Friday, April 30, 2004
Now you non-MMO playing punks have no excuse.
Well, except maybe based on time restraints...but still, it's free!
A demo is to be released around E3....Wee!
Well, except maybe based on time restraints...but still, it's free!
A demo is to be released around E3....Wee!
Saturday, April 24, 2004
A small star streaks among the uncountable numbers, then slows, and comes to a glide.
Not a star, but a small ship.
A lone pilot: explorer, adventurer, scientist - alien.
Sirens! Red lights! Attacks, incoming! Unknown ships, unknown enemies...
The blue planet...the only hope! Stabilizer fins - damaged...Atomic power - failing...small chance...brace for impact!
***
My ship...destroyed. Raygun, disfunctional. Atmosphere, breathable. These earth-bound aliens are not the same as those with the ships...Allies?
Their technology is strange, their ways unfamiliar. I must build a rapport with the hewmons. Earn their trust and technology, combat their enemies...
It will be difficult without my Raygun...but perhaps - yes, indeed! My affinity for the atom. I will implement it in new ways. Mold it with my mind, harness it to my fists, slave it to my feet! With such pugnacious power, I will stand a chance in this world. I must become...
The Martial Martian
Not a star, but a small ship.
A lone pilot: explorer, adventurer, scientist - alien.
Sirens! Red lights! Attacks, incoming! Unknown ships, unknown enemies...
The blue planet...the only hope! Stabilizer fins - damaged...Atomic power - failing...small chance...brace for impact!
***
My ship...destroyed. Raygun, disfunctional. Atmosphere, breathable. These earth-bound aliens are not the same as those with the ships...Allies?
Their technology is strange, their ways unfamiliar. I must build a rapport with the hewmons. Earn their trust and technology, combat their enemies...
It will be difficult without my Raygun...but perhaps - yes, indeed! My affinity for the atom. I will implement it in new ways. Mold it with my mind, harness it to my fists, slave it to my feet! With such pugnacious power, I will stand a chance in this world. I must become...
The Martial Martian
Friday, April 23, 2004
New day, new topic!
I've been watching an anime called "Naruto".
It's a story about a ninja boy who graduates from ninja school in his ninja town and goes on ninja missions with his ninja friends and ninja mentors. They fight many a ninja during these adeventures, and there are a LOT of flashbacks.
EVERY character in the series is oooooooozing with backstory and depth, and for a show about ninjas, there's an insane amount of variety with the characters. Ofcourse, with all this character, the 'main' story gets easily bogged down, and several episodes can pass without any plot advancement (but ya sure as hell know why characters are doing what they're doing....all of them have backstory).
Besides giving me flashbacks to DBZ in the slower parts, the animation ranges from JAWSOME to The Janitor Did It Because All the Animators Were Sick. Additionally, I find that they portray the females of the series as being all but useless in combat. There are some good opportunities for a smackdown with Girl vs Guy, but then suddenly something happens to dodge it. All the deadly female battles occur against other females...I'm not sure this is something anyone else would notice, or maybe something spawned from watching 79 episodes in under a week.
Here's another parallel for people who watch anime: they keep adding characters and plot webs...much like Ranma.
BUT
They actually advance those plots, or kill characters. Ingeneous.
I've been watching an anime called "Naruto".
It's a story about a ninja boy who graduates from ninja school in his ninja town and goes on ninja missions with his ninja friends and ninja mentors. They fight many a ninja during these adeventures, and there are a LOT of flashbacks.
EVERY character in the series is oooooooozing with backstory and depth, and for a show about ninjas, there's an insane amount of variety with the characters. Ofcourse, with all this character, the 'main' story gets easily bogged down, and several episodes can pass without any plot advancement (but ya sure as hell know why characters are doing what they're doing....all of them have backstory).
Besides giving me flashbacks to DBZ in the slower parts, the animation ranges from JAWSOME to The Janitor Did It Because All the Animators Were Sick. Additionally, I find that they portray the females of the series as being all but useless in combat. There are some good opportunities for a smackdown with Girl vs Guy, but then suddenly something happens to dodge it. All the deadly female battles occur against other females...I'm not sure this is something anyone else would notice, or maybe something spawned from watching 79 episodes in under a week.
Here's another parallel for people who watch anime: they keep adding characters and plot webs...much like Ranma.
BUT
They actually advance those plots, or kill characters. Ingeneous.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Tonight, the Devs of City of Heroes held an event.
A massive UFO descended on the central city building and began bombarding the area with turrets, drones, robot monkies and giant blob men.
At least 50 player controlled heroes arrived on the scene, some flying in, some teleporting....and the rest of us doggin' it on our well-worn lowbie shoes.
For the hour that the invasion lasted, I managed only to die three times. Considering that that monsters attacking ranged from levels 14 to 40 and all of which had area of effect attacks, I am quite proud. I used a (desperate) strategy to utilize my superior speed and agility - I jumped over the mob of heroes, landed next to the giant hero-slaying monster, kicked it a couple times with my atomic-based kung fu, then leaped deftly out of the front lines, narrowly avoiding the AoE blasts each time.
After our mob was beaten down by one of the middle waves, an Arch character appeared (apparently good friends of the Devs or in-house Testers) and proceeded to kick some alien ass and turn the tide along with the massive pack.
While the event was all good and fun (nothing I haven't seen in any other MMO including NWN), the fact that I never went lower than 10fps was pretty startling. At one point, I zoomed out during a melee so that I had almost the entire area in view, including the ~50 heroes, the 10+ baddies, and was still able to play the game. It was my own hardware limiting it, as there was no true lag - the server was handling it perfectly.
Tomorrow (today, whatever) the beta ends, all the characters are wiped and I get to restart my hero: Martial Martian. If work is slow tomorrow (today....whatever), you can expect to see an origin story.
Right now he uses Martial Arts to kick villains to death, and uses Super Reflexes to avoid getting pummeled into the hospital. I'm thinking of changing his defense abilities since I always get the green-crap kicked out of my alien ass, but I have the advantage of altering my strategy with the remake.
"Behold! The power of the ATOM!"
A massive UFO descended on the central city building and began bombarding the area with turrets, drones, robot monkies and giant blob men.
At least 50 player controlled heroes arrived on the scene, some flying in, some teleporting....and the rest of us doggin' it on our well-worn lowbie shoes.
For the hour that the invasion lasted, I managed only to die three times. Considering that that monsters attacking ranged from levels 14 to 40 and all of which had area of effect attacks, I am quite proud. I used a (desperate) strategy to utilize my superior speed and agility - I jumped over the mob of heroes, landed next to the giant hero-slaying monster, kicked it a couple times with my atomic-based kung fu, then leaped deftly out of the front lines, narrowly avoiding the AoE blasts each time.
After our mob was beaten down by one of the middle waves, an Arch character appeared (apparently good friends of the Devs or in-house Testers) and proceeded to kick some alien ass and turn the tide along with the massive pack.
While the event was all good and fun (nothing I haven't seen in any other MMO including NWN), the fact that I never went lower than 10fps was pretty startling. At one point, I zoomed out during a melee so that I had almost the entire area in view, including the ~50 heroes, the 10+ baddies, and was still able to play the game. It was my own hardware limiting it, as there was no true lag - the server was handling it perfectly.
Tomorrow (today, whatever) the beta ends, all the characters are wiped and I get to restart my hero: Martial Martian. If work is slow tomorrow (today....whatever), you can expect to see an origin story.
Right now he uses Martial Arts to kick villains to death, and uses Super Reflexes to avoid getting pummeled into the hospital. I'm thinking of changing his defense abilities since I always get the green-crap kicked out of my alien ass, but I have the advantage of altering my strategy with the remake.
"Behold! The power of the ATOM!"
Saturday, April 17, 2004
I read that Phase 2 started today for the World of Warcraft Beta. I was trapped at work and could not access my email.
I got home, opened up my email account. The thing about this account: it never gets any mail because I've only ever put it on resumes.
There was one message.
Check new messages.
Obvious virus email spam.
Delete all messages.
After all, getting a beta account and getting promoted to a Supervisor in the same day just wouldn't be fair to everyone else.
I got home, opened up my email account. The thing about this account: it never gets any mail because I've only ever put it on resumes.
There was one message.
Check new messages.
Obvious virus email spam.
Delete all messages.
After all, getting a beta account and getting promoted to a Supervisor in the same day just wouldn't be fair to everyone else.
Friday, April 16, 2004
My blog seems to be randomly going insane. Cool.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
How about that City of Heroes?
It get's an esteemed rating of "OK" from me so far. I find it hangs on me about once in thirty minutes (just the game, my machine still runs fine), but the sound also chops occasionally so it may be related to my drivers.
The combat is supposedly faster paced, but it's just that villains of your 'level' are just much weaker so you can take several at once. The abilities are geared to keep you in the fight, almost all heroes have healing of some kind. The fact that 'resting' has a cooldown timer is kinda pissy, but since I can use abilities to drain what I need from monsters, I don't use it at all incase I might actually need it.
My particular hero is a "Defender" which means I get abilities that centre around buffing, debuffing, healing and ranged combat. I have a sniper attack that almost 1-shots opponents of my 'level', a group debuff that sucks accuracy away from enemies, and a healing ability to regenerates all my groupies and supposedly drains endurance from the enemy I target it on (so far it drains a little more than a pixel).
Enemies are sometimes smart enough to attack me in groups, but often they use weak ranged attacks instead of forcing me into melee. They have a supernatural ability to jump and escape you when they are almost dead, which gets frustrating since normal street thug can out-jump a SUPERHERO, but whatever.
Quest are pointless "go here, kill that" at least at my level. I find they are unanimously boring, with the most entertaining part being how to dodge the packs of overpowered enemies that sometimes surround the entrances to the 'dungeons'.
Not being told the difference between a location within a zone and a zone itself, it was pretty aggrivating to discover that no waypoints appear when you need to leave your section of the city to do a quest in a different part.
The 'items' are fairly interesting and diverse, although some feedback on exactly how much enhancements to abilities are going to alter them would be welcome. It's a guessing game right now: sure, it says it increases damage, but at level 4, how MUCH does that actually improve it? If you stick an enhancement in and don't like the change, you just wasted that enhancement.
The chat interface is a step down from any game I've played. It's inconsistant and counter-intuitive, and the in-game help tells you to use commands incorrectly. There's no feedback on what you're doing wrong, so you're left guessing if it's a typo or if the help is just lying to you again.
Now it's time for BBQ.
It get's an esteemed rating of "OK" from me so far. I find it hangs on me about once in thirty minutes (just the game, my machine still runs fine), but the sound also chops occasionally so it may be related to my drivers.
The combat is supposedly faster paced, but it's just that villains of your 'level' are just much weaker so you can take several at once. The abilities are geared to keep you in the fight, almost all heroes have healing of some kind. The fact that 'resting' has a cooldown timer is kinda pissy, but since I can use abilities to drain what I need from monsters, I don't use it at all incase I might actually need it.
My particular hero is a "Defender" which means I get abilities that centre around buffing, debuffing, healing and ranged combat. I have a sniper attack that almost 1-shots opponents of my 'level', a group debuff that sucks accuracy away from enemies, and a healing ability to regenerates all my groupies and supposedly drains endurance from the enemy I target it on (so far it drains a little more than a pixel).
Enemies are sometimes smart enough to attack me in groups, but often they use weak ranged attacks instead of forcing me into melee. They have a supernatural ability to jump and escape you when they are almost dead, which gets frustrating since normal street thug can out-jump a SUPERHERO, but whatever.
Quest are pointless "go here, kill that" at least at my level. I find they are unanimously boring, with the most entertaining part being how to dodge the packs of overpowered enemies that sometimes surround the entrances to the 'dungeons'.
Not being told the difference between a location within a zone and a zone itself, it was pretty aggrivating to discover that no waypoints appear when you need to leave your section of the city to do a quest in a different part.
The 'items' are fairly interesting and diverse, although some feedback on exactly how much enhancements to abilities are going to alter them would be welcome. It's a guessing game right now: sure, it says it increases damage, but at level 4, how MUCH does that actually improve it? If you stick an enhancement in and don't like the change, you just wasted that enhancement.
The chat interface is a step down from any game I've played. It's inconsistant and counter-intuitive, and the in-game help tells you to use commands incorrectly. There's no feedback on what you're doing wrong, so you're left guessing if it's a typo or if the help is just lying to you again.
Now it's time for BBQ.
At work...killing time until I can actually get paid to be working.
Had to come in early for an internal interview for a promotion. It went well, but that was a given since half the interviewers have been my boss since I started...
We're supposed to find out if we're 'hired' at around 5. My shift doesn't actually start until 3:30 and I've been here doing NOTHING since 1:30...
Still, it's better than actually being on the phone.
Had to come in early for an internal interview for a promotion. It went well, but that was a given since half the interviewers have been my boss since I started...
We're supposed to find out if we're 'hired' at around 5. My shift doesn't actually start until 3:30 and I've been here doing NOTHING since 1:30...
Still, it's better than actually being on the phone.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
I was going to write a fairly evil post about some 'people' at work, but then I read Penny Arcade and all is well...for at least 12 hours when I'll be back at fucking work again.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Ender's Game has aspects from Dune, and Starship Troopers. However, I found myself thinking back to scenes from Harry Potter, in addition.
That's my fault for reading the books in the wrong chronology.
That's my fault for reading the books in the wrong chronology.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
A co-worker informed me that I look like the host of Beat The Geeks.
I informed him that the host looks like me.
I informed him that the host looks like me.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
$884.02 back from the Gov'.
Bling.
Bling.
Bling.
Bling.
Friday, April 02, 2004
Man, they played an awesome joke on all the support staff at work today.
First they told us that we'd be getting a massive increase in call volume over the next month (when we can't support the one we have now). Then they told us we'd be getting 300+ new agents in and trained in the next month to compensate (when we don't have room for the people we have now). Then they're going to change the product that we support, so we're going to be the only North American support for the largest brand of desktops that we support, and so we all have to be retrained (I get training tomorrow and Saturday). Then they hinted that two of the support people would be promoted and that the rest would go back on the floor so that they could train a new batch (and thus NOT have to promote anyone else that deserves it).
The punch line was when they told us it wasn't a joke.
First they told us that we'd be getting a massive increase in call volume over the next month (when we can't support the one we have now). Then they told us we'd be getting 300+ new agents in and trained in the next month to compensate (when we don't have room for the people we have now). Then they're going to change the product that we support, so we're going to be the only North American support for the largest brand of desktops that we support, and so we all have to be retrained (I get training tomorrow and Saturday). Then they hinted that two of the support people would be promoted and that the rest would go back on the floor so that they could train a new batch (and thus NOT have to promote anyone else that deserves it).
The punch line was when they told us it wasn't a joke.
