather then an excellent one.

The Watchman comic (I refuse the use the term Graphic Novel, and if you ever catch me using it, feel free to give me a verbal backhander) is an amazing story. It is a psychological profile of a world outside of our own yet so intimately familiar. It's an incredible story of social mores and morals. It's an amazing glimpse of a history that never happened. But it is NOT a perfect story (I am so going to get mugged by some guy in a Rorshach mask later).

Perfection is at best a subjective interpretation of something. If I judged Watchmen as a perfect comic, I would be stamping a subjective label on it, something that cannot be objectively verified, but even then I believe I would be simply deluding myself, since the moment something is called perfect, it denies that improvements can be made on anything. Since interpretation of a narrative (or really any form of art) is subjective, this cannot be true since perfection for one individual is not perfection for another, and thus improvements can always be made.

Ok, I admit, that last paragraph didn't make much sense, think about it like this: Perfection is something that can be true in two ways.
1. Objectively. If you have a perfect 100ml container, it will hold 100ml of water perfectly. This is objective perfection, in that it cannot be improved upon. The moment this container holds 100ml perfectly there is no way in which it can be improved in the task of holding 100ml of liquid.
2. Subjectively. If something is subjectively perfect, it is judged as perfect by an individual. This means the individual has decreed in their own mind that there is absolutely NO way something can improve upon the design/substance of the item in question. In my view, this is entirely wrong.

Someone can discuss "the perfect car", but it negates the idea that it could be supplanted by another "perfect car" in the future. A story can be "perfect", but that states that nothing can ever outdo that story in what it is attempting to do.

The moment something is labelled as perfect, I believe people are being close-minded. This is one of the reasons I dislike fanboys, since they are closing their mind to the idea of improvement by describing something as perfect. This is also a reason I always go into movie adaptations of previous stories with a sense of hope, believe that even if the adaptation is DIFFERENT, it may still be good.

That is, of course, completely ignoring my inherent uneasiness of remakes, adaptations and sequels as "max profit min brainpower" factory-produced movies, but I've talked enough about that in the past.

Watchmen: Nite Owl

2009-03-03T08:56:00.003+11:00

With the Watchmen movie coming up, it's understandable that the topic will come up in conversation occasionally. However, every time it does I get an odd look the moment I mention my favourite Watchmen character.

Nite Owl.

People just look at me as if I misprounouced the name of my fiance on the alter, but it's true.

"But he's so boring!"
"He doesn't really DO anything."
"He's like Batman without anything interesting."

One particular interpretation I've heard of the Watchmen shows three of the main characters as 'aspects' of Batman. Veidt is Batman's intelligence without his morality or desire for vengeance, Rorscharchs is Batman's vengeance without his cunning or morality, and Nite Owl is Batman's gadgetry and sense of justice.

Nite Owl is just a guy who is morally good at heart who happens to have a knowledge of mechanics/electronics and a desire to help the world, who gets in WAY over his head.

The others are either so crazy, have their heads so far into the clouds or so caught up in their own problems they don't really notice just what they're getting into. Nite Owl is the one person who has his head on his shoulders firmly enough to realise what's happening is bigger then any of them (well, except maybe one or two).

Rorsharch is an amazing character, but there's nothing actually LIKEABLE about him, same with the Comedian. Both of them are FRIGGIN' MENTAL. Veidt and Dr Manhattan are both highly interesting character studies of what would occur if you gave people these abilities, but still they're not particularly empathisable, and I, for one, never felt like I could relate to them. Silk Spectre was too caught up in her own problems, and I never really got a feel for the character.

Nite Owl is a (relatively, he still dresses as an Owl and fights crime) sane individual who just wanted to try and help. When the Keene act passed, he didn't have some grand scheme to avoid it, or just go crazy and ignore it. He was as surprised as anyone and was afraid to break it.

Let's face it, all nerds have harboured hidden dreams of one day being a superhero, and for most of us Nite Owl is a look at who we would have become had we done so. A relatively normal person who is out of his/her depth, but still tries to do their best. I find that incredibly relatable, which I imagine was the point to the character. It's Nite Owl who grounds the whole story, his feeble protests that remind us that what's happening IS extraordinary, something we often forget in the constant realm of comic books where death is temporary and breasts are forever perky.

I am looking forward to seeing Nite Owl in action in the movie.

Games without stories

2009-03-01T20:56:00.004+11:00

One might think from the title I may be about to talk about random puzzle games, or pointless fighting games, but no, I'm here to talk about games that TRY to have a story, and fail.

We've all played them. They're the pointless fighting games (or, as I recently found, Armored Core 4) that believe they have a story. They believe it, but that doesn't make it true.

Soul Calibur 4 is a perfect example. I just wish there isn't an actual writer who comes up with all that stuff. It's a bad story to begin with, and I didn't even understand it until I read it on Wikipedia ("wait, is THAT what it was meant to be? How the hell'd they work that out from that cutscene?"), and even now I think it was a waste of disc space that could've contained more breasts. Ha ha. I kid, I kid, that game couldn't contain more breasts if it came with the Victoria's Secret catalogue.

What inspired this? The above mentioned Armored Core 4. I love a good giant-robot-fighting game, and while AC4 may be a bit too fast paced for me (I still love it, I'm just not particularly good at it). It really, really wishes it had a story. It doesn't. It has characters (or close approximations of them) and unrelated events. I'm sure it was meant to be a grand, powerful event when you wiped out the entire central structure of an entire super-corporation that controlled 1/6th of the earth, but it never felt like it. It felt like another 100K in the bank to spend on new shooty-death-McBoom weapons. They could have told me someone killed my 'handler', and my only thought would be "hooray, less pretentious stuff that has no relation to anything". Here's a hint game writers, if my character has killed hundreds of people at the instructions of my handler, then told to go off and kill a big boss, when she later shows remorse at the death of a man who was "fighting for what he believed in... a real hero", it seems pointless and out of character, especially when she later tells me to go blow up what's left of the hero's army for enough money to buy the dead sea scrolls and use them as toilet paper.

I've done some reading up and you-tube watching of the game "Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe", and it succumbs to the same problem. They believe there is a story. The story makes no sense, and basically consists of a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo trying to justify why close friends in the DC Universe start biffing each other, and how Batman still manages to win everything even when he gets butch-slapped to the ground.

One last example, the most recent Dead or Alive game (like I said, it's mostly fighting games with this problem). Most of the time in 'story' mode they just threw you into random fights, but every now and then they'd give you a cutscene to try and justify the fight. Some of them are just pointless, and you can tell it was just to pad out the story mode and CGI budget, others is obviously just to show off their breast physics engine. The bit that really screws it up is how little sense so much of it makes. Case in point, playing as one of the ladies, there's a point where you have to hire a mercenary to later on help you defeat the evil corporation, righto, we're following so far. The Mercenary responds that he'll only fight for people who can beat him in combat. Beside being probably the stupidest requirement in a job ever (let's face it, most mercenaries aren't hired by better soldiers then they are), it's also the most pointless. Considering in this game every single fight seems to be resolved with hand to hand combat, if she can beat him then there's no point in hiring the mercenary, as she'd do a better job herself.

Game Designers, please, either have a story or don't. These half-stories in games are confusing and pointless.

Emergeant gameplay

2009-02-27T19:30:00.005+11:00

Random thought: if apostrophes ('s) are used to contract words (didn't = did not), what is "ain't" short for? Never really thought about it before.

What is Emergeant (possibly spelt wrong) gameplay? Well, I'm going to take the annoying route and write a shirtload before I even answer that question. Read on.

Long time readers (you poor, poor saps that you are) will know the crush I have upon the concept of customisability and openness in games. In many ways this is what attracts me to particular types of tabletop games, since if you get agreement from the other players, you're able to do anything you want. Computer games have it tougher, since you're stuck operating in the parameter's defined by the game, unless you've got an expert team of modders behind you and several months to kick back and waste while waiting for them to pump out the finished product.

One of the reasons I was originally so attracted to stuff in Warhammer 40,000 is the sheer fact you can do almost anything in it. If you have an entire galaxy to work with, it makes sense there are so many things that aren't covered in the rules. The Space Marines (the primary imagery used for the game) are recorded as having thousands of chapters (individually led armies), of which I think they have precise information for about a couple of dozen at most, and names for a hundred or so more. With that degree of option available, players can paint up and design armies in almost any way they like. There always seems to be a method available to make room for anything the players can come up with (within the rules and common sense knowledge of the backstory, of course). This openness is a requirement to make a game I will genuinely enjoy (though Games Workshop really buggered up plenty of stuff with Warhammer 40K).

Why am I repeating myself about my love for open stories? I recently began replaying Mount and Blade. I've gushed about it on this blog before, so I'll save you that pain, but I really NEED to tell how awesome today's gameplay with it was. My main character is the stock standard heavily armed and armoured Knight. He's a total dick who lances people in the face in standing fights, if you refuse to fight him he raids, loots, and burns down villages for his own wealth, and if you try to outnumber him he retreats to one of his three castles (and 1 city) and waits until you go away. The only time he can really be drawn into a fight he may not be ready for is if you besiege his castles/city without him present, at which point he'll raise an army from his standing forces, head to the castle and hold you off.

Now picture this scenario, two of his castles besieged at the same time. The character shows up with his army at the first castle and helps hold off the oncoming forces, but in the process loses half his forces. Here I made a miscalculation. Normally my castle forces are good enough they could probably hold off besiegers themselves, but the second castle I went to was at half strength (not sure why, it's a game I loaded from months ago). So my reinforcement army was at half strength, my standard defense army was at half strength, shouldn't be a problem, right?

Then I find out the attacking force is literally over 1,000 men. I was defending the castle with 100.

Holy crap. It was a white-knuckle battle. You... you PLEBS have no idea how elated I felt when I managed to scrape victory out of the battle. Twice the enemy managed to push through defenses and establish themselves on the walls, and twice I had to drop my crossbow and help directly in the battle to fight them back onto their ladders. When I realised the sounds the NPCs were making suddenly changed from grunts of battle to cheers of victory, I felt triumph.

Then I felt like an idiot because I'd gotten so involved in a computer game.

This is not a scenario pre-programmed into a game, not a scripted sequence, or part of a major battle. This is Emergent gameplay. This is not programmed at all, just through the way the game story unfolded naturally I ended up in a white knuckle tense situation. Knowing that I am one of the few to end up in a situation like this and triumphant despite no advantages on my side is what made it great. When you play a linear game, while some of the challenges can be amazingly designed it is always designed with the idea in mind that it is possible to beat. Through a gameplay situation emerging naturally in an open world, there is no way to know if it is even beatable, all you can do is try your friggin' hardest.

That is also the potential drawback of emergent gameplay. Imagine if through no fault of the player, they end up in an unwinnable situation. That can really ruin the enjoyment of a game, when all of a sudden the character they have worked so hard on suddenly can't go further, all because of things that happened in the background.

To continue with the use of Mount and Blade as an example, in one of my early games I made a character with the idea in mind that he would ally himself with a particular kingdom. Through behind the scenes calculations and battle results, that kingdom ended up on the back foot so strongly that no matter how good (or in some cases, ungood, to use a 1984 word) I was and how much I influenced battles, it still was completely pointless, and I would get my arse whooped no matter what. While, easily enough, I could have swapped the character over to another kingdom or just started from scratch, it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to know how easily background events could screw over my plans.

Still, I'd say the benefits are worth the cost.

Game Developers, all eleventy billion of you that read this blog, more open-world gameplay please.

Why FPS' just don't get me

2009-02-25T19:21:00.002+11:00

Busy days = few posts

I'm not much of an FPS (First Person Shooter to the uninformed in the methodology of the geek, in which case what are you doing here?) player. If I play a game, it's either since I want to forge my own story in the game environment, or enjoy a wealth of customisation so in depth it makes god himself scratch his prematurely balding head and say "Why didn't I think of that shit?" In this respect FPS' not only fall on their arses, but they fall on their arses so hard that a little known law of physics results in their hips splatting out their forehead.

Both of these things do not come in an FPS, and few enough of them have a story worth writing home about, let alone worth writing down on a piece of paper to begin with. Except to try and work out where they're going to squeeze in a sewer level (then again, I play fantasy Roleplaying games, where sewers seem to be the one section of society that advances beyond the medieval period. Seriously, those guys have plumbing that makes my house look like I'm throwing it out my window in a bucket), and potentially trying to mention the big boss's name once or twice before the grand finale, just so the players aren't thinking "Why am I shooting this bastard" as they unload a truckload of hot steaming lead into his brain and/or arse (some particularly odd sci-fi FPS' can have both being the same thing).

First Person Shooters are, traditionally, so linear you can attach a monorail to the story. Walk down corridor's A through Z shooting anything moving that isn't in the same colours as you, occasionally stopping for a cutscene and/or high-score and/or loading screen. When the only real variations in the narrative consist of "Shall I shoot generic grunt 172 with the pistol or go all out and use the shotgun" there is no real variety in the story. Granted, some people do not WANT variety, but I do. If I play through a game twice and it's the exact same both times I won't find any enjoyment in playing it through a third time. It's like watching a movie. First time you enjoy the experience, second time you analyse the narrative, and third time you wonder why you're not watching something with full frontal nudity.

Customisability is my crack, which makes it odd how unenjoyable I found Spore. It's probably just because Spore felt like you were playing the exact same game with a different skin, no matter how you tried to make your animals different. In an FPS customisability is which collection of death dealing guns you'll tote around like an anti-social maniac in the zombie apocalypse. Sometimes a game will go all out and allow you to choose your armour. Then there are some wild and crazy FPS (all designed for online play) where you choose a Class! These continally fail to gain my attention since I'm far more interested in a roleplaying game where characters can be genuinely different.

Someday someone will make an open sandbox game with nearly limitless customisability of your character. On that day I will happily resign from life and build a basement so I can hang around in it all day playing this game.

This will be doubly beneficial for me, since about this time the seas will turn to blood and there will be a sudden market for snow shovels in hell.

Oh ho, end on that bloody overused "snowing in hell" joke. Well guess what, I KNOW it makes no sense (Dante's inferno describes the deepest circle of hell as being an ice and snow covered plain) and I'll use it anyway. It's cuz I'm a maverick, see.

Don't see the new Punisher movie

2009-02-22T12:59:00.004+11:00

I was all set up and prepared to do a post discussing how so many prime time TV shows seem to want to reference fight club, but so few of them get it, but then... Then I saw the second Punisher movie (the third, if you count the original one a decade or so ago). "Punisher: Warzone".

Oh sweet jesus. Surely there are better stories that can be told. That movie was incredibly painful. I believe the metaphor I used on facebook to describe it was "It's like getting your wisdom teeth removed via your scrotum" (to female readers lacking in male genitalia, you'll have to imagine something quite painful and awkward).

1. The child. Sure, her father's dead, but would she REALLY latch on, that quickly, to a tall male who wanders in? Especially since this tall male makes her mother cry first time they meet. What did he do to her before she latched on? He gave her a flashlight. Whoop-di-do.

A note for next time. If you want a more emotional story, have her be afraid of him. She reminds him of his own daughter, so if she was bloody terrified of him that'd really screw with his head.

2. Use some ACTUAL bad guys. It's a comic book story, the only genre where you can get away with larger then life bad guys. Closest they had was 'Jigsaw', who basically was a normal mob boss made ugly. And Jigsaw's "muscle"? His crazy brother. He was nuts, but neither he nor the mob boss felt like larger then life threatening villains.

Throughout the movie it felt like they were trying to make them both into something more threatening then they are, but... They were only human. The opening scene shows the Punisher killing dozens of "only humans". At no point did it feel like he was in danger, especially since his always-worn bullet proof vest took about a dozen bullets at various points in the movie, only about three of which did more then make him blink. In the first (technically second) Punisher movie, they showed how he could be genuinely threatened and get the shit beaten out of him. In this one he felt like the Terminator sans imposing jawline.

Put the Terminator (without jawline) against a nutcase moron and an ugly bastard who cries when he looks in a mirror, and you know who will win before the opening credits are even finished.

3. No emotional connection. The only person I felt even a vague emotional connection with throughout the entire movie was Neumann. Yes, THAT Neumanna. From Seinfeld. That says how poor the movie was. No matter how many 'good men' died, or the pain they left behind, only Neumann got my sympathy.

Dragon Age: Origins, and why it's awesome.

2009-02-21T10:34:00.002+11:00

In an effort to stop the rampant pessimistic and overly critical stance this blog seems to have taken lately, I've decided to dedicate an entire post to something that is awesome. It should come as no surprise that the awesomeness in this post comes entirely from Bioware. No, I'm not talking about The Old Republic MMO (I'm reserving judgement on that), but from the upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins.

One of the always appealing aspects of the Western RPG is that you get to choose your own character and build him or her up from scratch. This is great and allows enormous amount of replayability in games, but has the problem in that it doesn't allow for much background. I sincerely doubt my heavily armoured Lawful Evil swordsman who's well on his way to becoming a divine embodiment of "evil arsehole" has much in common in his background with my chaotic good hippy-like Ranger who never wears anything heavier then a cotton shirt, and judging by the number of romantic options he seems to get, often much less.

So how to get around it? Some RPGS seem to just dictate to you who you were and bugger any choices you make on the matter. Case in point 1: Knights of the Old Republic 2, no matter what you choose with your character, your entire history is dictated to you and you need to find it out like an amnesiac cliche (despite the fact your character doesn't have amnesia, and is apparently just so thick he needs his life story narrated to him). Case in point 2: Neverwinter Nights 2, it seems this one village is so diverse it can give rise to anything from a Demon-summoning Warlock to an elite Warrior Paladin. Not bad for a place that only has three visitors a year.

What does Dragon Age do differently? Simple. From everything I've read, upon character creation and after choosing a class, gender, race, etc etc, you choose an origin story. An origin story is less of a dictated narrative and more of a basic social standing (high class noble, enslaved Elf, etc etc), which the game then places you in. Each origin has it's unique starting position, and you spend the opening part of the game exploring your life and informing the game of your normal sort of position in your backstory, how you got along with people, what your moral stance on XYZ is, things like that. Then at the end of your backstory, for some reason or another, you're recruited into the elite group who end up up shirt creek without a washer or dryer, beginning the epic narrative of the game.

I for one am so excited about this concept it gives me tingly feelings in my pants which cannot be contained in there alone, and so spread upwards into my nose affecting the erectile tissue contained there, as well. Are you sufficiently grossed out? Good, let's go onto the next paragraph.

This is taking RPG storytelling in a whole new direction. It was experimented with slightly in Mass Effect, with some background being chosen which had, at best, a tiny effect on the story (primarily just some dialogue changes and one or two minor quests), and I feel it was one of the appeals of the game. Now Dragon Age: Origins has taken this idea and run so far with it there's a gold medal in it for the game if it pulls it off and isn't caught using illegal drugs like "flat out lying in press releases and marketing".

The origins are supposed to have a genuine impact on the game. Dependant on who you are you'll be treated differently by NPCs. Inside the human settlements, Noble Humans will be readily accepted since they can order your castration otherwise, while low-born Dwarfs will be seen as little better then the yappy dog next door that comes over and wets the carpet. However the 'Wild-living' Elves will be completely unaccepted in human settlements, but the moment you go into the wild and meet their cousins you're up easy street, while the humans will be lucky to leave with both testicles still in the right container.

I could be over-emphasising the importance of the origin stories, and they could be little more then icing on top of the game-cake (in which case it needs to be a good cake anyway for the icing to be worth it), but considering it's part of the name of the bloody game (Dragon age: "ORIGINS") presumably they'll put some effort into getting it right. And anyway, it's BIOWARE. I haven't seen any bad decisions from them since "Hey, let's send all our sequels out to this Obsidian mob".

Why I dislike Games Workshop

2009-02-20T11:19:00.003+11:00

Feel free to ignore this post. It's written in the grips of a hangover, and thus it probably makes no sense.

Wargaming is a well known side of tabletop gaming. The flipside of the coin to Roleplaying, if you will. Rather then a focus upon the individual and their efforts to save the world, Wargaming casts it's focus wider, aiming to recreate the feeling of massive battles, all the while depersonalising the tragedy of such events. However, I play the Total War games and love them, so I lose all right to criticise them for depersonalising mass slaughter.

Games Workshop is the Wargaming company I've had most of my experience with. When my brother was in his early teens he was bitten by the bug, and loved his Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. It was a brighter era, back in 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K. The Squigs were funny, crazy little muchroom monsters. The Gretchin were sneaky little gits who stole their weaponry so they could join in the biffs and couldn't threaten anything. Ork guns were as likely to blow up their owner as destroy a tank in one shot, and just as likely to patter out a weak spray of bullets that couldn't dent paper. But, most importantly, it realised it was a game, and as such didn't take itself immensely seriously. Each race fulfilled a niche, not just in the gaming aspect, but in what it provided to the players. If you wanted a deadly serious threat to the world, you'd play as Chaos. If you wanted super soldiers killing everyone despite being outnumbered three to one, you'd play as Space Marines. If you wanted weak-ace humans who's only real bonus is numbers and tanks, you'd go Imperial Guard. Orks provided the comic relief.

Then about the beginning of 3rd edition, everything changed. The focus shifted from providing entertaining stuff for the players, to milking the gamers. The rules now required you to have a large number of troops, even in your basic Space Marine force (the "only a few troopers but each of them highly powerful" army). If you wanted your force to be competitive, you had to buy more basic troopers. Oh, and all the rules. And the codex for your chosen race. And sometimes you were unlucky and they released a revised codex.

The charm and light-heartedness of some of it (namely the Orks) all vanished under a wave of grim, gritty and darkity McDarkdark. I'm not stupid, even at the young age I was reading about all this in 2nd edition I realised how dark the universe was. But it wasn't all dark. The aforementioned Orks were mostly lighthearted, with stories about the docs nailing pieces of metal to an Ork in the shape of an arm, and it working (when the Ork just wanted the wax cleaned out from his ear). Now the 'Docs' of the Orks are grim and threatening evil doers, despite the entire race still retaining their originally comical method of speach and terms. It's as much of a strange contradiction as the latter Harry Potter book's grim setting being populated with "muggles".

I have to admit, having browsed through the 3rd edition rulebook (I believe they're up to 5th, now), I don't mind some of the modifications they made to the rules (such as the changes to the way saving throws work). But it would be willful ignorance to believe Games Workshop altered the rules to focus more on large scale 'army' conflicts over small scale skirmishes (as it was originally designed to be) out of anything other then an interest in forcing you to spend more money.

"Of course they want more money!" you cry, annoyed at me, "they're a business!". I direct your attention to the wikipedia page for "Andy Chambers" (I'm not gonna get the link, you can do that yourself mates). It states that he was the individual who tilted the company away from being gamer orientated (in other words, looking out for the gamers first) to being business orientated. Read up on how he did that.

Flat out withdrawing support for games that didn't provide regular income (Blood Bowl, etc, despite the fact they're now making a computer game about that particular board game).
No longer focusing on their previous loyal customers and providing for them, instead turning their focus onto the younger kids with more disposable income (I.E. Their parents).

Any company that changes it's intended audience like that gets no sympathy from me. Yes, I understand company's are in it to make money, that doesn't mean I have to like their decisions.

Another criticism of Halo

2009-02-17T16:36:00.003+11:00

First thing's first, a new word invented with the aid of Ernie: Distriss. A Mistress who lives a long distance away.

Now, the meat of this short post. In my usual boredom-fueled Wikipedia reading, I found the following sentence in the entire wikipedia page devoted to the marketing of Halo 3 (does it need this? Not really, no):

'According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather thant computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy - war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief".' (Halo 3 Marketing wikipedia page)

Having seen the diorama in question (here), my first thought is that it shows nothing but the futility of war rather then anything else, but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is the phrase "the heroism of Master Chief." As other Wikipedia wankers like myself know, along with Halo fans, Master Chief is a cybernetically augmented, brainwashed super soldier taught from near birth to fight. Anyone who's played the games (althought I admit only playing up to the end of Halo 2) knows that he has a personality that can be approximated to a brick with some glue on a corner.

Can he really be 'Heroic'? He's a near-mindless war-drone created solely for battle. For him to charge into battle and combat, especially considering he never friggin' loses, isn't really bravery, it's his nature. It's not like warfare is his job, it's his life. A Fireman is being brave for trying to save lives, even though it's his job. A bird isn't being brave for flying around really high, it's what the bird DOES.

The Master Chief, as a character, even as a narrative device, is just uninteresting. The only thing he is useful as is a reason for the player of a computer game to be massively more effectively then the player's allies and enemies. The Arbiter, who earned near universal scorn in the game, is a hundred times more interesting then the Master Chief, but even his story is really really dully predictable.

One day I'm going to find something to fan-boy about for an extended period of time. Until then I'm just going to rip on everyone elses's favourite things.

Statements that never precede a good idea

2009-02-15T21:27:00.004+11:00

You get two posts today, since over the next week I shall be posting infrequently. Despite this supposed 'bonus' it is really just a short post, with the meaty part of it stolen verbatum from a bunch of people I was drunkenly talking with friday night/saturday morning (it all blended together).

There are a number of phrases in the English Language that often are used to precede an idea or plan on how a number of individuals should spend their time. Among these phrases there are some that have, throughout the history of human endeavour, NEVER proceeded a 'good' idea. Here are a smattering of them.

1. "First, we'll have some shots, then..."
Any plan that requires a standard drink of alcohol down the throat in the space of two seconds before undertaking is bad. No arguement.

2. "OH MY GOD! I just had the best idea ever!"
'Oh my god' never proceeds 'good'. The best you can do with 'Oh my god' is shock and surprise. And the need to exagerate your plan so it is the 'best idea ever' just states that you're needing to overstate it's case.

3. "Dude! You know what we HAVE to do?"
"Stop you there before you start outlining an evening ahead that will get us arrested and/or lubed in an uncomfortable place that shouldn't NEED lube?"

4. "We'll have a quick nap now, then wake up in a few hours and..."
If you require a nap before proceeding to phase two, you're tired enough that you won't wake up in a few hours. This is one of the less 'bad' prefix phrases, since this is unlikely to end in catastrophe.

5. "You know what?"
No plan that ever relied upon in-depth knowledge of an indefinate conceptual item in language is worth doing.

Edit: Pix is a smartarse

Where is the fun?

2009-02-15T12:23:00.003+11:00

A long time ago, I managed to win a copy of Painkiller (which I still haven't installed) by sending a letter to a PC gaming magazine proposing one entirely radical idea.

(Note: I often make an attempt to keep this blog child-friendly on the off chance my mother stumbles across it, but in this case I'll make an exception since I'm angry and thus allowed to say naughty words).

That idea was: Games should be fucking fun.

Obviously I didn't use that precise language, but the emphasis was there.

It came when I read in an article one of their contributors defending a games developer who uttered the line "It's not about having fun".

Yes, yes it is you twonk, it is all about having fun. Having fun is the entire purpose of the exercise. These are GAMES, not work, not torture, not an arduous trial. Were games not about having fun, then Microsoft Word can be assured it will reign supreme as the most interactive sandbox game since cavemen started scrawling on walls.

Games, even the ones that aren't bright, cheerful and colourful, even the ones about tough grizzled generic badarse soldiers in armour so heavy it has it's own in-flight movies, should be about FUN.

Let's look at some of the many methods in which a game can be fun

1. "Ha ha! Running over that octegenarian was great" fun: Random hilarious mayhem, bringing a disbelieving grin and laugh to the faces of many a person as they see the pedestrians they hit go careening off into the sunset.

2. "Man, I am so smart" fun: The pleasure of outwitting the computer or another opponent, battling hard and coming out on top.

3. "Dude, that was awesome, good game" fun: The enjoyment from battling (not necessarily defeating) an opponent in a test of skill (rather then merely random numbers), utilising all the tricks and tactics you know.

4. "Holy crap, that was amazing" fun: Watching something so amazing happen in the game that you're almost awestruck.

5. "Oh my god, I cannot believe we did that" fun: The feeling of accomplishment for having done what feels like the impossible, even if everyone else who plays the game manages it as well. It still FEELS awesome.

The moment you bastards start making a game a chore is the moment I will switch off. I have enough chores in real life, I don't need a game to add more. So please, developers, publishers, beta testers, bug fixers, programmers, all people involved in making games, pay attention to this.

1. MMOs, make the fighting feel epic, rather then hack slash click.

2. RTS', make the fight feel like a true battle rather then a skirmish (or in some cases, a pub brawl with wizards. Yes, I'm looking at YOU Blizzard.)

3. RPGs, if I'm playing an RPG, I want to feel like something epic is happening. If getting from one point to another feels like I'm picking up a second job, then I will resign.

4. Everyone, instant unstoppable death is never good gameplay.

5. Bug fixers, find out about all the bugs and FIX them. If I'm playing an RPG and my super mega axe of cut'off'ur-arse vanishes from my inventory, your game is rapidly being uninstalled.

6. Publishers, if a game development company says they need more time to finish the game, give it to them. You'll make more money in the long run if the company has a reputation for putting out quality software at a slower rate (looking at you, Valve) then you will if you force out buggy shit that doesn't have half the

7. Obsidian Entertainment: Fall in a pit you can't climb out of and die from a yeast infection.

Why Storms of Zehir is a poor game

2009-02-13T00:10:00.004+11:00

Since I always assumed the entirity of my life was leading up to the point where I'm randomly bestowed with superpowers and thus need not your petty 'life skills' I never really made an enormous effort to do something with myself. This leaves me now at 22 with the beginnings of a life of alcohol fueled remorse ahead of me, and completely useless skills such as "dissecting the flaws of a computer game so complex I wouldn't even be able to guess how it was made." Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir is one such complex game. The part that was probably most complex in its design process is probably how they managed to make it through the entire game missing the entire point of what a Roleplaying Campaign should be.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir (henceforth NNSOZ, phonetically Nsuz) is the 6th game in the Neverwinter Night series, if you count all the expansions, and the third one made by Obsidian entertainment, a company I have slagged out so much in my blog that should I meet someone who works there in person I will proudly proclaim I don't know what an RPG is, and suggest they've got the wrong guy. After this many games using the Dungeons and Dragons license and ruleset, surely they would have worked out one of the main parts of the game are the aforementioned 'Dungeons'. Granted, the definition of Dungeon in DnD is as stretched as 'Tomb' in Tomb Raider, but the point remains that the normal Dungeons and Dragons campaign will, at some point, involve entering an enclosed location surrounded by the hordes of the evil villain, engaging them in mortal combat in an effort to get to the final boss fight.

In Storms of Zehir I'm currently approximately halfway through the game and I just came to a realisation while loading up an area it randomly booted me out of (more on that later). The group of adventurers I proudly lead aren't "adventurers", we're just glorified Caravan guards who occasionally take time off to thwart some obscure plot against our boss and occasionally beat up Kobolds.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things I love about the game. The fact the four main characters are all user made means you get to create a party to your suiting, and since the game can't work on the basis of certain annoying characters being in your party, it can't subject you to pointlessly annoying NPC sideplots like Obsidian are want to do. But this doesn't change the fact that my glorious warrior band are just caravan guards.

Part of the appeal of being an adventurer is going into the unknown, saving the local populace from a grave threat of the monster menace we're vanquishing, and making oodles of cash in the process which you spend on shiney bling that gives +4 to armour class.

In Storms of Zehir you're not even running the merchant company (although with all the work you're doing, it feels like you are). You work for someone else in establishing their merchant company, and are given part of the profits. Upon receiving my first paycheck I instantly turned around and said "wait a minute, this can't be right". I made more in an honest job then I had from looting the rapidly cooling corpses of a group of Orcs I'd come across while they slept, who presumably were up to some no-good or other. Were this the case, I had to wonder, why the hell did anyone adventure at all?

Alright, so I wasn't making any real money in killing monsters (unless they were attacking my trade caravans), so obviously I was doing it to help the surrounding countryside, right? Er, well, not really. Aside from some roaming monster groups which would be homing in on my group like a missile (except my leader was a slippery bastard who could hide like an elite SAS soldier afraid of the bogeyman in a blanket factory), the only monsters I ever found were in their own homes. Occasionally a quest would spring up talking about how they were causing trouble, but most of the time I saw the place on the map, barged in and killed everyone before they could say "No, stop, we're not bad guys".

So I was making no money in adventuring, and randomly killing dudes who'd done no harm just because they looked different from the races in my party. Two strikes against Storms of Zehir. Surely it would deliver in the third, the arching plot.

Er, again, not really. Like I said I'm halfway through the game and basically it just seems to be "sneaky snake people are sneaky, trying to infiltrate the surface world". I'm sure there's some big plot twist coming up (there always is) like you've been working for a Snake person the whole way through or something, but as far as arching plots go "go here, starting trading empire, make enough money to buy god status and make your portfolio 'Breasts'" doesn't really strike me as inspired.

Maybe I'm just being picky, surely if the gameplay is fun there should be plenty to forgive in the story arc department, right? And sure your noble warriors of justice and good turn out to just be rather shiney home invaders and muggers running innocent traders out of business by undercutting prices on everything, but if the combat is entertaining that's all the matters.

Err, about that...

Having enemies NOT scale to the abilities of your troupe sounds like a great idea, giving a greater sense of immersion (the alternative being that every county in the world is colour coded for difficulty for YOUR convenience and you're deliberately visiting them all in order), but it does make things a little less fun when you're run down by a band of enormous ogres so large their puny cousin would be able to beat up your entire party. Generally non-scaling encounters can be fun, but only if it is relatively easy to avoid the enormous pains in the arse, which is difficult when you're attempting to escort a trade caravan that moves with all the quickness of me trying to decide what pizza topping I want.

Even in the fights you're forced to have, sometimes you cruise through the encounter so rapidly you wonder why you even bothered to bring a sword, when surely a rolled up newspaper would have sufficed. Other times you have no choice but to smile politely as the enemy beat you up and steal your maths homework, with the only variable in the fight being "do I reload now or wait to see if I can take out one of these seven bastards?"

Storms of Zehir had all the promise of a good roleplaying game. There was genuine potential when I first heard the announcement that you could cut out annoying NPCs by creating your own party, but then they went and made it solely about creating a trading empire. Adventurer's aren't there to create trading empires, they're there to get paid by a local authority/wizard to walk into monsters homes and beat the crap out of them, in the process finding out the beginnings of a major plot to destroy civilisation by cancelling lunch.

Oh, and if a game's so buggy that opening a treasure chest has a random chance to boot you to the world map, something's gone horribly wrong.

And now, since I just realised I've written over one thousand words about a computer game based on Dungeons and Dragons, in order to restablish my manliness I'm going to discuss sports.

...

Bugger. I don't know anything about sports.

Reasons to be cynical

2009-02-12T10:36:00.003+11:00

I've had a few comments from people I know in real life who read my blog that a number of my posts in a row seemed quite cynical. There are two explanations for this, choose whichever one you prefer.

One, I'm a quite impressionable young stallion who has recently enjoyed watching alot of the Zero Punctuation reviews, which has inadvertently resulted in me leaping to the conclusion that cynicism is what all the cool kids are doing these days.

Two, I'm genuinely disappointed with alot of gaming. Surely among the multitude of games, PC, console and 'other', there would be one that would appeal to me and, upon playing it, would engross me so much I wouldn't stop playing it until I realised that unholy smell intruding upon my game experience was me.

Some may say I'm being too cynical, that the games industry has released many gems and I'm just too picky to see it. Well I like to think my pickiness makes me a more disconcerning gamer, and in an industry where Neverwinter Nights 2 did well enough to warrent 2 expansion packs I think this cynicism is well earned.

To use a philosophical metaphor (in a literal sense, not "It's like the man in the room in the chinese room thought experiment", ho ho, academic humour) we're currently in the medieval age of gaming. In the grand experience of Philosophy, it all started with a bunch of Greeks who started asking annoying questions and wouldn't shut up about it, to the point where most mainstream greeks were really annoyed with them. These Greeks established a vast number of the still-used-modern ideas of philosophy, most of them just adapted by the basic principle still in use.

The Romans came along next, and while there were some original ideas, alot of what they were doing was building up upon the original Greek philosophies, pretending it was their own (like they did with alot of things Greek).

Following this period of Greek (and Roman) philosophical shouting came the Dark Ages. This is a period where no one much cared about philosophy, but it was followed by the Medieval period. All philosophy in this period revolved around "How can we apply Aristotle and Socretes to the bible?" in which there WERE no original ideas beyond their masterful ability to put their hands over their ears and shout "la la la, I can't hear you saying Aristotle wasn't even a christian, la la la". In essence they ignored a vast majority of ideas that existed, and those they liked they tried to shoehorn into an idea they were comfortable with.

It wasn't until some guy named Descartes came along during the renaissance and asked a few new questions was philosophy really reinvented. Ok, he was completely wrong on nearly all accounts, but the fact he tried something new was bloody amazing. From him sprung whole bunches of new philosophers and philosophies, all written in other languages so that students who only speak english need to make do with translations that often go as word-for-word as they can, resulting in phrases like "an individuals being-in-experience-without-influence-of-their-being-in-pants" and other awkwardities.

Hang on, this is supposed to be a post about computer games, and I just spent the last four paragraphs summarising down the history of philosophy so much I've probably become completely wrong. But that is where it gets ingenius.

Look back at the 'Old' days. Yes, you remember those. The heady days of the NES, SNES, Mega Drive and original gameboy. The days in which if you wanted to use something motion sensitive it meant you were playing baseball outside. Games of such weirdness in storytelling and gameplay, where the immense variety of games was made possible because, let's face it, making one required nothing more then you to be a nerd, have a computer, and be able to make pixel art (sometimes).

From that period to about a dozen years ago, roughly, was the Greek era of gaming. Alot of new and interesting ideas, experimental thoughts being tried out and abandoned if they didn't stand up to scrutiny. About 12 to 8 years ago was the Roman period, where there were some new ideas but mostly it was just improvements upon the genre's already in place. The FPS was continually advanced, polygons got so impressive they could give Lara Croft pointy nipples (that word isn't going to stop my google-porn-results problem*) and Starcraft had ruined the lives of hundreds of nerds as they had their egos crushed by massed hordes of pixels screaming "kekekeke".

What happened eight years ago to ruin it all? This may be the cynical side of me talking, but to me if feels as though the computer games factory suddenly all packed up and went home, but forgot to turn the machines off, pumping out hordes of similar games in which the only difference is if you're a Space Marine, a normal Marine, or a Viking. It's like the games industry said "Well that's it boys, we've perfected the games, no need to strain yourselves now. Just clone Halo/Starcraft/World of Warcraft/GTA, and reskin."

I understand the limitations of time and money, resulting in games being difficult to find funding unless they're based on a tried and true concept which the publisher feels is highly likely to work. But come on, surely there's room for a few enterprising ideas. On a brief trip back through memory lane, the only big games I can think of in recent years that weren't either sequels or retreads of incredibly familiar gameplay mechanics are Spore (which I disliked) and Mirror's Edge (which I've never played). Everything else is either the eleventibillionth in a series that should have finished at 2, maximum 3, a game using such similar mechanics to other stuff it might as well be a sequel, or a reasonably shallow 'merge' of two different game genres that can proclaim originality but really is still in the shallow end of the pool.

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed alot of games over the years. Knights of the Old Republic, the Total War series, Mass Effect, Chaos League, the Armoured Core series, City of Heroes and the original Homeworld all kept me going for ages. But few of them drag me in for extended periods of time.

I think it's why I get so enthusiastic about single player RPGs (ones that AREN'T solely shoot and slacks. If there are genuine options in the dialogue that do more then give you good ending or bad ending, I get excited in my pantaloons), since if you discount the MMOs there aren't many that are so successful they inspire direct clones with reskins. And even the ones that could argueably be like this (Morrowind/Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc) the mechanics are either so unique or outright copyrighted, making copying them pointless. This means that aside from a simple staple of RPGs (agility is avoid hits, strength is carrying crap, etc) they all have to be somewhat unique. I love relearning rules and working out how to manipulate them for my benefit with a characterful... character. It's like learning the ins and outs of sex with your girlfriend in all her disgusting kinks, then breaking up with her for someone with a better body and lower inhibitions. Repeat ten times, then go back to your first girlfriend and find out it's still FUN.

Note to self: Upcoming post, do "Why Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack 'Storms of Zehir' went wrong/sucks."

Reason for disliking GTA

2009-02-11T20:25:00.002+11:00

Having played one of the GTA games for a while on my mini-holiday, I have come to a realisation.

I always appreciated the idea of a grand open sandbox world in which a character can act as he pleases, so it always confused me as to why I didn't like the GTA games. Now I finally know.

For me, Sandbox games imply you can create your characters personality by choosing how he acts. In the GTA games, the characters are never someone I can sympathise with or genuinely wish to get ahead in life. They may be realistic characters, they may represent a facet of modern urban life that try as we might we cannot easily wish away, they may even have slight comedic turns at times, but that doesn't change the fact that outside of a minor amount of simple human concern I wouldn't feel particularly moved if they crashed one of their stolen cars into a lamp post and suffered broken bones. There is very little about the GTA characters that I am able to empathise with.

Yes, I realise the GTA games are not meant to be a moving narrative emotional drama within the gaming genre, but come on, how am I supposed to want to see the main character succeed if I don't LIKE him. If any of the main characters of the GTA series and I were in a car together on a long drive, we would have NOTHING to talk about.

Man, considering how big a nerd I proclaim myself to be, I really don't like alot of the common nerd games. Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Warcraft, Half Life... I must be an Indie nerd, or something.

R2-D2, an analysis

2009-02-10T22:47:00.006+11:00

Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my blog's 150th post. That is a reasonable milestone, and shows a sign of age in the blog. How appropriate then that it falls upon today, my 22nd birthday. It seems that both for me and my blog, a time has come whereupon maturity must reign. We have both grown and developed over this time, one more then the other. I like to believe that as I have matured into what I like to believe is a fine specimen of a man, and as such I like to think this blog has become a genuine example of enjoyable recreational writing. And now, onto the post.

R2-D2 is a giant douche.

I know this topic has been covered before on other blogs, and in many arguements about the effects of the new trilogy on the Star Wars saga, but it is the case.

Let's assemble a collection of facts as visible in the movies.

1. R2-D2 was very familiar with Obi-wan Kenobi prior to the old trilogy. R2 helped Obi-wan and Anakin rescue the Chancellor.

2. R2 was aware that Anakin was Darth Vader. He was present on the lava planet when Obi-wan and Anakin fought, seeing Anakin go crazy-monkey-arse on everyone. The only part that was in any potential doubt was if Anakin went on to become Darth Vader, but considering he was hanging around on the rebel base afterwards where it was all being discussed, surely it would be mentioned at least ONCE around him. If not... you'd have to be stupid not to make the link. Obi-wan wins a fight against Anakin, suddenly Anakin's replaced at the emperor's side by a dude who needs life support to survive.

3. R2 was aware that Luke and Leia were brother and sister.

4. R2 never had his memory wiped, like C3PO did. 5. R2 is more then a mere automated Droid. He is capable of independant thought and decision making. This can be seen in numerous instances in the various episodes. Some notable examples (found in the old trilogy, at the time of most of R2's douchiness) are:
5A. Trying to entice C3PO along on the trip along the sands of Tatooine with promises of adventures.
5B. Actively lying to Luke (via C3PO) in episode 4 in order to get the restraining bolt removed.
5C. R2 making a bunch of protesting sounds when they were closing the door on Luke in episode 5, followed by a disappointed 'whine'.
5D. He displays anger by zapping an Ewok after they release him.
This is among other examples.

6. R2 is capable of independant decision making. This is shown when he stops repairing C3PO despite orders to do so, so he can fix the Millenium Falcon.

So, when we put facts 1 through 6 together, we come to a very specific conclusion.

R2D2 is a bastard.

When he tempts Luke into helping him by promising to show more of the princess booty, it could be argued at that point he hasn't made the link between "Luke Skywalker" from the planet Tatooine and "Anakin Skywalker" from the planet Tatooine, despite having met Uncle Owen's family before and been on THAT EXACT PROPERTY before. He may just be that thick. But then he meets Obi-wan (who claims not to have met him, probably why R2 was treating everyone like he was. He felt annoyed at being snubbed), who mentions Luke's "great Jedi Knight father". Surely he made the connection there.

R2 accompanies the Senator who adopted Leia back to Alderaan. So he should know that the Senator adopted the child (or one of them) that Padme had. From that he could easily deduce there were twins, and that Leia are brother and sister.

Yet he tells neither of them that fact, nor that their father is Darth God-Damned VADER.

If you need further proof? He doesn't even bat an eyelid when he's told C3PO, his constant companion, is going to get his memory wiped. He just. Doesn't. Care.

R2-D2 is a douche.

Armoured Core love

2009-02-09T17:19:00.002+11:00

Thank god for the Armoured (I refuse to use the Americanization 'Armor') Core series of games.

1. It is a series of games about giant, agile robots blowing the snot out of everyone and everything around them. Even with an incomprehensible storyline, it's AWESOME and genuinely enjoyable.

2. Enormous amounts of customisation, leading to players designing their ideal robot with ease, then feeling pangs of guilt as they have to replace that (currently) useless laser canon on their shoulder with a missile launcher, even if only for one mission. This degree of customisation is absolutely brilliant, and is something all giant-robot games should strive for and attempt to emulate. Aesthetically, even though I'm more one of the bulky mid-tech style robots, the Armoured Core design is quite beautiful and varied, going from streamlined slender light 'bot, to bulky tank-tracked brute force machine.

3. I'm good at it.

You heard me. One of the reasons I view this game as superior to many others is the entirely selfish reason that I AM GOOD AT IT.

It takes me a few minutes when I pick the game up after a 12 month break, but upon replaying my friend's copy of AC4, I was able to defeat enemies that are meant to be enormously difficult with a scary amount of ease.

I'm not a savant at it or anything, I struggle with plenty of the missions, especially on hard, and there are still enemies in the Simulator I just can't beat, but... I do scarily impressive at it. And it gives me a chance to try and exercise the tactical side of my brain. I do radical redesigns of my beloved Scythe MK-II AC (creating the Scythe DF and MB. Direct Fire and Missile Boat respectively) dependant on what is required for the fight. From there I alter my in-game tactics dependant upon the AI strategy employed, keeping close to ranged-fighters, keeping distant from close-combaters, etc etc.

I love these games.

Coming up: First impressions of Grand Theft Auto, having actually, finally, played the bastard.

Holiday time!

2009-02-05T14:38:00.003+11:00

As you can see, I haven't updated as regularly as I should, as a responsible blogger.

Well, work has been busy, and now I'm going away for five days. So to tide you over, I am attempting something new. A stream of consciousness post. NOTHING in this post shall be edited, it shall simply flow from the previous, with the only editing allowed being fixing up spelling mistakes.

This could backfire immensely.

Recently I've begun replaying the two Knights of the Old Republic games side by side, comparing the two. Please, PLEASE Bioware, don't abandon the single-player KotOR series. This needs something else, something done genuinely RIGHT so it doesn't end on a sour note (KotOR2) leading into a big flat tuba 'blaart'. An odd analogy, I admit, but it fits with the 'note' comment.

I've already discussed parts of the reason I disliked Knights 2 in a previous post, so I won't go into it again, but... come on Bioware. And actually do it YOURSELF this time, don't just pass the job on to Obsidian entertainment like you do with all your sequels, leading to inferior products.

There is a train of thought here. RPG games that disappoint. Someone needs to tell Peter Molynew... Molynus... The guy who made the Sims and Fable, what precisely "open world" is. Open world, in a nutshell, means that when you play the game three or four times over, you should be able to get a genuinely different experience. And I don't mean "I married generic person 1 in game 1, and generic person 1 a bit later on in game 2", I mean GENUINELY different. Random events shaping things and making it nearly impossible to replay the same story twice, choices beyond "Pinnicle of goodness and awesomenarity" and "puppy-sodomiser" (that isn't going to help my current google search result problem, which I've explained in previous posts).

As a genuine offer, computer game companies of the world, put me in an office for three weeks straight with a word processor and a "How to write video game design documents" and I will deliver to you a design that, if implemented right, will make me ORGASM IN MY TROUSERS, and potentially sell very very well. Note I said orgasm there, not Nerdgasm. Nerdgasm's are extreme expressions of self enjoyment sans trouser-stain.

The word 'sans' is not used often enough. I try to slip it in where I can, but no one notices (or if they do they just think "he's trying to sound smart again"), but really the greatest use for this word possible is "sans trousers." Trouser, banana and cheese are the three most inherently funny words in the English language. Other words, such as Vulva, rely solely upon a simple premise in that you do not expect to hear those words, and that is their sole entertainment value. Trousers, banana and cheese are just inherently funny to say. Try to say those in a dramatic sentence and you will fail.

"Someone stole my trousers!"
"I was given a concussion by a hurled banana"
"He was stabbed with some cheese"

No matter how serious the subject matter, it is just not possible to make them dramatic.

Really, pants in general aren't dramatic. I understand the humour value of the following sentence relies upon the fact that in the UK "Pants" means underwear, but one of my favourite ever Zero Punctuation phrases is:

"It ceases to be grovy pants and ends up just being pants".

Pants is also a funny word. Really, there is no word for the things you put around your waist that go down to your legs that can be anything BUT funny. Try to put Pants in a dramatic sentence. It will fail.

Ok, stream of consciousness over.

Wow. That is a scary stream.

See you all in about a week.

The Dreaded Bag of Random

2009-01-31T23:40:00.007+11:00

Posts shall be sporadic at best over the next week. Monday to Thursday, I'm working 8 until 5-6. Thursday to monday, I'm relaxing near a beach with excessive alcohol in my system. It's a hard life I've got.

1.

Every now and then I read through random news, and I came across this. This is goddamned awesome. Only question I can ask myself is "Were I trying into that town, would I stop, turn around and flee?"

The answer is yes. Yes I would.

2. http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html

Absolutely awesome site. I'm already making use of it. It forces you to write, something I have a hard time disciplining myself to do (although apparently if I'm writing useless stuff, I can do it pretty well. You know those recent posts talking about where Final Fantasy 7 failed and Knights of the Old Republic was painful? Both over 1.5K words each.

Oh, and if you want to know what the "horrible sound" it promises should you violate the extreme alarm is? It's Hanson.

3. I am horrible at guessing ages. I've mentioned this before, but now it's just ridiculous.
Everyone reading this blog should be a fan of Mythbusters, and if you're not you're probably reading this post by accident, somehow unintentionally ending up here looking for Halo leet tactics (if so, apparently insulting the sexuality of your enemies is popular) after I made a few posts disparaging Halo.

Have a guess in your head about how old the various Mythbuster teams are. Now go wikipedia it.

I know, I know. I'd guessed Adam and Jamie at 50s, while Kari, Tori and Grant were early 30s. Turns out the trio are all mid to late 30s (Kari 35, Tori and Grant both 38), and Adam's only 42. Man, I suck at ages. It must be because they're all having fun with pyromaniacal glee. I don't associate people over 20 as giggling at giant flaming explosions.

4. My brother used to be a major Warhammer 40K (plus Necromunda and Blood Bowl) player. He lost interest when they started making things really serious. He began playing in 3rd edition (as best he can remember), but still collected their monthly Magazine (White Dwarf) until about issue 270. He's got these, and out of boredom I've been picking them up to have a look-see every now and then.

Dear god did it get wanky. More to come in a larger post about where Games Workshop buggered up their own canon, for me.

Where's my bloody rocketpack

2009-01-30T12:55:00.003+11:00

This isn't actually a post about rocketpacks, I just stole that phrase from an Australian comedian (unfortunately I can't remember his name) about his dislike of the 'future' (AKA the present). He was promised that the future would have hover cars and rocketpacks, and it had better damned well deliver!

Rocket packs were his beef. Mine is space travel.

The more I think about it, the more I think there are three requirements before mankind really starts traveling through space.

1. Commercial viability.

It's a horrible fact, but Fight Club is right. It will be the commercial companies that first explore other planets. This isn't the age of discovering "the new World" with the Aztec cities of gold hanging around on the horizon. No government will fund an incredibly costly mission to colonise other planets while there's need for that money on Earth, and no company will do it unless there's potential for profit.

So, before any space exploration stuff can happen, we need to find some commercially viable substance to seek out in space. Either some amazing mineral that's awesome to build stuff out of, some incredible powersource that justifies the power cost of getting into space and then some, or even just some kind of space moss that cures cancer, dandruff and erectile difficulties, all at the same time. Until we find that commercially viable substance, space will be explored at a snail's pace.

2. Space Elevator.

By now most nerds know what a space elevator is. It's a building (or even just a cord with the elevator attached) made of super-tough materials linking the surface of the planet with the outer atmosphere. The space station it's linked to in the outer atmosphere is where space ships dock and take off from, avoiding the difficulty of trying to break atmosphere as they take off, saving them immense amounts of energy.

Of course, the energy required to lift an elevator that high into the air would be about the same as it takes to get a space ship to lift off. The reason the Space Elevator is genius is that it has two elevators in place. Once mining, or intergalactic trading, or space moss collecting starts out in space, the minerals need to be returned to earth. This means that there would be a second elevator. As one elevator is lowered to the ground containing the produce, this energy is transfered into lifting the other one up. Clever, huh?

Of course, to get this sort of thing we need to start making more regular trips into space, yada yada. Plus there's the issue of control of the space elevator, which country owns it, do other countries have to pay to use it, is it in fact only owned by a company and they charge the government and other companies for it's use, etc etc.

3. F-T-L travel

ALL nerds know this one. Faster then Light travel. Of course alot of sci-fi has them actually somehow traveling faster then light, but this is pretty ridiculous. You'd need some way in which the various pieces of debris and massive amounts of matter (such as, you know, planets, suns, asteroids etc) don't interfere with the travel or cause any kind of danger.

In general the more practical (wow, that word is so inappropriate there) solution would be to 'jump', or teleport between locations. Blah blah blah, complex physics stuff, blah blah blah. Executive summary: Not in our lifetimes.

Next time someone gets kidnapped by Aliens to be anally probed, be sure to ask them when they plan to share some technology with Earth. We could use a leg up in the journey to outer space. After all, the sooner we get into outer space, the sooner our militaries become filled with giant robots. And who doesn't want that?

Seriously, put your hand up if you don't want giant robots.

You, the prat at the back with your hand up, get the hell out of my house.