Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne's Blogocube

Happy Forth! Be sure to PUSH and POP your stacks properly.

2008-07-05T05:28:13Z

I had an interesting Fourth of July, in that I spent it online.

Marianne McCann (mmccann) hosts fireworks shows in SL. Virtual fireworks are scripted particle displays -- nothing too realistic, but in a way, that's what makes them awesome, because they can do blams and sprays and effects you can't get in real life. So, since she's known for her pyrotechnic prowess, what's a girl to do on a holiday devoted to blowing things up..? That's right, a massive, thirty minute display of awesome!

Thanks to the miracle of the interwebs and interbutt 2.0, you can now view this extravaganza on the social photomarking tool networking webtersode known as Flickr!

Gaze in wonder, ye mortals, and despair.

Rest of my weekend? We're poking a bit at an arcade project, but I anticipate it's not gonna be a quickie, since we need to make a bunch of custom avatars and animations for it. More to come. Also, COH tomorrow, D&D sunday -- finally, I get to PLAY D&D for the first time in 26 years instead of just GMing it or designing it! Let the good times roll.

Rawk-E

2008-07-01T14:08:33Z

So. Rock Band 2. Announced yesterday, comes out in September (whoa!), uses all your existing DLC, and a number of other vague promises that they've listened to our complaints about RB1 and addressed nearly all of them.

I'm trying not to squee! too much, because while liked RB1, a lot of things we assumed it'd let us do (design a band despite being solo, do world tour online, etc) didn't pan out in the end. What we got was a stripped down core band experience -- just the bare bones, ma'am -- with very little flourish or depth. It did what it had to do and did it well and then exited stage left.

I don't want to be disappointed again by raising hopes too high, but it's hard not to; any improvement on RB1 would be stellar, since RB1 already did the solid basics perfectly well. Anything on top of that can ONLY be good, right? And they'd take care of the most blatantly obvious deficiencies in the formula (notably online bands) given their competition's ready to eat their lunch on that front, right? We'll see. I will hope.

I'm just glad I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't care about drumming and owns a cross-game guitar (the 360 Xplorer). I can play BOTH games this fall. And with Guitar Hero slated to stop sucking and start dishing up a proper RB-like experience complete with vocals, I'm poised to enjoy MUZIK GAEM to double degrees. \|mm|/, indeed.

In other news, went to see WALL-E last night. I went in skeptical; I'd heard everything from 'dull' to 'life-changing experience'. I'd heard it had a very tired and pedantic message about fat, lazy bastard consumers. To tie in to my earlier point, I didn't wanna raise my hopes too much.

Fortunately, it did in fact deliver. It was never dull; it was masterfully directed and engaging, even in dialogue-low parts. ESPECIALLY in dialogue-low parts. And more importantly to me, the pitfall I foresaw it dropping into, doing the generic slam against American consumerism, turned out to be a bit more subtle 'n simple than that -- it became one of my favorite tales, the old "Those Who Forget History.." yarn. This wasn't a race of cynically lazy slobs; it was a race of ignorant-by-way-of-innocence types who didn't even realize they were yearning to break free from sloth until it was accidentally pointed out to them. Much better!

I won't say it's my favorite Pixar movie... that one probably goes to The Incredibles, simply because it satisfies the inner comic geek in me on so many levels, and has some really human characters to connect to. But it's definitely in the highest tier. It's hard to really rank Pixar movies by which ones you like best, since they're all so damned awesome... it'd be like picking your favorite childrens. So, tl;dr, WALL=E = Highly Recommended.

I Am Keiko Takamura (And So Can You!)

2008-06-30T00:53:44Z

This is Keiko Takamura. This is her MySpace. She also is on LJ as keikotakamura.

You should get to know her, because she rawks. I say that with an A-W-K instead of an O-C-K because it's a unique and pleasant flavor of rock, one which speaks of good times and good feelings and something wonderful to enjoy. She's basically one (1) female of the human species, with one (1) guitar of the accoustic variety, although scientists believe she may be sprouting additional spawnlings and forming a band soon.

Her music is very good and if you hate it then you hate joy.

She's been seen on MTV, and if life was a competition, she came out waaaay ahead of the other two social maladjusts that were depicted in her special. They may as well have named it Keiko: The Show. She also sells underwear with a cartoon picture of herself on it, so you can keep her snug and warm in a hideously stalker sort of way. This is encouraged.

If you're in Second Life, more specifically if SL doesn't make you instantly parrot "lawl flying penis furries lawl", then you should go to her shows. That's a good dosage of Free Keiko, although tips are very appreciated -- or purchases of her fine, fine songs or swag. There are many ways to support your local Keiko. You could spread the word to your friends. You could tie a brown ribbon 'round an old oak tree. You could bake a series of delicious cakes in the shape of her head. The possibilities are endless.

I believe, if I had to tl;dr, I'd say I like her music and I think you might too, so go listen. Thank you for your time.

Pushbutton Native Americans

2008-06-26T15:57:14Z

The title of this post reflects various workplace transitions. I prefer not to talk about my day job because I Enjoy Not Being Fired For Blogging About My Job(tm), as noted in the past. I shall point out in an obfuscated way that the old issue of "Too many chiefs, not enough native americans" cannot really be solved with pushbutton native americans.

This is the sort of thing bad 50's B-movies are designed around. The pushbutton native americans have a habit of turning on their chiefs, armed with laser guns and impervious to our radiation weaponry. Soon we are their fleshy slaves, toiling in mines, broken and suppressed.

Our work situation isn't QUITE that bad, but I confirmed today that when you push the button, the native american goes "ERROR" and falls over, so I'm figuring they're gonna have to rethink this whole deal.

The 7Seas workfront (because let's be honest, SL is basically a part time job for me, not just a gamey lark) is looking more complicated, but that's fine; it's all problem solving and coding and getting things DONE. Or rather, it will be. Right now it's pondering how to get them done. We're cruising at a decent clip, regardless, and I'm satisfied despite annoyances. Last night I got a good picture of the scope of this project... for the 5-7 items not properly delivered each day, we're shipping out 100,000+ items that are being delivered just fine. Every. Day. Holy smeg. We can't even fully study our log files because both Excel and OpenOffice go "ERROR" and fall over when presented with only eight hours of 7Seas data.

Things are huge and scary and wonderful and hopefully not prone to collapse and disaster and horror and running and screaming. Time will tell.

Hudda Hudda Huh

2008-06-23T13:23:40Z

I need to post more often. Problem is, when I try to organize my thoughts into a blog post, it's rarely some epic and majestic dissertation on a subject of great weight and wisdom, it's me yammering about various games. This post is (mostly) no exception.

It was Pyro Weekend in TF2, and as a career pyro, I was lovin' it. Pyro was a tricky class, because everything it can do, someone else in TF2 could do better. In CQC, the soldier's rawkets were king, and he had more mobility due to rocket jumps. For ambushing, a spy is the way to go, and he had cloaks and disguises to get you into position. And... that's really all the pyro could do. Fail to get to where they need to be since they have to cross open terrain and take standard routes, then fail to kill anyone because they're basically a pure melee class.

So, Valve changed things. Now Pyro has two different, distinct play styles (and variations thereon). A ranged pyro gets a flaregun to ignite people from afar, as well as a burst-shield to reflect rockets back at people. An ambusher pyro gets additional health to survive those close calls (and soldiers now take more damage from their own high explosive artillery being treated as a melee weapon) and a flamethrower that crits when you 'backburn' people. SCORE.

Of course, now there's the inevitable catcalls of "pyro is overpowered" and "nerf pyro". But this is an online game. Everybody is simultaneously underpowered and overpowered and needs to be buffed and nerfed and blood and fire will sound the trumpets of Nerd Forum War to the nonbeliever who dares to disagree, etc, etc. Par for course, baby. Par for course.

Meanwhile, I busted my ass working on 7Seas 3.0 fishing rods, only to... decide to postpone them. Mono's coming soon to SL, sooner than I thought, and since I'm bumping into the memory limits of stock SL scripting I feel we need to wait. We're in no rush; unless someone haxx0rz the game, there's no reason to shove forward on production before it's as awesome as it possibly can be. Meanwhile Jen and Meissa are cranking out fish and keeping the huddled masses happy, and that'll carry us through.

Someone at scans_daily posted some really old comic adaptations of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, which reminded me of how much I adored that book in high school. I hit Amazon and picked up that and F451 for a little re-reading, and glad I did, since this edition (while missing the anti-racism story about southern blacks going to mars) had a really interesting story on science and religion added to the compilation I hadn't read before. Great stuff.

The only down note is the same one from my last read through... why does 99.9% of Mars's population immediately and unanimously decide to run back to Earth when nuclear war breaks out? Wouldn't a good portion, if not most of them, opt to stay put rather than voluntarily go off to die an inevitable horrible radioactive death? Never made sense to me.

Finally, saw the Incredible Hulk. It was quite pedestrian; amazing actors (and Liv Tyler) pouring their heart into very, very thin parts and a very servicable but nothing more story. And yet, I was quite entertained... I guess a little of the Hulk Formula goes a long way, despite how straightforward it all is. Also, I'm LOVING how Marvel's starting to tie their movies together, to build one continuity out of them. This is something DC is specifically trying not to do, and it's a shame. Having Patrick Bateman meet Superman would've been a real kick. Amirite?

In Which I Actually Finish A Game (also, Hippie Crap)

2008-06-18T16:33:34Z

Hey, kids, it's another pile of random game thoughts and life musings! Wow! I AM BLOGGING THE INTERSPHERES

When the internet went down earlier this week, I decided I'd take that opportunity to do a little single player action and conquer one of those "I'm avoiding them" games. In this case, it was the Penny Arcade RPG.

Fortunately I was already pretty close to the end, and I'd been doing every sidequest and every fight I could get my hands on, so none of the brawls were really amazingly hard. With the health and damage bonuses from the final subquests (one of which I could've finished earlier if I'd known I had to click on one particular machine at the end of a boss battle... ah, well) the final boss of the game wasn't too bad, either; just a matter of whaling on his bag of hit points and blocking every now and then.

I'm definitely looking forward to episode 2, which from the trailer will be including more human characters and a bit more story content than random beatings. (Rough guess, there.) I doubt it'll be released anytime soon, though... this isn't like Telltale Games and their vigorous production schedules. We'll see.

Also, details on this week's (!) Pyro unlockables in TF2 are out, and they look great! We're talking two genuinely different playstyles represented by the unlocks, and I can't wait to try 'em out. The achievements to get them aren't that bad, either, barring the obligatory eye rolling One Million Damage/Heal/Whatever Points achievement. This weekend is gonna be a great one for gaming, what with most of my COH characters now being up to snuff (crab arms, gang war, stamina, SO's, etc) and my Pyro gettin' some loving. Woohoo!

As for SL, we're making good process there; I had to pause my work but there's really not much left to do for the rods. Just gotta do the optional fishing HUD now. I've been getting a few more feature requests, but I gotta lock down the feature list... we're running up against SL's script memory limits left and right, and if I let feature creep in, the whole thing could collapse. Best to take the set we have and run with it.

As noted in an earlier entry, a water main break meant everybody in my county had possibly-toxic water for three days. Between that and the electrical outages and the net/TV going down, it's amazing modern civilization doesn't collapse onto itself more often. We get so used to everything from digital convenience to plumbing that when bits of them are yanked away, it disrupts all our lives.

I'd say we should hug a tree and go camping and learn to live simply in peace with mother earth, but screw that, I say we just work to make our modern age a bit more sustainable and durable. I dig the 'green' movement; it's a different beast from earlier eco-fads in decades gone by (Earth Day, anyone?) because it's less about abandoning our evil, evil technology and more about keeping our toys and making them less destructive or at the VERY least counterbalancing their side effects.

I hope eco-momentum can be sustained... the gas shortage is fortunately providing the stick along with the nebulous carrot, since unlike the nebulous sticks of yesteryear (ozone layer), EVERYBODY can see, feel, and suffer the direct effects of it on their day to day lives. Will that result in actual, long-lasting change, or will people just forget all about 'green living' once gas prices go down? We'll see.

ZOT.

2008-06-16T20:40:17Z

Thunderstorms over the burbs, smaller scale ones than the DoomStorm of last week... Things nice and quiet, just rain... Then KABOOM! And one flash of light later, the internet and cable are toast.

Hopefully comcast will be more responsive to the whole burb going offline than they have been to our house's signal strength probs. Age of broadband my ass.

Edit: Net's back, but we're gonna have to boil water and wash with waterless lotion for three damn days because of a water main break. Civilization is pretty easy to topple lately, isn't it? Next thing you know an unspecified airborne threat from "plants" in general despite them having wildly different biology will randomly start making people kill themselves until it stops for no good reason.

Envisualizerating Your Success, Or Something

2008-06-16T13:54:15Z

So last post, I whined a bit about my lack of progress.

I guess exposing that "I'm kinda lazy right now" vibe to the Huddled Internet Masses (all four of you) helped, because this weekend I cracked the whip and got bizzy. 7Seas 2.2 Fishing Rods are 85% complete. All features except for the HUD are integrated and working, even the slightly dodgy security system which I un-dodgied in the process.

I don't have the servers and contest boards and other bits 2.2'd, but that's fine; as long as I make prototypes that test positively against the rods, we're good. Hopefully I can get the rod to beta testers this week, and next week start releasing them, provided they work under normal heavy use.

I haven't played much of the Penny Arcade RPG or Mass Effect since my initial forays, and I have figured out why. It's the same reason I love TF2 and Rock Band and COH but shun most story-driven games... it's not that I hate narrative, it's that I hate REPLAYING narrative as a penalty for failure. I don't like loading save games. If I screw up and die, it's a double punch, because as irrational as this sounds it feels like the game's mocking my lack of skill at overcoming whatever challenge it just crushed me with, and as a penalty it's making me backtrack and re-do various fights and conversations since my last save. I quicksave like a man possessed, but it mocks even this, as odds are I'll eventually hit a point where I unknowngly "saved too deep" and can never get out again because I wasn't equipped right or built my guys right and now I am doom'd.

Now, to be fair, reality is rarely like that. It takes a unique flavor of game imbalance to cause it, but I HAVE hit that imbalance before, and have no desire to do so again. I'm seriously considering throwing up the God Mode flag so I can get through Mass Effect without this anxiety on me.

TF2/Rock Band/COH/Street Fighter/WWE/Whatever don't have this problem because if you fail and lose, whatever, another round is only seconds away. It's all about the quick bite of challenge and virtually penalty-free failure states. Even in COH, debt has been nerfed to oblivion -- party wipes are just minor inconveniences. You can play without any fear whatsoever that you're gonna screw yourself. Even respecs are plentiful to help you correct mistakes, provided you put a LITTLE thought into your build. I like pick up, play, put down games without a lot of penalty.

Speaking of COH, I finally got my spider leggies on Operative Thirteen, and WOW are they made of awesome and win. It's so nice to actually be a quasi-tankmage... someone with ranged damage (which I adore) and actual mitigation (which I'm not used to having). It's a trip and I can't wait to try it out in groups, now that I've "graduated" from the weaker wolf spider track.

And... that's it.

Do Re Me LAWL Fa So La Dee Doo Or Something.

2008-06-12T17:17:20Z

SingStar! Because, well, why the hell not? I primarily sing in Rock Band, so more karaoke games make sense, particularly ones with more "big name" songs than Rock Band can manage. (See also its pack of who-the-hell-are-you-guys they're offering up as DLC this week.) I picked up the PS3 version for the online store and a few nice tracks, and the old PS2 80s one for a setlist comprised 85% of awesome.

It's not the best karaoke game -- that'd be Karaoke Revolution nee Rock Band. Its vocal tracking software is pretty poor, its 'rapping' sections are completely screwball, the 'static' vocal note display is a pain, and featurewise it doesn't feature a hell of a lot. Still, 7Seas has made me wealthy enough to take the occasional splurge and I'd call it money well-enough spent. It'll definitely work for all those parties I don't have anymore because my friends moved away or lost interest in me. ...not that I'm bitter.

Also watched half of pTerry's The Colour of Magic last night. Sean Astin is ROCKING it as my namesake -- Twoflower, the first tourist of Discworld. It's so awesome to see the character I've tagged myself with for over a decade now brought to life! It's interesting that I dig the char so much given the actual BOOKS he's in, TCOM and TLF, are largely plot-free rampages of comedy situations that don't entirely fit Discworld canon in the long run. I definitely prefer the latter day books which are steeped in worldbuilding canon and the ongoing modernization of the disc in comparison, but these TV specials do recapture some of the initial wonder of the early Discworld.

This week has largely been a restless, listless, bored, low-energy affair of doing little but grabbing at low-hanging gamer fruit. I intend to resume being productive soon, but for now, I'm not pushing it. My brain is telling me to cut it out and just chill and I'm gonna listen to it. It's not the good kind of relaxing, though -- it's the kind of forced relaxation that comes from being ambivalent about doing anything of note. It never really LASTS for any long time, but it does happen to me occasionally. Hopefully this won't last long.

Doom From the Sky

2008-06-05T13:10:11Z

I don't know if it made national news or not, but the Washington D.C. area (I live in those parts, in a non-specific, don't-stalk-me way) got hammered incredibly hard by several rolling waves of storms yesterday. They were moving 60 MPH and some of them had tornadoes with 'em, causing a ton of damage and a couple deaths.

Fortunately, my parents were on the ball and phoned me up in my windowless office to say "Uh, maybe you should come home early..." because the first wave hit 5 minutes after my harrowing escape. On the way home even before the first storm hit I had signal lights out, road closures, forcible detouring into parts of town I had never been to before and had no idea how to get out of, etc. After getting home I had to be ready to dive into my bathroom for safety at a moment's notice, and had to deal with the power rapidly flicking on and off. (Needless to say I unplugged the tivo and kept the computer shut down. Nintendo DS and Blackberry were my salvation.)

Creepiest bit is this photo my dad took of a vaguely funnel-like rotating cloud that formed directly over our freaking house, but never quite got up to speed. Aieeee.

This is the worst weather we've had in months. Even the snowfall this winter was nothin' in comparison. And we have more storms lined up for the next few days... hopefully just "Lotta Rain" and not "Lotta Horror".

Also on the terror list, an unspecified friend was chatting with us in IM last night, when suddenly they sent lines of gibberish as if their hands were being pulled from the keyboard, followed by 'help' and then disconnected. On top of that, their cellphone wasn't being answered. Needless to say we kinda freaked and did the Happy Internet Dance of Not Knowing Someone's Street Address Or Home Phone Number Because We're Just Internet Friends And Thus Have No Idea What To Tell The 911 Operator.

After a tense half hour, we finally indirectly got to said person, and it turns out their Signifigant Other was just tickling them and they accidentally closed the IM window in the process and didn't realize there was any panic going on. Aieeee. At least it was nothing serious / doomy.

Let's hope the following weekend has less encroaching disaster, as a whole.

Edit: We're off to a rocking start as no less than two hours after I get to work, half the buildings in the FDA network are shut down due to power failure and the employees are sent home. I get to fumble around a pitch black office for my iPod, climb down some stairs, and drive home with a cascade of traffic light failures and lane closures. LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL

Gamey Ponderances (ME, 4E, 5B)

2008-06-04T13:08:48Z

Mass Effect PC rolled in yesterday. The new UI improvements help a lot -- notably the ability to pause what's going on and issue commands to your NPC buddies. Combat still isn't perfect... fights are usually over in the blink of an eye and a hail of gunfire leaving me confused as to what just happened, but that may be because I'm on "Casual Mode". What can I say, I prefer story to action.

I'm trying to play through as a Paragon (good alignment) this time instead of a Renegade (bad alignment). The Renegade was fun but kind of mindlessly dickish to everybody and in order to get your bonuses you had to come off as an absolutely selfish hardass all the time, even when you didn't wanna be. I appreciated them posing the Renegade as a Dirty Harry type, who gets the mission done and saves the world but in questionable ways, but too often I was basically just being a prick for prick's sake. In contrast, Paragons pick the most compassionate response possible... but they end up being a bit generic nice guys as a result, with uninteresting dialogue and no real twists.

I'd love an RPG that allows me to be more than a saint and an asshole. A deadpan snarker, a schemer, an unhinged oddball, a comedian, whatever... just some variation other than rolling as the epitome of good or evil.

And thus we come to Dungeons 'n Dragons 4e, which is freeform and thus allows that! I'm enjoying the rule changes, and particularly like what they've done with Rangers (although I'm trying to find some interpretation of the rules that lets me master a crossbow instead of a generic longbow) and the whole thing feels RIGHT. But one thing doesn't, and that's the DDi (Insider) service.

DDi provides a character builder, character visualizer (basically a 3-D dressup doll), rules lookup table, issues of their D&D branded magazines, a map editor, and the online game table. All that sounds good, but there's a problem -- they want $15 for it. Now, you may recall from my earlier posts that I have no problems paying cash. And I felt that the DDi service would be better than the free offerings because it's polished and pro and offers new features the free solutions don't. In essence, DDi would be Better Than Free. (All web enterprentuers need to read that article.)

Well... upon more research... it's not actually better than free. The rules lookup is just that, the rules, it's not like online books and the resources are pretty limited in scope. The builder can easily be duped by free programs. The visualizer MIGHT be awesome but I highly doubt it's gonna come close to COH's editor or even a well done SL avatar. The map editor isn't going to be much better than a free editor -- but wait, it's got 3-D elements, right? Yes, but you have to pay extra for 3-D tiles and 3-D miniatures, via micropayments! Obviously being an SLer I have no objections to micropayments, but MPs just for bits of art, and MPs on top of a subscription is too much to swallow for too little value.

The real killer for me is the game table. It's not actually a 4e game table, it doesn't do any of the rules and math gymnastics for you, it provides NO TOOLS whatsoever beyond "move tokens around on a whiteboard" and "roll a die". That's it. In other words it's doing nothing that the free game tables aren't already doing, and they don't charge you money for their service or their artwork. You can't even say the matchmaking service is the real gem of the pile because there are free matchmaking services, too. Having it all integrated in one package... character vaults, game tables, services... that's appealing. But it's not $15 plus unspecified MPs appealling.

So, what ARE you getting that's irreplacable? WOTC magazines. That's it. No thanks. Unless they severely beef up the features and make DDi something powerful and indispensable to gamers, they are charging way the hell too much. What they have right now -- an end-to-end software chain and some mags -- is worth maybe $6 a month at most. It's not even comparable to an MMORPG's level of content and ongoing service.

Finally in the "stupid" category, we have Second Life(tm)'s 5th Birthday Party. It's been a yearly resident-run event, but this year, Linden Labs(tm) are stepping in to take control...

EDIT: The Lindens have more-or-less reversed their reversed reversed decision, or something. I'll include what I originally wrote under an LJ-Cut.

Finally in the "stupid" category, we have Second Life(tm)'s 5th Birthday Party. It's been a yearly resident-run event, but this year, Linden Labs(tm) are stepping in to take control specifically to kick out a group of heinous bastards who have no right to participate and stain us all with their horribleness and must be purged from the virtual earth. That's right, I'm talking about... kids.

Nope! Not furries, not goreans, they're specifically welcomed. But child avatars aren't. Oh, they can show up and party, but the parade floats and exhibitions they'd set up -- all PG rated and utterly nonsexual, just toys and games and fun stuff -- are not allowed. And why? Because some moron senator who has no idea what he's talking about thinks SL is a haven for child predators. ...and yet child avs can drop in. They just can't submit content to the party. Huh? What? Logic? Sensibility? Then again, these two concepts have been long missing from LL's vocabulary since they stopped being creative enablers and started being PR flacks.

Okay, the update is that kid avs and kid av submissions are welcome, but since the whole event was changed from Mature to PG, goreans are not. Which is fine. But what isn't fine is that they hijacked a resident run event in an effort to sanitize it, then burned a bunch of folks in the process and tried to unburn them, etc. If they wanted to run their own official party, yay, but taking over a resident event is just obnoxious.

Anyway, Flotsam Beach and related enterprises will not be participating in this hijacked party. ...we didn't have plans to do so in the first place, so it's a bit silly to boycott now, but dangit, we are. There are some alternative, purely resident run events around the grid; visit those instead.

Beach 08: The Jim Crow Golfing Experience and Wrapup

2008-05-31T00:31:50Z

We went out to Bob's Eat and Get the Hell Out Grill. Good food, good stuff. Also got some salt water taffy and souveniers. Then we immediately went out golfing.

Two problems emerged. One is that this was a new course, and we didn't check ahead of time if it was handicap accessible. It was... if you consider accessible to mean "On 1/3rd of the holes, the disabled golfer can't play." Place had more steps than an Escher painting. Thankfully Jen could carry me up and down steps but believe me, I was not a happy camper... they actually had mockingly labelled "Wheelchair Paths" that could lead disabled golfers to "observation" sections that would let them WATCH the rest of their party having fun without them.

So, if you're ever in Nags Head and you get the opportunity to visit Mutiny Bay Miniature Golf... don't. And I hope Google picks this up and it becomes a hit when people are searching for that place's phone number and address.

Anyway, shopping + golf = wiped out from heat exhaustion since I wasn't drinking enough fluids, so I crashed out and felt fried for the remainder of the afternoon. Had a big dinner with the family, medicated, evacuated, and am reasonably okay now. Just waiting until Battlestar Galactica, then waiting to go home tomorrow morning.

I'm not ready to leave. My body's physically aching to get the hell out of here but my mind doesn't want to go, because I know the hell waiting for me at the office. It's gonna be one of those weeks of pure Confusion, Annoyance, and Frustration. Yay. Hopefully a restful, COHy-and-such Sunday will help me recover and be ready to face that.

Beach 08: Om Nom Nom, Etc.

2008-05-30T06:21:38Z

One of the joys of this trip -- and the bane of my existence -- is the food. Not specifically the meals, but the SNACKS. My god, the snacks. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Doritos aplenty. Honey roasted peanuts and cashews. Brownies. Donut holes. And that's just a minor sampling.

Problem is, snacking all day leads to gastrointestinal horrors later on. As lovely as all this is, I'm NOT looking forward to the weight I'm gonna put on, and I AM looking forward to getting my munchies back to normal. ...but not before a visit to Bob's Eat and Get the Hell Out Grill. It's got chicken tenders to die and/or kill for.

I made the most of today by doing a shopping run, in which I picked up a ship inna bottle and a two-headed quarter for souvenirs. We also grabbed an Uno deck, because it's a vicious and fast paced game of strategy and backstabbing and tons of fun. Also, an automatic card shuffling machine, because we suck at shufflinating. Finally, we visited Logan's Ice Cream and actually met Ma and Pa Logan, who own the biz. Good to be supporting the little guy instead of just hitting up a Dairy Queen. All in all, an eventful trip.

Finally, we watched the MTV True Life special starring our good pal, Keiko Takamura. Naturally, it was framed as a salvo in the war between New Media and Newer Media, with MTV showing how that horrible Internet Monster will destroy your REAL life, because it's a FAKE life, not REAL, and you should totally watch more television instead of being on the webs. Keiko came out of it smelling like roses, thankfully, and even SL wasn't bashed -- but the other two, a camwhore who thinks people want to read her blog for her deep thoughts and not for her boobs, and an IM addict who actually puts some value to chatting up guys online and exposing her boobs (see a theme?) were just sad cases indeed.

There was one defining moment of irony the special completely failed to notice. In one segment, we have them showing one's Internet Boyfriend as a creepy and terrible thing to have, with background music akin to The Shining when it is discussed. In another we find out Keiko met her beau online and they click perfectly. The show didn't even miss a beat with slamming one and raising the other. Oh, and let's not forget the "Going out drinking and smoking and hooking up with guys in a fit of social desperation is healthier for you than talking to people online" message it hammered home. Lawl.

Oh! Also, I snuck a peek at the D&D 4e DM's guide. I'm really impressed! It's got charts and design forumlae for encounters, complete with City of Heroes style archetypes for designing your brawls effectively. I think I may enjoy running some D&D romps online. Especially since it seems a typical adventure only has 3-5 battles at most. I can swing that and fill the rest with rich, juicy story. The whole guide's got some great, well organized suggestions on how to craft a good adventure module, much better than 3e's guide was. Kudos!

I can't wait to get my 3-book box set I ordered off Amazon so I can start poking at Insider with my book codes and see what extra services they're gonna offer up. (Brilliant idea, by the way -- I don't like the steep subscription price, but the idea of a game table that lets you play D&D online is appealing since I have nobody local to me except J&A to play with. And the idea of offering bonus content to people with specific book keys registered is a smart way to beat piracy.)

Beach 08: Not Much

2008-05-29T14:50:21Z

Sup, blog.

Haven't checked in in a bit. Not really anything worth note. Yesterday I floated from internets to rock band to internets to Mario Kart to internets, then watched a RiffTrax and went to bed. Granted, it was thunderstorming all day long, but even inside the house I coulda done something more unique or fun.

I'm getting my usual neurotic worries about not making the most of my vacation, so I'm gonna try to get out of the house and do some shopping and stuff today... do something of note, something interesting.

And... that's all I gotta report.

Beach 08: Film at 11

2008-05-27T04:15:03Z

Movies, movies, movies. Copious free time lends itself well to films. Let's briefly go over the current crop.

Jurassic Park, with RiffTrax provided by Mike Nelson and Weird Al (!). We decided to show the family RiffTrax; it was their first exposure to it, although they were familiar with MST3K. After some minor audio difficulties, we were off to the races and lovin' it. The middle sagged a bit (I didn't realize how slow and boring JP really was) but the whole experience was awesome and highly recommended.

We showed Primer to our Cool Uncle and Cool Aunt. Most of the family abandoned ship since the first 20 minutes are guys talking over each other about vague technology; it confused and bored them. But once we were on board for the crazy time travel wonkery, minds were blown. As they should be.

Today, bright 'n early we went for a showing of Indy and the Crystal Skull. It's hard to talk about it without spoilers, but I'd say the 'mythos' they were working with was okay; it was no more out of place than Christian artifacts or ancient tribal stones of power were in the other movies, just another intersection of archaeology and the paranormal. It was a bit odd to be rolling with a slew of new characters, but it's not like the other movies had a steady cast either, so hey. Overall, it worked... not as majestic as Raiders or Crusade but leagues better than Doom and pretty fun as a whole.

Also, I finally saw Enchanted. I'm into meta and fictional, rule-based fantasy elements getting mashed up with reality ala Last Action Hero. But this was too sappy and not sarcastic enough for my tastes. It did what it set out to do, bringing magic of fairy tales to the real world, and I'm sure it pushed buttons for the audience it was designed for, but me I'd spin it as bringing the harshness of reality to a fairy tale world instead. Like Shrek, basically. You can be snarky and bitter and still have an upbeat happy ending, yannow. Closest we got here was the "summon the woodland creatures of New York" scene. Still, I'll acknowledge its craftsmanship.

Tomorrow I have plans to rawk out with The Cars in Rock Band, but otherwise no major plans. Just cruisin'.

Beach 08: Golfocalypse Now

2008-05-25T22:42:45Z

Went to Lost Treasure Minigolf. It's a tradition; it's a great sprawling course with lots of neat tricks and varying shade / no shade / indoor in a cave / outdoor areas. Very balanced, very nice. You even do a short train ride to get to the first hole! Yaaay! The greens are lookin' a little lumpy lately, but it's still fun. I came in 2nd, short four strokes (had some bad holes).

I didn't end up taking too many photos. The problem is that a lot of the beach activities we do are the beach activities we ALWAYS do... and the look of 'em don't change much. I snapped photos of the fam around the new house, but at golf I didn't see much we hadn't seen and documented already. Ergo, I refer you to last year's photos. I do have my USB cable with me so I can upload this year's photos live; I'll get to 'em later.

Also jammed with the cousins a bit in Rock Band. I am still digging the concept of playing games with people who are not digital distant smacktards, and looking forward to doing more of that.

More to come!

Beach 08: Arrival

2008-05-24T23:50:09Z

We're heeere!

The house is HUGE. Which is good since we have 20 people under one roof, oy. We're all grimy and tired and unwilling to do anything major tonight, though... we were stuck in a 10 mile crawl for TWO HOURS, which expanded the trip to eight hours total. Yucktastic.

Only issue I had was the TV in my room was up six feet in the air on some mounted pedestal thing, angled down. That's bad for a guy who's three feet tall and has a neck fusion and is trying to play 360 games on a 20 inch standard def screen. We did some jury rigging and dismounted the thing and lowered it; it's good now.

Plan is to do minigolf tomorrow or the day after... nothing else locked in. Just hours and hours of free time sprawling out. Yay!

...not looking forward to logging into SL tonight for a daily IM run, though, since last time I was in was yesterday at lunchtime. Ick. This will suck.

Edit: Just played four player Mario Kart. YAY. I have never played four player, well, anything before in my life. Mostly because I've never had four friends who enjoyed video games in the same room at the same time with a four player game handy.

Also, handled IMs (phew) and now gonna get some rest.

So Close I Can Taste The Sand (...eww)

2008-05-23T14:52:43Z

Beach! Beach! Just one more day! Until then, I'm poking through various PC-type things, since the game consoles are packed up.

The Penny Arcade game is awesome. It's harder than I thought it'd be, requiring good reflexes to block attacks and good planning to know when to save up for special attacks, when to use items, etc. I like it! But I got the 360 version, and quickly found out I couldn't fumble the sticks and buttons and triggers fast enough. Since 7Seas has taken off I'm a bit more cavalier with money (which means I spend "normally" instead of "thriftily barring occasional spikes" as I normally do) so I decided to grab the PC version in addition. Glad I did; using the mouse makes the process a lot easier and quicker, and I'm having a lot of fun.

My Graduating Class of Issue #12 has been finalized, in City of Heroes. They are:

* Operative Thirteen, fallen hero whose luck finally ran out one day and is now obsessed with pragmatic pessimism and causing the ruin of others carefully planned schemes, hero and villain alike. (Soldier/Crab)

* Doctor Larceny, an 80 year old "mad chemist" villain from the 50s who wants one last run at the big time, when his arthritis medication made his knees CONTROL the weather instead of predicting it. (Mastermind/Thugs/Storm)

* The Uncivil Engineer, a day laborer Scrapyarder who takes up random violence jobs to pay the bills between constructing death ray lairs for mad scientists and weird technospires for Arachnos. Beats people up with a shovel, wrench, etc. (Brute/Mace/Willpower)

* Flora Fairchild, who is undergoing a secondary mutation that ties her more closely with nature and gaia's weather patterns, and is finally getting a chance to go home -- to a public that only knows her as a bioterrorist, mind. (Controller/Plant/Storm)

* Knight's Fall, who is not technically BRAND new but is new enough, and is the restless spirit of a young hero who was cut down on her first mission and then shunned by her family in favor of a replacement hero. (Blaster/Archery/Ice)

Yaaay.

Over in SL land, I'm pretty much just checking IMs once a day and then cashing out. Once we get back from the beach I'll have time to do some 7Seas 2.2 dev work, work on MSi, and explore and socialize more. Being the creative workaholic I am I rarely do the latter two in favor of the former two, but.

Now, then! Back to waiting for vacationy goodness.

Issue 12 Musings

2008-05-21T13:25:23Z

Okay, so Issue 12 has dropped sooner than anyone expected. It has a few polish bugs and a few more serious wallbangers, but I'll let those slide (under assumption they will be fixed). Let's talk turkey.

With the new XP curve in place, I was able to get to level 10 in a single long session. That's good stuff, right there. Beginner's Luck ensured I didn't perpetually whiff my hits, and with enough teammates, no XP debt for noobs, and tri-converting insps into revives when I did get pasted I could progress at a good clip. The biggest problem I've had with COH is that it wants to be a casual-friendly MMO but until now didn't really have a casual-friendly grinding curve... it'd take you forever to get to 'the good stuff'. There's still some problems there, notably in the teens when you're sucked into the gaping maw of boredom that is Travel+Fitness power picks, and I still don't get why they balanced the game around the idea of enhancements going from Useless (TO) to Lame (DO) to Awesome (SO) with no in-between, but... it's too late to do much about that now.

My newly rolled spider was fun enough, for what amounts to an AR blaster with no secondary. (In the early levels the only thing you have other than shooty time is some near useless mitigation due to, you guessed it, TOs.) I enjoy assault rifle sets, though, no matter how wussy they are... something about hosing down minions with a machine gun speaks well to me. Which is probably why I just can't get into mideval sword hackery type MMOs. Still, this guy isn't really gonna be unique or interesting until he finally hits 24 and gets his Crab Spider abilities and some actual SOs in the mitigation tools. I'm willing to wait-and-see.

My new Mastermind was likewise weak but fun. I'm FINALLY playing a Thugs MM, the type I've wanted to play since COH launched -- Thugs were patched in after and I really wanted an MM, so I started Charly as a next-best-thing and got too busy playing her to go play ANOTHER MM on top fo that... and then after she hit 50 I realized I hated all the MM secondaries other than Traps. At last, the time has come! Storm works well for me, and I love having two pistols. I understand the Bruiser is going to be a pile of suck but I'm hoping the experienced thugs MM'ers in our group will have some suggestions for how to make him less than useless.

Next up on the docket will be my Hero!Flora Plant/Storm Controller, and a Mace/Dark Brute. I'll roll the brute tonight, probably, but will wait until after the beach for Flora since she needs a proper RP sendoff.

Speaking of the beach, packing's been pushed off to Thursday. It might be a bit of a rush but Jen's promised to help, and presumably we can get it all done in one night. I'm also gonna wait on playing the new Penny Arcade steampunk game... I bought the Microsoft Points to order it (it just FEELS like a console game to me, not a PC game) and I'll download it while I'm at the beach, odds are. I plan to do a lotta gaming at the beach... tons of free time, relaxing environment, folks to play multiplayer with (at long last!)... it's gonna be sweeeet. No COH, though, so I better get my fill on that before we bail.

Beach Prepwork

2008-05-19T13:12:17Z

So, this weekend I was mostly offline due to Comcrash. Couldn't get in COHing during the Saturday window. Didn't get a lot done in SL. etc. I DID watch 10+ hours of the Venture Bros., which was awesome, and play a bunch of GTA4, which was less awesome but still fun enough to merit purchasing. I just wish they could come up with an intuitive shooting mechanic that didn't require chording and four different control elements at once. Or they could just let us use our damn USB keyboards and mice. But anyway, that's a familiar rant, so I'll cease.

The real fun is coming up in five days, when we bail outta here and go to the BEACH. Outer banks. Nags Head. Duck. Minigolf. Ice cream. Games. Relaxation. AWWYEAH. Ahem. So, I need to start prepping, because nothing sucks more than a last minute packing rush.

Which basically makes the following a notes-2-self entry (or a notes-for-obsessive-stalkers entry, on the reverse side) but hey, my LJ, I can use it as my personal post-it note board if I want.

MONDAY, Wii -- Aside from packing, get the 'button cover' for Mario Kart made. Pack Wii, power cord, video cable. I have a component cable on that thing right now, do I need to track down the original A/V cable or buy a new one? Bring both Wiimotes, the wheel, the zapper (for pinball, mostly), and the woodblock nunchuck holder. Fill a flipper with games.

For peace of mind on Monday, also track down my 4gb USB microdrive, and make sure the bookmark list on it is up to date. If it can't be found then we may need to make a store run to get another. (I thought I had it in my bag, but that was just an old 1gb drive. Blargh.) If not, do this Tuesday.

TUESDAY, DVDs -- Bring netflix rented Eragon and Jurassic Park for RiffTraxing. Pack Venture Bros., Torchwood, Death Note. Hm. Anything else?

WEDNESDAY, Rock Band & 360 -- Pack up guitar, USB hub, microphone and if it can be fit in the car, the drum kit. Jen may need to haul this. Or we may have to leave it at home. Which would suck since I rarely get a LONG period of time in which anybody can learn drums; usually they try for five minutes, can't figure it out, hate it, and dump it. If we had time to practice maybe someone would dig it. As for singing, dunno who'll have guts to sing karaoke in front of a group, though... particularly when we've got nuns and old relatives joining us and I have stuff like "Number of the Beast" in my songlist.

Pack up 360. 360 unit itself, power brick from hell, regular TV cable (on the black desk), 2 controllers (remove battery units in transit), USB Wifi because hey, why not. Pack one CD flipper with games. Bring the woodblock holder.

THURSDAY, Medicene Bag -- Check what parts Mom's bringing (notably toothbrush/paste). Pack stomach meds, ibuprofen, shaver.

I'll add more if I remember anything else.

Comcast Must Die (Preferably In a Fire)

2008-05-15T18:44:27Z

Yep, I'm offline again. And this time it's not even yoyoing for a while then back, it's just dead -- no less than a week since comcast last checked our crappylow signal strength.

No SL work, no IMs, no TF2, etc... Until they get here to poke at in on SUNDAY. ARGH.

On the upside I managed to snag a rental copy of GTA4 to test the controls. (They changed them around a bit this time, more of a stock shooter mechanic.) Fortunately the classic style controls are still there, so I can in fact play... Although the new car handling sucks. If I can get the hang of that and shooting I might buy the game.

...Now to go stare at the wall for awhile. And/or the Venture Bros dvd I rented. Heard good things about that show, figured I should scope it out.

Edit: It's still not 100% stable, but it seems the evening hours are plausible for internet access. I'll have to skip tomorrow's telecommuting, though... from past experiences when Comcast flakes out it always flakes out during work hours, for some weird reason. You'd think it'd be the other way around.

Finished Venture Bros Season 1. This show is AWESOME. SO DAMN AWESOME. I'm gonna put in Amazon orders for the box sets. I'm a sucker for any show that plays with melodramatic cartoonish villanry.

Inspiration Needs Better Timing

2008-05-13T13:04:54Z

So.

Second Life announced they were gonna open up sales of a new kind of sim -- one with 1/4th the prims and script performance and cost of a normal sim, but 1/1 the size of a normal sim. Basically it's a big, light-use area that doesn't cost a lot of money to run, great for landscaping and simple projects.

I wanted to do an 'art project' type area for a long time, since I first joined SL. Something that exists only for its own sake, not specifically to push a product or provide a service. Jen's felt the same -- so we picked up two last night. She's going to be building a giant tree you can fly around and explore, ala Below The Root. I'm going to be building MSi, the Mad Science Institute, where bright young avatars learn how to create hideous mutants, giant shrink rays, and threaten the United Nations for a ransom of one million dollars.

I thought long and hard about my idea, about what I wanted to do. Weeks I poked at various ideas, none of them really fitting. It kept bubbling away on the backburner of my mind, trying to congeal into something workable. ...and unfortunately for me, inspiration always strikes at two times:

1. When I'm in or en route to the bathroom.
2. When I'm trying to go to sleep.

In this case, it was the latter, and boy did that screw me up. My brain will not listen when I say "Okay, okay, you're excited about the idea and you want to start popping off a dozen ideas for how to make it happen and what to do with it. That's very nice for you. Now shut up, I need to get to sleep!" End result? Poor sleep, waking up late, and going to work all burned out. I'm looking forward to getting more sleep soon to try and compensate.

Also, last night I saw Iron Man. I was pleasantly surprised -- this is probably one of the best comic book adaptations I've ever seen, with exactly the right mix of action, drama, and comedy. I'd rank it up there with Spiderman, X-Men 2, and Batman Begins in terms of comic book movies that do it the right way. (For examples of colossal fail look no further than Daredevil, Catwoman, Fantastic Four, and to a lesser extent the first Hulk movie.) If Marvel can keep it up, can keep cranking out quality stories with good acting, then the proposed Avengers movie might not actually suck. Wouldn't that be nice?

Poking at Issue 12

2008-05-07T14:22:39Z

ObSL: My new security system that will be built into 7Seas is coming along great. My proof of concept last night worked well, even under insane and impossible non-real-world load tests. It won't be unhackable but it will be unfeasibly stupid to try and hack considering it's just a silly little fishing game. A good balance between practicality and security.

Now, then! City of Heroes, Issue #12. It hit the test servers yesterday. I've barely scratched the surface, since I plan to do most of my work on it after it goes live (there's new mission arcs and such that I'm holding off on) but so far, I'm quite impressed. The QoL changes are huge, the VEATs are awesome, and my City of Planner sessions so far have been a success.

Yesterday I primarily focused on doing builds. I've got two stormies planned, a Plant/Storm Troller and a Thugs/Storm MM, and both are really tight builds. They're basically pretty dull folks until level 20, due to the need of a travel power and fitness... but after that point the storms start rolling in and we get some good craziness going on. Thankfully, since COH's levelling curve has been smoothed out, getting to 20 is no longer the painful chore it once was. I got my Archery/Ice blaster I rolled on a whim all the way to 20 in only a few weekend sessions, and I anticipate the same here.

All in all, I have four new characters planned...

Heroic Flora Fairchild (Plant/Storm Controller), a reroll of Flora since there's no faction-switch in place. I'll have to RP out a bit to get her relocated, including some tiebacks to my VEAT, but once that's done I can start doing the wrath-of-nature schtick in full. One minor disadvantage is that she's too sweet and acceptable to have anybody go "I don't trust this 'former' villain!" Even moments where I try to make my heroes like Street-Spirit be a little unacceptably unheroic get dismissed by other players, since we're all playing pretty modern-age heroes rather than silver-age. But that's fine -- it's NPC reactions that matter more, the civilians who don't know Flora beyond what they heard on CNN about her evil, evil villainry. Makes narrative sense.

Operative Thirteen (Crab Spider VEAT), a purely-ranged and support build. I'll have more on his story as we go along; he's like the opposite of Flora, a hero who fell instead of a hero who mistakenly fell. Should be a deliciously real villain instead of an antihero, with some good meta-twists.

Unspecified Character #1 (Thugs/Storm MM), which I want to play mostly because I've wanted a Thugs MM for a long time and I hate all the other secondaries. I haven't picked a concept here, yet, although it'll definitely either be screwball or true-villain. I'm currently pondering a weather controlling robot stolen by a bunch of thugs from a Paragon lab, who they've reprogrammed to be a straight up G thang. Word to your manufacturer and/or refurbisher, compute dis, my locally oriented organic companion units. ...problem is making a good robot/gangsta costume. Not easy.

Unspecified Character #2 (Mace/Dark Brute), armed with a pipe wrench. I just wanna beat people to death with a wrench, is that so wrong? (I seriously considered a wrench-beating tanker, just for the sheer incongruity of heroically caving in someone's skull with industrial steel.) Probably some sort of Jason Vorhees type, if I can get a GOOD mask going and not just standard COH facepaint.

...just to be safe here, before anybody asks, I'm NOT a violent nutball in real life, thank you very much. (And you shouldn't have to ask that question, anyway, Jack. It's just a video game.)

You Can't Hide Secrets From The Future

2008-05-05T13:31:24Z

So after a weekend of aimless, restless boredom and shuffling from shootan to teevee and such, a white-hat hacker found an exploit in 7Seas.

As horrible as that sounds, at least it gave me something to focus on, something to be energized by. I immediately started drafting up plans for version 2.2 of the game. I hate to publish an update so soon after the latest one, but if I carry this off according to plan, it should (in theory, as always) be the last update. After that you'd need some heavy duty packet sniffing tools to hack this thing, way overkill for a fishing game.

Of course, I don't believe in patching just to close a hole. So I polled 7Seas owners for new features they'd like to see, and have a swath of them (mostly low hanging fruit) ready to code in so that swallowing the update becomes more palatable. Levels above 5, gear vendor profit tallies, numerous contest board feeps, and local custom prizes are in the works.

There's some preproduction to puzzle through and code to work out tonight, and we're weeks away from a release, but I think this'll be a good step forward and not just a CYA move.

Of course, this didn't stop me from having an endless series of nightmares tonight about things going wrong in mysterious and terrible ways. Like being in a car ride with my parents, then getting KOed and waking up with blood in the car and them missing, and me having to drive the thing home myself (er, how? I can't physically drive their car, that's where I kinda knew it was a dream) and try to remember the road intersection where I lost them, and other horrible things. Not a fun night. In fact, generally I never have GOOD dreams. Either I don't have dreams (yay!) or I have ones full of frustration and feeling helpless (boo.) Yay me.