Stumpy Kitten

All the power to them as long as they don't fuck up and drag both the new company and Blizzard down with them. Afterall, one Blizzard is good, but two Blizzards better.

You are Venom! How does it feel to be king, you
lucky dog you! Congradulations, you are
officially the coolest chum on your block. Go
be a nice symbiote-aided person and eat some
bad person's brains. YOU DESERVE IT!!!


Which Superhero Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Does Venom really eat brains? And is he really considered a superhero? I've really only ever seen/heard of him chasing down Spiderman.

[Enter Kitchen]

You enter your kitchen. The window is open allowing a nice cool breeze to enter your basement dungeon. Your cat sits between the windows, slaping the outside window as though she is chasing a bug. Dishes pile high in the sink and the stove looks like it could use some cleaning.

[Examine the cat]

Your disproportionate cat looks back at you as you approach and meows innocently. You can see into the sunny backyard from here and quickly have to squint against the brightness. Your cat assumes she's in trouble and hops down from the window, heading for her food dish. You can't see what she might have been playing with from here, but maybe if you examine the window in more detail.

[Examine window]

You squint against the glare, looking for bugs. You slide the inner pane but discover nothing. You slide the outter pane and discover two giant centipedes!

[Attack]

You attack with your current equiped item: Bounty Paper Towels!
You hit the giant centipede for 3 damage!
The giant centipede attacks you and misses!
The giant centipede attacks you and misses!

[Examine giant centipede]
The giant centipede is extremely pissed and looks slightly bruised!

You attack with your current equiped item: Bounty Paper Towels!
You hit the giant centipede for 2 damage!
The giant centipede attacks you and misses!
The giant centipede attempts to flee into the kitchen but you block it!

[Change equiped weapon: Bounty Paper Towel Roll]

You attack with your current equiped item: Bounty Paper Towels Roll!
You hit the giant centipede for 30 damage!
The giant centipede screams in rage then collapses on the floor in a pool of blood!
The giant centipede is dead!
The giant centipede attacks you and misses!

You attack with your current equiped item: Bounty Paper Towel Roll!
You CRITICAL HIT the centipede for 325 damage!
The giant centipede collapses in a heap on the floor!
The giant centipede is dead!

You receive 550 experience!

[Examine area]

You are in the kitchen near the window looking outside.

[Try not to have heart attack]

You successfully resist having a heart attack and dying.

[Watch TV]

I woke up, stumbled over to my computer and checked my WBC2 download only to find that it had barely moved. I grumbled and started surfing the net then woke up for real. Kinda freaky but at least the download is really almost done.

Concerning insomnia and red limbs: I totally get that rant, man. Totally.

What was that shooter-sim that we played on Tyler's network? Velocity? It had a similar engine to Decent only it was about a lot more high speed fun (and less screaming as you desperatly try and find the exit room before the generator gets destroyed by T AGAIN :) ). This reminded me of it.

There was actually about 40 minutes left of gameplay - a small dungeon with simple puzzle and then the climatic battle. The small puzzle would have been more interesting if I didn't have gear that made me totally immune to the damage it causes, so instead of having to think, I could just plow through.

The final battle was an obvious case of destroy-the-source-of-power, and once again, I had items that made me immune to reprisal damage and so on my 3rd try (took me a bit to discover what spells and damage she did), it took me 30 seconds and 3 quick katana slices to dispatch the ultimate boss. So much for that.

The ending, however, was awesome. It would be extremely cinematic were it a film, but instead they decided to stick with the ugo game engine and boring still-frame cutscenes. It's also an interesting cliffhanger, which kinda brings me to my next rant:

Everyone knows Shadow creatures are cool, ya? Obviously, otherwise we wouldn't see so many of them. The various undead types, shadow dragon, shadow mages, ect - they are cool, but they always suck. Seriously, try and think of a cool Shadow creature, npc, ect (Alice and Tondel don't count for this!) that didn't get blown away by the hero in 2 seconds. There really isn't an example, although a couple in their context are pretty close.

The Shadow Dragon in BG2 did a good job at ass kicking...but really you weren't even supposed to fight him since you could sneak by him as he sleeps. Then you can come back after leveling up a bit and totally put him down. Afterall, Shadow Dragons are about as powerful as a White dragon and they are the weakest of all true dragons.

The basic Shadow undead is pretty nasty to level 1 characters, but they didn't get the massive upgrades like almost all other monsters with 3rd edition. They basically drain strength and that's it. A level 3 hero could hack them apart in 2 seconds. The next level up is a Shadow Mastif which is a really shitty oustider that is only also usefull against very weak opponents. The Shadow Fiend is much better but still overrated for its level. If it could drain strength like a normal Shadow, it would definately be dangerous.

SoU specific creatures are the Shadovar, which are ancient Netherese humans that escaped into the Plane of Shadow to avoid death. They've been there for thousands of years and yet I killed HUNDREDS of them on both the Prime and Shadow planes and they didn't once do more than cast darkness on me. Ancient extremely magical people who have been there for thousands of years and the best that their mages can do is darken the room?

It really takes the interesting out of creatures when you can smack them down so easy. It doesn't help when a low level character can smack them down easily on their own shadow turf. Meat for the grinder, free experience. All of these monsters have interesting potential, but are still pretty basic and weak for their challenge ratings. Where is a Shadow Elemental? Shadow Mephits? REAL Shadow Mages/Clerics like from Spells&Magic? And why are they always evil? I loved the interesting perspective on Shadow Mages in S&P because they are seperate from death, darkness and evil and thus truely more neutral in the alignment spectrum. But, because all the creatures they associate with shadow are evil, it usually turns out that they are better off being evil as well. Its silly.

The world needs more Alices and Tondels.

I just realized that it could be playing SoU that is killing me, but I've survived much worse. MUCH.

Game Update: I feel the story is coming to an end and predict that I have around an hours worth of gaming left. I have encountered another giant error, involving the NPC story which, much like the original NWN campaign, has prevented me from concluding whatever it is that the NPC was very slowly getting at. I have a feeling that I may have missed a major event in the NPC story since I switched NPCs a couple times to try them out. Here's a quick rundown. I'm playing a plain old Fighter so I chew through most anything easily. This means that having a caster for artillery would be awesome, but slow-poke Xanos just can't decide if he should cast a shitty cantrip or use a fireball. In the end, he is pretty good since he has HP and can fight a little. Trapspringger is supposedly a cleric/rogue, but besides turn undead and a couple low level heals, she's pretty useless as a cleric. Fortunately, her rogue skills are very high (despite the character screen saying she is equal rogue/cleric levels) so you can equip her with heavy armour and she is still very usefull. Currently I have given her a lot of AC items and Constitution items so she has more HP and a better AC than me and does comparable damage when she sneak attacks. Turning undead is very usefull since you end up fighting one really strong undead and a lot of low level undead at the same time a lot. The Kobold Bard is too weak to stay alive long in combat since the NPCs always get themselves targeted by strong monsters. He was probably the most story detailed character, but his fragility ended up getting him killed and a poorly timed save-script break caused him to be lost forever. :P

The levels are getting very awesome now, although a little effects intensive. Some levels grind my PC down to 4 frames per second because of giant mobs of monsters or complex effects and scripts. I obviously can't fault the game for this since I'm playing with a machine under-spec, but I can't help but wonder if these scenes run well on higher end machines.

I'd love to gripe about some story stuff, specifically about how Shadow monsters always get the shaft, but my head is calming down and so its probably a good time to get to bed. The important stuff is that these people still haven't figured out how to get you attached to an NPC. They kill off an important one and the dialogue seems to think that I might care that this is happening eventhough I've seen this NPC for maybe .05% of the game. Sure, he's in the backstory, but you still need to make him important to me in the GAME. I felt nothing when he died except elation, since I wouldn't have to worry about more dialogue with him. Secondly, along the same lines, is the major villain. You have to make me HATE them for me to chase them into extremely dangerous situations. Why the fuck would I wander through a giant collapsing city getting poisoned by giant spiders, clubbed by golems, and exploded by demons if the villain I'm chasing is supposedly (my character having never seen them do anything evil) super evil and hellbent on killing the planet or something? Hell, I don't even know what the bitch wants, and yet here I am slaving away at some giant 3 part puzzle where I have to trudge through 3 giant dungeons to find 3 boring orbs just to lower some forcefield that MIGHT get me within range to kill her. I don't feel like I need to kill her except for maybe petty revenge for when she turned me to stone for a brief period of game time (aprox 3 minutes and all of that was a cutscene). The original NWN was like that too. You spend all game hearing about some super evil guy doing all this bad stuff, but you only see him twice. Once when he laugh evily and gets away, and the 2nd time you KILL him. Then the REAL villain turns out to be some obscure creature that you never heard of except in the last 2 hours of game time and a little side quest that you did near the start. Its stupid the way that they expect you to do all these horrible trials for little to no reason besides "You're a hero, you have to".

I will rant about the lameness that is Shadow monsters tomorrow.

Ever get a headache that feels like someone is stabbing a serrated combat knife into the top of your head?

Update:
[Arnold Voice]
It's not a tumor!

I'm wondering how its possible for so many different companies to compete in the world of online drug selling, especially in regards to penis enlargement. I get all kinds of spam from these people saying they can enlarge 3 inches or more. If you think about how much spam I get on a daily basis (aprox 3-10 penis enlargement related email a day, ~10 other mortgage/plumbing/porn spam on top of that) all from different sources as far as I can tell. That's 10 different providers selling similar products to 1 hotmail address, daily. I'd love to see some statistics showing just how effective bulk mailing is. How many people do they get to even read their spam let alone buy the product? I would guess very few, but the fact that they continue to bulk mail people proves otherwise.

The average size of human male penis in the Western Hemisphere is 5 and 1/4 inches. The percieved norm is 7-8 inches. So that explains why most ads offer to increase your size by 3 inches. Is that length and diameter? Does it even work?

All common sense aside, its nice to know I'm well above average at something.

:)

The preceeding post is not suitable for children, sensitive readers, and those who actually might have clicked on one of those ads with faint hope. Ahaha.

NWN: SoU Progress update:
I'm about 1/4 of the way through the game...unless the plot is going to throw me a curve (please god). About 50% of my play time has been wasted on reloading; VERY frequently my weakling NPC will get killed and pseudo die. I will then defeat the monster that slew him and trigger some event. After that event fires, my NPC disappears forever. I assume I could go back to the start of the game and find him again, but its a lot less frustrating to reload. Not that is isn't still really frustrating. I HATE defeating a particularily tough encounter first try, and then have to redo it 15 times because the game script went lame.

Happy Tree Friends have updated with a new "Christmas in June" kinda thing. Several Christmas Kringle cards are available for laughter. Man I love those guys.

I died watching MK2 last night, but revived this morning, so its all good. The D&D movie, I think, is actually worse than MK2, although the difference is not signifigant.

I'm about 30 minutes into SoU and I've had to reload very often. The scripts have broken several times on me already and otherwise its just a lot easier to reload than it is to respawn. The voice acting ranges from super-excellent to please-end-my-pain, but the new voice sets for PC characters are unanimously good/hilarious. There's almost all the feats they left out from the original game, even though none of them are particularily usefull given the extreme powergaming that is almost all NWN modules. One out of the dozen new character portraits are good, the rest are below-josh-art quality. I took the half-orc sorc (has the best voice acting yet) with me as my npc slave since my only other choice at this point was the rogue/cleric dorf who I'm terrified might start coming on to me. The other tag-along npc I think is a racist paladin chick, but she decided to stay home and clean up instead of keeping me warm on those cold winter-tileset nights. BTW, I'm fighting level 3-5ish kobolds which kinda spoils the kobold bashing fun since they can kill me (a level one il-equiped fighter) in 2-3 hits. I'm sure the story will aptly explain why there are this many powerful kobolds....yep....

WBC2 is at 53% which is really good for an obscure 1 year old game, and at this rate, I should be able to finish SoU and uninstall it to make room if need be (which is very likely).

My god, what a night for media!

I was just playing SoU (lots of highs and lows in the first 20 minutes already...) and I get interupted by the D&D movie. I channel surf between bouts of SHIT which the movie is pretty much 100% of and end up watching it and Patriot Games (an excellent spec. ops/intrigue movie) at the same time.

Then I saw the scene where the token black thief gets stabbed and the hero of the movie screams "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!". Best movie minute ever.

Then some guys get shot up, a boat explodes and Patriot Games is over. Do I channel surf and find what else is on? Do I go back to SoU? What's this? MORTAL KOMBAT? Awesome. After that? MORTAL KOMBAT II. OMG.

This game looked quite good...4 years ago. They announced this game ages ago when those graphics were actually pretty good for the time. I don't know what happened to their development, but it's obviously taken them longer than they thought. It still has some pretty interesting ideas, although those ideas are now common in any MMORPG you see being released. A shame, really.

NWN:SoU finished downloading last night, my fastest edonkey download ever: 615 megs in under 40 hours. I will burn the CD tomorrow while Caitlin feeds her Harry Pot addiction. I find it interesting (sad?) that a simple story like that can enthrall so many different types of people...Coke in the paper fibres? I think so.

And in my pursuit for a game that is NOT NWN related (since that game is driving me insane with the weekly gaming group, scripting, and forums that I participate in), I have hunted down Warlords: Battlecry 2 in its full form and have begun downloading. As my various rants have previously indicated, it is a very unpopular game considering its immese superiority to big-name games that are being released even as I type with new tech, and as such WBC2 will be very hard to find full sources from which to download. Currently the download is at 1.01%. Using no math at all, I will assume it will be completed not one day short of 1 month from now. After that I will play the singleplayer campaign which is a delightful story-lite warlord rampage, Risk style. After that, anyone I know can be expected to hear from me, as I will be begging, pleading and blackmailing for people to play this awesome game with me. I tried playing with random people on Gamespy before and will never ever do that again.

I was somehow not suriprised to find that people will actually lurk in the lobby area for hours just to get someone to play with them so they can cheat to win without effort and call me gay for 20 minutes straight. If I wanted that, I would just go back and play a Blizzard game on Bnet or maybe a Half-life mod.

I hate people.

I keep forgetting to post it, but http://64.236.34.141:80/stream/1018, also known as Groove Salad is an excellent MP3 streaming radio (just copy and paste the above address to 'play from location' in winamp). It's groo-v tunes that I find perfect for surfin', scriptin' or ranting to and its at good quality and upload.

I am also 50% done aquiring NWN:SoU, the expansion for NWN. It should take me like two days to play through single player a couple times (Gamespy says its about 20 hours) and then I will put up a comment (aka essay). The game is out in stores as of 2 days ago, but the 1.30 patch has yet to be released, pissing all kinds of players off since they can't play SoU with normal NWN online until the rest of us get the patch. Heh.

There were all these parts at the beginning that I recognized, so well I could tell what was comign next. But I didn't think I'd ever seen the movie.

Heh, now Pete knows what it's like to be me when watching TV/movies or reading books. I like to think its some sort of precognition, but really its just being able to pick up on the typical plot lines, cliches and so on. Seriously. I can read the back of a book and tell you some pretty good details about the plot. I find it very entertaining when a movie actually surprises me with something I had no idea was coming.

I don't know why I keep linking Gamespot since every other time I go there the PC section gives me 404 errors, but it saves me some typing.

/me gets on hands and knees and prays that this time they will work out the bugs and streamline their frickin' interface.

It's an excellent Turn Based Game with lots of strategy but the bugs caused Peteo and myself to go nuts when the game crashed on us during the culmination of our devilish alliance against the strangely out of character inept AI. (Disclaimer: I actually had the patience to continue, but Pete succumbed to the wiles of shooting terrorists in the face).

I need like a robot or something that I can do some hardcore gaming with. Everyone I know is weak and has to "take a break" or "go to work" or "sleep". I miss the days of 6 hour RTS battles that when completed feel as if you really did just save the universe from those Zerg/Terran/Protoss bastards :D

Heh by the time I get around to buying a new machine, ATI will be back on top again.

This wasn't very encouraging to read. I'm wondering if these guys are getting too old to review games? I watched Shane play the beta for a few hours then jumped into the game myself and had very few problems. I think I was level 10 by the time I hit 12 hours of play time.

The first thing that people need to realize is that this isn't an FPS. It's a MMOFPS. There's a lot of things different about it and a common FPS that apparently really throw people, but shouldn't at all. You have equipment, you point and shoot, you die and respawn.

The 'tricky' part isn't at all since its all explained with little popup windows that range from telling you what your selected weapon does to telling you the environmental conditions of a continent. I assume that these reviewers didn't have these turned on, didn't do the tutorial, didn't do the VR training, didn't look at the control setup (which shows binds for pretty obvious functions), and didn't have the shout channel on where people constantly ask how to do stuff. The fact that Fargo didn't know about the ejection-hot drop and he was so 'experienced' in the game amazed me...I think BoxMonkey and I figured that out in the first couple hours of play. I love Fargo and all, but he seems like such a moron in that text. Ofcourse, that was just his personal opinion and not his proffesional opinion. Sluggo, the actual reviewer of the game, was even more clueless.

Here is the actual official review from Gamespy.

Creating a character is simple enough, although new players may feel overwhelmed trying to decide which of the many options they should spend their initial 2 certification points on.

Yes, that's true. Ofcourse, if you had read any documentation about the game and what each certification does, I think you would probably know to go with your strengths from other First Person Shooters. Good at Stealth? Go hacker. Good at tanks in BF1942? Get a tank. If you don't read anything about the 70$ game you just bought and will be paying 20$ a month for, then sure, you will be overwhelmed.

Sadly, because they're accessed from a small button on the start menu and not available in-game, many players may not even realize the tutorials exist.

Once again, if you are illiterate, you will find playing a game with text to be hard.

Maybe the biggest challenge of PlanetSide is finding -- and surviving -- your first few battles.

Okay, follow me here: hit escape to bring up the game menu. Hit "i" for [I]nstant Action. It will count down for 10 seconds, 20 if you are in hostile territory. Then you will be dropped to a random location where a battle is taking place. If you can't find something to do at this point, you should format your HD, give me your computer and drown yourself in your bathtub.

"Hotspots," which in theory tell you where the action is, all look the same, so it's impossible to tell if a fight involves 10 or 100 people

By the way, those giant explosion graphics on the world map show where combat is taking place. All you need to do is look and find where a bunch of those are clustered and make your way there. When I played, I found combat 100% of the time. If there is 1 hotspot out in the middle of the terrain away from a base, you can probably guess that it was two guys who were running somewhere and ran into each other. If there's a giant cluster of them around a tower, it probably means there's a big battle.

So far we have determined that you need to be able to read and have common sense to play this game.

To join the fight, you'll need either to take a shuttle to a drop point, or use the warp gates that connect various continents together.

Since he never discovered an important feature of the spawn system, I shall politely correct him and point out that he should have played the game a little more before impressing upon millions of gamers that the game needlessly sucks. The game has an awesome feature that allows you to jump into any spawn tube. You then pull up a map and can pick adjoining tubes that you can almost instantly spawn into. You can jump continents with this feature as long as you control enough bases in the control web (more on this later). Thus, if you don't have a vehicle and somehow can't hitch a ride, jump into a spawntube (located in any structure in the game) and seconds later spawn near the location you want. It's an important part of your mobility in the game and this proffesional reviewer and gamer never discovered it.

PlanetSide also has a few other niggles that make things tough on the newbie.

Main Entry: 1nig·gle
Pronunciation: 'ni-g&l
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): nig·gled; nig·gling /-g(&-)li[ng]/
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: circa 1616
intransitive senses
1 a : TRIFLE b : to spend too much effort on minor details
2 : to find fault constantly in a petty way : CARP
3 : GNAW
transitive senses : to give stingily or in tiny portions

I'll assume he means def no. 1

Once you get used to it, the interface offers a lot of options, but learning where everything is takes time.

I agree that the original keymapping was stupid. It seems to be a trend in the MMO games that I've played - have the most complex and difficult key setup possible instead of going with and obvious universal FPS setup. However, you can easily go through and set it up exactly how you want, which I'm certain everyone does so you can't really complain that it's hard because you have to reconfigure more keys.

For an action game, PlanetSide contains a lot of moments of inaction.

Once again, this is a new genre of game. If may look and feel like other FPS, but its an MMO. Besides, 30 seconds of downtime isnt so bad once you know how to play, you can still hear over the text and voice chat and, if you don't start respawning in the firstplace, you can actually get revived by a medic. I found that almost no one used revival medics, though and prefered to respawn (since they could change equipment and get more ammo).

I also found the pain of having to spend 30 seconds dead and usually another minute getting back to battle as an excellent incentive not to die.

...can produce coordinated assaults on a scale so jaw-droppingly epic that the first time you see it, you'll probably want to just sit back and watch.

It's totally true. It's like being a unit in a game of Total Annhiliation, and very entertaining to watch.

The actual in-game combat, on the other hand, leaves a bit to be desired. It's especially tough on newer players, who start out with some fairly useless weaponry, and don't get much feedback on when they've hit an enemy or how bad they're hurting. You can eventually acquire an implant that displays an enemy's health status, but the earliest you can do that is at rank six -- and it takes several hours of gameplay to get there. I also wasn't entirely happy with the mouse control, which felt a little sluggish, and not as responsive as "twitchier" games.

Personally, I hate games that aren't 1-shot-fatal. Overcoming this was pretty hard, but there are certain tactics you learn that pretty much guarantee easy kills such as melee killing people when they are using terminals, chasing down infantry with assault vehicles, ect.
As for the newbies, they start out with shit gear, but as long as you have a cert, you get your gear for FREE. This includes vehicles (which have a 5 minute restock time for individuals so you can't spam people with suicide planes or something). And newbies also start out with 2 certs which is enough for a vehicle, heavy weapon or MAX armour which is insanely strong armour with built in gun. This makes them just as powerful as anyone up to level 6, just not as versatile. After level 6 people get implants which can make a huge difference in some situations.

As for leveling time: by doing the in-game VR training and using all the terminals you need to use anyways, you can get enough exp to get to rank 3. This is before you ever even see an enemy and takes probably 30-60 minutes as a newbie, and a lot less if a vet is playing a new character. If you find a group, you get exp for that and get a LOT more experience for each kill and for things such as hacking a base. If you were in a group of ten and assaulted a fairly well defended base and won, you would probably get another 3 levels just for that. Once you get to level 9-ish, it really slows down since you are now above the average level of player and get less exp for killing lowbies.

Oh, and you can configure the sensitivity of your mouse several ways for each specific type of mousing you'd be doing. So it can be set to be fast moving in menus, slow moving as infantry and ultraslow in vehicles if you wanted. I don't know why he decided to complain about the mouse.

The vehicles aren't as fast or over the top as, say, Battlefield: 1942, but PlanetSide's pace is clearly slower and more strategic, and this is reflected in the vehicles.

Yes, the vehicles are a little more 'realistic' than BF1942, as in they aren't quite as arcade physics based. They are actually faster, though. Perhaps the fact that the gameworld in Planetside is so much bigger than a typical BF1942 map is what confused him.

We've seen many reports of lag, but haven't experienced much of it ourselves, so it's hard to tell how rampant an issue it is.

Yeah, there was constant bitching about lag in the beta, although the only time it lagged for me was when the server was about to drop, which wasn't very often. I have a feeling that people are just using the Lag Monster as an excuse for sucking since we can't see other player's pings to know for sure. Also, despite running this game on a P2 400 with 312 RAM and a 64MB GF2, I had faster loading times then a LOT of people. This leads me to beleive that people are playing this game on their laptops with telephone modems. in which case, yes, you'll be getting a lot of lag and chop.

I never really felt I had an impact on the world, and there wasn't a minute that I was waiting for a shuttle or jogging from a drop point to a nearby base that I didn't wish I were playing Enemy Territory or Battlefield: 1942 instead.

I think it's clear that you still have no idea what you're doing in-game and probably should have an experienced player come over and tell you what you're doing wrong. Maybe go over and watch Fargo play and see what you're missing. I always felt like I was making a difference in any given conflict. I was a stealth hacker/light aircraft pilot/engineer. I had ultimate mobility, allowing me to fly into undefended bases and towers and to solo hack them. In ground conflicts I was literally invisible and could flank enemy infantry, killing them off as the crouched aiming at my allies. I can't even begin to communicate to you how many people I killed by walking right up to them and putting a pistol clip into their brain while they stood still and their allies were not 3 pixels away. In a support role I used my Mosq aircraft to chase down weaker units, destroy mines and turrets and even as a delivery vessle (I would fly over a tower or base and bail out, landing on the roof for easy and undefended access). I could repair and hack terminals so my allies would have access to enemy vehicles, weapons, and ammo and I could repair equipment for them and myself allowing me to stay active for hours without having to respawn.

; I've yet to see any of the llamas that dominate many public servers in other games in PlanetSide, a major accomplishment indeed!

The two reasons for this is 1) because its pay to play and lamers typically aren't old enough to afford it/to have a credit card and 2) because the game is still new. Lamers often stick to a game as long as they can because they already know all the exploits and best ways to lame and have all the hacks installed. It's only when enough real players ditch that old game for a new one that the lamers are forced to move on to find people to annoy. Since it's a MMO and very hard to hack/get an illegal account, it should be the most lamer free FPS for a very long time.

So, if you're looking for a teamplay game more sophisticated than the current crop of online shooters, and are willing to pay your dues -- and the monthly fee -- PlanetSide offers a good deal of fun.

If I had a job and income enough to afford a slightly faster computer (my system does chop a fair bit in the truely large and fun battles) and the monthly fee, I would very much be playing this game right now (assuming I wasn't at work :P ). I find it extremely fun, lots of options for both team and semi-solo play, the vehicles are very well done and easy to pilot, and the action is never ending.

One final comment on the review: He doesn't talk at all about the Command structure of the game. Escencially, if you are the Squad leader (you are the guy who formed the group or the next highest ranking soldier in the squad when the current commander leaves), you get Command experience points in addition to normal exp. Having a few ranks in Command allows you to use the global Command chat to talk with other commanders around the world and organize assaults. Once again, this shows that the reviewer really didn't play the game enough to get past the initial newbie stage. He did give a fairly impartial review despite his obvious frustration from the game, but I find it frustrating myself that games with good features and gameplay get shot down because some guy who is paid to review the software didn't take the time to get into the game.

He states: "I'm going back to Enemy Territory." as if that's what he was playing instead of reviewing Planetside.

// posted by J @ 1:19 PM

Useless info of the moment:

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers has made over $900 million USD from ticket sales alone, topping Harry Potter and the [irrelevant nouns] movie by over 300 million.

"The official Neverwinter Nights Web site has a brief news item posted on the front page informing readers that Shadows of Undrentide, FloodGate and BioWare's expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights, has been released and is now available in stores. The site also warns that the Shadows of Undrentide CD-key is on a red piece of paper in the box, despite the installer mentioning that the cd-key is in the manual. BioWare advises prompt registration of the cd key with the BioWare Community Web site." -Gamespy

There's some hi-tech security.

"That position has been filled". I was begining to think that I was calling the same guy over and over for several different jobs, but the people that answered had slightly different accents each time.

Employer: "Do you have any experience in [job field]?"
Me: "Not directly, but I am a fast learner and very interested in [job field]"
Employer: "We would prefer someone with experience."
Me looks at job posting again and reads: "Experience not necessary, will train."

I guess that is code or something. But I'm wondering how I'm supposed to get 7 months to 2 years experience in a labour/sales/service position if no one wants to train anyone? Am I missing some rule of this employment game? Do I need to pretend to have experience to get hired? Am I saying the wrong stuff? Maybe I just havn't found an employer desperate enough like at my previous jobs.

I guess I'll link up my resume when I get the chance and maybe people will email me with what I could do to improve it...not that I'm sure half the people I give it to even read it.

I watched the 1994 Jackie Chan movie "Legend of the Drunken Master". It was the most satisfying action movie I have EVER seen. Not only are there insane stunts by Chan, but some of his opponents are equally crazy. The Kicking Guy makes Chun-Li look like an 80 year old. Not to mention that the drunken fighting scenes are HILARIOUS.

I watched a bio on JC a while ago and apparently the Drunken Master series of movies is where he got famous. He started out as another Bruce Lee imitator but met with little success. Then he had the opportunity to play a Drunken Kungfu fighter and invented all the moves for his own take on the style, and in the process became the "Mr. Niceguy" fighter that he is known as today.

Criticise? Don't mind if I do!

Review of a Review

"While the game's lengthy single-player campaign was hardly an afterthought, Neverwinter Nights' 3D engine and toolset got a lot of attention, because they were intended to allow fans to create and host their very own D&D adventures."

Let's get my opinion of the original game out of the way: I thought the game was way overrated. The engine was slow and clunky and a Diablo2 wannabe. The singleplayer was several chapters (turds) made by serveral different people (highschool students?) which combined to make a lengthly story (peice of shit) which was disjointed, undramatic, and considerably inferior to anything they had done in previous games. They turned a party oriented, story and character driven, location wandering game into a hack and slash one player game which repetative tile sets and a plot that was both unoriginal and reminiscient of TA: Kingdoms, especially with the 'dramatic cutscenes' which are actually just poorly drawn frames which they play some spooky music to and zoom in and out of.

However, I still play the damn game a lot. The toolset, while horribly laggy and unforgiving, was patched and made usable. While 99% of the modules people have made with the editor are so bad that they cannot be described with text, that 1% are extremely well made, interesting or downright fun. So, what has Bioware done in this expansion? Back to the review:

"While Shadows of Undrentide doesn't fix the shortcomings of Neverwinter Nights' Aurora engine (which isn't aging as well as BioWare's Infinity engine, which was used for five years' worth of great RPGs)...

The first of many comments by the reviewer refering to the Aurora engine. The game engine should be something considered in the original game review since this is an expansion. You can't possibly expect a company to change their engine for an expansion. He doesn't mention the 'shortcomings' of the engine, but for me they consist of horrible inventory lag and graphics, memory intensive particle effects, clumsy chat and party interface. Granted, some of that could be tweaked for an expansion, but most of the really bad stuff has already been patched pre-expansion. Finally, if you are going to lament about their new 3D engine, maybe you should consider what you would be rating the game if it was still using that oh-so-much-better 2D engine. I think you would shoot this game the fuck down if it was using a much more capable, stable, 2D engine.

" Shadows of Undrentide isn't a conventional expansion pack, because it's not a continuation of the previous game. Essentially it's a brand-new campaign using the same engine, so although you're required to install it on top of Neverwinter Nights, the stories of the games are completely separate"

WOW! I've never heard of ANY expansion pack that didn't continue the storyline of the original game! That is so unconventional! . Once again he slips in a comment on the engine.

" -it will probably last you 25 to 30 hours, and there's some good replay value to boot."

Thirty hours is nothing, especially for an RPG. This is likely also a generous estimation.

"The expansion retains the same excellent mechanics of Neverwinter Nights, so you can easily control your character and access a variety of useful in-game information using the mouse and a few keystrokes."

I seem to be confused...is he talking about mechanics, or interface? Mechanics would be the Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. Interface would be menus, and control. Isn't there a test you need to pass to be a professional reviewer?

" Much like Neverwinter Nights' campaign, Undrentide's campaign does a good job of actually letting you role-play your character, mostly by giving you both good-natured and evil-natured dialogue options and quest solutions"

If by evil you mean maybe twisting a conversation so that you can milk all of 50 gp from an NPC (while you have 90,000 in you inventory already), then yes, I imagine so. Really the game doesn't allow for the wide roleplaying that the pen and paper does. Its simply impossible to guess what any PC might be thinking in response to actions. My all time favorite game ruiner is "What if I want to join the villain? All these other loosers have joined him, why wouldn't he want me?".

"There's a lot of dialogue to read through, but it's good enough if you're interested, and it can be skimmed through easily if you'd rather just hack and slash your way to the end. "

I think there needs to be some genre definition here. Its a RPG and he's complaining about the amount of dialogue. Why are you playing this game if you want to skim through it all? Go play a different game if you want Hack and Slash. I want a fucking story with fucking characters. Infact, screw this game, I'll go read a book until Baldur's Gate 3 comes out.

"The expansion takes you through several new types of environments not found in Neverwinter Nights, including a snowy wilderness, a desert, and some ancient ruins"

The snowy tileset is the same as the current rural one, only everything is in a layer of snow. Something that could easily have been done for the original game. The other two, however, are actually worth mentioning. Not that you couldn't just go and download similar tilesets from various online sources and get them right now for free.

"The plot of the game isn't remarkable, but it does a decent job of setting up the sorts of adventures and challenges you'd expect from a fantasy RPG."

If this guy, the guy who skims through dialogue to get the the hack and slash, complains about the plot being lame, I shudder to think at what it's really going to be like.

"The prestige classes are powerful and versatile."

These are pretty much a class you can take at anytime once you meet the extremely low requirements. They are insanely powerful and were balanced in the original D&D rules because you couldn't take them unless there was specific reason in the story. They are something you character should only have access to for extremely good reason, scuh as saving the freaking world. Yes, that's how powerful they are.

"...those who were disappointed by the fact that Neverwinter Nights was primarily a single-character campaign will likewise wish that Undrentide's campaign had lifted this restriction."

This is the singlemost reason why NWN sucks. They ruined the party aspect by forcing you to travel with only one other character. The party is the heart of D&D and they ignored it. Again.

"...Shadows of Undrentide's new environments and variety of new enemies (including some popular fantasy mainstays such as gnolls, basilisks, and manticores) fit right in with the rest of Neverwinter Nights' visuals..."

Actually, Gnolls are already in the game and nowhere do they advertise that they are new.

"...but don't really exceed the graphical standards of the original game."

Ofcourse the graphics fit in but don't exceed the original...they CAN'T because they didn't upgrade the engine. I guess this guy was expecting NWN2 instead of an expansion.

"Shadows of Undrentide recycles much of Neverwinter Nights' audio, including its music and sound effects, though it does add new music, sounds, and voices. "

I'm guessing here, but I'm pretty sure that he means the new content has new sounds to go with it, but the original content will still have the original sounds. Was he expecting them to redo the audio for the entire game?

"The new music is mostly very good, and fits the new environments well, though some of it seems overly dramatic."

Yeah, I suppose if you weren't reading dialogue to get any sense of importance or drama from the story and characters that you would have no reason to get into the proper mood to appreciate dramatic music.

"The expansion also improves on the Aurora toolset by including relatively easy-to-use "wizards" for creating plots, setting up shops, and generating waypoints for non-player characters."

Much like Gnolls, all these features are already in the game. I know this because, unlike some other people, I actually played the original NWN game and used the Toolset.

"It seems unlikely that BioWare's Aurora engine will enjoy as much staying power as the Infinity engine before it."

How is this relevant to a review about an expansion? Obviously if I'm considering buying the expansion (and thus reading this review) I'm going to want to know about the actual content as opposed to some guy's vague opinion on whether this engine will be used in another game/expansion ever.

"Ultimately, Shadows of Undrentide isn't the most epic or memorable RPG with BioWare's name on it, but it has plenty of good, new content to satisfy most any Neverwinter Nights fan."

Uh huh. Excuse me while I try and find out if you are the same guy that gave NWN a highscore when it first came out...
AH HA: Infact, he was. So he gave the expansion 14% less pretty much because he didn't like the fact that it had a lot of dialogue, recycled sounds, and the same game engine, despite all the added and new content.

I guess its up to the reader to decide if he was just affected by the hype and gave the original game a much higher score than it deserved or if the expansion truely is that much worse than the original game.

Went canoing this weekend with my family. It was a similar route that I took before, but this time I did a lot more paddling. The sun was pretty abusive and I managed to get burned on my wrists, elbows, left side of my face and nose and both my knees. I also got a nice sandal burn where only the tips of my toes are a nice bright red. The knees hurt the most since I seem to move those a lot.

I'm very stiff but not too sore. I'm not sure why...I paddled the damn thing all day (was about a 4.5 hour trip) trying to keep up with the other boats who frequently had 2 people paddling. Caitlin was in the same canoe, but was more ballast than propulsion. I'm fine with that. She saved her energy for other stuff. Hee.

There was a slew that was pretty much just a water jet in a break of an old bridge/dam. My stepsister and her husband went through first without getting a good look at it and they spilled, recovering the contents of their boat about 5 miles downstream. I went down with my uncle and we also spilled, much to the amusement of some nearby fishermen. What they hadn't told us was that we were the 8th boat to try it, and the 8th to fail. Ah well. I don't get to ride a rapids much and the water was surprisingly warm. Next year we shall defeat it.

So, Much Music had a reshowing of the MTV awards tonight. The Gollum award acceptance was excellent. And how about that performance by Tatu? My goodness.

I think Gollum had too much to drink at the awards pre-party: download it

These little shorts are so well done and so damn funny: Red vs Blue

If only Volition and Relic could get together and make a hybrid RTS-Space Combat Sim. Just set up a game scenario, elect a commander to handle resources/construction and the rest of the players jump from ship to ship, piloting and manning gun turrets. It'd be Natural Selection in Space...hopefully done better though :P

The above Relic link was initially supposed to go to a Gamespot preview of Homeworld2 which has many tasty screenshot. Unfortunately, the enite Gamespot site crapped out while I was typing. I'm so happy I'm not paying a subscription fee to them. On a sidenote, I really wish they'd decide on a format for their site. It gets very hard to navigate when they change all the links and move around buttons every 2 weeks.

Late night channel surfing, I encountered CNN and an interesting interview. It seems that the USA has lately been going uber censorship on all classroom texts, including elementary, secondary and post-secondary books.

Common words are being altered in order to be non-offensive. The Government, apparently behind the censorship, is removing supposedly offensive words in order to spare psychological damage to young people, specifically, young females who are apparently more influenced by words like YACHT, POLO (defined as elitist) and BOOKWORM (predjudice).

An Education Specialist, Dianne Rivatch was the target of this interview, mostly because of her book, The Language Police, which goes into much more detail of the (stupid) reasons behind this censorship, and why it should be opposed by the public. She said that its far more damaging to censor these many, many words and cut off the children to the 'real world' which has people who say words such as LANDLORD/LADY (sexist) and BLIND (rude way of saying Visually Impared).

The words range from everyday use by anyone and everyone - MANPOWER (sexist), COWBOY/GIRL (sexist) - to words that are actually more offensive to take out of books such as GOD (too religious) and HELL (also too religious).

Are you offended if I say a word that has a gender diffinitive in it, despite the fact that the word has been used for decades not being specific to that gender? Apparently BROTHERHOOD is both racist and sexist. What about words that have a dictionary definition but also a slang term such as BABE? Censored

What are we supposed to do about languages that depend on gender difinitives, such as Japanese or French? Oops, I forgot that we're talking about the good ol' US-of-Melting-Pot.

So, be aware and concious of your words. Next time you think to be tactful and say that a girl has a BOYISH FIGURE, you might as well just call them a dike and be done with it. Chances are that they read the word FAT in an uncensored magazing somewhere and developed an eatting disorder completely independant of anything you said or did.

(edited for author name)

Two related posts in quick succession, hrm...

This has a lot to do with clones, as well as one of my first blog rants about giving new, yet inferior games, all the credit for changing the genre.

Yes, I do beleive I just called Warcraft III inferior.

While Dark Age of Camelot was interesting at points, I don't beleive that I could ever play Everquest. What I know, however, is that I will probably try and play Lords of Everquest. It seems to be a very good ripoff of Warlords: Battlecry and I would play it in a heartbeat if they had dropped the whole EQ relations...but like some other brands (Total Annhiliation) they are trying to make more money off the name. In this case especially, it makes sense.

And yet, with the massive copying of (IMFO) OBVIOUS features that should be in ALL games in the RTS genre these days, they leave out an integral feature: customizability. Is that a word? Lets pretend it is.

See, they have 15 heroes to choose from. Sure, thats a great selection. But how many heroes would we have to choose from if they let US pick the class, race, gender and faction? I don't want to play some EQ sterotype that some guy decided would be cool - I want to play MY stereotype that I think is cool! Maybe the sequel will have this futurisitic, hyper advanced feature. But Warlords had it. They also had levels up to 50 (not 30 like LoEQ) . They both have inventory customization and Retinues and common unit advancement.

Why wouldn't the developers add that character creation in? Look at EQ! ITS ALL THERE ALREADY. All they need to do is mindlessly plug information into the new engine.

What about other areas of the game?

"According to Parker, as many as 200 units (100 per side in a two-player war) will be battling onscreen at any one time. While I never saw that many as we progressed through our game, each of the three players I was playing with did develop some enormous armies of 30 or so fully 3D polygonal units each."

Well, the previewer sounded impressed, but 30 units is an average sized army in a common game of War3, and that's the number of elite units I have guarding my hero in Battlecry, let alone the fact that in Battlecry I had never found the unit limit and I'm very certain that I had over 450 units battling 3 computers, each with at least 100 of theirs. I will try and find the screenshot, but I SWEAR that over 25 thousand units died that game. Sure, they were sprites, but then what about TA? Those were all fully 3D and definately numbered above 30.

But if you are going to say "you could have more on screen with sprites than 3D" then why even bother going to 3D? Why not use all that excessive horsepower on simpler graphics and thus have a bigger and better game at the cost of being trendy 3D? Look at Battlecry again. They didn't force their artists to go insane by drawing each frame of animation for the 100+ buildings and units, they made them all in a 3D program such as 3DSMAX, animated them and then took captures of each frame they wanted for the animation. They then turned those stills into plain sprites and suddenly you have a game with sprites thats looks as much like 3D without being 3D.

"I also observed the so-called 'smart formation' AI in action and was quite impressed. Grouped units will naturally organize themselves into sensible formation with "tank" units (warrior types) in front protecting the physically vulnerable spell casters and healers in the rear. Even better, the player's Lord won't melee attack without specific orders, but will instead sensibly cast spells and work to support troops. This should help reduce the micromanagement load that's all too often a problem for this genre."

Once again, an old feature that impressed him. I remember this feature the first time I played the Command and Conquer demo which came on a single floppy disk from a PC gamer magazine. The artillery followed behind the tanks which followed behind jeeps which followed behind infantry. In TA, the Commander could be set to use his various weaponry, or even repair units instead of attacking. This should be an obvious, easy to implement feature that should be very custom to each player. There should be a default toggle and there should be various settings that you can set in order for your units to do exactly what you want. Ofcourse, why the fuck you are playing an RTS if you don't want to manage stuff, confuses me. Go play a turn based game, whiner.

"That heartened me, tweaking and polishing is what will keep this game from being just another WarCraft III clone."

Um...actually no. Polish will make it MORE like War3 because it will be a GOOD game, as opposed to shit. My second point on this quote should be obvious: Don't call it a War3 clone when War3 is actually a clone of another game.

So, let us review this preview: The previewer has told us nothing new that we couldn't have gone to the Lords of EQ site to read for ourselves, besides the fact that this game got him off his ass and out of the office for the day. He mentioned a storyline, but only in vague detail; yet another pre-god-please-kill-me-quel game. He mentioned the major features of the game, none of which are new to the media regarding this game, let alone features that have not been implemented in numerous games since 1995. He was impressed by all these features. I was impressed by the 4 player multi. Ground breaking. He makes an incorrect comment regarding it being less like War3 if its polished, and then gives us a hint on the release date.

Did I mention the artwork for the game is really bad?

And suddenly, game clones begin to make sense.

Without this shit law, companies would really have to try and come up with new and original games, and gaming would evovle so much faster than it has.

Or, they'd spend all their time suing each other.

"You're goin' down, Lich bitch!", I screamed through the crypt. He would stand no chance against my massive elder air elemental, boosted by my mystical cleric magics and by the force of my god of summoning and magic!

The elemental tore through the chaff that was skeletons and mummies, then...got stuck. Poor AI and pathing had intervened! I vainly tried to use my own bulk to push the elemental towards the now laughing Lich, but it was only much worse! Now I myself couldn't get close enough to the lich to strike it before it finished casting.

And so I did fear, for I knew what was coming: DISPEL MAGIC. The most brutal, overpowered and overused spell in the entire game. Yes, this spell, possesed by 100% of the monsters encountered by adventurers over the level of 8, is the bane of any class using magic or items to give themselves immunities from ALREADY cheesey abilities such as instant death effects (but not all instant-fucking-death effects, although you wont find that written anywhere) and mind affecting spells!

I stood no chance! As the first dispel magic hit me, I could feel my armour spells and elemental damage immunities rip away...my death magic immunity, my mind spell resistances, my health fortifications, my saving throw boosts! GONE! Only two protections remained on my person - Haste which was a function of my boots and therefore not affected, and my SPELL RESISTANCE effect!

Ofcourse! My spell resistance spell that should, in theory, save me from a spell designed to dispell my other spells. But I guess a spell so obvious as that would not have the designed effect. Ha.

There I stood, a naked cleric. My class relies on the boosts that my spells provide and the creatures I can summon. But wait! I still have my elemental- nevermind. That just got dispelled too.

So I ran away. Ofcourse, the Lich bitch wasn't done with me yet. A second later, a Stun spell hit me - which ofcourse, stunned, dazed, and paralyzed me all in the same effect. And then, the Finger of Death.

The battle lasted 4 rounds. Thats 24 seconds game-time, about the same real-time.

Hurray!

I'm sitting here with photoshop open, a blank document just waiting for me to do something with it. I have several ideas what to do, the source material for poses, colour schemes planned...and yet I just can't seem to do it.

1.5 years ago and before that, I would have cranked something out; I probably would have stayed up all night working on it with gusto, endlessly tweaking it. So why do I have a giant 'Piro' block? Why can I not do something so simple as pick up my sketchbook and doodle senseless things?

I have several ideas, each with a pretty obvious solution...but then why have I not come to terms with the problem and fixed it? Why can't I just work on this stuff like I have since I was old enough to hold a crayon?

I'm reminded of a very early memory. A school project...I can't remember the grade. It was Halloween. I wrote a couple page story, in crayon with companion drawings, of a haunted house. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Writing a couple pages was a giant accomplishment then, and the drawings were my top skill. Then I showed it off to my parents. They said it was excellent....but...I had written the entire story from the RIGHT to the LEFT of the page. I was destroyed. My perfect creation, ruined.

Is that part of the problem? I'm afraid of feedback from what I create because it might break some enormous rule that I should know about? Do I not want to do something potentially amazing, only to have it shot down because of some giant flaw?

Ofcourse, then there's the whole self-confidence issue. Is any of my work really 'potentially amazing'? I know my Maya stuff sure isn't. Most of my artwork from Highschool and Sheridan was average at best. It can't truely be expected that a lot of it would be amazing considering the hours I put into most of it. Sheridan was a joke with the homework and the apathetic teachers. I really did learn a lot while I was there, but can't help wonder just what may have been if I had put more out of class time into art instead of retarded waste-of-time Counter-Strike.

I'm totally shy of showing people my work. I LOVED doing that Independant Study in OAC art, but I HATED having to show it to people, even my parents and closest friends. I couldn't even stand to be in the same room while people were watching it without feeling the urge to tear up and run screaming. Why? Fear of being crushed? Wow! That's awesome...but...(enter crippling blow here). Honestly, shouldn't I be resistant to that? Especially with the way I brutally critique everything else? I suppose that would be my retribution and defense for my own work.

That seems to be my strength (and bane to everyone around me heh): knowing what is 'real' and 'fake' and what looks 'good'. The quotations are to resolve some of my confidence issues...am I really good at that, or just a loud mouth guy that thinks he can spot all the obvious special effects? Back on track: critiquing. I enjoy it, I'd like to think I'm good at it. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I can absorb what is good and bad and apply it to my own work...except in the creativity extent.

It always feels that no matter what I am creating, I'm ripping someone else off. I have this great idea for this thing...then I realize I saw that on TV two days ago. Read it in a book. Played it in a game. Maybe tomorrow my amazing idea will be on a news site - a brand new ground breaking feature in a movie...my idea, except not from me.

So how can I feel like drawing if what I draw may
be average...again?
be awesome but have a giant flaw which is the only feature people see?
be unoriginal?

Currently I'm stuck in some sort of quicksand trap. I want a good job; a job in the games industry would do me just fine. But to do that, I need to work on my art/design skills. To do that, I need to feel motivated. To feel motivated, I need to feel like I'm accomplishing something. To accomplish something, I need to have confidence that what I'm doing will have an effect. To have an effect, I need to show my work to someone. To show my work to someone, I need to have work to show them. To make work, I need to feel motivated....and so on.

I need constructive critisism. Isn't that what I've had? People saying 'Wow! That's awesome...but...(enter crippling blow here).'? So...have I learned not to get too attached to anything I do for fear of getting the crippling blow? Then why do I bother getting my hopes up? Why do I bother doing anything?

I'm not doing anything. I wake up, vainly struggle to look for a job. Dare I get my hopes up to get this job? No. I probably won't, so why bother? I play a game. I seem to be good at games, but its just a trick. Anyone can be as 'good' as I am if they spent as much time playing as I do. Infact, they'd probably be much better. Anyone notice how they get closer to beating me the longer a game stays in our little circle? I'm 100% sure if we still played Starcraft regularily that any one of you would kick my ass in it.

So. I play games to feel like I'm accomplishing something...defeating opponents. But really, its all unfair- hollow victories since I have the advantage of time. Everyone else has jobs or school. I assume that's why I feel so guilty playing games now. That and the reason why I feel guilty for sitting here typing this annalytical rant for so long. Wasting time doing something - anything rather than doing something that might get me a job.

Its really not that I don't want to work. I like work most of the time. I'm a hard worker when I get down to it, specifically when I have a reason to care (being paid, job that I really like). That's one of the things I use for confidence. If I did finally get a job, regardless of what it was, I know I'd be good at it simply because I would work hard at it.

That suggests that I would be good at art if I was getting paid for it. But don't I like art? Then why don't I work hard at it? All the reason are above, I suppose. But then I feel as though I'm using those reasons as excuses - something else I'm good at.

My latest excuse/project is a Neverwinter Nights module. You see, but wasting my time on this, I'm not actually playing a game, so I don't feel quite as guilty. It's related to my supposed future job (design/scripting) and its also creative. By making this, I'm avoiding looking for a 'real' job because potentially I can use it to get a 'real' job. See? It's also born out of frustration of my critiquing of otherpeople's works that I've seen in Warcraft3 as well as Neverwinter Nights. I've seen some real crap get ultimate acclaim online from millions of people and I feel that I could do much much better.

It started at least 4 years ago as a D&D campaign I was thinking of running (I won't even start on my inner feelings about my DMing inabilities...ahaha). It was forgotten for a while. Then I actually made a slightly altered version of it that fit well into the Warcraft3 aftermath. I made a full map of it; its almost totally complete, and a second map is about half finished...all that's missing is the extreme details such as spellchecking dialogue, perfecting unit facings and a few cinematic details. And I have shown it to no one. I stopped working on it for a bit as I managed to find enough force of will to do another binge job application....with no success.

And then Neverwinter Nights was reinstalled on my computer. I played with the toolset to see just how hard it was since most of the modules I had seen online really sucked. I decided that it would be a much more detailed venue for the story I had started in War3 and have started an altered version of it. Progress is slow. Not because the editor is hard, but because I keep losing interest or having to rip out huge sections because they arent original. I recently played a module online that had a section with almost identical code to mine. It took me a week to add in that entire area and in 15 minutes of playing someone else's work, it became totally unoriginal and I decided it had to be purged.

I intend on trying to defy the urge to not do anything with this module. I am trying to make something that people can play and truely enjoy and maybe pull off something that is original. I feel that its unlikely it will meet with positive critisism from me (much like that war3 map didnt) and so I maintain that I feel negative towards it because I don't want to feel the hope that it will be good, incase it isn't and I get crippled...again.

Working on my Module for NWN. Was going fine with my only mistakes being setting variables to the wrong values (and thus not being able to complete quests). Then I run into a brick wall on a well documented and extremely simple peice of code:

void main()
{
//brain Merv with a rock
Effect eSplat = ExtraordinaryEffect(EffectDeath(FALSE, TRUE));
ApplyEffectToObject(DURATION_TYPE_INSTANT, eSplat, GetObjectByTag("MERV"));
}

In this case, I'm creating an effect (Extraordinary so it cant be effected by magic by accident) called eSplat. I then set that effect to EffectDeath which will deal 100% hp damage to the target I call later. I said FALSE to the super-gore death and TRUE to damage feedback so the player will see the damage dealt on their screen. Next I call the ApplyEffect line to instantly call eSplat on the target object, MERV.

I checked the syntax like 20 times and found a few examples on the dev boards, one of which is identicle except they named a few more variables. What I can't figure out is why the editor keeps telling me:

sr_splat.nss(4): ERROR: NO SEMICOLON AFTER EXPRESSION

Line 4 being the declaration of the eSplat....but it has the SEMICOLON already! If I take it away, it still wants one. I put in a second and it still wants one. The only place the semicolon should be is at the end of the line. Nothing else needs it. So why does it tell me it wants one?

My only guess is that I'm missing an #include file since that tends to cause these stupid little errors, but I can't find a mention of this function needing one anywhere in the examples or docs.

This was posted on a games forum I lurk on:

Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Heaven, God went missing for six
days. Eventually, Michael the archangel found him, resting on the
seventh day. He inquired of God, "Where have you been?"
God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction and proudly pointed downwards
through the clouds, "Look Michael, look what I've made."

Archangel Michael looked puzzled and said, "What is it?" "It's a
planet," replied God, "and I've put LIFE on it. I'm going to call
it Earth and it's going to be a place of great balance."

"Balance?" inquired Michael, still confused. God explained, pointing
to different parts of Earth, "For example, Northern Europe will be
a place of great opportunity and wealth while Southern Europe is
going to be poor; the Middle East over there will be a hot spot. Over
there I've placed a continent of white people and over there is a
continent of black people," God continued, pointing to different
countries.
"This one will be extremely hot and arid while this one will be very
cold and covered in ice."

The Archangel, impressed by Gods work, then pointed to a large
landmass in the top corner and asked, "What's that one?"
"Ah," said God. "That's Canada, the most glorious place on Earth.
There are beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, streams and an
exquisite coastline. The people from Canada are going to be modest,
intelligent and humorous and they're going to be found
traveling the world. They'll be extremely sociable, hard working and
high achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as
diplomats and carriers of peace. I'm also going to give
them super-human, undefeatable ice hockey players who will be admired
and feared by all who come across them."

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed; "What
about balance, God? You said there will be BALANCE!" God replied wisely.

"Wait until you see the loud-mouth b@stards I'm putting next to
them...."

Science Log, 06/04/03:
It seems that I have the ability to shoot forth a globule of pure bile from my throat. The stimuli that provoked such a reaction (most likely defensive or hostile in nature) is unknown, although I was watching badly dubbed anime (Yugi-Oh...it brings back too many stupid MtG memories) at the time of the event. The bile appears to be body temperature, seeing as how I didnt realize it was in my mouth until it started burning my tongue and teeth. This stealth attack surprised me and caused me to inhale sharply, sending much of it down my windpipe and causing much more pain, violent coughing, tears in my eyes and total fear and confusion. Cold water did little to abate the searing pain and it did not subside until I had eatten 3 peices of cold white bread. I theorize that it acted as a spunge, absorbing the bile and allowing the bile to burn it instead of me.

The prospects of this reflex as a weapon are many. Further tests will have to be provoked in order to discover the effect of this bile on living flesh, stone, wood, concrete, steel, and space age plastics, in addition to determining its range and accuracy in the event that my mouth be open at the time of projection. This first incident suggests that it will have strong, perhaps lethal, effect. Currently, in preparation for the discovery that I can activate this on command, I am taking suggestions for my Apathetic Super-Villain name; I fully intend to use this power for whatever cause I deem 'swell'. I am currently partial to "The Vile Venom."

End Science Log.

Great news! Monster has found new jobs matching your job search agent criteria!

Here are the results that were found on Wednesday, June 04, 2003:

Your job search agent titled "no 1" matched new jobs based on your search criteria. Listed below are the top 1 match(es)... (Just click on the job title to view a job.)

1. Jun 3 15:25:40, Représentant publicitaire, Communications Voir, CA-ON-Ottawa

USELESS!!

Anyways, no word back from the 'banks' or that other prospect. I did, however, binge today and applied to about 30 places through various job match services and was bored so I hit the crappy strip malls around here again. From Illustrator to Telemarketer to about 5 different grocery stores to Harvey's to Blockbuster to Tim Horror's...

And it was such a delight to get rained on. The rained on again. Then to face various managers who looked more pissed off than I was. The Harvey's is my best prospect since it was LETHAL in there. They looked so understaffed and the Highschool kids there were clueless. I dunno if I actually want to work there but my options continue to dwindle. I applied online to a College Student Painter project, which isn't anything fancy, just a workforce that goes and paints houses, ect. It looks to pay good, has lots of available positions and I'm actually OVER qualified for it (because I worked with my handy-man Dad for so long and have a couple art certificates :P). I just hope to god that they don't need me to have a car like every other Painter job I've EVER seen posted.

I'm praying for the painter job since its something I've done before and its not too hard, plus its full hours. Idealy, getting a job at the mall up here as a grocery stockboy would also be excellent since I wouldn't have to bus, smell paint all day, and I could work the shifts no one likes (usually night shifts so I won't have to deal with people - yes!).

If anyone has leads on jobs in the Etobicoke area (preferably NORTH Etobicoke) for a guy with some art skills, various computer skills, basic construction skills, basic food skills and who works REALLY damn hard when he gets payed for it, let me know via email.

Watched a gameplay trailor for Starcraft: Ghost. It was unnimpresive. Looks like Solid Snake in Space (only graphically more tasty - I like the blizzard style better).

Guess that's why I don't care much for consoles...

Aw, man, what a day of NWN. I was playing in the afternoon trying to see how much cash I could get to see if I could buy an item at the new Event store (You can buy some of the nicest items in the game from the DM posing as the G1 Shopkeeper, lowest item sells for 5 mil). I got up to 700K GP, but then got bored and went exploring.

I found the Isle of Dreams which really has no more story than "An insane Gnome lives here, watch out for his machines." So I found a few golem-esq type things, pummeled them easily and eventually found the entrance to a crypt.

I ventured, adventurously inside, examined the first monster I saw and promptly was killed in 2 hits. The second hit disarmed both my weapons (a vorpal shortsword which i found in the donation box only a couple days ago, and my original Shortsword of Essence...kinda says a lot about finding good weapons on your own up to level 13, eh?). So because I was dead-dead and hadnt thought to switch my chat mode to Shout, I had no choice but to respawn, losing 1690 exp and ~200K gold. Oh, and apparently if you respawn after being disarmed, your weapon disappear forever. AHAH.

So, I explained how cruel that was to the others on the server and one of them pitied me and tossed me a vorpal longsword. Its actually better than my shortsword was but my character was configured for shortswords so my attack bonus dropped by 6 points, and I got one less attack with it each round and also had less chance of critical.

I died about 3 more times before I quit for the afternoon, ending up at 0 gained exp for the level and about 150K gp...

Then I rejoined in the evening to see if some guildies were on. I made a couple cash runs then offered all my pitiful cash for whorthwhile weapons. I so despise begging, but there was no way I could continue to play unless I got some better stuff and it was pretty much impossible without starting a couple pharm characters to get the newbie stuff.

Cid Vicious took pity on me and gave me a sword he had on an alt...which is excessively nice. So I totally lucked out there and I am a usefull member of adventuring society again.

Then I went out hunting with the guildies and eventually we got chased out of Menzoduran by angry angry drow. I was just taking Lareth back to Neversummer when the server crashed. Since I had a tonne of standard NWN items kicking around in my inventory, I jumped back on to sell them all (and to check the donation box...it usually gets filled up good by high level people right after a crash ;) ).

The Big Guy (DM) was running a silly pseudo-event in the arena, pitting players against silly monsters. Ofcourse, when I join he decides to surprise us all with a big end-game boss. This thing was doing 130 damage to me (I have ~80hp), but it also had knockdown. So when it hit you and killed you in the same hit, you went flying away DEAD or just kinda stood there for a minute like you were totally stunned...and then crumpled to the floor. The animations were hilarious and the DM had an auto respawn thing turned on so you would eventually stand back up after you were dead-dead.

The sheer pummeling it gave to about 15 players, most high level, was hilarious. It took about 15 minutes to get him down to Near Death with MANY hilarious animations and much screaming, at which point the DM had us line up for a reward. He gave us this nifty stone which has a nifty armour spell on it which has a nifty graphical effect.

It makes me feel like Sting at the end of the Dune movie (before he gets stabbed and crushed to death).

(cue evil guitar riff)

Went out (for like the first time in a week) to buy some cat food, shake n bake, mayo, and tomatos. Unfortunately, the store I went to had very pale tomatos and they were very pre-ripe so I didn't grab any.

Here's why I needed the tomatos:
Josh's Cheap and Easy Food Recipe #36: Cheap Bruchetta
Need:
Bread (any kind, old, new, doesn't matter, it'll taste the same)
Tomato based Sauce (such as a pizza or pasta sauce. we have a garlic and mushroom type)
Cheese (probably cheddar or motz, havnt tried others)
Toppings (onions, tomato, pepperoni, baccon, green olives, peppers)

Steps:
1. Find an oven and set it to ~400-450
2. Sauce the bread - not too much or the toppings will escape, not too little or it will be very dry
3. Do one of the following
a. Grate cheese. make sure you cover the entire bread surface
b. Slice cheese in fairly thick chunks and cover bread
4. Slice up your toppings and stick em on. You can also put the toppings on after the cheese has melted a bit so that they cannot escape while you're devouring them.
5. Put the bread slices on a baking tray and cook em until the cheese is good and melted or until the bread turns a baked brown.

The onions will fry on the cheese, so they lose a lot of punch but cut the overpowering cheese nicely. Tomatos help to juicify the overall taste, while the olives add a nice salty spike.

If the bread is too dry, try adding more sauce or tomatos. If the bottom of the bread is damp after baking, try placing tin-foil between the pan and the bread. This also makes cleanup a snap if you go crazy with the cheese and it oozes everywhere.

I find this to be an excellent snack or a full meal depending on how many I make. Since it doesn't require a microwave or anything besides a knife and the oven, its great for a late night meal when you don't want to wake anyone. If you fold the bread (after you cook it all) you can eat it with one hand, perfect for gaming. If you eat the bread straight off the pan, the only dishes you've used is a single knife to slice and spread, and the pan.

And best of all, its super cheap.

Lets talk about Americans and Klingons.

Americans and American policy want to be like the Federation. They want to be seen as a pure form of society, perfect in every way except for the evil wants of the individual.

Instead, they are like evil Klingons who have dishonoured their families and spend their time lashing out at everyone, especially those people who really are members of the Federation (France, Canada, Germany, various Neutral Countries).

Much like Klingons, they are a constant contradiction. They always lie and scheme, plot and murder, but at the same time they devote themselves to 'honour'...I'm afraid you can't do both. "A coward would show themselves in a true test of battle!"; then why do all Klingon ships have CLOAKING? How can the Americans bitch "That was so cowardly!" about the way the 9/11 attacks were carried out when they themselves spent several days shelling the shit out of Iraq (and not for the first time) from hundreds of miles away in complete safety?

Well, not complete safety. CNN reports that 20% of casualties suffered by the Empire...er, the Coalition were from friendly fire incidents. Since it's CNN, its always much worse than it actually sounds - I'd suggest closer to 50%. Ah, yes. There's a mighty war machine.

Oh, hey? What news has there been from those pilots that exploded several Canadians? They are still in court. Yep, the US wants us to forget about it. They keep shifting their story from pilot error to control tower error in order to keep anyone from being able to blame a specific reason for the attack. "We had to destroy any enemy of the Empire to keep our Honour intact!". The pilot's reasons for it was actually because they felt they were in 'danger'. You were in a supersonic-fucking-jet...you couldn't just FLY AWAY FROM GROUND TROOPS?

Lets call the Middle East "the Romulan Empire" for now. Those Klingons are always telling us they know that those damn evil Romulans are up to something; that they are honourless and shamefull and need to be wiped out! But then, we usually find out that some Romulans are working with some Klingons...it really isn't often that those Romulans are up to no good without help from the Klingons or from some other external force. Really, if we left them the fuck alone they probably wouldn't bother anyone.

But nope, this time its a matter of Honour. Lets ignore our Federation Allies and the Neutral Zone (the UN) and use our cloaking devices to penatrate deep into Romulan territory. Now that we're here, lets try and find out if they really have some of those 'secret weapons' that we KNOW they do. Afterall, those weapons could be cloaked. Those cowardly Romulans have cowardly cloaking devices!

How long has it been? I'm not sure how many days since the first attack on Iraq. Where is the reason Iraq was invaded? So far the CBC has reported that they found some barrels that "may have at one time" contained chemicals that "may have been" chemical weapons. I just hope they find those damn evil aluminum tubes soon!! You know? The ones that could be used for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of different things....and also as part of making nuclear weapons.

Now that we've invaded Romulus and killed millions, shot a few of our own troops and ruined all the pathetic infrastructure that they managed to rebuild since the last time the Klingons invaded, the Klingons are changing their story. "Look at the evil squallor these poor Romulan children are living in! How could their Government allow this to happen! They have no Honour!". Well, lets pull a Janeway and fuck with the time travel:

Before Iraq was invaded the FIRST time: Governement aid was plentiful, rule was strong but there was much peace. People who didnt like it left. Those that didnt were branded Rebels and hunted down. OMG, the Klingons have never done that before, ever. Janeway, take us to the next time-space coordinates, please...

Iraq after being invaded the first time, to prior to being invaded the second time: Hospitals, schools, essencial institutions all fucked up. Embargos prevent important things, such as medicine and food being plentiful. Reconstruction takes years. Society finally recovers with massive help from the Government. Janeway, leave the Borg alone, and bring us to the present.

The Klingons blast holes in cities and then point and scream "No HONOUR! We're here to help you!" despite the fact that they are DIRECTLY responsible for the problems that are killing off Romulans by the hundreds each day.

I fear that I may have rambled a little.

Ofcourse, not all Klingons are bad. I know there's a few Worfs and Martoks out there, but, just like in the cold war, they get labeled as traitors and punished for not being a 'loyal' Klingon and constantly supporting their High Chancellor.

But what of the Federation? If the Klingons are right then we MUST be wrong! We don't want to go along with the Klingons because they are doing something EVIL that we don't agree with....well, its time for them to call us enemies because of it. "You have no Honour for not mindlessly following us into whatever we do! Filthy Pa'Tak!!"

I saw that as a real chance for Canada to step up and say "Fuck you, we aren't Mini-America.". Instead, all opponents of our Government decided to cash in on the easy chance to oppose our leader in public, even though the majority of them DONT SUPPORT THE US DECISION. They just wanted to be seen on Subspace Television saying for all to hear that Piccard was making a big mistake by staying out of this one.

In more recent news, Canada has reached over 30 deaths from SARS. The Americans laugh at us and say "Ha! We only have 27 deaths, our healthcare is SUPERIOR! No Americans should travel to Canada because they have the plague!". Really, most people suggest that the extreme screening flyers go through in US terminals is the major reason for their lack of infections. I'm so upset that their state of airport Martial Law has netted them fewer deaths.

And how about the cows? A single cow in the Prairies has been found with Mad Cow's Disease. They have slaughtered hundreds of cows and not found any more with it. And what's that? The Americans have stopped all import of beef from Canada? I hear big food chains like McDonalds will REALLY love that.

I fear I have rambled even more.

I think in some future posts I will turn on CNN and type what I see there. It should be extreme entertainment.