Blaugh!

And Nothing Of Value Was Lost

2012-01-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

As some on the Internet might be aware, tomorrow (Wednesday, January 18th) marks the date that many websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, Rockpapershotgun, and innumerable others will be "going dark" (becoming completely inaccessible, outside of an informational message) to protest the upcoming United States bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Blaugh! will be following suit.

...Well, not really. I'd love to participate in this blackout myself, but the thing is, I doubt enough people are aware of Blaugh! in itself, so going dark would serve no purpose whatsoever. Unless Google decides that Blogger as a whole will be blacking out tomorrow, Blaugh! should (theoretically) remain operational. Not that it really matters.

Musings on RPG Battle Systems

2012-01-11T01:30:00.001-08:00

[01:20:55] [Ough] i should play more ff6
[01:21:18] [Ough] the battle system still bothers me. the fucking bars that keep fucking filling when you're selecting from the fucking main menu
[01:25:15] [wildweasel] if i had one wish for a romhack, it would be the complete removal of ATB from any of the FF games that used it
[01:25:32] [wildweasel] make it play like ff1 or something, i dunno, just get rid of the stupid fake realtime
[01:25:39] [Ough] my favorite standard rpg style battle system is final fantasy 10's
[01:25:55] [wildweasel] hm actually yes, that's a good one
[01:26:17] [wildweasel] smt3: nocturne did about the same thing too, but with more emphasis on being able to influence the turn order with certain abilities
[01:26:27] [wildweasel] that'd be a bit ambitious for a rom hack though
[01:27:22] [Ough] that shit was perfect! speed and attack "times" and turn order were still a huge deal and something you had to pay attention to and strategize with, only instead of being accomplished by fucking bars it it had to do with what you did and, importantly, you had time to think about it
[01:27:36] [Ough] then they went back to atb in the sequel.
[01:28:04] [Ough] i never played much of that anyway

Well, Uh, You Know (A YU-NO Post)

2012-01-10T01:55:00.000-08:00

Man. Why do some of the really intensely well-written games have to be so embarrassing to talk about online?

The topic of my (potential) embarrassment this time around is a Japanese visual novel slash point-and-click adventure game by the name of YU-NO. Recently chronicled in a highly enlightening article on Hardcore Gaming 101, and also coming to the forefront of news for people already familiar with it due to the unfortunate passing of the game's music composer, Ryu Umemoto, I became interested in YU-NO after learning that there was a very complete fan translation of the game. Those who know me well enough can probably guess how I got my hands on the game, but that's not the important point here.

YU-NO's story has many twists and turns, not all of which the player can naturally be present to witness at a given time. That's where the beauty of the game's narrative comes in, though - you don't hear of big events "through the grapevine", you aren't always conveniently in the exact place that something is going to happen, and you most definitely don't know exactly when a specific event will occur. But the game's rather unique save-game system is how we get around this. Here is a brief explanation of how it works.

Shortly after the game's prologue, you gain access to a device called a Reflector, two Jewels, and a Divergence Map. The Reflector doesn't really serve an in-game purpose besides the ability to pull up the in-game menu, should you decide you want to quit playing. The Jewels - of which you can carry up to 8 - are how the game's save system works. You can "bookmark" points in time by pressing one, at which point it vanishes and leaves a bookmark icon on the Divergence Map (which is, in reality, a gameplay device to help you discern where the plot branches will occur). If you open the Map and then click on the bookmark icon, you are warped back to the exact point when you used your jewel, but any items or jewels you may have gained or used will retain their current status. In short, if you bookmark a scene in which you need a crucial item but don't have it yet, obtain it much later in the story, and then restore the bookmark, you will still have the item and can use it. The game's own universe has its own explanation for this sort of behavior, in the form of many stacks of scientific documents (I've been told the game even comes with a physical copy of one such document). Parallel world theory plays a huge part in this; this isn't a simple time-travel plot.

Here's the thing, though. This plot device has not, to my knowledge, been used in any other game - in fact, I have almost no idea how anything like this could be applied to any genre other than visual novels or adventure games, without it merely coming off as a highly restricted quick-save system (and the players, understandably, crying bloody foul over it).

This brings to mind the quandary I touched upon in the very first paragraph: why, of all things, did the most interesting plot device I've seen in a game in years...have to be attached to an adults-only visual novel? Granted, the sex scenes do bear the very slightest amounts of character development which would have been awkward in any other context (however, I'm told that the Sega Saturn port, which omits these scenes, was able to get by just fine story-wise, though is otherwise quite an inferior version of the game), but really, all this seems to have done is greatly limit the game's audience after the fact. Sure, the game probably wouldn't have sold anything had the developer not marketed it to "those" sorts of people, and likely would have faded into obscurity...but now that it's available in English (thanks to those kind folks at TLWiki), and English-speaking countries have very different attitudes towards sexual content in media...especially in regards to some of the situations in which it occurs in a game like YU-NO...

...Sigh. Now nobody's going to take this post seriously.

2011: A Weaselly Year in Review

2011-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

2011 - a year in which I moved to a new house, applied for about a hundred jobs and never once got an interview that lead anywhere.

On female gaming journalists

2011-12-14T15:30:00.000-08:00

You can go ahead and make fun of me for this, but I am a regular subscriber to Kotaku's RSS feed. I don't always read the articles - often times I just skim headlines, skipping over anything that has to do with current press darlings Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty, and anything that happens to have the "by Tim Rogers" by-line attached. But occasionally I'll find an article that makes some outlandish claim, like "[game] is sexist and here's why!" These articles' authors often spend more time going on about the fact that they are women, than about why they feel that the protagonist of whichever recent game is not an example of a strong female lead.

Here's the thing, ladies (chivalrous context, not patronizing). Don't spend so much time reinforcing your own gender through the text. If we're at all curious about whether the article's writer has boobs or not, we'll read the by-line. You don't need to make any effort whatsoever to differentiate yourself from your male counterparts. In the end, readers such as myself are only interested in reading, not about who's doing the writing. Just write things about games and I'll read them. Simple as that. (And preferably, keep on topic, because I can't stand an article that gets my attention by claiming to be about Metal Gear Solid, only for it to turn into a long, heated discussion over how much the author paid for jeans - hello again, Tim Rogers.)

I only subscribe to Kotaku because I can't find any more up-to-date and relatively unbiased source for news on the latest major video games. If I had an alternative that covered all platforms without the possibility that they are accepting bribes for conveniently leaving out negative paragraphs in their reviews, I'd gladly boot Kotaku out of my RSS reader entirely. Does Gawker Media have any editors on staff, or are their writers able to just directly post to the site?

...Man, I should quit ranting like this, especially since I just tied the Blaugh to my Google+ feed.

If Web Browsers Were Video Games...

2011-12-07T00:29:00.001-08:00

I'm pretty sure I haven't seen this done anywhere else on the 'net, so here goes.

Mozilla Firefox is Doom, because despite having been based on an antiquated source, the community has turned it into something that remains popular, and has made mods for it that make it do things that browsers really shouldn't have to do. All that, and the latest version has far higher system requirements than it really ought to need.

Google Chrome is Bejeweled, because its simple aesthetics and uncomplicated design have drawn people to it, but beneath the surface is something just as sophisticated as everything else.

Opera is Civilization, because it has a moderately-sized group of dedicated followers, and has loads of options to adjust on the surface, but some users just can't get into something that deep.

Safari is Marathon, because it does try so hard to be Firefox, and while it does have its devotees, the Firefox users tend to notice that something's not quite right about how it's put together.

Lynx is ADOM, because who needs graphics and mouse support to surf the net?

Konqueror is SuperTux, because nobody really seems to know what it is except the Linux folk, and it's really not quite as well put together as the more mainstream stuff.

Internet Explorer is Solitaire, because it comes with Windows and the people who use it don't realize that there's anything better (or can't install new programs).

Netscape is Wolfenstein 3D, because while it might be internally about the same as Firefox, it's really showing its age and can't quite do the same stuff that its younger brother can do these days.

Iceweasel is Hell On Earth 2, because it couldn't be called Doom despite being pretty much the same damn thing.

Chromium is Diamond Mine, or pretty much the same thing as Chrome except named differently due to being released under different circumstances.

iCab is MacPipes, because it's generally nice to have on older machines, but doesn't really do anything complicated, and at the end of its life, was still sold as shareware.

Haiku isn't really anything, because try as I might, I can't think of any BeOS-specific games.

A Dumb Thought...

2011-11-21T00:53:00.001-08:00

Suppose a burger restaurant were to run a "Jive Thru" window.

Custom Soundtracks and Dynamic Music: A Compromise

2011-11-16T14:19:00.001-08:00

These days, it's really nothing special to find a game that has "dynamic" music. In such games, you'll hear a basic ambient track when nothing's happening, then things start getting loud when you are in combat or if you're in danger or if you've been spotted or whatever. The thing is, though, that the music associated with said games isn't always very good, or players just don't like it and would rather listen to something else. Some folks, myself included, would occasionally like to get away from a game's soundtrack if they've heard it a million times, so they opt to turn the in-game music off completely and put on their MP3 music or whatever.

There is a disadvantage to this, though - the music a player listens to isn't always suitable for in-game events. They might shuffle to a high-power song like Dimmu Borgir's Progenies of the Great Apocalypse while trying to sneak into a place undetected, or even quite the opposite, they might end up with a quiet song like...nearly anything by Kitaro, in the middle of a tense firefight.

What I've considered is the creation of a specific music player targeted at gamers that aims to get around this sort of thing. Obviously, we can't mod every game out there to add our music into it (games like Skyrim do not have the music folders easily accessible, and some games do not even have the capability to be modified). So the alternative is to make an all-encompassing solution, and since we can't make any kind of detection for combat and non-combat situations, we'll need a manual control.

Here's the basic concept: the Gamer's Music Player has two playlists in two columns. The left playlist is for non-combat situations like stealth missions, exploration, or conversations. The right playlist is for combat and other intense situations. Players load up each playlist with music of their choosing, then run their game and press Play to start the non-combat playlist. When the situation dictates that combat music would be better, players can press the Play button again, which will switch to the other playlist and play the first unheard track. When a playlist is out of songs, it shuffles the track order around and repeats from the beginning of the list.

Now if only I knew enough about programming to write this kind of thing. Or maybe as an interface plugin for Foobar2000. (Say, I wonder if that's already possible, to switch playlists and skip to the next track at the press of one button?)

Weasel's Game Theory Corner: Players As Characters

2011-11-13T17:00:00.001-08:00

Complete immersion in a game is sort of a crap-shoot, I have to admit. For the games that try so hard to give you all the atmospheric noise and full-body awareness like Mirror's Edge, there are usually the things that take you out of the experience, such as seeing yourself in a mirror and concluding, "This person isn't me. I'm controlling them, but they aren't me." This really gets me to thinking about the games that try to go above and beyond mere characterization, and put in serious effort towards making the player feel as if they are truly a part of what's going on in the game.

Of course, in the older days, this was a lot easier to pull off, since games like this were primarily text-based narratives with parser interaction. The quintessential example, naturally, is the Zork series, where the "protagonist" earned the nickname AFGNCAAP due to the games' occasionally overt attempts at avoiding referring to the player by any gender-specific pronouns, or describing them at all. As games gained graphical capability, though, it became much harder to immerse the player in such a way.

It does seem, though, that there can be attempts to tell the player that they are the main character. Modern games seem intent on turning the player into a silent protagonist and refusing to show them their own face, but the characterization still comes into play since in-game characters inevitably need to call the player something, and it's often a generic name like "Gordon Freeman" or "Alex Mason" or some such thing. Adventure games like Myst do try to blur this line, though, by refusing to name the player. This even plays into the story, as important figures like Atrus never actually learn your name and even acknowledge such later in the series.

The most recent games, though, hardly even bother - why would a player want to play as themselves, after all, when the entire point is digital escapism, the ability to do anything with no consequences? So I suppose that's why games like Mass Effect, Saints Row, and Skyrim exist, where the player may create a new self to their own design and inhabit them as they would any pre-created character in any other game.

I do wonder, though, why more developers haven't tried to involve the player like Zork and Myst have.

We've Relocated!

2011-11-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

...No, not the Blaugh. That will remain here at Blogger (even though I really hate the changes they've made to the composer and interface in general).

My parents and I have moved to a house just two towns over from the old one. I'm still on the bus line, employment opportunities are just as limited as before (to the best of my knowledge - I haven't checked downtown yet), and the house is a similar sort of two-story setup compared to the old one. The big difference, though, is that we are finally owning a house again, instead of just renting one. Granted, the rental agreements for the last couple of houses didn't suck that much, but there are just some limits I can't get behind...especially the restrictions on using thumb tacks.

Home ownership is cool because we don't have to worry about the rental company ordering random home inspections, we can make whatever alterations we wish (not that we'd need to yet), and we don't need to contact the rental company to schedule any sort of maintenance to vital appliances.

Now if only I hadn't gone and forgot to grab more socks from the old house. Oh well, I'm getting my clothes tomorrow, along with the other essentials, like my TV. And hopefully, sometime in the near future, we'll get actual internet connectivity around here, instead of having to deal with the spotty, relatively slow and bandwidth-limited 3G provided by my netbook. (2 gigs a month just ain't gonna cut it if I decide I want to buy something on Steam.)

Old-School Gaming Aid of the Day

2011-11-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

I don't recall if, in the past, I've ever spoken of the Nintendo DS game, Etrian Odyssey. If I haven't, it's a Wizardry/Might & Magic style dungeon crawler whose primary gimmick is the use of the DS's touch screen as a map that the player must manually fill in with the stylus as they venture through the dungeon.

These days, much as I love the Etrian Odyssey series, I do occasionally like to dabble in games of an older (and less portable) sort, like Shining in the Darkness or Eye of the Beholder. For such cases, developers often expected you to have sheets of graphing paper to keep track of the layout of each floor. Well, as I'm in the process of packing and moving, I don't really have access to such things, so a digital equivalent has been necessary.

I've found such an equivalent - Dungeon Mapper 0.2 alpha by Ryan "Zerker" Armstrong. It runs in Java, has a primarily keyboard-controlled interface, and is generally quite helpful once you learn the controls. It supports dungeons of an arbitrary size and any number of floors per file. And since you can save the maps to a single .dungeon file, sharing your maps to other players playing the same game is easy as pie.

If anybody's been wanting to play these old dungeon crawlers (or anything else that needs a manual map), this is just the ticket.

What I think cover shooters are doing wrong

2011-10-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

(Reposted from a Hardcore Gaming 101 forum post from October 3rd, 2011. I figured it bears repeating and exposure to a different audience.)

I'd be willing to bet that, to about 90% of the people on this forum, the cover-based shooter is probably the most reviled genre outside of FMV games. Honestly, I don't like the majority of cover shooters either, but that's because I feel that many of them are doing something wrong with the concept rather than the concept itself being horrible. I've played enough of these things that I have some idea of what the "ideal" cover shooter would feel like.

Cover button should be configurable. Personally I prefer the "take cover" button to be the sort of button you should hold to continue taking cover. Some people prefer it to be a press-once button, where the cover button toggles whether you're in cover or not. Really, though, I think this should just be an option, in the same way that "toggle crouch," "toggle aim-down-sight," and "invert Y" should be options.

Blind fire should be blind. The concept of blind fire (shooting from behind cover without sticking your head out to aim) was pioneered by Kill.Switch, but even that game didn't quite pull it off. Many games will give you blind fire as an option, but make the crosshair still work as a general indicator of where your shots are going. I've seen games where blind fire only serves to make the bullets spread out to absurd angles regardless of what the gun's actually doing. Uncharted had the right idea, where you can fire blindly, but you are not given a crosshair, and the option exists mainly to shoot people that are immediately opposite your side of whatever low wall you're stuck to.

Blind fire as suppressing fire. The entire point of firing blindly from cover is to make sure you're putting fire downrange, towards the enemy, and forcing them into cover themselves. Most military units have the rest of their squad to pin down enemy units with gunfire (suppressing fire isn't really intended to hit targets; it's intended to keep the enemy's head down). Most cover shooter protagonists don't have a squad with them, so it's up to the player to try to suppress the enemy without exposing themselves to torrents of gunfire. Thing is, though, in absolutely every cover shooter I've played (exception being Brothers In Arms and Army of Two: The 40th Day), the enemy completely ignores the fact that you're shooting in their general direction. So with the exception of the Uncharted example in the previous point, blind fire is nearly useless in the majority of cases. If enemy AI were to react to your shooting by taking cover, clever players could pin the enemy down by unloading a rifle at them, then while they're stuck down, rush for the next available cover.

Cover-diving's nice, but give me more indication of what it'll do. This is something Deus Ex: Human Revolution did really well and I hope more cover shooters copy its example. Under normal circumstances, you'll jump when the A button is pressed. If you're in cover, though, the A button is multi-function. If you're at the edge of a wall, it'll usually show an indicator, where tapping the A button will dive towards the next available cover (if there's one in range) and holding the A button for a second will have your character turn the corner and continue sticking to the wall. The latter of those is a feature more of these games should have, since it cuts down on potential player deaths resulting from trying to wrap around walls without exposing themselves. One thing DX didn't do, though: cover vaulting. Then again, I guess they expect you to break cover to jump over it from the regular FPS view.

Do cover shooters need to be third-person? Killzone 2 and 3 have shown me that they don't need to be, that the whole idea of a cover button can be executed from a first-person perspective without switching to a third-person view. Without the camera pointing over your low wall of choice, blind fire is actually blind. This lends some credence to the "modern warfare"-flavored cover shooters potentially including gadgets like SWAT 4's Optiwand, Splinter Cell's Optic Cable, or even the recent firearms development Cornershot.

And the biggest annoyance of all: level design. Just because your game is cover-centric doesn't mean you need to litter your streets with concrete walls, wooden crates, and burned out cars. Be clever, people - put those physics engines to use for once and let the player make their own cover by knocking over desks and vending machines, or actually put some challenge to your cover corridors by giving the player a corridor that has no cover in it at all, forcing them to resort to the aforementioned suppress-and-rush tactics. Make them duck into offices, or force them to find a different flank from another room. Make the player goddamn think.

Personally, I think the problem with cover shooters isn't necessarily the fact that there are so many of them. I think the problem is that, for as many as there are, none of them are learning from the mistakes of their predecessors.

Minecraft - The City

2011-10-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long while since I posted anything remotely interesting on here, so here's something I've cooked up with assistance from Eksfaktr, Malachai, and a number of other sorts of folks.

Our project is to create an actual, proper "city" in Minecraft, in the sort of way a real city might be built. We are, of course, using Creative Mode, as mining all these materials by hand would probably increase the time it takes to build this by about 20 times (even more for the sheer amount of gold, lapis lazuli, and yellow wool we're using). This is still a work in progress.

The basic configuration is a single city block - the interior of the block is 24 blocks by 24 blocks, bordered by stone half-blocks as a sidewalk. A road surrounds this sidewalk which is 5 blocks wide, with road lines (yellow wool) indicating lanes and crosswalks. Sure, there aren't any cars in Minecraft, but just in case it happens...

Our idea here is to create a believable city, with notable landmarks and buildings that obviously serve a specific purpose...and once we're done building it, turn the monsters on, revert back to Survival mode, and try not to die.

I really apologize for the haphazard way I'm arranging these images. Blogger's Compose editor really sucks and I don't care enough to learn HTML the "proper" way to fix it.

It starts with our base of operations: EksWeasel Apartments. It's a small apartment stack (only enough room for two small-ish rooms), but each apartment has just about all the furniture an average Minecraft player would need - a bed, a workbench, a large chest, a couple of furnaces, and a record player (just because I can). This building was designed more for aesthetics than actual utility, but I imagine it'd stand up to a few Creeper assaults, given my use of stone bricks and iron bars. The only thing I'd really worry about is the glass breaking, and even then, most of the windows have "suicide prevention" bars outside of them...

A front view of the Apartments. Yes, the Apartments come with free HBO, but unfortunately I didn't have room to put in any TV's without knocking down a few walls.

Off to the right, we have the interior of Eks's room. His is slightly larger than mine, just from the quirks of how the building was built. I should note that no prior planning or drafting goes into these buildings - I'm very much a "spur of the moment, stream of consciousness" type of builder.

Progress shot #1. This came just after the Apartments were built. We've only got two city blocks finished here. Fun fact: this city is actually nowhere near the spawn area, and even with a map, you have to travel a good distance past the south-east corner of the map to find the city.

A view at night (because we lazily didn't bother resetting the time of day despite all of us being server ops). My "street lighting" in action. I can't make the street lights as tall as real ones would be, because torch lighting doesn't actually reach that far.

The second floor up on Eksfaktr's office building. His idea is to just make foundations of each floor, complete with carpet patterns, before bothering with trivial things like lighting and stairs. There's a different carpet pattern for each floor. He puts a surprising lot of effort into these.

In these two shots, you can see other carpet patterns. Lighting was supplied by me for purposes of actually making them visible. I really like the sun pattern he put on the third floor. The "diner" pattern, thankfully, can now be made using colored wool; the last time the two of us attempted such a thing (at the GigaBurger restaurant on the ZDoom Minecraft server), we were forced to use snow blocks and obsidian.

Exterior view #1 of a Dubai-esque luxury hotel suite, which I dubbed the "Prince of Persia." The rooms actually aren't that big, considering that we're working with relatively limited floor space given the 24x24 city block size, but I managed to fit four of them on the upper floors. The "P" sign was Malachai's idea.

And here's the other end of the hotel. This actually looks a bit better if I turn smooth lighting off, but you get the idea - the building is actually wedge-shaped and curved on the back. The fountain at the front is a really simple addition that needed one bucket of water and a simple barrier (part of which is actually the sidewalk).

It's almost like a different world up here. This is the rooftop of the Prince of Persia, with fancy lapis walkways bordered with gold. From here you can see the table I built. What didn't end up in this picture is that, on the other end of the roof, there is a swimming pool with a diving board.

One of the rooms at the hotel. I tried to integrate everything into the curved design of the building, but this ended up being slightly troublesome. Each room has a small tub of water, two double-beds, books, a large TV (bottom left corner of the photo), one furnace and one dispenser.

The lobby. Even if you're just sitting and waiting, at least there's lots of reading material. Would have done more with the glowstone lights, like perhaps a full-on chandelier, but the ceiling isn't quite high enough to prevent it from becoming a hazard.

Progress shot #2, after the finished Prince of Persia and a city park (i.e. lots of dirt and trees). The fact that there was a sunset going on is a complete coincidence and not an attempt by me to pass this off as artsy.

Inspired by a certain recent game that came out that month, Malachai and I set to work on building a LIMB ("Liberty in Mind and Body") clinic. Mal took care of the interior, while I mainly handled the logo on the outer wall. Minecraft blocks don't really have the resolution needed to capture LIMB's logo in full fidelity, but well, I made a decent enough attempt at it.

Interior of the LIMB clinic, in progress. The vaulted ceilings are mainly due to us having not put in the proper ones yet. I have, however, installed the major feature here: the purchase terminal. Because we need our Praxis kits and hypostims.

In the lobby facing towards surgery. I've faked fluorescent lighting by embedding glowstone in the ceiling. This looks a lot better if you're using a custom Painterly pack and made the glowstone less crystalline in appearance. You can also see Malachai standing on top of my reading material, in the guise of Minty Fresh from A Dirty Job.

Progress shot #3 with the LIMB clinic finished, as well as a radio tower on top of that natural rocky outcropping and a school campus installed (with a helipad on the gym, because I bloody felt like it). After this shot was taken, more city blocks were constructed, and I eventually built another GigaBurger restaurant.

Progress has kind of stalled on this in the last month or so, but mainly due to most involved parties being kind of bored and getting a lot of real-life obstacles in the way. But hey, I felt it was worth sharing the pictures I'd accumulated.

In True Return To Form

2011-09-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a while since I blogged about a D&D campaign, mostly because I haven't really been paying attention. I show up for the people, and tend to not really care much about the game being played. That all changed tonight, as we have not only a new DM (who has been doing this for 17 years), but also a new post-apocalyptic-medieval setting, and a neat selection of characters. Not a lot of players tonight but that gives us lots of time to roleplay and set up the whole thing.

The campaign starts with Malachai's character, a Kender (again with the Kenders...) Assassin (ported forward from the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook). His family is stripped of their flesh by a Rogue Eidolon, and both he and the Eidolon are mysteriously teleported to a new plane of existence. This plane of existence is where the other four of us are, and by four of us, I mean an eccentric Gnomish inventor (an NPC) and his three Warforged assistants.

Warforged #1, whom I'll call Steelfist, is a Monk-class who specializes in punching things with his adamantium fists. He's struck a deal with the Gnome (whom the DM has stressed sounds a lot like Star Wars Episode I's Watto) - he protects the Gnome, while the Gnome doesn't order him around. He's easily the most sensible of the group, serving as a foil to #2's idiocy and my short temper (ha ha...blacksmithing pun).

#2 is an Artificer with the stats of a Fighter. I've called him Hank (you'll know why, next paragraph). His specialty, which his stats don't allow for yet, is crafting wands and whacking things with them. Funny story involving him and our first combat round...I'll get to that. His weapon of choice is a long flail, which is stored in his thigh, RoboCop-style.

#3 is me, a Ranger (purely for the ranged-attack specialization). My gimmick is my arm-cannons. My left hand is spring-loaded, capable of firing my fist up to 70 feet, attached by chain. This basically works as a ranged melee attack, and with Power Attack and Cleave feats, I can do a sweep with the chain, God of War style. Also, while it's in flight, my hand has limited Kung Fu Grip, enabling me to interact with doors and levers from a distance. The right hand, according to the DM, basically works like Fallout 3's "Rock-It Launcher" - it, too, is spring-loaded, but I can load nearly anything in it (that'll fit in the barrel - usually rocks) and fire it 110 ft away. Very fun. Oh, and you're probably wondering why I named #2 Hank - I named myself Boomhauer. =P

But here's the story with that combat I talked about earlier - when Mal and the Eidolon teleported into the Gnome's lab, the Eidolon promptly ignored Mal and proceeded to spray blood at Hank, driving him into Madness. Hank posed a clearer imminent danger to us than the Eidolon did (surprisingly - considering the group is only averaged at level 3), so my first reaction was subdue him without damaging him. I grappled him with my chainfist (using the chain), succeeding for one round. The next round though, he bullrushed me in his fit of madness, knocking me over. Steelfist grapples the Eidolon by clinging to his head (Eidolons are apparently quite large, even compared to Warforged). I, meanwhile, have Hank on top of me. I aim my cannon arm and fire at his head at point blank, sending his head across the room. Nope, no blood, since he's a construct. It's a bit cartoony, actually; his head is sitting on the floor, still in a fit of madness and gnashing of adamantine teeth and all that, while his body is feeling around where the head plugs in and not finding anything there. Thankfully, his head just plugs right back in, so once the Madness runs out, Steelfist just slots the head in and lets him go about his business.

I forget how we killed the Eidolon.

Close Encounters of the Furry Rodent Kind

2011-08-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

The train ride home this evening got very strange, very quickly. Upon boarding the Green line into Portland, I sat in the midst of some inner-city sorts, and one guy in a green sweater holding a squirrel. Several seconds of awkward silence were broken when one of the folks next to me asked him about it - he said it was alive ("sort of"). They wisely ceased that line of questioning and resumed making rude gestures at the girls in the car behind us, and continued their attempts at getting said girls to "show some ass."

I caught a bit more of a glance at the squirrel and learned what the man meant when he said "sort of" - the squirrel had seen a taxidermist. In this context, Squirrel Man's comment about his pet being "alive, sort of" was made all the creepier, so I made the much wiser move of hopping off the train at the next stop.

Seems like small, furry rodents are a recurring theme today. When I was riding into town earlier this afternoon, there was a girl sitting across from me, listening to MP3's, holding a small square of blanket with a shy guinea pig inside. Every time she would pull the blanket back to pet it and calm it down, it would hide its head inside said blanket. I should have taken a picture, but I would have wanted to get the girl's permission first, which would have been difficult if she couldn't hear me. And, well, I'm a bit shy (understatement of the century) and probably would have flubbed the sentence.

The Weasel Ideal: Shooting At Your Own Pace

2011-08-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

This one occurred to me while I was eating an order of Carl's Jr. Chili-Cheese Fries. Whether that's a testament to the fact that I need to quit eating fast food, or an outright endorsement of said fries, leaves to be determined.

The first-person shooter is one of those genres that really doesn't change much. The many constants include long-range weaponry with an emphasis on marksmanship, explosions, enemies that shoot back, and while this last one is often taken for granted, the first-person shooter also implies a real-time game. That's what we're going to change in this Weasel Ideal.

The problem is, though, how does one remove the real-time element from a first-person shooter, a game which is generally expected to be a test of marksmanship, reflexes, and low-level battle tactics? For the answer to that question, let's look at another game in a completely different genre: Frozen Synapse. That is a turn-based strategy game where turns are executed simultaneously, where the strategy isn't so much in positioning yourself as it is trying to predict what the other player will do during this turn and trying to position yourself in anticipation.

Synchronous action is certainly the way to go here, but Frozen Synapse's interface wouldn't lend well to an FPS. So another game comes to mind: Earthbound. In an early dungeon (the cave leading to Giant Step), you might notice that the enemy encounters only move when you do, giving you time to think about your next move (if you intend to avoid them). For our game, we'll say that any action other than looking around with the mouse will cause the game to advance along with you.

A typical battle scenario would probably look like this. When you enter the game, you find yourself in the middle of an alleyway, flanked on both ends by gangsters. As you stand still, nothing is happening, allowing you to look around and get your bearings while you think about your tactic. You find a single open door next to you, with stairs leading up. You sprint up the stairs, and in doing so, the scene snaps into action, with the gangsters all drawing their weapons and following you up the obvious choke point. You stop at the top of the stairs, and everybody else freezes in place, mid-step, some of the gangsters having already pulled the trigger, their bullets barely escaped from the barrels of their guns.

You need to find a safe place to hole up and get your gun out. You duck into an open bedroom and draw your shotgun (everybody continues moving while you get your gun out, until you're finished drawing it and everyone freezes again). You fire at the first guy that pokes his head in, and as you pump a new shell into place, the action continues until you're finished. At this point two more gangsters have flooded into the bedroom door. There is a window to your right, hanging wide open. You duck through it and drop back to street level. Everything continues moving until you hit the ground.

The whole point of this is that everything moves when you move, but everything freezes when you don't. You can stop combat at any time to get your bearings and figure out where your next move should be. There would of course also be squad members, which you could issue orders Brothers In Arms style while the game is frozen, with them only taking action when you move.

There will be times in which you want the action to move without moving yourself. Walking in circles might do the trick sometimes, but other times you'll want to stay completely put, so for those moments there will be a "rest" button, Rogue-style, where you can sit tight and wait for things to happen, such as C4 timers, squad members getting in position, or enemies to get closer for that all-important head shot.

Don't Panic

2011-08-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Last night's impromptu snack run came with a slightly Douglas Adams twist.

Every week or so, I make the two-block walk to the Plaid Pantry, a 24-hour convenience store. I usually do so at night, because of less traffic and shorter lines. I get the feeling the night clerks are getting to know me pretty well, but even they've got some surprises once in a while.

On this occasion, I walked in with one of those environmentally-friendly library tote bags, since I was stopping in after dropping off some library materials. When checking out, the clerk asked if I wanted a bag. No thank you, I had told him, I was carrying my own already. And without skipping a beat, he gestured towards the plastic bag that he would have pulled from the rack, saying "But with this bag, you could go suffocate a dolphin!"

His on-break co-worker began to argue that dolphins were cooler than he was giving credit for, and at the end of his argument, mentioned something about how "you don't need to worry about them anyway; they're all going to leave once they build that interstellar bypass."

I finished paying for my goods and left, but not before seeing them off with a casually understated "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

Thoughts on Human Nature and Grade School Education

2011-07-24T13:28:00.001-07:00

Something's just occurred to me. Children in our society are typically taught to share with their friends, to not be selfish bastards, to let their siblings, cousins, friends, etc. have a look at the cool thing they got for their birthday or whatever if asked nicely. We're taught to share from a very young age. So why is it that many corporate entities effectively make it difficult, if not illegal, to share?

Say I buy a new game. I end up liking it a lot, but the game has no free demo version, gameplay trailers don't really give much of an idea of how it plays, and the game has some stupid little encryption or authentication or some shit that prevents me from simply loaning my friend the disc. I'd lack the skills to crack the protection on it, so I couldn't just spawn a copy of the game for my friend to try at his leisure and buy whenever he has money to burn. So the only real option, outside of having my friend drive the ten-plus miles to my house to play it on my computer, is to BitTorrent the game that I already own. Which, by most laws and regulations, is illegal.

This basically turns the childhood "sharing is caring" drills on their head and tells us everything we know is wrong. I'm the kind of guy who will gladly let my friends play with my game systems or try a bite of my sandwich (as long as they don't have mono or some other nasty spittle-transmitted disease). How long until the corporations figure out how to make that illegal, too?

the privateer, chapter 2

2011-07-14T23:05:00.001-07:00

Here's the second chapter of that story I wrote in the last post where I wrote something.

The Weasel Ideal: Backwards, In A Flash

2011-07-14T01:40:00.000-07:00

Anybody ever play the Prince of Persia games? No, I'm not talking about Ubisoft's newer cinematic 3D platformers - I'm talking about the original, 2D, miss-a-jump-and-you're-impaled Prince of Persia games. Those represent a brand of 2D gaming that I absolutely love. A platforming game in which your character's mobility actually requires some skill to pull off, where you can't jump the height of a small building, where you can't run 50 MPH - where your character acts like a human. Other games have since pulled off the same sort of formula, such as Out of This World, Flashback, Blackthorne, and recent independent release Rocketbirds: Revolution. And there have been some other titles that sort of tried the formula but simplified it a bit, like the GBA Splinter Cell.

This is a Weasel Ideal column, though, so we're not here to reminisce about the games of the past - we're here to make new ideas that build upon them.

The game this time, as you might guess, follows the Prince of Persia template. Screen by screen transitions (the screen will show bits of adjacent areas, though, which will scroll over once you cross the "border" so as to prevent accidental pitfalls), lots of ledge climbing and difficult jumps, and a fair degree of puzzle solving to taste. Our gimmick this time, though: cover and stealth.

Flashback and Blackthorne came out almost the same time, and both were Prince-like games that featured gunplay instead of swordfighting. We'll pull elements from both here.

First will be Blackthorne's "cover" system. In Blackthorne, you could hold the Up arrow (while your gun is drawn) to drop into the shadowy background, causing any shots headed your way to simply whiz past. That does work in a pinch, yes, but sometimes a firefight can be made more thrilling by the absence of cover, or the need to take a risk by running between two covers. So for the purposes of this game, we'll only allow the player to take cover at indentations in the wall, open closets and the like (or by entering other rooms in the background - but we'll get to that in a bit). Alternatively, the player can crouch (and roll, a la Flashback) to take cover behind sandbags, crates, or whatever else is handy.

Element number 2 is somewhat of an interpretation of Flashback's gunfighting - to survive many gunfights in Flashback, you generally would want to get into an advantageous position to get the drop on an opponent. Attacking from behind works, but so does dropping from a platform directly above with one's gun drawn, landing in a crouch and hitting the opponent before they have a chance to aim their weapons. Players could do that in our game, but let's throw in a free-aiming system like Shadow Complex where players can use the right stick or mouse to aim their weapon in any direction. Even still, getting in the right position to take down an enemy is crucial, since they're as fragile as you are, and a badly timed assault could result in even the weakest thug with a pistol killing you.

The aforementioned need to find a good position brings to mind the most important element of this mish-mash of games: stealth. Not only can we refer to the GBA version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, we can also refer to the (much, much better) freeware 2D remake, Splinter Source (it's a bit down the page...), which really handled the Splinter Cell brand of stealth much better than the GBA game did. Taking cover and minding the field of view is important to getting a good position to take out enemies. To simplify things, if an enemy isn't alerted, their field of view encompasses everything on screen in their facing direction on the vertical level that they're standing on. Here's a picture to demonstrate (blatantly stolen from Flashback).

The guard standing in the bottom-right corner, facing left, will be able to see everything to the left of him to the end of the screen. This enemy is currently in passive mode, meaning he hasn't seen the player yet and hasn't heard any suspicious noises. The player, standing above him, is well out of sight. If the player were to draw his gun and fire a shot, however, the guard would go to active mode, which allows him to aim freely. To prevent the issue of "psychic guards," different sounds would have different identifiable chances, i.e. there would be a certain chance that an enemy would be able to figure out where the sound was. Let's demonstrate that with a further doctored picture.

From this current position, the player draws his pistol and fires a shot at the wall in front of him. Might not be the wisest tactical decision, but roll with it for now. The colored rings I drew around the player represent the volume of the shot, assuming we're using a weapon with a suppressor (the old Hollywood myth that silenced weapons are COMPLETELY silent is not being followed here). If the enemy is within the 100% zone, he'll immediately know from where the shot was fired and aim his weapon in that direction, going through his usual guard behavior (either shooting at the player, or ordering them to freeze and then shooting them). If he's in the 75% zone, it might take him a bit longer to figure out where the shot came from (though he'll always jump into active mode and draw his weapon as soon as he hears something). At 50% volume, the guard is more prepared to believe that what he heard might have just been his buddy in the lower left corner coughing or something. At 25% volume, there's a decent chance he won't hear the shot at all. Now, we won't always have the volume zones in a perfect radius around the player - we'll take into account certain materials muffling or echoing sounds, so if you shoot while standing in a padded closet, nobody on the outside will really give a shit, but if you fire a shot from inside a large, empty warehouse, that silencer probably won't do you a hell of a lot of good. Oh, did I forget to mention that enemies will be able to free-aim at you if they're in Active mode? You won't be safe from enemy vision just by standing one floor above them if you're making a lot of noise.

Let's get back to that bit from earlier about ducking into rooms in the background. That'll be done in the style of Sierra's obscure 2D action title, Hunter/Hunted - if you enter a door or opening that leads into another room in the background, the current "layer" will zoom in until it disappears, while the player runs into the background and the next layer zooms in. This prevents silly little issues like having to draw inner rooms backwards, and also allows us to make the room layers as deep as we want them to be. A map would be handy in this case; think Valkyrie Profile Lenneth.

Oh, and our character will have a fair number of moves available to him, so your actions might not be so limited as in the older Prince of Persia titles. I'm thinking about hanging from ledges and firing up over the ledge, similar to hanging cover in the Uncharted games. Getting down into a prone position, rolling over on your back and aiming upwards while just barely peeking out of a ventilation shaft. Ducking into an alcove in the background and grabbing the next poor sod dumb enough to walk past you and either using him as a human shield, interrogating him for that elusive door code, or just knocking him out right there. Pushing people off dangerously high ledges, potentially onto other people who happen to be walking below - or just causing disturbances by dropping someone into a midst of sentries (a bit like dropping guards off rooftops in Assassin's Creed). The real key is not just in stealthy things the player could do, but also in figuring out ways to use said stealthy things as acrobatic tools to get into new areas. Or moves that ordinarily are used for getting around, and figuring out ways to use them as defensive tools (I'd imagine run-jumping into an enemy would knock them over, and hanging from a ledge would enable you to grab enemies and pull them over).

Wow, this got long and rambly. Maybe it's because I haven't done one of these in a while.

Why I'm Not Excited For Burnout Crash

2011-07-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

There are videos circulating around the 'net - gameplay footage for EA's newest Burnout game, entitled Burnout Crash. Now, I'm something of a fan of the Burnout series, since it's the only racing game I've ever played where it's more fun to be a sucky driver than it is to be a professional. This came to its largest peak when I played Burnout Revenge's Crash mode, which involves propelling your car into intersections full of traffic to cause the largest pileup possible. Burnout Paradise's Showtime mode didn't quite cut the mustard for me, since there was more emphasis on making the car bounce down the highway than there was in seeing the aftermath of a badly-timed (or well-timed) swerve. I thought to myself, why isn't there a Burnout game that solely consists of Crash mode?

Then I saw this gameplay footage:

My only thoughts: what the hell are they thinking?

The real appeal of Crash mode, to me, was that it takes place in the same perspective as normal racing, enabling you to really see the effects of your impact. Here, it looks like we're given just a boring intersection from an overhead perspective, with no real focus on the action.

The second issue I have is that idiotic-sounding announcer. There's a rule of thumb in video games regarding "live" commentary: the more enthusiastic (or just vocal in general), the less appealing. If given the choice between Unreal Tournament 2003's wrestling commentator and Mortal Kombat's match announcer, I'd pick Mortal Kombat. (That's probably the reason why Unreal Championship 2 on the XBox had such an option.) Burnout Crash's announcer somehow manages to be even more irritating than Paradise's DJ Atomica, which takes real effort.

Lastly, there's the fact that, despite the game (apparently) containing support for ordinary controllers that have, y'know, actual buttons on them, the game is being designed mainly around support for Kinect. I have not heard anything good about Kinect whatsoever, outside of all the open-source implementations that scan people into Minecraft and such. Using it as a game controller seems excessive, and designing Burnout Crash around Kinect (and making the player jump up and down to trigger the Crashbreaker explosion) sounds kind of dumb to me. My experience with Rock Band and WarioWare: Smooth Moves tells me that it's not always a good idea to force the player to jump up and down, especially if you're living on the second floor of a house or apartment building. Okay, the jumping can be faked in WarioWare, and Rock Band's kick pedal can be muffled with a few extra rugs for padding, but how do you fake jumping up and down with Kinect, without accidentally crashing through the floor (thus taking Burnout Crash to its too-literal conclusion)?

There are other things, too. I kind of expected Burnout Crash to at least look as good as other games in the series. What we've got here is the equivalent of an exceptionally well done browser game, or something designed for a portable device like a PSP or iPod. Or perhaps this is designed for an iPod or such - the no-button architecture again presents potential control issues, but I can understand shaking the phone more than I can jumping up and down.

Overall, Burnout Crash would need some serious rethinking if it wants to really satisfy me. I guess if I want a game that's all about crashing cars into each other, I could always go back to Burnout 3 or Flatout 2.

the privateer, chapter 1

2011-07-05T02:25:00.001-07:00

I wrote something. Here is a link.

Dear [redacted], please [censored]

2011-06-24T03:12:00.001-07:00

Dear Portal 2 fans,
Spoiling your favorite game for me does not make me want to run out and buy it.

Dear My Little Pony fans,
Don't pester me to watch your show, and I won't pester you to play Doom.

Dear StumbleUpon,
Please stop suggesting "rage guy" comics every fourth Stumble.

Dear Wing Commander: Privateer,
It's really funny when you randomly spawn four heavily armed Kilrathi bombers at the base I just launched from. Really.

Dear Lloyd Center Mall of Portland,
Didn't you used to have an Arby's in your food court?

Dear [redacted],
Man, why'd you have to turn out to be the Origami Killer?

Dear freddiew,
You really should have chosen Chocolate Chex.

Dear Tri-Met,
Clean your trains once in a while, will ya?

Dear Blaugh readers,
Thanks for putting up with me.

Dear Blaugh.com,
Thanks for not suing me.

Dear Gearbox Software,
You probably shouldn't have called Furious 4 a "Brothers in Arms" game.

Dear Nintendo,
Man, why won't you give us Americans the chance to play Last Window, Xenoblade, or Another Code R?

Dear Dearblankpleaseblank,
Thanks in advance for not suing me.

The Names Have Been Changed, To Protect The Innocent

2011-06-04T01:33:00.001-07:00

On the train ride home, I randomly started writing detective monologue about the things around me in a #ZDoom branch channel on IRC. It's been slightly formatted to better fit the blog format, outside of some omitted sections of just general chatter and other things for context. Other users' occasional comments are preserved for posterity.

<@wildweasel> okay i'm back, now that i'm on a different train
<@wildweasel> really didn't like what was going on on that other one

A Hispanic couple was having an argument. Some other guy was yelling into his cell phone and was reaching about 4 swears a second. The entire car smelled like old beer and there was an abandoned styrofoam container from Panda Express a few seats away that I dared not open.

Never understood why, but it always seemed like the newer, fancier trains always had more garbage lying around than the older ones. Maybe the fancier cars were just more of a pain to clean, and honestly I didn't blame the people responsible.

Or maybe the populace at large thought Tri-Met was too vain for pushing these prettier, more streamlined trains and sought to even the odds.

In today's day and age, you really couldn't tell. The kind of age in which the government is truly afraid of its own people, in which the news must be obtained through less legal means to get anything interesting, and you're more likely to make money pretending to be a Nigerian prince than you are doing anything legal.

The view outside the train was so dark as to be impenetrable, outside of occasional buildings that opted to leave dim lights on through thin blinds. The occasional neon sign or traffic light could be seen, but rarely the building it was attached to.

The train gave several lurches back and forth as it struggled to round the corner of Morrison and 3rd. Weaker stomachs than mine had given way to this, but at this point I had been riding long enough to barely notice.

[23:33:02] <@NeuralStunner> ... You're quite a writer.
[23:33:12] <@wildweasel> Based on a true story. =P
[23:34:18] <@wildweasel> I've been meaning to get back into practice writing, honestly, and I figured doing the pulp detective novel thing about things that are actually happening to me right now was the way to go
[23:35:32] <@wildweasel> Hnm. I wonder if I ought to continue.
[23:36:29] <@wildweasel> Eh, what the heck.
[23:36:34] <@NeuralStunner> Go ahead and write
[23:36:34] <@NeuralStunner> You can post it on Blaugh! later

The voice of the train chimed forth with its usual spiel that we weren't to ride without having a valid ticket. It seemed like the richer areas of town, with the upscale Louis Vuitton outlets and frozen yogurt bars, were more likely to have panhandlers wandering during the late hours. It stood to reason that begging for money would net better success in a richer area, but not when all the stores are closed.

It was this part of town that always interested me the most, but it was hard to do anything of interest without money. That old catch-22.

The more I rode the MAX line, the more I started to notice which areas would have which sorts of people. Every demographic had its own travel comfort zone. I rarely saw the thuggish types ride past the mall and free-rail zone, while as I started to leave the big city and get into the suburbs, the friendlier (and frankly prettier) folks started to get on.

And on Saturdays, the stretch between the mall and the Arena would leave the train nearly deserted.

The big divide was the tunnel between Washington Park and Goose Hollow...which I was just approaching and thus would have to delay this monologue for about five minutes.

[23:43:19] <@wildweasel> [[to be continued, i guess]]
I actually went through a pretty long tunnel here for about five minutes. I continued writing once I got my mobile internet signal back.

The train tunnel was nearly the most frustrating part of my weekly train ride. The acoustics were terrible and resulted in a horrible screeching noise permeating the entire car. The worst bit was the fact that it was underground, meaning all aerial signals were lost - radio, cell, and mobile internet included.

The train made another announcement. "In the priority seating area, you are required to move for seniors and people with disabilities." After the pre-recorded lady was finished talking, the message was repeated again in Spanish by a male voice that might as well have been the Spanish-dubbed version of Solid Snake.

[23:54:59] <@NeuralStunner> (Rather sad when kindness is "required".)

It wasn't long before the train reached its halfway point, Beaverton Transit Center. Familiar territory. I used to ride up here all the time, back when I worked in the area. I knew every store and every street...until I was fired, or as the temp agency put it, my "assignment has been ended."

It wasn't even told to me in person. Of all the representatives on all the days they could have contacted me, they instead opted to send me a form letter, via email, on a Saturday that I had requested off.

And since then, I haven't held a steady job since.

The view from the window seemed to scroll both ways. I could see the street lights on the port side from the starboard window.

Of all places, Beaverton almost seemed to be more alive on a Friday night than even the greater Portland area. Not because of the people - just the lighting. Even the auto dealerships were better lit than Portland's storefronts.

One thing for certain, though: approaching the Hillsboro area, one was less likely to see anything interesting between train stations. No lights, few crossing streets, generally only the parking lot for some long abandoned office with a few old junkers and someone's Toyota Prius that'd only been parked there for convenience.

"Beaverton Creek. Doors to my left." "Puertas a mi izquierda." On this train, it was nearly as ubiquitous as the London Underground's famous "Mind the gap."

[00:05:55] <@BlazingPhoenix> dayum
[00:05:58] <@BlazingPhoenix> good writing :o

"The doors are closing." An innocuous statement at best, that also served as a warning that the train was having problems if you'd heard it more than twice per stop. That often meant the door was jammed, or someone was jammed in it.

Curiously, it was also the only phrase on the train that was not translated to Spanish.

Another stop at a less popular station resulted in the doors opening and nobody entering or leaving the car. Of course, this wasn't like the city bus, so a rider couldn't pull a cord or press a button to signal a stop - it'd stop every single time.

A couple in their thirties slept in the priority seating area, unlikely to get a rude awakening at this time of night, even by the Hawaiian-shirt-clad father and his three overenthusiastic children. At least three people on the car sat with their skateboards in their laps and their earphones pumping some type of evening music.

A red-haired young man and his bandana-wearing girlfriend sat at the opposite end of the car in the elevated section. I sat dead center, in the part of the train where the seats faced sideways, and the accordion-like plastic walls would fold and bend when the train rounded a corner.

My kingdom for a standing desk, I thought, noting to myself that I quite badly needed to stretch my legs - but my home stop was another couple of miles away, at which point I'd have to walk the rest of the way.

"Fair Complex - Hillsboro Airport. Doors to my right." "Puertas a mi derecha." Only one stop to go. I packed my laptop into its too-large bag and prepared to start my walk.

[00:19:46] <@wildweasel> [[i.e. i gotta start walking, can't write one-handed. =P]]
[00:19:59] <@NeuralStunner> OK. :P
[00:20:04] <@wildweasel> i'll be back in like half an hour or so
[00:20:09] <@NeuralStunner> Gotcha
[00:20:23] <@NeuralStunner> You better blog this too
[00:20:24] <@wildweasel> i'll hear any messages you send though so highlight me if there's trouble
[00:20:29] <@wildweasel> yeah, i'll be blogging it

More Terraria Impressions

2011-05-23T02:19:00.000-07:00

I've spent a solid half-week playing Terraria (off and on - what, you think I'm some kind of jobless weirdo that sits and plays video games all day? ...you might be right.) and I'm discovering further nuances that aren't immediately apparent just from the surface.

I don't recall if I mentioned this in my previous post, but of particular note is the way games are saved. Terraria saves worlds and characters separately, so characters are not tied to generated worlds. What this means for the player is that, should you be unsatisfied with a world, you can easily generate a new one, and you can carry all of your character's items and upgrades to the new world. This is even the case online, as you can bring your decked-out character with iron armor and the Cloud-in-a-Bottle accessory (which enables double-jumping!) to visit your friends.

As I might have said before, Terraria has more of a "purpose" to it - while there's no preset story (much like Minecraft), your purpose eventually becomes clear as you stumble upon "corrupted" areas of the world, distinctive by the purple grass, yellow sky, and the fact that there are some pretty nasty mutants around to make your life a living hell (hint: stay AWAY from the Devourer until you can get better armor and more health!). This does seem to give the game a very RPG-like feeling, except that there is no experience point or level system - character strength is directly determined by the quality of equipment and the number of upgrade items you've found. In this way, Terraria feels more like a cross between Dwarf Fortress and a latter-day Castlevania game.

Terraria also seems to have an interest in the occult, as underground areas may house Demon Altars, which are needed to craft extra-special items, such as the type that can summon boss monsters(!). Of course, some of the more powerful items require you to harvest ingredients from corrupted areas, or particularly difficult monsters.

Then there's random events. While I haven't personally experienced some of these, I've learned a lot from listening to friends who are also playing the game (though I haven't outright spoiled any of it by reading the official Wiki or watching Youtube playthroughs). These events range from a Blood Moon (spawns more powerful monsters at night) to a Goblin invasion (which can actually happen in broad daylight) to even a random boss monster showing up out of nowhere to completely wreck your day. Thankfully, I haven't seen any monsters that will actively destroy your buildings, and if you happen to die, the most you lose is a small portion of whatever coinage you're carrying (which is why it's a great idea to dump all your money in a chest before you leave on a cave-diving expedition).

And yet, despite having crafted my first set of armor, numerous weapon upgrades, and having had both a Merchant and a Nurse move into my little hamlet, I feel as if I've only begun to scratch the surface of what this game has to offer. More thoughts forthcoming.

First Impressions: Terraria

2011-05-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I put anything serious on the Blaugh, so here goes some impressions of the recently released digging/fighting/building game, Terraria.

The first and most obvious comparison is Minecraft, and I don't dispute that. Hell, even the icons for the tools seem to look really similar to those of Minecraft. At its core, Terraria seems to fall into the same niche of exploring, carving neat holes in the landscape, shoving metric ass-tons of dirt, rocks, clay, and such into your pockets and then using said things to build more stuff. But there are a few notable things that Terraria does differently.

Among the things it does differently, the most obvious of those is that it's 2D instead of 3D. Minecraft fans might see this as a disadvantage, since built structures can't be as complex, but there is still some "depth" to the environment, as some things can be affected by the presence or absence of background "walls" (it seems monsters are more likely to spawn where there are no walls, for one). The mouse interface seems geared toward interacting only with foreground objects, but Terraria sort of gets around this by having a special tool (the Hammer) specifically to interact with the background. It seems kind of silly to have a tool that is designed only to interact with the background (and to the best of my knowledge, it does not let you remove walls, only things attached to them, such as signs, platforms, workbenches or furnaces - something that I hope is fixed; maybe there's another tool for that).

The roles of the various tools are changed, in that tools don't degrade like in Minecraft. Instead, the tools are now highly specialized, so that only specific tools can be used to perform certain tasks. The pickaxe is intended for digging dirt and stone blocks (and until you craft your first sword, is also your first effective weapon), the axe is for trees and wood, the hammer removes background objects and also can be used to harvest Crystal Hearts (which permanently increase your max health and can only be found deep underground), the sword exists solely to damage enemies, etc. I have no idea what benefit an upgraded tool provides, as I haven't made it that far. I imagine it takes an awful lot of copper and iron bars to do that, though.

Probably the first and most noticeable change is the presence of NPCs like the tutorial guy. Talking to him reveals helpful information on how to get started (though he conveniently leaves out some information like the fact that more monsters spawn at night and you might want to shelter yourself before the sun goes down), but even for people who are familiar with the game formula, he provides more in-depth information about things like falling stars, shadow orbs, crystal hearts, and townspeople. Yes, townspeople - as in more than one. Fulfilling certain conditions will cause more NPCs to move in to your "town," such as merchants, nurses, or even dryads. I haven't seen any of them yet, but from the sound of things, this game has more of a Sim City element to it, in that you have to satisfy the residents by giving them a shelter as well as one for yourself.

The first hour I've spent with Terraria has so far been promising. Time will tell, though, how much staying power it will have - I'll report back my progress as I explore more aspects of the game.

While This Blog Doesn't Often Rally About Political Issues...

2011-05-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

I hope we can all agree that this bill is complete bullshit.

Failure to Overdramatize

2011-04-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

I met up with my brother after he got off work today. When we'd both reached the MAX station and had to go our separate ways, I tried something I always wanted to do. You know that thing where a guy turns and looks at another guy, except then a bus or train passes by, and when it finishes passing by, the guy is gone? That's what I tried, and it almost worked, except that when the train stopped, my brother and I could still see each other through the gap between the train cars. I suppose that made it more hilarious, though, in the same way as an escaping ninja failing to use a smoke bomb.

Must Be That Time of Year

2011-04-09T12:39:00.001-07:00

Everything's getting a technological upgrade around this house this year. First it was me and my new computer (despite delays in fixing the RAM, it's running stronger than ever), then I assembled a new box for Mom from the spare parts of my old machine, then Mom donated her old machine to me for use with whatever the heck I want (ended up throwing Ubuntu 9.10 on it).

Then I woke up this morning and found that the parents had brought home a brand new Sony Bravia 40" 3DTV with a Blu-Ray player.

[insert Dr. Frankenstein cliché here]

2011-04-06T14:04:00.000-07:00

It works it works it WORKS! I got my new memory (finally!) and my Ultimate Gaming Rig of Ultimate Destiny is once again operational. Following along with the Left 4 Dead naming tradition I've set for some reason, I have christened this new machine "L4DTAAANK."

Random Assorted Bits, Bobs, Kevins, and Shaving Cream

2011-04-02T03:41:00.000-07:00

Spent the night on a website that shows me a random image on command. I'm currently lying face-up in bed with the laptop hovering over my face. Dropped it on my face. The only ill effect, outside of me saying "Oof!" in a keyboard-muffled fashion, was that I turned on capslock with my nose.

Since I still have not received replacement RAM (partially my fault as I kept forgetting to drop the old, dead RAM in the mail for four days), I've been playing Yakuza 4 and striving for 100% completion. This involves me coming up with downright dangerous ways to speed along things like eating every food (like going up to the rooftops, starting "combat training" and letting the handgun-wielding thugs plug me with rubber bullets, all so the Life bar drops down far enough that the game will let me order a bunch of food items at once).

My parents inexplicably watched The Terror of Mechagodzilla on Netflix. The riffing was glorious.

It is generally inadvisable to fall asleep while tightroping.

Eyeborgs: Not as bad a movie as Eagle Eye...but not as good of one either. This paradox ceases to be a concern when you realize that neither movie is anywhere as good as Sneakers. And despite (somewhat) better acting, I found that the original System Shock had a better-thought-out plot about AI-controlled robots taking over the world. (Notice to Hollywood: DO NOT attempt to make a System Shock or Deus Ex movie.)

Sleeping is good. I should do that.

Posting From The Bus

2011-03-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

For the first time since getting this netbook, I'm finally taking advantage of my ability to access internet via 3G, by (what else?) making a frivolous post on my Blaugh while riding the bus home. Ain't technology wonderful?

The Last False Alarm About The False Alarm Being A False Alarm Is Itself A False Alarm

2011-03-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

My new computer had bad RAM - both sticks. Time to RMA this shit...

Do People Give Gifts For Saint Patrick's Day?

2011-03-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Because I just finished up my new computer yesterday and she's runnin' like a dream.

Cleaning Up The Front Page A Tad

2011-03-09T11:59:00.001-08:00

Get outta here, you depressing tirade about broken computers and XBoxes (XBoxen?). I'm ordering up parts for a new machine today...as soon as I can confirm that the transfer from my savings actually happened. Stupid online banking website is down. =P

That Last False Alarm Was A False Alarm

2011-02-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

The video card that I reseated the other day ended up dying. Crap. So much for this computer.

To avoid that feeling of emptiness that comes with a dead computer, I hooked my netbook up to the desktop machine's keyboard, mouse, speakers, and monitor. I'm silly. =P

s/uck/alse alarm*

2011-02-25T14:43:00.001-08:00

My computer's back in good standing - guess the video card just needed to be re-seated. Huh.

Well, Fuck - Part Two?!

2011-02-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

Apparently it's not bad enough that my XBox is nearly fried - my COMPUTER is having issues, too, in the form of random freezes! They're becoming alarmingly common and I have no idea what's wrong.

Well, Fuck

2011-02-22T19:42:00.000-08:00

My Xbox 360 is now dead, on the very day I received my long-awaited copy of Raiden Fighters Aces. I'm out of warranty. The total value of my console, including the wireless network adapter, is $50. Fuck.

A Sorely Ignored Feature Request

2011-02-20T11:27:00.001-08:00

Sony, I wish you would give us an option to stop games on the PS3 main menu from playing STUPID LOUD MUSIC.

I like the animated icons, and I like that videos can play chunks of themselves in the XMB, but when they play music that is twice as loud as everything else the system can put out, ESPECIALLY when said game icons are the one item that is highlighted by default when the system first boots, it gets very, very irritating.

Damn it all. I wish Sony read the Blaugh. =P

On Feet, Dress Shoes, and Aaargh

2011-02-19T23:35:00.000-08:00

According to my...*ahem* fancy expensive distance tracking device (which is totally not a PokéWalker from the Pokémon SoulSilver version), I walked over 14,000 steps today in the process of traveling into Tigard for a job interview. My search for gainful employment drags me far and wide...or at least as far and wide as Tri-Met can carry me. I'm jumping on nearly every opportunity that presents itself to me, and god dammit, I swear I WILL get a job this year!

Yeah, there's not a lot of real point to this post outside of the aggressive affirmation stuff. Also, my feet hurt, and if this were any Final Fantasy game, I would likely have encountered roughly three hundred random battles. Damn, I left my Auto Crossbow at home. =P

For A Scientifically Fun Time

2011-02-16T23:55:00.000-08:00

Have a look at the Science Scouts list of Badges and try the following...

- See how many badges you have.
- Watch any show on Discovery or Science Channel and try to guess what badges people on the show have. (Extra Difficulty: no Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.)
- Watch any TV crime drama and guess what badges people on the show have. (Extra Difficulty: no Bones.)

If You Can't Be With The One You Love, Love The One You're With

2011-02-15T02:26:00.000-08:00

Nope - no cards, no pseudo-philosophical ranting and raving about the concept of love...not even listening to songs like "What Is Love," "The Concept of Love," or "Love Hurts." Nothing happened at all this Valentine's Day - and that's precisely the way I like it.

My dreams have been getting severely messed up, though. Like, so messed up that I feel that blogging about them would be exposing too much to this crazy internet. Can't blame me, right? Especially not if said dreams might have involved the shower on a few occasions? (This remark does not in any way indicate the actual content of said dreams. Get your minds out of the damn gutter and make room for that Oregon liquid sunshine.)

Dad called Oregon's weather this month "the February fake-out" - earlier this month it was actually starting to get somewhat warm outside, even approaching 60 degrees at times. Tonight, though, not only did it rain harder than I've seen in about six months, it also happened to be one of the coldest light breezes I've seen since December. It wasn't blowing particularly hard, but it still chilled my nose quite a bit. I'm amazed I didn't catch cold - maybe I did, though. Let's see what happens when I wake up tomorrow, eh?

Reasons Why, Despite The Random Ass-Kicking, Kazuma Kiryu Can Be A Good Role Model

2011-02-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Kazuma Kiryu, the Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan and protagonist of Sega's niche Yakuza series. Given that the Yakuza games are all about organized crime and random beat-downs of street punks who will take any opportunity to attempt to con you out of your money, you wouldn't really think that there is any educational value in them. Actually, there are a few important life lessons to be learned from events in the game, and hell, Kiryu-san can even be looked upon as a role model (if we were to ignore the fact that he gets into a street fight with a random mugger every two minutes or so). Here are reasons why Kazuma could be considered a positive role model:

Number One: RESPECT.

Even when dealing with sworn rivals like Ryuji Goda, or friends-that-want-to-kill-you like Goro Majima, Kazuma speaks with respect. He goes out of his way to avoid offending the people he talks to, apologizing for the manners of his friends (such as when temporary sidekick Rikiya calls a famed tattoo master "old man"), and sometimes refusing to accept rewards for simple tasks.

Number Two: EMPATHY.

If a random passerby gets their purse snatched, Kazuma is quite willing to chase and subdue the purse-snatcher. If a man is about to jump into the river over his mounting debt, he's quick to offer financial advice that does not involve suicide. And if a little girl is worried about a stray puppy starving to death, Kazuma Kiryu will scour the entirety of Tokyo for the one convenience store that sells puppy food. Simply put, Kazuma is selfless and pays mind only to the best interests of the common man. It doesn't matter if he has to beat down the entire Snake Flower Triad on the way to Don Quixote's to buy dog food; he'll do it, just the same.

Number Three: ADVICE.

Kazuma could very well write his own newspaper advice column. A lot of the random side-jobs he accomplishes throughout the series tend to involve him talking to people who have problems and giving them the advice they need to solve them. Perhaps he's just an inspirational sort of guy, even if he doesn't mean to be.

Number Four: CALMNESS.

The ability to remain calm under pressure is one of the most important things for any situation, and Kazuma demonstrates incredible calmness, even under such ridiculous situations as a helicopter assault on the Fuma Family office. Even if a friend has just been shot in a bad place, Kazuma keeps it together long enough to haul said friend to a clinic for medical attention.

Number Five: RESTRAINT.

I will not deny that Kazuma Kiryu gets in a lot of fights. However, he knows exactly when to quit, and does not kill. He even makes great attempts to avoid fights altogether if possible (which is no easy feat, especially in the more back-alley portions of Kamurocho). He does not loudly announce his credentials as a Chairman. He rarely raises his voice. This restraint even applies to the people that follow him; he is more willing to take care of a situation himself than he is to allow others to take risks doing it themselves. He even leaves Okinawa for Kamurocho without alerting a young "fan," so that said fan does not risk their life in a foolish chase.

Number Six: OTHER.

All this stuff, and I haven't even mentioned how Kazuma donates money to, and eventually becomes the owner and operator of, the Sunflower Orphanage in Okinawa. He applies his leadership skills from being a member of the Tojo Clan to raising a group of 11-year-old children, and although his work for the Clan isn't exactly something you would want to bring to show-and-tell, he at least makes a good enough father figure that all of those children look to him for advice and words of encouragement.

Given these numerous examples, Kazuma Kiryu can be seen, not as a fierce warrior, but as the sort of dependable fellow that could do anything to help those he is closest to, even at great personal risk.

The Weasel Ideal: RPG Personality in Battle

2011-01-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

The one common trait that seems to link all role-playing games these days is that, given sufficient time leveling, grinding, buying equipment and generally building strength, any given party of adventurers - even if they're all weak heal-mages or something - can begin to skip through battles merely by spamming the "Attack" button over and over again until the opposing party is dead. Basically, no matter what the party is like in terms of personality, combat specialization, and unique abilities, they can be effectively reduced to "Mash A to win battle." Most of the time, RPG developers try to discourage this from happening by just making the Attack button less useful (or removing it entirely) - notably, the Pokemon games do this by not having a generic "Attack" function, but rather force the player to make a tactical decision by choosing which elemental power would fall under the opponent's elemental weakness.

There's a sad, lost opportunity here. Think about the fighting games out there - in many of them (particularly ones like King of Fighters), a character's move set highly depends on their personality. Why not apply this idea to an RPG battle?

Let's throw together a "sample" party - we have three characters. The designated hero is a loudmouth blonde guy that would rather insult or fast-talk his opponents until they gave up than kill them. His love interest is a quiet girl who prefers things be as precise as possible. And tagging along for the ride is their friend, a blunt man of few words. Using this three-man party, I'm about to describe an RPG battle system that is less about whittling away your opponent's HP numbers and more about trying to resolve a conflict quickly - whether through combat or diplomacy.

"Hiro," our...hero, probably would not have very many skills that actually did serious damage to an opponent, and the few that do would cost MP (he can kill, but he's hesitant to do so - also, for purposes of this sample game, we'll assume that MP regenerates slowly, both during and outside of battles). Hiro has no default Attack button - he can issue normal physical attacks at the cost of 1 MP. His default combat action is "Intimidate" - he'll draw his quarterstaff, spin it around a bit, yell at his opponent and warn him that he's gonna be in for some serious hurt. For weaker foes, this might actually cause them to run or surrender on the spot (still granting experience points). But if Hiro is weaker than his foe, they will likely be unimpressed, or even become enraged and conk him on the head to make him shut up. As a last resort, Hiro has a "limit" action called "The Last Straw," in which he merely draws his weapon and attempts a lethal blow on his opponent. Because of how difficult it is to work up the nerve to actually take a life (something he is highly opposed to doing), this maneuver would likely cost a very, very large chunk of his MP.

"Emily," the timid librarian that joins Hiro, also has no basic "attack" button - her default combat actions come in the form of two buttons. The first button, "Panic Shot," has Emily quickly ready her mini-crossbow on her wrist and fire a shot at her target as quickly as possible. This has a chance of missing, might not strike a lethal area and thus probably only wound or cripple a target, and has a chance of accidentally hitting a friend. In some standout cases, Panic Shot might trigger automatically, as Emily is the sort that is easily startled. The other button, Aimed Shot, requires the player to decide where to aim the arrow, and also requires a waiting period. This shot will nearly always hit the target, and the targeting interface can offer hints as to places which may be lethal if an arrow strikes them, but depending on the distance, size, and motion of the target, pulling off such a shot will take a variable amount of time (and also a proportional chunk of MP - striking a specific artery with a bank shot may require nearly all of her MP).

"Biff," the big guy, is also unique among the party. He does not use a weapon, fighting with his fists. As a result, most of his attack actions do not deal lethal damage; he can kill enemies, but this requires him to focus (either a long waiting period before such an attack, or spending MP to speed it up). Biff's one-punch, one-knockout mentality dictates that he not waste a lot of time with lengthy combination attacks; his focus is instead on causing enough damage in a certain location to incapacitate the enemy so that no more than one punch is needed. Punches to the gut or groin are common. Biff's punch is accompanied by a mini-game: when Biff winds up his punch, a circle begins to focus on a specific point on the enemy. The player must move a cursor to the center point of this circle, then press a button when the circle exactly overlaps the cursor. The closer the circle is to the cursor, the more effective the punch. More difficult foes may require the player to move said cursor out of the way of obstacles (to symbolize dodging and evading oncoming swings as the punch connects).

So as described above, the goal in this battle system is NOT to kill everything in sight. Not only does the player gain experience points for causing all opponents to run or surrender, but each character physically plays differently from another according to their personality. Loudmouth Hiro wins fights by discouraging the other guy from even trying, calculating Emily either panics or spends time carefully lining up her shot, and macho Biff just...punches people in the junk. Kills are still possible, but are discouraged (less experience in most cases, though some battles can't be won through bravado and junk-punching alone).

2011-01-20T02:46:00.000-08:00

True loneliness is calling the Skype Call Testing Service (echo123) because you need someone to talk to.

That Weird State of Subconsciousness Again

2011-01-07T13:46:00.000-08:00

I had a weird dream again. Well, that's kind of a generic way of putting it - all my dreams are weird, when I have any of them. In this case, it happened immediately after I slapped the "Off" button on my alarm clock at 11 AM, only to fall back asleep for another two hours.

I found myself in a blue jumpsuit, standing in a line with several other people wearing similar. Each of us was handed the grip from a plastic toy revolver, then the barrel, then a cylinder that looked too small to even take a .22 bullet. This gun was designed in such an impractical way that I had trouble believing that a human being created it. Not only was the weapon given to us in pieces that did not obviously fit together, but the cylinder went in sideways (so even if I could load ammunition into it, it would not fire because the bullets are pointing to the right of the gun), the barrel was actually a flashlight, and instead of a hammer, there was a charging handle on the left of the gun that, when pulled, pivoted 90 degrees outward and made audible plastic gear-crunching sounds. When the charger was pulled, the cylinder rotated a full 360 degrees and the barrel-flashlight switched on. I found no way to turn it off without pulling the trigger, which I'd been told that I didn't want to do.

Once we'd all been fitted, we were sent to the most bizarre obstacle course I've ever seen. It looked ordinary at first glance, until you saw that instead of wood, some of the obstacles were actually made of ice filled with brown food coloring, and some of the tightropes had obvious gaps in the middle that, oddly, did not affect their tightness at all - they were still fully capable of supporting human weight. Also, there were sections in which we were supposed to slide underneath gaps. In retrospect, it reminded me of a Mega Man game.

I passed the test, somehow (I didn't get to see how), and found myself in probably the most absurdly tall apartment I've ever seen. It had the form factor of an apartment in an ordinary complex, but it seemed to extend very far vertically, with some areas that looked like closets actually being staircases, ladders, or fireman's poles. I went down one staircase and found it to have no lights or handrails, so I was forced to use my gunlight. And once I'd reached the bottom, I was greeted by an oddly-proportioned woman whose bottom half was far larger than her top half, who advised me to sit down and watch an episode of NCIS in which Agent Gibbs had been killed by a medicine capsule stuffed with C4, leaving him splattered all over the wall.

I thought I'd woken up, but the first thing I saw as a list of names, addresses, and online screen names, which I eventually realized was all supposed to be me, as if it were a list of "witness protection" identities I'd assumed at some point. I stepped outside my house (it felt really old) and found a red Mazda parked three feet off the driveway, in the front yard.

That's about when I woke up for real, realized it was 1:00 PM, and quickly got out of bed and grabbed a shower. I don't think I'll ever know what this thing means.

The Marcel Proust Character Questionnaire

2011-01-07T02:30:00.000-08:00

The Marcel Proust Character Questionnaire was developed by Marcel Proust (go figure) as a method of developing character personalities. I took a similar questionnaire three years ago, back when I used my Lemonfingers account, but since those three years, I've made some pretty major changes to the four characters I used - so I'm doing it again, with the revised characters, and this questionnaire instead of the other (Livejournal-derived?) version.

The characters are:

* Richard "Rick" Dautter, the son of an abusive ex-Marine Corps father. He is tritanopic (a form of color-blindness where he cannot tell blue and green apart) and was raised by a scientist who was working on a classified project, and thus could not spend much time with him in his youth.

* Tera le Vont, the sole heir of a long-running noble family from a tiny island halfway between Canada and Europe. She distances herself from her lineage due to her father's failed attempt at seducing her, and thus donates all annuities and income from her parents' will to charity, rather than take any of it.

* Tia Nilssen, a private detective who lost her parents at an early age and never knew a real family. She became a detective to find out who her parents were, and why they died. She tends to solve her problems through smooth talking.

* Rudolf Monticelli, a private detective who met Tia at the University of Investigation of Utah. A brute of a man, standing almost seven feet tall, he solves nearly all of his problems with violence or harsh language. As a result, despite having an investigator's license, he is wanted for questioning in ten states regarding a series of brutal shotgun-related deaths.

* Interviewing agent [REDACTED], the interviewer in charge of this session. Assigned to read the interview questions from behind a pane of one-way glass and administer electrical shocks to uncooperative subjects.

==BEGIN QUESTIONNAIRE==

* Introduce yourselves.
TIA: Do we have to? We already kind of did that earlier...
RUDOLF: Who's asking? FBI? Interpol? You got a warrant? Am I under arrest? I want a lawyer!

* INTRODUCE YOURSELVES.
RUDOLF: GAAAH! You didn't need to do the shock therapy sh-AAAAH! Alright, alright! Rudolf Monticelli, private detective!
TIA: Tia Nilssen, also a private detective.
RICK: Richard Dautter. I, uh...drive a forklift.
TERA: Tera...le Vont.

* What do you consider your greatest achievement?
RUDOLF: I killed the guy that killed Kennedy.
TIA: Which one?
RUDOLF: The words "grassy knoll" mean anything to you?
TIA: I'm pretty sure that not only were you not old enough to kill people in the 60's, you also didn't even know what "knoll" meant.
RUDOLF: Fuckin' party pooper.
TIA: My greatest achievement? Getting my investigator's license. Not much of interest has really happened since then, though.
RICK: I got away from my asshole father.
TERA: [[no reply, but spent this question glancing at Rick]]

* What is your idea of perfect happiness?
RICK: A warm bed, a cool drink, and someone to share both with.
TERA: Whatever perfect happiness is, I'm sure I haven't reached it, and likely never will.
TIA: That feeling of satisfaction when you close a case.
RUDOLF: Happiness is a warm gun.
RICK: Huh. Never took you for a Beatles fan.

* What is your current state of mind?
TIA: Is this an interview or a psychoanalysis?
RUDOLF: My state of mind is I want to punch whoever's asking these questio-AARGH! Enough with the fucking shock therapy already!
RICK: I'm not sure if I should be laughing or cowering.
RUDOLF: It better be the SECOND one, pal.
TERA: [[no reply, but cowering in her seat]]

* What is your favorite occupation?
RICK: Driving the forklift. Pay's not great, and the foreman yells at me a lot if I don't do things just right, but once I get into my groove...
TIA: I can't imagine doing anything other than investigation.
RUDOLF: I wanted to be a hitman, but Tia here tells me it's not exactly legal.
TERA: I'm...not sure.

* What is your most treasured possession?
RUDOLF: My gun. I love it sooo much!
TIA: (What on Earth is wrong with you?) I can't quite decide between my P.I. badge or my cable ties. All the authority of real police badges and handcuffs, but smaller and less shiny!
RICK: Don't know what I'd do without my bomber jacket. (Though sometimes I'd like to pretend it wasn't my dad's...)
TERA: My ring. It was my mother's...

* What or who is the greatest love of your life?
RICK: (Should I just come out and admit it? I haven't even told her yet...)
TERA: I...don't know what to say...I never thought about it...before...
TIA: Sorry, guys. Vow of celibacy. Romance doesn't get in the way of the job.
RUDOLF: ...Uh...can I use the same answer on more than one question?

* What is your favorite journey?
RICK: The rock band.
TIA: You were in a rock band?
RICK: No, the band called Journey.
TERA: The journey of the mind through the realm of dreams. (Or nightmares...)
RUDOLF: Journey to the Center of the Earth.
TIA: Huh, you read Jules Verne? That's two revelations in one question...

* What is your most marked characteristic?
TIA: Hey, uh, I didn't get to answer the last one...
RUDOLF: Don't sweat it, girl.
TERA: Most people know me because I'm some kind of philanthropist. I make a lot of donations...but what they don't realize is that I'd sooner get rid of my father's fortune than spend it on myself...because that's precisely what he would have wanted me to do, and I won't give him the satisfaction of it.
RICK: Geez...that came out of nowhere.

* When and where were you the happiest?
TERA: My room...until that day...[[begins crying quietly]]
RICK: [[tries to reach over and comfort her, but can't reach from his chair]]
RUDOLF: Cut back on the waterworks, lady...
TIA: How about _you_ cut back on the pithy one-liners, buddy?

* What is it that you most dislike?
RICK: My father. Irresponsible, womanizing jackass that deserves everything he got!
TERA: My...father...but for a different reason...
TIA: I'd say what's on my mind right now, but what's on my mind would probably reach over and punch me.
RUDOLF: ...huh?
TIA: Forget it.
[[When later asked to answer this question properly, Rudolf was uncooperative.]]

* What is your greatest fear?
TERA: [[no comment, but appears to be suppressing tears]]
RICK: ...My color-blindness might eventually get me killed, somehow.
TIA: I...don't feel comfortable answering that.
RUDOLF: Again, who's asking the questions? How do I know that anything I say here won't be used against me in an interrogation later? How do I know THIS isn't an interrogation? [[Rudolf quickly turns toward the back wall of the room, correctly assuming it's the one-way mirror]] Ah-ah, you're NOT gonna shock me this time, pal!

* What is your greatest extravagance?
RICK: I...occasionally spend more than six dollars on lunch? Hell, I don't know...
TIA: I had my gun engraved...my name's right there on the slide.
RUDOLF: Not bad...but what good's havin' your name on a gun you didn't make yourself?
TIA: Rudolf, that "Heavy Magnum" of yours is probably going to explode in your face some day, you know that?
RUDOLF: Who says I'm gonna shoot someone with it? The look on their faces when I pull it out is good enough for me.
TERA: This is why I'm pro-gun control.
RUDOLF: And what fuckin' good would that do, huh, lady? [[Questioning agent [REDACTED] would like it to be recorded that he was very close to shocking Rudolf again for this response.]]

* Which living person do you most despise?
RICK: You should already know what I'm gonna say here.
TERA: That lawyer, from five years ago. He said he was only doing his job, but I swear he had it out for me...
RICK: ...not your father?
TERA: No, not my father...he's dead.
RICK: Something you're not telling me, Tera...
RUDOLF: Officer Drake in Traffic. Guy owes me a lotta money and has the balls to tell me he doesn't remember borrowing it! Well how about I borrow a little something of YOURS, pal? Something like your--
TIA: Ahem! Some of us would like to exit this room without smelling too much of your burning hair, so I'd quit before the interviewer zaps you again. ... As for my answer to that question, well, technically I answered it before a few questions ago.

* What is your greatest regret?
RUDOLF: That I killed the guy that killed Kennedy...
TIA: Again, I'm pretty sure you didn't do that.
RUDOLF: I didn't fucking finish. I was gonna say, that I killed the guy that killed Kennedy before he had confessed to the cops. I could'a had my time in the limelight!
TIA: Jesus Christ, Rudolf, how old were you back in '68?
RUDOLF: Old enough!
TIA: Are you sure? I've seen your driver's license, or what's LEFT of it, and it says you were born on July the 17th of nineteen-sixt--
RUDOLF: Shut the FUCK up, lady, before I--AAAAAARGH!

* ANSWER THE GOD DAMN QUESTION.
TIA: I...uh...
RICK: My greatest regret is that I never punched my dad in the face. He deserved it so much.
TIA: ...Yeah, you're right! I regret that I haven't punched Rudolf in the face, ever! I might start now!
TERA: ...I actually did punch my father, once...didn't end well...
RICK: ...It's okay. You don't need to go into detail right now.

* Which talent would you most like to have?
RUDOLF: Kind of a hard question to answer, buddy, considering I've got all of 'em already!
TIA: I won't even bother telling you all the reasons why that statement is so very, very wrong. I wish I was my own attorney sometimes. I bet I'd be good at it...
RUDOLF: Be glad you aren't, Princess. I'd probably hate you more because of it.
RICK: I always wanted to be a ninja. Not the killing people at night part...the running up walls and climbing across ceilings part. It'd add an interesting dimension to my sex life, that's for sure!
TERA: ...More like what talent do I wish I didn't have. Look, I'm tired of all these questions, I just want to go home and read a book...please...

* Where would you like to live?
RUDOLF: The 1930's.
TIA: He said where, not when.
RUDOLF: So?
TIA: Fuck it. Can I live in Italy?
RICK: Washington. I hear it's nice.
TERA: Wherever Rick goes, I can't help but follow.

* What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
TERA: I don't know for sure, but I could tell you I'm not far from it.
RICK: That's not entirely true. You got me...
TERA: I...
RICK: We'll suffer through everything together. Whatever happens, I'll be there with you.
TERA: ...
RUDOLF: ...Y'know, I dunno what true misery is, but sitting here listening to these lovebirds is sure making me feel pretty nauseous. For Chrissakes, pal, you sound like a Harlequin romance!
TIA: There are times when you need to shut your lip, Rudolf.

* What is the quality you most like in a man?
RUDOLF: And seriously, what the hell's this? You guys think I'm gay or something?
TIA: (Wouldn't surprise me.)
RICK: That's...not something I ever really thought about. I like to think that I'm everything I'd want from a guy, but I'm probably not perfect.
TERA: [[declined to answer]]

* What is the quality you most like in a woman?
RUDOLF: Blonde, big tits.
TIA: How typical.
RUDOLF: Lemme guess, you're jealous?
TIA: Jealous of a Playboy centerfold? Oh, please, they probably have the personality of a flake of drywall.
RUDOLF: Not that you're much better.
RICK: Can I say something?
RUDOLF: No, I'm sick of listening to you.

* What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
RUDOLF: That I'm too awesome.
TERA: Um...that's not really deplorable, that's just self-worship.
TIA: Yeah, I'd say your worst trait is that you're too full of yourself.
RICK: I'd take it a step further; his worst trait is that he's a narcissist.
RUDOLF: You'd probably be dog-piling me if we weren't all strapped to chairs.
TERA: I'm not strapped to a chair. I could leave any time I want.
RICK: So why don't you?
TERA: I'd rather get this done first. Which leads me to my answer: the one thing I dislike the most about myself is that I'm too focused on finishing what I've started.
TIA: Which would explain something about that court case she was involved in five years ago...
TERA: And how did you hear about that, hmm?
TIA: I'm not really sure. Word gets around, I guess.

* What is the trait you most deplore in others?
TIA: Well, gee, if I'd known he was going to ask THAT, I would have saved my answer from the last question and used it here instead.
RICK: Yeah, we kind of did that backwards, didn't we? Heh...
TERA: Is the interviewer working from a script or something?
RUDOLF: Are YOU working from a script? Because I swear I knew what you were gonna say before you even opened that pretty little mouth of yours.
TERA: Um...

* What do you most value in your friends?
RICK: They have the eyes that I don't...like yours, Tera. Those blue gems of yours that help me see things I wouldn't be able to otherwise.
TERA: Uh, we've been through that, Rick...my eyes are green, not blue.
RICK: Like I can tell...
TERA: You could at least try to remember...
RUDOLF: I value an extra gun or two at my back. Gotta say, it sucks to get shot in the ass.
RICK: Is it my imagination, Rudolf, or did you become a private eye just to get in gun fights?
RUDOLF: Ain't your imagination, pal.
TIA: Sadly, he's not lying.

* Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
RICK: Oh, this one's easy. I've always been a Batman fan.
TERA: Nancy Drew. I've been reading her books since I was a girl.
TIA: I don't read a lot of fiction, but I could say Arsene Lupin.
RUDOLF: Encyclopedia Brown. ...What?

* Whose are your heroes in real life?
TERA: The Grateful Dead.
RICK: Even in spite of my dad, I'm going to say the United States Marine Corps.
RUDOLF: Professor Marlowe from UIU. Taught me a thing or two about ballistics.
TIA: The modern police force. I can't do all the work myself - only the stuff they don't have the power to do themselves.

* Which living person do you most admire?
RICK: That depends...uh, is Louis Armstrong still alive?
TERA: I admire everyone. If I could be an ordinary person like them, I would be happy.
RICK: ...But you're ordinary to me.
TERA: Huh?
RICK: That...didn't come out right.
TERA: Oh, forget it Rick, I know what you meant to say.

* What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
RUDOLF: Oh, god, chastity. I can't tell ya how many times that would've ruined a hot date!
TERA: Um, no offense, but I'm surprised you know what the word "chastity" means.
RUDOLF: I dated a nun in training once.
TIA: This explains everything.

* On what occasions do you lie?
RUDOLF: Do me a favor, whoever's taking notes on all this, go back and read every single one of my answers. I guarantee you nearly all of them are lies. Well, except for the virtue part.
TIA: And the Encyclopedia Brown books.
RUDOLF: Shut up, Tia, I'm trying to make it look like I don't really read those.
TIA: Not doing a great job of that.

* Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
RICK: I didn't get to answer the last two, guys...can we backtrack a bit?
TERA: No, no, let's not make this go on any longer than it already has.
TIA: Damn right.
TERA: Really? You agree?
TIA: No, I mean "Damn right" is a phrase I overuse a lot.
RUDOLF: You mean you didn't take vocab classes either?
TIA: Damn right! ...Damn.

* If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
RUDOLF: I like me just the way I is.
TIA: Am.
RUDOLF: What's the letter M got to do with the question?
TIA: I meant your sentence should have ended with the word "am." As in, "the way I am."
RUDOLF: That's you, not me.
TIA: Grr...

* What are your favorite names?
RICK: No, I'm serious, I haven't got to answer the last four questions...
RUDOLF: You trying to get them to start over or something? We'll be here all fucking day if you keep that up!
RICK: But--
RUDOLF: They're getting lazy, pal, it's better not to call 'em out on that.
TIA: For once, he's right.

* How would you like to die?
RUDOLF: Ya see, pal? They fucking heard us!
RICK: Ack!
TIA: Wait. He didn't say it like that...
TERA: Sounded more like he's asking HOW we'd like to die, not whether or not we want to die.
RICK: Phew, yeah, maybe you're right...
RUDOLF: Dammit, don't scare me like that!
TIA: You're the one fear-mongering, bub.

* If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
TERA: A cat. It'd be simpler then...
RICK: I like cats. I'd adopt you.
TERA: Awww.
TIA: I like the cat idea. Except I'd rather be one of those drug-sniffing dogs.
RUDOLF: I wanna be a gun.
TIA: What, being ordered to put out eight hundred times a minute?
RICK: Being taken apart and reassembled every week or so?
TIA: Existing only to kill people? ...Ohh, I get it.
RUDOLF: Yep.

* What is your motto?
RUDOLF: Do it my way or watch your butt.
RICK: ....
TIA: ....
TERA: ....
RUDOLF: And that's it.

[[All four subjects were released as per Agency protocol 117B. Interviewing agent [REDACTED] was disciplined for excessive use of the shock-therapy unit.]]

Happy Bloody New Year

2011-01-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

It's 2011. Only one year until the world ends, and only four years until Back to the Future 2 takes place. In other words, if we're all still alive by the time that happens, we'll supposedly have flying cars, holographic killer sharks, hoverboards, hands-free gaming (waaaaait a second...) and pizza that's delivered in little freeze-dried hockey pucks that can be restored to full size in a microwave.

Meh, like any of that's ever gonna happen...especially not the holographic killer sharks. And why the hell not? Who knows. Oh well - apparently Duke Nukem Forever's coming out this year! Hopefully we'll have time to enjoy it before the world blows up. (Come to think of it...is Roland Emmerich on the FBI watch list? I wonder if he secretly has some deep-seated desire to destroy the Earth? Think about it - nearly every movie he's made after Stargate has been about major cities being blown to bits by some major catastrophe, whether it be irradiated giant lizards, horrifically bad weather, or the Earth's core exploding...or whatever "2012" was about...)

Merry Festivus (Even Though It Might Have Been Included In The Previous Post's Portmanteau From Hell)

2010-12-24T23:00:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmukkwanzaavus...uh...Yom Kippur?

2010-12-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Christmas time. Really, we should remember that this is a time of spiritual uplift, of oneness with the universe...and Donovan. It is not a time for heavy drinking, over-eating, and casual sex with farm animals, that is out of the question. So be warned, David Pegg. --Ian Anderson

Brevity: The Soul of Wit (Also, The Bane of Weasel's Musical Enjoyment)

2010-12-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

Why is there no extended version of the Bones theme song? All that's available is the "DJ Corporate Mix" on the soundtrack album, which sounds almost nothing like the original song. I've had to hack the 30-second opening theme apart so it loops, and 25 seconds of looping theme song does tend to get on one's nerves.

I don't know what that means

2010-12-20T02:34:00.000-08:00

I've never exactly been the type to just sit and watch a movie or TV show without good reason. The last movie I watched was Zombieland. I guess I just tend not to be a very patient person with stuff that doesn't specifically have me doing anything. That's why I tend to watch mysteries and crime dramas, because while I'm busy watching an FBI agent grilling his suspect about the flavor of the day, I can spend time drawing my own theories of what exactly happened.

Given the above, it should be of no surprise to learn the names of some of my favorite movies - The Big Sleep, Spartan, Boondock Saints, and Murder, My Sweet. They really give me a chance to flex that "mystery muscle" that I always like to think I've got.

Of course, half of these films I wouldn't be able to see were it not for my parents' gracious decision to allow me to use their Netflix account. There's all kinds of unique stuff on there, including some stuff that I'm pretty sure I never want to watch (and if I do, it will not be on Netflix, because the parents might learn of it - still don't know why "Maid In Sweden" is on there). And of course, since Netflix is a paid service, they also have lots of TV series with no commercials or anything (quite unlike Hulu, who interrupts your show a lot with dumb unskippable and unmutable commercials and also only allows you to watch seemingly every other show).

Kind of a long-winded post to get to my intended point: I'm watching a lot of the series Bones. Emily Deschanel is pretty awesome. Were she a Mass Effect player character, she'd probably rank highly on the Renegade scale, which is cool because that's the kind of scale I play by.

Voice Actors Needed

2010-12-02T17:33:00.001-08:00

Regular readers of Blaugh probably know I'm a Doom modder. Among my more popular creations is Diaz: Last Hours of Purity, which is currently receiving a massive update.

One main source of (actually quite justified) criticism towards the previous version is that many of my resources are borrowed from other games. I am not an artist or a sound designer, so there's no way around my using borrowed sound effects. For this version, though, I've resolved to replace every borrowed sound with something that I will not be on shaky legal ground for using - mainly graphics and sounds licensed under Creative Commons, from freesound.org and others. This works quite well for the more common sounds like falling brass casings, footfalls, punching and crashing noises and gunfire. What it is not good for, however, is voices. I have a lot of brand new enemies in Diaz, all of which have unique voices (which lends itself very well towards the player being able to quickly identify threats simply from hearing them speak).

What I need the most is voice talent. I'm currently auditioning for seven male roles and one female role. Since this is a mod for an M-rated shooter, some of my audition lines contain swearing. Full details about what I need can be found in this VoiceActingClub thread, which includes the full list of roles, descriptions of what I'm looking for, and a list of audition lines. If you don't have a perfect-quality microphone, that may not be a problem, as a good number of my enemy characters wear helmets, so I can apply the "helmet filter" to them (think stormtrooper). Be aware that these voice roles all require you to be able to make convincing pain and death screams - one or two silly ones may not be too bad (one of the "burning death" bits already in the mod is fellow modder Marty Kirra hilariously screaming into his mic).

Stay tuned for further updates to the mod, and please get in touch with me via Skype (wildweasel386) if you'd like to audition for the part. Doing this via Skype is preferable since I can give you real-time feedback on how I'd like the voice to sound. I'm open to suggestions if you'd like to reinterpret your character a little, though (a little artistic license never hurts!).

A Dream

2010-11-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

My dream last night was something of an epic.

When I "woke up", I found myself in a small ward in a hospital. This ward only had three beds in it. I was in one, the one to my left was empty (freshly vacated) and the one to my right had a seven-year-old girl in it. (I later found out the girl's name was...something starting with T. This dream had a weird trend of having everyone's name be a body part, so I'm guessing she was either called Thigh or Tibia.)

The door to my ward was locked, so I didn't have much to do. I woke Tibia, who didn't really say anything. I recall saying something to her along the lines of "I'm glad you're alright." Kind of weird, considering I didn't feel like I was supposed to know her. The ward door opened by itself (must have been past lights-out hours) so I took her hand and walked out. She seemed unsteady, so I tried my best to keep her up.

I had a conversation I don't remember, talking to one of the hospital staff who I think told me the girl's name. That's about when I suddenly flashed do a different point in time.

I was in a bus or something, in the middle of a church parking lot. The only people in the bus were myself and two other passengers, no driver. A large vehicle (a van or something) slams into the side of the bus where all three of us are sitting. The bus is pretty much totaled (somehow) and I find myself on the outside. My first instinct upon gaining control of myself is to run into the bus and grab the other two passengers. As soon as I've done that, I suddenly wonder where Tibia is. I take the van that crashed into us (which has no driver and is in perfect shape) and drive back to the hospital where I was before.

I don't recall if the orderlies and hospital staff helped me find this or not, but my search for Tibia eventually leads me to a strange room on the top floor. On one side of the room are 15 reclined dentist chairs (sans dentist equipment), each one with a teenage girl sitting on top. These girls are wearing pretty much bare minimum of clothing. They all appear to be doing some kind of breathing exercise.

On the other side of the room is a long narrow hallway with a bullseye painted on the end, and one girl is standing there with a gun in her hand and a doctor next to her taking notes. The girl isn't holding the gun correctly at all, and in fact pulls the trigger with it pointing almost 180 degrees from where the target is. Thankfully, it's not loaded. I learned that this is some kind of "genetic memory" test.

Since nobody in the room's watching me, I start poring through the files. The test is supposed to be determining who in the room has retained the knowledge of using firearms from their mother's genetic imprint. I thought it was a bit weird, myself, until I looked at the chairs again and saw Tibia there, now ten years older than when I last saw her. Seeing her like this triggers a bizarre flashback that I'm pretty sure I was not present for.

It feels like it's 1940's Russia, and I'm running through snow, and I've taken the hand of a girl who looks a lot like Tibia. She has a gun in her other hand (a Tokarev, I think) but it's out of ammo. She asks me when we'll "get there" - I have no idea what she means but I say something and she seems to accept the answer. Then I realize she called me "Knuckle." Huh?

I flash-forward to the hospital, still staring at Tibia, and my reflex at this point is to grab her and go. I ask the doctor if he minds if I take her, and surprisingly he offers no resistance. But first, I want to see how she fares at this test, so I pull a revolver from...somewhere...and place it in her hand. She immediately turns to the target and points it straight at the bulls-eye, but then I see her look of fear as she does so, then immediately she lowers the weapon. The doctor noticed this and he wants Tibia back, so I grab her hand and we run for the exit. Orderlies are trying to stop us, but we're too fast. Tibia's got my gun, still, but she's not using it. Apparently she doesn't want her genetic memory taking over.

I'm grabbed by someone. It's the doctor from the test room. He reaches for my face, in that slow doctorly manner, but I elbow him in the gut and break from his grip. Then, I hear the first words Tibia seems to have ever spoken: "Let's go, Knuckle!" They're the words of a broken voice that hasn't spoken in years. We make our escape together and I come to learn that Tibia isn't just her mother's daughter, she's a near exact replica of her, as part of a genetic memory experiment in which the genetic memory is almost the only memory she's got. I don't know how they managed it, but this is about where the dream ended for me, which sucked because I wanted to learn more.

Whatever the case though, this'd be an awesome plotline for an Assassin's Creed sort of game. (Maybe if I did away with the body-part names.)

Posting From Some Guy's MY Netbook

2010-11-18T11:58:00.001-08:00

This post is being typed from my living room, with no wires attached whatsoever, leeching wi-fi from one of my neighbors (which Windows 7 tells me their router has not even been set up), and I've suddenly run out of ideas for how to end this sentence. Blasted writer's block.

So I've got myself a new netbook - a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012, courtesy of T-Mobile for almost nothing. It means more monthly fees than usual, since I now have (limited?) 3G access (best not to tempt fate though; I'll only use the 3G support if I need it and can't get wi-fi...the terms were slightly unclear over how much I'd get and how much I'd be charged). But in the long run, this costs me vastly less than buying a netbook from Newegg (whose cheapest model is $280).

I'm pretty happy with the hardware, given that it runs Doom quite nicely, and seems to have little problem with OpenGL and Direct3D-based stuff (I bet I could probably run some of my Steam games on here, but again, I'd rather not tempt fate). The one problem: the default operating system is Windows 7 Starter. Which means I get none of the awesome features, and more importantly, I can't change the bloody wallpaper.

Not to worry though. I'll be sticking a more advanced version on here at earliest convenience. (Or I'll Hackintosh it. Or I'll just put Ubuntu or something on it.)

Well, [Insert Swear Word Here]

2010-11-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

I spent most of yesterday getting a new desk into my room. This meant leaving my computer unhooked most of the day. Well, big mistake; by the time I had the new desk in and my computer connected to the 'net again, I saw an email from iMatchSkills (my unemployment office's job searching service) that told me a temp agency was looking for people like me.

By the time I'd received this email, said temp agency had already closed for the day. I left them a voice mail and waited.

Today comes around and no reply from the agency. I call them again to find that I was just half an hour too late. They'd already filled their quota for employees just before closing yesterday.

I checked the date on my email message. It came just after noon, meaning that the time I spent moving a god damn desk into my room has actually cost me a job.

Catch 23: The Sequel to Catch 22

2010-11-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

A lot of paradoxes are getting in the way of my getting a job.

First, I have no car. I can't buy a car because I have no income. I was offered a job last week that required me to be able to drive a car, as the hours were late enough that public transit was not an option. Well, I have no license, as I don't own a car. And I have no income to buy a car because I don't have a job, and I don't have the job because I don't own a car.

Second, I need a college education. I can't justify going to college because I would need a student loan. I don't want a student loan because I'd end up having to pay it when I get out of college, regardless of whether I have a job or not. College would stop my unemployment benefits (as far as I've read), and in today's Oregon job market, I have no guarantee whatsoever that having a college degree would actually help me get a job. I know at least a few people with college degrees that still can't get a job, not because they lack a degree, but because they're overqualified.

And then there's the eternal conundrum of how often is too often when making follow-up calls for applications or interviews. If I don't call back my prospective employers, they'll forget about me. If I do call them back, I often get the "don't call us, we'll call you" speech. I can't win.

Malachai VS Psychic Boat

2010-11-01T23:22:00.001-07:00

A stay at Mal's place caps off with the two of us tag-teaming through the first level of Crysis on Delta difficulty. Delta doesn't make things a hell of a lot harder than Easy in my opinion, but our conditions of tag-teaming dictate that if either player dies, the other takes control.

Making our Cloak-abusing adventure extremely difficult is a certain boat that happens to know exactly where you are whenever you have to switch the cloaking device off to recharge your suit energy. We dubbed the boat Psychic Boat, and it soon became our mission to take the damn thing out at all costs, as not only had Psychic Boat managed to kill the both of us three times in the same area, it also had the uncanny ability to not only pick out protagonist Nomad's position with frightening accuracy and be able to get several good hits with its machine gun, numerous times leaving Malachai's health in the single digits.

It took us roughly one hour to get around the peninsula to a dock which Psychic Boat frequented. My advice to Mal was to just full-auto them with the totally-not-AK-47, as at this early stage of the game, we lacked any explosive ordinance. A quick bullet-hosing of Psychic Boat only served to draw its fire, causing Mal to retreat into the dock house to recharge. Quickly he gathered his thoughts, reloaded, and peeked out again, taking a few quick shots at Psychic Boat's equally-psychic gunner, disabling the boat's effectiveness at sniping with machine gun fire.

With our arch-nemesis out of the picture, the level got a hell of a lot easier. And incidentally, only after capping Psychic Boat did we finally find grenades.

The World is a Scary Place...Kind Of

2010-10-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

I come to you fresh (read: within one day) from watching a movie called Eagle Eye. I didn't like it much; so many ridiculous things happen in that movie that I'm sure the writers had no idea what a computer was until last week. But it did get me thinking: the world can tend to be a pretty scary place, even without computers being involved.

But what I guess scares me more is stuff that's actually feasible - the psychic hallucinations in FEAR didn't scare me at all, yet Condemned: Criminal Origins freaked me out with its rage-a-holic junkies popping out of every dark corner. Resident Evil got me because of the infected dogs crashing through windows without warning, and yet the original Alone in the Dark doing the same thing wasn't quite as scary to me (yet it still provided a lot of danger, as AotD's controls were never that good).

Moreso than the above-mentioned video games, though, is the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, which shows an entirely possible scenario in which San Francisco's Bay Bridge is bombed, and the Department of Homeland Security steps in to investigate the protagonist, a high-school hobby hacker with a taste for alternate-reality games. The stuff that happens in that book scares the shit out of me because almost all of it is derived from the pages of today's news (with some dramatic effect applied where necessary; after all, it's fiction, and it's got to be interesting).

I wonder if anyone in Hollywood has read that book. Probably not; Hollywood seems to be pretty distant from what I consider interesting. (Oh come on, two Transformers movies? Adaptations of children's books from twenty years ago? What's next, a CG reboot of The Brave Little Toaster? I would stop watching movies if they did that one.)

Also, the Minecraft Halloween Update is supposedly live; I'm not at home and can't check it out.

The Dev Team Doesn't Think of Everything?

2010-10-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

The game: Interstate '76. The scenario: Taurus ("Stampede" on the radio) has been shot and it's up to me to drive him out of trouble while he bleeds in the back seat of Groove Champion's Picard Piranha.

Interstate '76 has a few keyboard controls that really aren't really useful. One of these keys is merely labeled "Poem." When pressed, protagonist Groove will ask Stampede to read a poem through the radio. He will read one of a small handful of poems, providing a rather odd background to the racing and destruction going on.

But back to the situation at hand: the man called "Stampede" is in my backseat and bleeding pretty badly. I, with my training picked up from the likes of DOUG the Eagle and other such break-the-game guides, decide to press the Poem key.

"Hey Stampede, how 'bout a poem?"

Taurus chimes in over the radio and begins poetically describing the speed of his totally-not-a-Cadillac, despite the fact that he does not have a CB radio on him, nor is he even conscious at this point (as at this point in the mission, Groove has asked him how he's doing and has received no response).

Silly developers. I guess you don't think of everything after all?

Glowing Cheerily

2010-10-24T17:16:00.001-07:00

I can't count the number of job opportunities that I've jumped on and gotten as far as an interview without ever actually getting the job. At no point has this become clearer to me than last week's interview at LinkTech in Beaverton - I was told that Oregon's job economy is bad enough that posting any job listing on Craigslist will get many, many people responding to that listing. It really does put things in perspective for me: with the number of people looking for jobs, I may not necessarily be the best person for the job in a given instance, because the really good people might be out of work as well.

D&D provides some social comfort, as I get some modicum of purpose as I try to come up with more plot points to appease the ever-growing party. (It's no mean feat to manage a party of ten or more characters, especially not when 50% of them also have animal companions to worry about as well.) I am amazed I manage to put up with it. Sure, there are the occasional complaints between players, but that often gets ironed out.

And yes - I still need a new computer. It will not be a Power PC Macintosh, as I've found out that those do not play Minecraft particularly well. =P

Hey, Uh, Can Anybody Loan Me $900

2010-10-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

Although I now own Left 4 Dead 2 (gifted to me by a friend), I can't play it. Why? Not enough RAM. Even with many graphical effects turned off, the game will badly stutter or freeze during high-action moments, such as the finale for The Passing. If anybody actually wanted to play the game with me, I'm sorry, but it's effectively unplayable. To add insult to injury, after quitting my SP game to explain to a friend why I could not join their MP server, Steam itself froze for about 20 seconds mid-sentence.

So basically, this computer now sucks and needs replacing at earliest convenience. Shame I've been out of a proper job for two years and can't afford anything!

One Month Later

2010-10-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

The reason I haven't posted in a while is pretty much a lack of new material to post about. Not much interesting happens lately, even in a world where Duke Nukem Forever actually has a release date, Super Mario is 25 years old (two years older than I am), and my best friend and AMD-devotee Malachai bought a Macintosh. (Second-hand...and it was an aluminum-case G5.)

What'd I spend the last month doing? Well, up until last week, it was sitting at home and doing nothing, until the weekend in which I would go to a Dungeons & Dragons meeting to be a DM (which, despite slightly regretting, hasn't gone too badly thus far).

Then there's that last week: a week-long trip to the beach at Lincoln City. Walks on the beach, inhaling the salt air, and seeing my first (and likely only) green-flash. And, well, surfing the Internet (as I suck at real surfing) and doing dishes like I would normally...just at the beach. I guess Spirit Mountain Casino's slogan isn't so wrong after all (It's Better at the Beach!).

Unfortunately, the trip's pretty much worn me out, and it doesn't help that not only did Unemployment come up short on their deposit last week, none of my potential employers ever call me back (even when I call them and ask them to call me back as there's nobody there to take my call), and finally, I had to ask for a temporary loan from Mom to buy some essential groceries.

Sigh. Money being tight makes me glad I didn't pursue the thought of moving out, back in 2008.

A Sudden Policy Change and a Missed Connection

2010-09-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

So I hitched a bus ride home from Malachai's place (like I do every week), only to find that the two dollars cash I had on me was just short of what Tri-Met now charges for bus fare. The fare, I'd been told, was just increased to $2.05, meaning I was short a nickel. The driver was pretty friendly about the whole thing, allowing me to board the bus anyway, but helpfully reminding me to "make sure you stick a dime in the next time you ride, okay?"

I wasn't really all that happy about it, but I tried to smile at the driver as I thanked her for the courtesy. But before I could get to my seat, I heard a voice a few spots over asking me if I needed a nickel. I didn't accept it instantaneously, in fact I don't tend to like being indebted to anybody, but I finally decided to accept the help. The good Samaritan in this case was a young-ish girl (couldn't have been more than early-20's) in a white hooded sweatshirt and long red bangs.

I didn't really get a chance to ask for her name. (And by that, I mean I had plenty of chances, but I never took them because I've got no guts.)

The moral of the story, I guess: carry more nickels, and take more chances.

Weasel's Mood-To-Flamewar Principle

2010-09-19T15:07:00.001-07:00

Something I've noticed in my years of frequenting Internet message boards: the mood you're in while you're reading a forum is directly proportional to what kind of discussions you tend to end up reading. Since usually all you see on a forum is the topic title before you jump in and read a thread, this is by no means a conscious decision.

In plainer terms: if you're in a good mood, you'll tend to see cool things happening. If you're not happy, you'll tend to find more threads in which people are having arguments. This is slightly changed up if you happen to have moderator privileges on the forum in question - if you're feeling foul, any flame wars you find tend to be of the kind that you can't really do anything about without angering either the party involved or the rest of the forum (i.e. OMG NAZI MODERATION!). But if you're feeling good, even if you do end up finding an argument, it's usually extremely one-sided and action may be taken that ends up pleasing everyone (sometimes even the unfortunate soul that got himself banned for posting that childhood-destroying picture of the Ninja Turtles doing something highly indecent).

This might also happen in meatspace (as opposed to cyberspace), but it's a more obvious thing, as if you walk into a room looking angry, this anger might spread. It's kind of an empathic thing, like how when one person yawns, the person next to him might yawn as well. (And somehow, typing about yawning just made me want to yawn. Nobody else was in the room, though, which means I can't really test the "contagious yawn" theory...)

Craftiness, And How It Cannot Be Mined

2010-09-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

I bought Minecraft. See ya later.

Popular In The Wrong Way?

2010-08-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

Somebody who evidently doesn't know much about Doom mods wrote a top 10 doom mods list. What shocked me was when I scrolled down and saw number ten in the list...

...my unfinished, horribly broken, massively overpowered Mecha mod.

Granted, the top ten list seems to be more along the lines of "top 10 Doom-mod-related videos," or else the infamous Bill Gates Doom video wouldn't be in there. The list also loses credibility for not including any explanations or download links, as well as having not mentioned the really popular stuff like Urban Brawl, Harmony, or Ghouls vs Humans.

Still, though...while I'm flattered at the (totally nameless) mention, I have to wonder what the hell this author was thinking. Why my broken, unfinished Mecha mod, as opposed to something better?

I Shall Now Brag About Characters in a Computer Game, For Lack of Better Blaughing Material

2010-08-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

Borderlands is getting way more play time than expected - and I haven't even been touching the DLC packs yet (outside of Zombie Island of Dr. Ned). Ever since the Borderlands deal started on Steam two days ago (actually three by this point), my list of saved characters is just getting bigger, yet somehow I still manage to find excuses to bring my blatantly overpowered Level 42 Soldier into Malachai's server (at level 38) in which the two of us power-leveled a level 10 Soldier by forcing him through the very end of the game. (We also did something similar, as my dear older brother lost all his saved games when his hard drive died, so we power-leveled him from 1 to 22 in the space of half an hour. He is now doing the introductory quests. At level 22. Can you say, "instant dog-food?")

But yeah. Lots of people are getting Borderlands lately and looking for people to play. Well, I'm game (usually)! Just add theweaselman68k to your buddy list in-game...but only if you don't mind me bringing my Level 50 Brick to punch Bone Head in the face a couple of times.

D&D'ing Like A Pro

2010-08-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

My first weekend as the new DM has hit off pretty well. While I was only able to run the actual campaign for 45 minutes, I think I handled the character creation questions pretty well.

However, the events of the campaign, having lasted 45 minutes, were pretty uneventful (I need a thesaurus), outside of Malachai's character using the new Mechanics skills to invent a clockwork chainsaw (I dubbed it the Cyclic Chain Blade). Maybe next week.

Early Late Three O'Clock Edition

2010-08-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

Prophetic, or just late? You decide.

This was spotted in the channel guide on Malachai's Xfinity cable box: local station KPTV-12's 10 O'Clock News program appearing several hours later (or is it earlier?) than usual.

The Two Week Hiatus Shall Now End

2010-08-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

Because STONE COLD SAID SO--wait, that's a dated reference? Never mind then. (On that note though, I really want to see Expendables...not because of Steve Austin, though. More because of Bruce Willis. And Terry Crews. DOUBLE SUN POWEEERRRRRRRRR--*is shot*)

I've kind of been skimping on attending D&D games. They always seemed to wear me out, and to be perfectly honest, I really felt like I needed to get away from the social stuff for a while. But upon attending the most recent session of my preferred group, I remembered one important little detail...I was in line to be the next DM. And I hadn't gotten any material ready.

Well, a quick browse through my "Words" folder revealed quite a bit of unused material that I'd been neglecting for years, including what I had intended to be the backstory to a Fire Emblem sort of game. Well, Fire Emblem is not that far divorced from a D&D setting, and neither was my little universe, so I basically took the setting and rolled up the beginnings of a campaign. A little bit of feedback from a few of the players alerted me to potential universe glitches, rules that I'd need to keep in mind, and most importantly, at least one player reminded me of some of the campaign missteps of my "ancestors" (a campaign that was only ever referred to as "Clambake", among others).

I admit I'm a little nervous. I've never DM'ed a game before and this will be my first. I've got a lot to live up to, from what I'm hearing, but I also don't think I'll have much of a problem exceeding expectations (especially if I'm expected to be a rules-lawyer with a penchant for hand-waving plot elements from thin air).

A Stylistic Tribute And Not In Any Way A Rip Off

2010-07-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

Your Moment Of Zen

2010-07-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Weasel Ideal: A Tribute To Hollywood Fight Scenes

2010-07-05T01:24:00.000-07:00

Many games take their set-piece cues from Hollywood cinema. Shenmue pioneered the use of quick-time events to allow the player to have a (highly limited and frustrating) interaction with action-centric cutscenes. Max Payne gave you control over slow-motion. John Woo's Stranglehold added numerous stunts like diving over tables, rolling down the street on carts, and other such things.

But there have been very few video games that are about the actual making of a Hollywood film. There's The Movies, which was more of a management sim; Stuntman: Ignition, which covered the career of a Hollywood stunt driver; and...uh...well, I'm out of ideas. There just aren't many of them.

Let me further pad out this introduction by stating that I'm quite a fan of Jackie Chan's movies, and basically, this Weasel Ideal covers a game that might very well be the best possible way to do him justice.

Take your average beat-em-up game - walk down the street, whack some poor guy in the head with a two-by-four, walk down the street some more. While many games have given you the tools to make these things a little more exciting (Yakuza, God of War), few have really been as interesting to watch as a good martial arts action flick. So the idea here is to make a game where the emphasis is not on not dying, but in filming a martial arts movie to the specifications of your stunt director. So your goal is to eliminate all the enemies in the "scene" in as stylish a way as possible.

You start by selecting a "movie" (there are a number of settings available, from Medieval War Drama to Ancient China to Modern New York), where you are put into action in a number of different "scenes" (single areas). In each scene, the goal is to eliminate enemies using your vast repertoire of martial arts skills (more points if you don't overuse specific moves too much) and environmental hazards (best points if you use most of these in a scene, or if you use one particular hazard a number of times for the "Running Gag Bonus"). You have no health bar; if you take too much damage, your stunt director might scrap the take but you'll be allowed to continue to figure out where all the hazards are.

At certain points in each movie, you'll have to fight a Major Character (boss). A movie audience isn't going to see health bars, so one of the requirements for a good take on a boss scene is allowing your character to take enough hits (while still putting up a decent enough fight to be believable) to convince the audience that this boss really means business. The boss fight may not end with the boss being defeated; it may turn into a chase sequence. If a boss is supposed to be defeated, your director may ask that you do so in a specific fashion - while you're allowed to use any other method to dispatch him, you'll get more points for doing it the director's way (or a special secret way that gets more points but is well hidden). After disposing of the boss, you'll have a small amount of time in which to use your Taunt button to deliver a famous one-liner.

Much like in Stuntman: Ignition, you won't get by on the movies alone, and you'll probably want to spend some time "developing" new techniques (practicing on fellow stuntmen in the gymnasium) and showing off your stuff in television interviews or "DVD Extras" which allow you to try a previous scene under very different parameters.

Of course, any game about making movies would have to have a replay director mode and capability to upload to Youtube.

Funny How These Things Work Out Sometimes

2010-06-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

And also, should EA Sports opt to add vuvuzelas to the next FIFA game, there ought to be a volume slider for those, too. --Me, previous post.

Turns out I wasn't too far off, after all...

Features I Think Are Missing From Modern Video Games

2010-06-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

More customization than just your character.

Drawn To Life on the Nintendo DS is a step in an awesome direction - it's a game that you can literally sculpt to your liking thanks to the fact that you can draw most of the major game elements. I want more games to let you do things like this - give me a character creator, sure, everyone likes those...but also give me things like a symbol editor (could end up being a clan logo, a family coat of arms, a graffiti tag, perhaps the letterhead on all documents that come from my organization in case this is one of those kinds of games), a place to write a signature (which would show up in a few surreptitious places throughout the game), hell, maybe even a "Favorite Color" box that affects little things, like subtly offsetting the frequency of cars on the street that are that color, drawing the heads-up display in that color, stuff like that.

Random interactive elements.

Duke Nukem 3D was a pioneer among first-person shooters, not because of its running and shooting gameplay (which was really not that much different from Doom, save for the addition of a jump button and inventory system), but because of how many things Duke can just screw around with (ladies not exactly included, *cough*). Toilets can be used, pressurized fire extinguishers will explode when shot or somehow damaged, the DJ's microphone at a radio station prompts Duke to make a Freudian slip on air, an arcade machine isn't exactly usable but still provides a witty one-liner on Duke's part.

Simply put, I want more games to be like Duke. If I see a toilet on the wall, I want to either be able to utilize it, flush it, or even just be able to use it as a weapon (either in the Burn Notice fashion or the Half-Life 2 fashion, doesn't matter which). If there's a TV, I'd love to be able to turn it on and see what's on (or just smash it for no reason). If there's a soda machine, let me get a soda from it (even if it doesn't mean I get to drink it). Basically, make the world feel alive by letting the player do stuff in it. Even something so innocuous as letting the player use a chair to sit in it is welcomed (and thank you Bethesda for allowing me to do that in Oblivion and Fallout 3).

Independent volume sliders.

The PS2/XBox/PC game Kill.Switch presented a highly annoying conundrum: the music was irritating as hell, but turning off the Music Volume would also mute the cutscenes, as the cutscenes have music in addition to the people talking about the storyline. Basically, I'd love to be able to optimize the volume to my personal tastes. Even something so overdone as having separate sliders for music, ambient sound, gunfire, speech, engine noises, alarm buzzers (how I sometimes wish I could just silence those in Just Cause 2...), character one-liners (getting a little bored of "Makin' bacon!")...hell, an option in any game to toggle the player character's Silent Protagonist status would be welcomed at times. (Hello, Shadow Warrior...)

And also, should EA Sports opt to add vuvuzelas to the next FIFA game, there ought to be a volume slider for those, too.

Spend Them Wisely; They're Not Easy To Come By

2010-06-24T11:47:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me that I never blogged my birthday at all this year. Well, I'm now 23 (for sake of being a stereotypical gamer let's assume I just reached Level 23 and have a few skill points that I need to spend), and my birthday present from Mom was, well, not having to pay out the $65 that week to help with rent. I took those $65, as well as a little extra I'd been saving for a rainy day, and purchased a new laptop screen for this Acer Travelmate that a friend from the D&D group had no use for and gave to me for free.

Well surprise, surprise...the screen came broken.

I've got nothing against the seller at all (though this will make me think twice about ordering parts on eBay anymore). My current target of frustration is UPS, who not only wouldn't give me a tracking number without paying an additional $40 on the return shipping, were probably also responsible for the screen being broken in the first place. Damn you, UPS!

As for those skill points...uh...probably spending those on actually getting good at playing Hidden & Dangerous 2. Hard frickin' game.

Long Forgotten Design Elements

2010-06-21T03:54:00.000-07:00

Video games have clearly matured over time. And by "matured" I don't mean that they've become old enough to own their own homes, vehicles, and alcoholic beverages. I mean that we, as gamers, have started figuring out just what makes a game good and what makes it a frustrating mess.

In the 30-some years that video games have been in the mainstream, game mechanics have clearly been evolving, and evolution implies natural selection. Basically, game mechanics and ideas that people don't like will end up on the cutting-room floor and eventually forgotten about, until years down the line somebody coincidentally comes up with the same idea, and the cycle repeats. Here's some of the game mechanics that I notice have been pushed out of gaming's gene pool, so to speak...

Extra lives. These aren't really dead and gone as much as the others in the list, but it seems to me like more than 90% of games released over the last ten years or so have not had any sort of limit to how many times the player can die or fail a mission before reaching that ubiquitous "Game Over" screen. Of the remaining ten percent that I can recall off-hand, the majority of those are Nintendo games. This is mainly due to the advent of the check point system, in which progress in a game is rewarded by allowing the player to restart somewhat closer if he dies. These days, dying in a video game has far less of a penalty than it did in the 80's and early 90's. If you died in Super Mario Bros, you'd go backwards to the beginning of whatever level you're in, or if you're halfway through, back to the halfway point. Continued deaths result in having to restart the entire game from the beginning. If you die in, say, a LEGO Star Wars game, you don't go backwards at all; you merely respawn in place and drop several of your studs. Even if you're out of studs, dying merely has you respawn in place.

Granted, the extra life (and its distant cousin, the Continue credit) aren't gone from gaming. Some genres refuse to live without it, such as scrolling shoot-em-ups, most 2D platformers, and other arcade-style games.

Passwords. Suppose you did run out of extra lives, and you exhausted your last continue on that one boss. Rather than making you start over from the beginning, the game would give you a series of letters, numbers, or symbols to make note of in case you wanted to start from a relatively nearby point in the game. Anybody growing up on the games of the 80's would inevitably have to write down a password for a difficult game, like Castlevania 2, Mega Man, or Metroid. I know at least one person who has an entire notebook full of them.

Why are passwords gone? Well, to borrow a rather out-of-context capitalist idiom, "I have people who do that for me now." More accurately, battery-powered save RAM, flash memory cards and hard disk drives, which take the writing-down of passwords out of the player's hands and instead inscribes a 32 KB chunk of data describing your exact location, inventory, objectives, and other pointless statistics. No more remembering random strings of characters like "QHXF", "7791-5446-6584", or "JUSTIN BAILEY ------ ------". Game saves couldn't have come sooner, either; Famicom games like Dragon Quest were beginning to have pretty ridiculously long passwords due to the high number of stats that the game needed to keep track of (the US localization, Dragon Warrior, removed the password system and instead shipped with battery-backup save RAM).

Manual-based copy protection. Here's one for the computer gamers. Look up Post #332, paragraph 5, word 17, then type that word backwards into the box indicated by the symbol "NADIR" on your code wheel. Got that done? Okay, now pitch your code wheel in the recycle bin (we at Blaugh promote environmental friendliness!) and just insert your disc into the disc drive. Or toss that too, and just log into Steam. Basically, modern copy protection doesn't involve manuals (which can easily be photocopied, or the results compiled into an Excel spreadsheet and then distributed among friends - both of which I've personally done!), it's (supposedly) about convenience for the end user. Granted, many folks think we should go back to manual-based copy protection, as modern DRM really kind of sucks, and it'd get people to read those forgotten old tomes once in a while.

What I think should happen? Instead of CD keys and online authentication, game installers should have you look through your manual to answer one question. Even for something like, "Read the Credits section of the manual and enter the name of the third Bug Tester under Capcom QA Department." It's not ever going to stop piracy and admittedly is more here to prove a point than anything else. There's no stopping piracy, especially as pirates are willing to jump through more (self-imposed?) hoops in order to Stick It To The Man(tm).

But I ramble.

Warps. Before there were passwords, there were level warps. Want to start your game of Super Mario Bros at World 4? Just head for the secret Warp Zone at the end of World 1-2. Who doesn't remember that? The Warp Zone is rather missing lately; most games don't offer more than one way to get where you're going. These days, warp zones are (unintentionally) replaced with sequence breaks; getting to a place ordinarily inaccessible through clever use of glitches or advanced maneuvers that are not ordinarily learned until later in the game. And to the best of my recollection, only games like Shadow Complex have been explicitly designed with sequence breaks in mind.

Gaming still continues evolving to this day. But what game mechanics will continue to fall to the wayside as we, the gamers, decide that they no longer contribute to an enjoyable game experience? As usual, only time (and vitriolic message board rants) will tell...

It's Memorial Day

2010-05-31T12:01:00.001-07:00

And going directly against Weasel's Blaugh Ordinance No.228, I am writing a post in its honor.

I love the military. I love what they're doing to keep our homelands safe. Yes, I'm not just paying attention to the American military, but also every other military that has done their part to keep their country safe.

To those who died in the line of duty: The Blaugh salutes you. And to those who are still alive and still fighting for your respective causes: keep at 'em, I'll be supporting you from back here.

I don't hate the military. I just hate the idiots in the government who give them orders.

Morbid Curiosity: Prime Target, Part 2

2010-05-31T00:16:00.000-07:00

To show you all that no, I'm not crazy, and Laz Rojas didn't make Operation Eisenmann entirely by himself, here are some comparison screenshots (which you'll have to click through for, since I'm too lazy to make thumbnails).

First we have the opening. Here it is in Prime Target, with marble as far as the eye can see, and a rather nice looking fountain up front surrounded by American flags and potted plants. This is it as it appears in Operation Eisenmann. Owing mainly to the upscaling of the entire level, it seems much more empty, though we still have the majestic fountain surrounded by Nazi flags and eagle statues. There is a Pain Elemental at the top of the fountain because I've forgotten to load Eisenmann's DeHackEd patch.

Veering off to the right from the entrance we have this balcony which overlooks a hearing room of some type, with a potted plant in the corner. Mr. Rojas interprets the room thusly, with the hearing room being slightly more brown and less like a hearing room, but the distinctive glass barrier and potted plant remain.

Elsewhere in the map we have an elevator corridor with a swimming pool in the distance (I guess US Senators have to swim sometime, right?). In this picture I am discharging my Beretta pistol for no good reason. And here is the same corridor again from the perspective of everyone's favorite Allied covert operative. This time I am firing my pistol (which may or may not also be a Beretta!) at an Arch-Vile who appeared over the pool, likely for the same reason the Pain Elemental appeared over the fountain. (See also: this alternate view of the pool and the same alternate view from BJ's eyes. No, I didn't kill the Arch-Vile with my pistol, I used the console.)

And finally, an overhead view of the south-eastern portion of the level with the names of the employees hovering over it as mentioned in the actual review, and the same general location in ZDoom. Hopefully that's proven that I'm not crazy. For further screenshots (but no further comparisons), have a look at this Majhost gallery.

I'm not quite finished yet, though: my previous post on the subject, which I posted almost four months back, got a fresh (and anonymous) comment a couple of weeks ago, evidently from a very upset Macintosh user:

Fuck you! Finally someone plays Prime Target and his dumb liberal ass goes out of his way to mock the "senseless patriotism". This game is miles ahead of Doom in every respect! Shove your review and your site right where your head is, up your own ass. Thanks! :)

To which I replied:

Finally someone comments on my review of Prime Target and his dumb takes-things-too-seriously ass goes out of his way to mock the fact that I said "senseless patriotism". This game is miles behind Deus Ex in every respect!

See, I can do it too!

So let's consider this a formal calling-out. I'm curious to see what said anonymous comment-writer's reaction is to this, as he/she hasn't replied to my rebuttal yet. I'd greatly enjoy hearing specifically why Prime Target should be considered better than Doom, considering Prime Target has no official map or physics editor, pretty horrible FMV acting, and virtually no active player base, unless this is really all the Macintosh community has to play anymore.

Can any classical music aficionado...

2010-05-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

...identify this song for me, please? It came from an old DOS puzzle game called TextTris, and evidently all of their music came from some BBS's Creative Music Format (CMF) archives - there is no embedded metadata and the filename tells me nothing. I recall the song also being played in the movie Tombstone, but that doesn't help me much either...

[edit] Apparently it's Danse Macabre, as heard here:

Good Feature, Bad Feature

2010-05-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the old Goofus & Gallant features in Highlights Magazine and a rather frustrating attempt at playing Daggerfall...how not to design a tutorial for your game.

The first and most important thing to consider is whether the tutorial should be skippable or not. I see a lot of games these days use the tutorial segment as a prime opportunity for exposition, but this means that people who already know how to play the game (i.e. have been reading the manual, played the demo, or jumped into multiplayer first) will skip the tutorial and miss what may end up being crucial plot information. But on the other hand, if the tutorial can't be skipped, players who have completed the game before and want to start a new game will be forced to sit through it again.

Interactivity is key for a tutorial. Many people prefer to learn by doing, not by watching (or in worse cases, listening or reading). Daggerfall comes into play here - the tutorial presents you with a wall of text, much of it consisting of the menu combinations you'll need to use to get at your inventory. Then it says "I'll be back again in a few minutes." That's not good tutorial design. While you're teaching the player things, he's not going to remember everything you said in the wall of text, especially not if you have no way of bringing it up again. By the time the tutorial pops up again, the player may have goofed around enough to be several steps ahead, making the tutorial even less helpful. Daggerfall was not the last game to do this - 2000's Fallout Tactics does a similar thing, but at least voice-acts the wall of text so that the player can try to remember what the voice was telling them to do.

Another point to the above: the 1997 strategy game Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. The game's tutorial consists entirely of non-interactive videos. Given the game's merciless difficulty, I'm sure this didn't help much either. The first mission is near impossible unless you already know exactly what to do.

Another example of a bad tutorial: the "trial by fire." You're eager to get the player to the "good part", but you don't want to throw him into a combat situation without him knowing how to at least take cover and shoot back. Just Cause 2 does this to an extent - the first thing that happens is you are tossed out of a chopper. Then the game teaches you how to maneuver in the air and pull your parachute. It's entirely possible to die here. Then the game teaches you how to use the grappling hook, because you have no weapons. Granted, the parachute and hook are the most important parts of the game, but forcing the player out a flying vehicle might not be the best way to train them at times, since many players' first reflex is "SHIT! I'm falling out of a chopper and I'm going to die!" And they panic. Panic is not beneficial to learning how to play a game.

Lastly there's the "stealth" tutorial. In particular I'm going to mention Soldier of Fortune 2. The very last part of SoF2's tutorial is how to sneak around without being spotted or heard. This is far easier said than done. You almost can't do anything in the mission without Sam chiming in and telling you, "Looks like you've been seen, John. Head back inside the fenced area and start over." Not only is failure a constant thing, it also results in you manually having to navigate back to the fence to reset the course.

Honorable mentions here must also be made for many console to PC conversions, in which the tutorial prompts either refer to the XBox buttons, or worse, refer to "aliased" buttons that you have to bind ahead of time. Countless examples: Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 4, Mercenaries 2, Lost Planet, Street Fighter 4.

Everyone raves about how video gaming has gone mainstream. Well, the reason that's not happening faster is because many people are intimidated by the games! This stuff really doesn't help.

Selectable Output Control Knows Fewer Bounds

2010-05-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Time for a technology-related rant.

I'm once again spending the weekend at Malachai's place, this time with my PS3 in tow (which, by the way, this post was composed on - lol postin from mah ps3!). PS3, of course, has an internet browser built in. So I surfed my way to Youtube, intending to watch some old videos from my Favorites. I came upon a Top Gear clip of Richard Hammond and James May playing "car darts" - but lo and behold, the following error appears.

This video is not available on your device.

Apparently Youtube is now capable of singling out what platforms can and cannot play a specific video. Presumably this is at the behest of the BBC, but this is a very bad precedent. Those of us that want to have a full-featured media center in our living rooms now have just one more obstacle; this effectively means that a media center can only be a PC running Windows (because who knows, maybe some video site somewhere has blocked Linux and Mac OS X users as well!).

Weasel's E3 2010 Predictions

2010-05-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Since E3 is far from the huge industry spectacle that it once was (actually it seems to have not changed that much for us non-industry people), my predictions might seem a bit overblown this year. But here goes anyway. I'll also be including betting odds, in case anybody wants to bet me cold hard cash that something will happen.

The Likely
2:1 - Activision releases gameplay footage of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

2:1 - Singularity's multiplayer component to be developed by someone other than Raven Software. (Double-down: said someone will be fired on Day One of game's release.)

3:1 - Activision confirms Raven Software's involvement in the next Modern Warfare 2 map pack.

The Not-so-Likely
5:1 - First trailer of Metal Gear Solid Rising. (Double-down: said trailer will be later confirmed to have been running in real-time on an XBox 360.)

5:1 - Call of Duty Black Ops to be a console exclusive with "no plans" to release PC version.

10:1 - Trailer of upcoming XCOM revival will demonstrate the game's business and management aspects. (Double-down: there will be a riot in the crowds watching said trailer as the people who grew up with the original X-COM will become enraged at the new game's simplification, while people who never had any idea what X-COM was will be unrealistically excited about the "depth" of the new game.)

10:1 - Nintendo announces Nintendo 3DS will use nVidia Tegra mobile graphics chipset, and will have mobile-phone-style "third" screen on the back of the top screen's clamshell, to display the system's status while in sleep mode and to display silly pictures and game-specific information on the outside of the system. (Double-down: the nVidia partnership won't happen at all, and ATi will announce a new, similar graphics chip developed specifically for 3DS.)

The Borderline Nutty
15:1 - Metal Gear Solid Rising to have PC port available at launch.

15:1 - Metal Gear Solid Rising announced to be "special edition" of MGS4, with Raiden's new storyline being only part of the package; the rest of the game will be announced to be an enhanced port of MGS4 to the XBox 360 with additional VR Missions and special weapons and gadgets (some of which are exclusive to each console's version).

15:1 - Ubisoft announces partnership with internet service providers to enable gamers to receive "games on demand" direct from their service providers for an additional monthly fee on their service bill. (Double-down: Said service will actually be their new DRM system: Ubisoft's next major game will be announced later in the year to be exclusively available through "games on demand".)

15:1 - Sega announces plans to localize Ryu Ga Gotoku: Kenzan, under the new title, "Yakuza: Origins."

The WTF Section

20:1 - Valve goes completely apeshit and announces Team Fortress 2's imminent conversion to a "free to play" business model, similar to Battlefield: Heroes, in which the game is free to download and play, but players can pay additional money to buy the special weapons and hats without needing to earn the achievements. (Double-down: Engineer update becomes the first update that players cannot unlock with achievements - all of Engineer's new items must be purchased.)

25:1 - Bobby Kotick is assaulted on-stage by an angry ex-Infinity Ward programmer.

25:1 - Peter Molyneux demonstrates "Mylo", his Project Natal tech-demo, at which point he will utter a key phrase that one of his programmers slipped in without his knowledge, causing Mylo to begin a rant like no other.

30:1 - Peter Moore, famous for getting temporary tattoos with the logos of upcoming games, will get a permanent tattoo for the next Madden game, bearing the likeness of said game's cover player. (Double-down: Said cover player will also appear on stage along with a group of other players to demonstrate the next Madden's integration with Playstation Move and Microsoft's Project Natal, at which point one of them will tackle the cover player and directly invoke the Madden Curse on stage.)

Quit Spending Your Damn Money, Weasel

2010-05-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

Things I really should not have bought over the last week: Just Cause 2, inFamous, a pair of sweatpants that didn't fit, an A&W Cream Soda, and $1 worth of credits at one of those silly touch-screen arcade machines they have at bars (on which I ended up playing Solitaire, of all things).

I'm an impulse buyer. That's a big problem when I'm making only slightly more than $100 a week on unemployment benefits. It's especially bad in that there's a lot of crap out there that I want, really bad. I'm still catching up on last year's game releases (and even some games from up to ten years ago that I can't seem to get any other way). Having a debit card is dangerous for me. So is having a PayPal account. I should probably "lock down" my spending for a month or so.

The Following Post Will Consist Entirely Of Angry Growling And Miscellaneous Guttural Noises

2010-04-28T20:06:00.001-07:00

HRGLGHGLRLGHLGHLGHRLGHHHHGLGHRHGLH.

RAAAAAHHHH!

URGGHHHHH!

HHHNNNNNGGGGG!

As I Venture Out Into The Daylight...

2010-04-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

...and wonder how I come up with these faux-poetic post titles...

Wednesday. I'm headed into Portland, area of the Art Institute campus, in which I'll be interviewed by someone to see whether the Institute is right for me, and whether I'm right for the Institute. Or something. They plan on showing me around. I plan on showing them how empty my wallet is.

What this means for me: basically, it's a great excuse to get out and get some sunlight and exercise for once. So I guess I look forward to it. A bit.

Though I'm in high spirits, because I just found a single Swedish Fish sitting on my desk. God, I love Swedish Fish.

[Your Planet of Origin Here] Day

2010-04-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Hey, it's Earth Day, a day in which we celebrate the fact that Earth exists and have a giant globe in the living room with presents underneath it. Wait, uh, maybe that's the wrong holiday. I don't care.

What have I done that's environmentally friendly? Nothing. I've belched several times, and if my calculations (and statistics) are correct, I may have just contributed 0.0000000125% towards today's global warming.

Bah. Global warming's a hoax anyway. Just like the idea that Reese Witherspoon and Alicia Silverstone are actually different people. Or that Halo is a good game. (Oooh, snap!)

The Serendipitous Airwaves

2010-04-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I'll have an urge to listen to a specific song on the radio, whether it be over FM airwaves or via internet radio. I will typically have no idea what the name of the song is, or who performs it. Yet, the instant I switch on the station that I believe will play it, that exact song will be playing. This has happened to me so far no less than three times.

There are also those crazy instances in which I'll be listening to a song from my collection, or from a CD or tape, then decide to check what's on the radio...and find that they are playing the exact same song I was just listening to. The most memorable instance of this that I can think of was about ten years ago, on the way home from a trip to the Washington Square mall in Tigard. The tape player in the Toyota was playing Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin, and Dad pulled the tape out the second the song ended. The radio happened to be playing the same song, and we came in right at the end of it, just in time for the line "...which is an illusion." Creepy.

This only serves to remind my random-tangent-prone brain of the time my Foobar2000 playlist, set to shuffle mode, decided to play three versions of Rush's "Closer To The Heart" in a row.

Warning: Reduce Distance to Target

2010-04-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Running out of money again, but hopefully not for long. I'm pursuing my career opportunities harder than I've ever done before (Which isn't by much, especially if you're familiar with my...aversion to college, which even I have no idea what's wrong).

Currently? I'm trying to figure out the best way to get home without having to spend more money. Maybe I can convince someone here at Malachai's place to drive me home. It's not like I live that far away...far enough to not be able to walk, but not far enough to spend much gas.

My Biggest Purchase Using Tax Refund Money

2010-04-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

...wasn't video games ($140 at Gamestop got me Assassin's Creed 2, Resonance of Fate, and Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition). It also wasn't a new computer (as my prospective new computer would cost me around a thousand dollars, which is not the amount of money I got from refund), a new microphone (as of this moment The Price Pros finally got around to refunding me the $60 I blew on a microphone they did not have in stock), or a camcorder ($400 for the Samsung that I was looking at).

My largest single purchase with my refund money was...two pairs of slacks, two pairs of shoes, dress socks, and a laptop bag. I spent $190 in total. Why so much? Actually, I was asking myself, "Why so little?" Smart shopping and opportunistic timing. But more than that, the answer to "Why so much?" is actually because this is an investment. I've got a job interview tomorrow, and I didn't have any nice pants or shoes to wear. And I'll be damned if I'm going to show up to a prospective employer wearing black jeans with a mustard stain on the knee or slip-on sneakers. I wanted something nice. Hell, they'll have paid for themselves in two weeks if I get this.

My Daily Activities That I Wish I Could Get Paid For

2010-04-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Unloading and reloading the dishwasher, cleaning kitchen counters, and hauling out garbage.

Typing a lot of really large words very quickly.

Google and Wikipedia searches.

Watching old movies and making fun of them. (Like "The Sound of Music" last night - OMG! NAZI SWASTIKAS ON THE ABC FAMILY CHANNEL!)

Spending money. Yeah, I bet everybody wishes they could get paid for spending money. (And none of that supermarket "rewards card" bull-honkey.)

Being a jerk. There's another thing I bet everybody wishes they could get paid for - I'm sure a lot of people would be more than willing to punch a random dude if they got fifty bucks for it. (Per person, per punch, plus travel expenses if the target is not local. Actually, this isn't that far off from contract killing, except you'd probably lose your contract if you actually did kill the target...unless the contract specifically called for a number of punches in excess of one hundred. Bah, I'm overthinking this; now I really don't want to get paid to punch people in the face.)

I would also mention that I'd love to get paid to play video games, but from the stories I've been hearing about what it's like to be a professional play tester...I'd rather do something else for my dough. =P

Nothing To See Here

2010-04-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

It's April the first. You might expect me to deliver some witty-yet-disappointing little joke here. Well, I guess the joke here is that there is no joke - I ran out of ideas after I blew the "PC Gamer" thing a couple years ago.

Hey, That's Cheating

2010-03-28T12:30:00.001-07:00

I'm a pretty frequent listener of various internet radio stations (Shoutcast, not the modern things like Last.fm, Pandora, erc). One such station is NoLife Radio, a station that deals in video game music. Today, though, I caught them playing a song from Grand Theft Auto IV. A real song. Uh, isn't that generally considered cheating? Deviating from a genre on a technicality like "it got played in a video game"? I'm amazed I haven't heard NoLife playing Rob Zombie's Dragula at this rate (didn't that one show up in about five different games?).

A Flawless Lack of Light

2010-03-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

Today marks the release of the remake of Perfect Dark for XBox Live Arcade. It costs ten bucks and contains everything from the classic Nintendo 64 game...everything except for the terrible frame rate.

Sad as it makes me that Nintendo 64 games are now considered "retro" (stop making me feel old and get off my damn lawn), it's great that PD can now be enjoyed by the whippersnappers that believe that Halo was the first console FPS. Though is that such a good thing? Assuming that some of the more asshole-ish glitches remain (I have not tested yet to see if the poison knife effect still persists after death and respawn...), I can imagine some people becoming pretty frustrated with the game. The aiming system is still quite difficult to get used to after years of having the crosshair pasted directly in the center of the screen.

All that being said, though, I must applaud the developer for their modernization efforts. The game's exactly the same as the original, in all the places the count, and any of the things that would lead to an unfair judgment have been suitably tweaked and enhanced (even the voice acting, which despite being the same recordings, is now in crisp high quality).

The modder in me, though, poses a different question: is it much easier to rip the sound effects from an XBLA game than it is to get them from the N64 ROM?

The Waiting Has Actually Not Killed Me

2010-03-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today, everything I complained about in the previous post ended up being completely rectified.

My copy of Space Invaders for Game Boy arrived (and it works great on my Super Game Boy...I'd love to see an emulator do this crap), my tax money showed up as well (I am rich! Comparatively speaking!), and I also finally got the RMA number for the microphone that I was mistakenly shipped (what the hell am I going to do with a 2.5mm lapel mic with a gold connector? That's totally not what I ordered).

This is hopefully not the end of this up-shot.

It's The Waiting That Kills Me

2010-03-13T15:35:00.001-08:00

I'm waiting on three things to show up in the mail, two people to contact me, and numerous jobs. Augh. Time acceleration has never been more desirable.

Audio Displeasure

2010-03-01T22:26:00.000-08:00

My headset's broken.

Well, not entirely broken; it at least still functions (i.e. is still capable of recording and playing back sound), but the left earpiece (the one with the all-important microphone attached to it) has popped off. It currently dangles by its wire.

I'm sick of my headsets and microphones dying on me. I want something that will work and be durable. Maybe I should invest in a professional-quality mic.

Does anybody have recommendations? I obviously am not a rich man, but do you know of anything that will last a long time? I'm actually going to prefer a desktop microphone this time, despite not having a lot of desktop space for one. Suggestions? Anti-recommendations?

That's Funny, 'Cuz I Don't Know Him

2010-02-28T19:32:00.001-08:00

On a return trip to Malachai's place from picking up dinner supplies, we found ourselves traveling at roughly half the speed we should have been. The only vehicle in front of us was a beige-colored pickup truck. No sooner had Mal said something to the effect of "Why are we going so slowly?", the truck slowed almost to a halt and appeared to be pulling off to the side. Except then he suddenly accelerated and landed in the ditch at the side of Farmington Road. We heard him spin his wheels for 20 seconds, but then he reversed and then began driving forward very quickly. He struck the "Bike Lane Ahead" sign with his bumper.

This went on about three more times, before the truck finally managed to climb out of the ditch, grazing the Bike Lane sign again on his way out and also colliding with a mailbox. I thought this was the end of this amusing streak of terrible driving, but then the truck began swerving and then mounted the sidewalk in front of the church not fifty feet ahead of us. He drove through the bushes and then dismounted the sidewalk into the church parking lot.

If I had thought to stop and get a look at his license plate tag...but damn it, that was probably the funniest moment I've seen on a road trip in a while. You'd normally have to pay for entertainment like that.