OMG Alec!

Ever started reading a news article thinking it was supposed to be a joke, and you’re just left waiting for a punch-line that’ll never come?

That’s life baby, that’s life.

Okay, so bear with me for a second here.

Those of you who have played Diablo 2 would be familiar with having a mule. A mule is a character whose sole purpose for existing is to carry the things you’ve found/earned/won on your main characters that you might not need now or might want to trade.

This is mainly due to the limited stash space of characters in Diablo 2. This has caused my mind to start conjuring ideas and possibilities.

So take this situation as an example. I love Paladins. I’ve only ever experimented with the other classes up to maybe Act 3, but I’ve always gone back to the many flavors of Paladin (My fav being Zealadins). Because of this, I’ve always had plenty of open character slots so I’ve always had spaces for Mule Characters.

The problem was, it was such a PAIN when trying to transfer items, having to log off, get on the mule, drop off the item, log off the mule, log back on. Damn, I get exhausted just from typing it.

I’ve always thought that it’d be a nice idea to just implement a larger stash, but then that would introduce the problem of EACH character, including mules, being able to hold lots of stuff. Blizzard might see a problem with this, which is probably why they had such a small stash.

But I present this idea:

A Mule Class!

You create a character that is actually a mule. It has no other skills than maybe to increase its holding capacity, or run speed or something, but basically, in each town there would be stables and ALL your Mule Characters would show up there, allowing you to transfer items amongst them without having to relog.

I’m tired and it sounded really interesting in my head.

Since everyone’s pretty much got their own predictions and interpretations of what the Large Hadron Collider is going to bring about, I figure I’ll add my own thoughts.

Ok, here goes: The LHC is going to cause a Resonance Cascade and bring about a portal storm through which the combine is going to come and subsequently enslave the entire human race after a 7 hour war.

Seriously, it’ll happen.

I’ll told you so.

(Oh yea, I tend to have a bit of dyslexia sometimes because the first time I ever read about the LHC I thought it said Large Hard On Collider)

I have many interests

I wouldn’t say that I’m a jack of all trades, but damn close enough to it. In my time I’ve dabbled in the areas of Programming and related fields thereof; I’ve tried my hand at digital media production including graphic design, film, and even 3d modeling; Photography and digital manipulation; Writing (The first chapter of many novels, poems, campaigns, and this here blog); and even music and sound production (Albeit short lived).

But none of those I would call my passion

I’ve gone to school for the past three years as an art student, only now realizing that it’s not for me. Unlike my close friends who go to school for art, I don’t often spend my free time on creative output relating to my field of study.

Unlike Alex who, in line with his field of study, creates his beautiful LXstrations in his free time; Chris who produces pride-garnering, fanciful vector work; or Marcus who just makes awesome shit (Which are in-tune with his interest in industrial design(I think))

I never really spent much of my free, creative, efforts on art pieces or anything like that. Even though I changed my major to Computer Science I still don’t spend my moments working on applications or really code anything of my own.

So what do I do?

I design games.

For years now any moment when my brain isn’t being wrapped around school or work, I spend my free thought cycles designing and refining games. My pet project, which I spend at least 6 hours out of everyday working on, is a Role Playing and Tactical Combat/War Game System. Hell, I even created a mini-game in this system that I’m mildly proud of (Ask Alex, Chris, JohnT, or Joe what they think of Rasslin’).

I spontaneously think up and refine designs for games. Often. Hell, I’ve even got a design for a RTS/Sim game based on the concepts of Hive Mind (Or Hive Mentality as Rhi suggested) and Insectoid Intelligence. In a sudden flash of unguided thinking I designed the framework for a MMO based in the Metroid universe (Trust me, it doesn’t suck like it may sound)

Not even computer or video games even. My main work is a table top game. I’ve tossed around some board game concepts. I’ve even thought up ideas for CCGs and card games of the classic type (Which aren’t really my bag).

But how do I go to school for that?

Thus I’ve decided, I can’t. There are so many things that being a game designer encompass that there really isn’t any one field that I could go into that would really set me in the right direction. I can’t get a degree in game design.

Which is why I’ve decided that I’m going to start writing, first small, design documents and open source them. There are probably plenty of beginning programmers that are in need of a good design document to develop around. Hell, how many open source games are there that are just copies of commercial games? Shit, how many commercial games out there that are just copies of other commercial games?

Too many.

I just hope that when the mortar hits the pestle that I can churn out something original and fun. I can’t program nearly well enough, I don’t have the skill to put the pencil to the paper (Or paint to the canvas or whatever), but I sure as fuck can design a fun fucking game.

Once I get over this whole laziness thing.

EPURON GmbH, a subsidiary of Conergy AG, won the top honor for best film advertising spot at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes. The ad was recognized as the best tv ad from Germany at Cannes. It was created by Nordpol+ Hamburg.

Admittedly

I actually love the way the Metroid: Prime series tackles the atmosphere and immersion that is so paramount in the Metroid franchise. Coming from one who thinks Super Metroid was the most perfect game of all time, that has to say something.

Mood

Before I get into it, let me first talk about the things I love about Metroid atmosphere. Whether by design or hardware limitation, the early Metroid games had not an ounce of cinematics to them. It was what Half Life did to the FPS genre in an age chock full of separated levels and out-of-game cinematics. I think there’s like a grand total of, what, five two-second clips of Samus’s ship in Super Metroid?

The beauty that I see in it though, is that even without much of a narrative the Metroid games immersed me like no other game have before. In the Metroid games you never went out of body (Yes, I realize it’s a 3D platforming game). What I mean to say is that you played Samus at all times. You never just watched Samus do badass things, you were Samus, doing badass things.

While I absolutely loved the feeling of being one lonely bounty hunter diving deeper into a planet bristling with life at all levels, it never gave me a chance to dive deeper into the story.

Immersion

This is where the Prime series shines. Barring the scripted cinematics, the gameplay portions are retained with expert accuracy. They retain the heavy mood of isolation and deep cavern exploration. What the Prime series adds, though, is immersion to go along with that mood. There are so many little details and flourishes of personality that is added to the play experience that I sometimes dream of a complete remake of Super Metroid with the Prime engine.

I want to be able to see, not just imagine, how Crateria would look as I land upon it and step out of my ship for the first time. I want to see the rain pour down, making tink noises on my armor, obscuring my vision as I make my way towards a cave opening. I want to trudge around in the darkness of the Wrecked Ship. I want to be able to scan that corpse outside of Kraid’s room and be able to know, with certainty and satisfaction, that it is indeed the rotting corpse of Armstrong Houston.

I’d want to be able to discover and see all this without a voice piping in and giving me mission objectives.

Guided Tour

My main gripe with Metroid Fusion was that you were constantly being told what to do. I guess they felt like they had to baby Samus because she got into a little trouble on SR-388. The way I see it, the entirety of my familiarization with Samus is that she is a bounty hunter with such renown that the Galactic Federation gives her, and her alone, the singular mission objective of either 1.Infiltrate and destroy a fucking planet, or 2. Infiltrate and destroy a fucking species. What she does while on the job is completely up for her to decide. This is what I believe gives rise to the One Girl In All The World factor.

Friendly Competition

I fully appreciate having other bounty hunters in the galaxy and realize that there are many that are close to Samus’s skills. What irks me the most is that some of the high-flying stuff that the other hunters can do almost makes Samus look like a pussy. Of course, this can also be countered with the fact that she kicks their asses in the end using her superior skills. I haven’t seen that this interferes much with the meat of the game, lonesome exploration, so it’s not as big of a gripe for me as a CO belching out orders is.

Do Both

What I really want is for them to keep the deeper-diving story presented in the Prime series and in Fusion with the OGIATW factor of the Metroids of old. I loved the scanning of lore in Prime and learning of Samus’s history in Fusion. I just want all the hand-holding to be cut. I’d want them to use the story-telling elements and mechanics they used in both Half Lifes for situations where they wanted to reveal more about the story.

That’s one of the things I love about silent characters. They compel you to want more than just watching them, they make you want to be them.

“The company said late Tuesday that after months of testing various video advertising models, it was ready to introduce a new type of video ad, which it said was unobtrusive and kept users in control of what they saw.

The ads, which appear 15 seconds after a user begins watching a video clip, take the form of an overlay on the bottom fifth of the screen, not unlike the tickers that display headlines during television news programs.

A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it. But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.”
Via NYTimes

The ads should be up on YouTube as I type this and, as the article states, only show on YouTube’s content partners. It’s definitely a better idea than the random, or sometimes forced, 15 second ad clips that show on other video sites but I don’t imagine too many people wanting to click on them for the simple fact that we as people hate interruptions. This is the reason why the classic video ad, a TV commercial, is so widely hated.

Even so, I suppose being given a choice to interrupt your video is better than not.

So the demo for Bioshock came out last night. I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it but it was still a very pleasant surprise. It took us a bitch and a half to download it, but their servers were probably being pounded but a few million ravenous gamers. Hell, it was probably just one server.

In either case, we got it at around four in the morning. After marinading it in anticipation for hours we hungrily set it upon the TV and stared in wonder. For some reason Alex asked me to play first and I wasn’t one to argue.

I remember one of the first things I said right after the intro cinematic (Thinking it was still part of a cinematic) while staring at a beautifully wrecked plane floating in an unblemished ocean, “Oh man, I would so splooge my pants if it just said this was in-game.”

I stared at it for a second more and, looking back at Alex, moved the right thumbstick.

The Camera moved.

And I was splooging.

Nothing can really be said about the game itself that hasn’t been said already but, braving redundancy, I’ll give you a rundown. Of course one of the first things that could be said about the game is the immersion that the setting is able to achieve just by the mere miracle of being what it is. If there’s one word that, to me, to exemplify the setting it would be tension. There’s so much tension and pressure stressed in the environs from the creaks and groans to the breaking glass windows keeping the Ocean from barging in. Yea, that’s right, Capitalized. It’s the Fucking Ocean.

There’s also plenty of tension and pressure in the setting aside from just the environment. The people of Rapture are at an end and they know it. Around every corner you can literally hear people begging for help or at least someone who would answer. Once again, as in the System Shocks before it, the use of audio in this game is quintessential.

The graphics are amazing. Everything else I already knew from reading previews and such and this was one of the things that I just had to see for myself. No matter how much anyone goes on about it it’s just one of those things that just hits you when you actually see it. The graphics are amazing. Everything from the concepts of the design to the water is just great. No matter how long I go on or how many videos I link to, this is just one point that can’t come through unless you’re playing it for yourself.

This is definitely a game that I’m going to be playing at two in the morning with the lights off and my headphones on full blast. The only thing that I could complain about was the length of the demo but that’s not anything to do with the actual game. Keeping that in mind, they made excellent use of the time they had, putting in tons of atmosphere and creepiness factor to each room. The action wasn’t too bad though as they show off two plasmids and two weapons not including the default melee weapon.

Overall it was a very good demo and I’m fiending for this game worse than I ever have.

For those that haven’t heard yet:

Hey guys! Slowpoke here bringing you some breaking news! So apparently the FTC has abandoned Net Neutrality ¹. Net Neutrality is a fresh concept that states that Companies such as ISP cannot control the flow of information. This means that if Net Neutrality weren’t in place, corporations such as Comcast would be able to charge websites and other services a premium for faster access to their sites. They would also be able to make access to their competitors’ sites and services unbearably slow.

Thanks Slowpoke.

The thing that really troubles me is that the abandonment of Net Neutrality allows companies free roam and total control of the data their users are streaming. The consequences of them being able to control the speed of data transfer for certain sites are huge! Imagine for a minute that the only services transferring at your internet connection’s fastest speed are the handful that have paid your provider that premium. That means that any other site will go at perhaps half the speed of which your internet is capable. That doesn’t just limit itself to websites either, it can include games as well as voip.

Another thing that this opens up is Deep Packet Inspection ². What this means is that not only will your provider be able to control how fast you’re able to receive your content, it can also inspect the content you receive. This means that all IMs, emails, and sensitive information transferred to websites are available for access to the provider and anyone whom the provider deems deserving of your information.

I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t want to have my ISP be a gatekeeper. Just gimme my content like I paid you for.

¹ Source: FTC throws out Net Neutrality
² Source: Deep Packet Inspection

Seriously, why has no one implemented this yet? Bears are already the number one threat to America, they’d be the perfect asset to any commander/warlord/shogun/overmind. Especially if they had a few levels of tech upgrades.

Seriously, bear cubs play with 500lb logs for fun. CUBS! Imagine what damage a fucking grizzly could wreak upon the hapless masses and their prospective faces.

They’d need hella resource management though and I guess a winter-long cooldown would suffice as the only disadvantage in going with bears.

Okay, I have to admin, I only wrote this article so that I would have a reason to post these two very badass pics.

Yea, I know those are probably photoshopped, but that doesn’t stop them from creeping me the fuck out. Just something about the thought of an expanse of water in almost all directions so far that you can’t see the end of it, and the possibility of something fucking HUGE being right behind you.

Yea, fuck that.

It’s a bit disappointing to me honestly. I was one of those guys who really honestly thought they would announce Diablo 3 this year, oh how I was wrong.

I guess I should’ve expected that they’d keep on trying to feed their monstrous beast, WoW, what with some competition heading their way soon. Honestly though Wrath of the Lich King looks pretty weak. There wasn’t even an exciting CG movie for its announcement, it was just some stagnant in-game “Story-telling”.

They’ve only announced one Hero Class and it sounds like it’ll be the only Hero Class to be added for this one. They have the typical selling points, new levels, new skills, new areas, new dungeons, new gear. Basically what they mean to tell you is new shit to grind for. That’s a boner inducing thing for some, but not for me.

One thing that put me off a little was the fact that they had “New options for character customizations” as one of the headlines, meaning changeable hairstyles and new dances. That’s cool and all and I’m glad they’re catering to the casuals/RPers, but it’s a little weak of them to have to list that as one of the selling points of it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a faction grind to “Learn” the new emotes.

Source

Anyway, I decided to clone my minimalist design from TTT.
Oh, and I also cleaned that place of spammers, but I expect them to reappear so I’ll put up more security. Not that anyone’s actually going to use the site or anything.

Peas and Rice! I swear I need to get someone to put a timelock on my computer or else I’ll never be able to set my sleep schedule straight.

Problem is, I’m the only one I know that runs a Linux box and therefore the only one who could set such a thing and thus the only one who would know how to bypass it.

If I had the kind of willpower not to, I wouldn’t need someone to do that in the first place.

Y’know, this little project of mine to log down my thoughts while I’m surfing the web is 1. Only gonna last a week at most, knowing me, and 2. Causing me to be even more addicted to the internet.

So I’ve pretty much given up on trying to start a website. I guess I’m just too damn lazy to follow through with anything. Can’t ever keep up with having to consistently pump out content.

Sure, I get the urge to rant once in a blue moon, but I can’t keep making daily, substantial posts. If you’re reading this, you probably know me personally, and here I’ll give you an offer. If you want any or all parts of the sites I’ve made, just make me an offer and I’ll be happy to give them up. Someone more dedicated should be running those ships, I’ll just keep to my own.

Anywho, I’ve come to acknowledge the big pink elephant in the room. I’ve finally admitted to myself that I have an internet addiction. I need to do something productive so I guess I’m gonna bite the bullet and keep a blog. Earlier tonight I got an email about renewing this domain and I decided that this domain shouldn’t be going to waste so this is going to be my new Tumblelog of sorts.

Mostly though, it’ll just be me posting shit I find interesting. Thanks goes to StumbleUpon© BTW, because without them, I would never have this constant, steady urge to keep my ADHD satisfied and seeking that satisfaction from the internet.

In other news, new design will be made for this.