Author: Jason

Dragon*Con 2009: Day Two

Dragon*Con

When it comes to Dragon*Con, four hours sleep is a lot.  And remember, you can’t be hung over if you are still drunk.  Really, it doesn’t take much too keep yourself going all day, that canteen I have isn’t water, its vodka and Crystal Light Lemonade, because, you know, I’m trying to watch my diet.

The day begins with a car alarm.  I shit you not.  Not even seven in the A.M. and there is an annoying *BEEP BEEP* alarm that I can hear… in my room… on the 38th floor.  Jeez… So, once awake, I figured I’d just stay up.  Three hours later I’d find myself sitting in the Free MMOs panel, listening to Krystalle tell us about some nifty free MMOs some of which I knew about and some of which I did not.  Expect to see a few of them tested out and reviewed here, because these days in this economy I am all about the free.

Made my way over to the Hyatt for a panel on How To Draw Monsters.  Interesting stuff, will definitely utilize some of that in my Saturday doodles when they return.  While I was in the area I sped through the Art Show… Some people like to take their time and carefully examine the art, but I’ve been to enough Dragon*Cons that, no offence to the artists, I’ve seen most of this before, either exactly these before or items very similar.  Lots of the same artists with the same styles they always have, and almost all of it is incredible stuff… but its not new, and most of it is not the kind of thing you stand considering for hours letting the emotion of the piece work into your soul… its fantasy art, with dragons, and women showing boobs, and guys with swords, and little monsters, and fairies, and women as the seasons, and aliens, and henna, and Celtic knots, and all the stuff you would expect.  Good stuff, but at this point I can speed through the hall and if it doesn’t jump out and grab me then I’ve probably seen it before.  This year didn’t even have one of those awesome miniatures scenes I’ve enjoyed from the last couple years.

I also took this opportunity to make a first trip through the exhibit halls… much like the art show, it is a lot of the same stuff every year.  As is typical, I spent a little time in some of the book sellers looking for deals or books I’m missing, but overall, great stuff that I’ve seen before and so really easy to speed through.

Then it was off to the MMO Roundtable.  People from Cartoon Network, CCP Games, Funcom, Hi-Rez Studios, and Sony Online Entertainment answered questions about the MMO industry.  Lots of good stuff here.  I ran in Ferrel from Epic Slant, and he gave me a t-shirt.  Woohoo! Free stuff rocks!

With my head full of MMO industry goodness, I wandered over to Watch the Guild where we did exactly that: watched season one and two uncut.  It was interesting to see each season without the breaks, the credits for every short segment.  It played well.  Ms. Day was great.  Being that she’s a bit of a geek herself and a big reader, she seems to really like Dragon*Con, so hopefully this means she’ll make many returns, even if it means she has to miss PAX.

It is important to break for dinner prior to going out to party and drink.  I did so, and then did so.  Frankly, as much as I love the MMO track people and the MMO track, the WoW Party getting the giant room was a huge waste when you consider to do so meant pushing the BSG party into a piddly half-ballroom.  They reach max capacity very fast and had a massive line.  Seriously, on the first Dragon*Con after the series ended, did they expect attendance to diminish?  Its the funeral, the big send off… BSG had a huge turn out.  The show may be over, but fans always swell and linger at the end.  The Firefly Shindig, forced to use just half a ballroom as well was in a similar boat, though not anywhere near at severe.  Meanwhile, I strolled right in to the WoW party, took one of the many empty seats and almost immediately got up to leave.  I wanted to party, but I couldn’t get in to the good parties… so instead I resorted to the Marriott lobby, people watching while sipping spirits.  I did manage to run into and catch up with quite a few friends, but still, I’d rather have been able to get into a party instead.  That said, I still enjoyed myself and made it well beyond 3AM of another day at the Con.

Day two ends as day two should, exhausted and drunk.  Not the highest of highs, but high enough.

Dragon*Con 2009: Day One

Dragon*Con

The day began as no day should… waiting in line for registration.  However, once let inside, well, lets just say that a couple hundred geeks in a room being forced to walk a maze of a line can be pretty hilarious.  Some people shot video of it, I’ll provide a link if I ever see it posted online.

After a spot of breakfast I headed off to the “Write a Story in an Hour” panel, which I visit every year, because its funny to hear people shout out story elements and craft a beautifully weird story… not by the panel, mind you, they tend to ignore the really out there stuff, but there is always a group of us taking the best ignored suggested, like a typewriter possessed by the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson that requires a bottle of liquor to be poured on it before it will function, and making our own ridiculous plot.

Then it was off to the Fallen Earth panel where we got to hear that people who work on games tend to like working on game, and that crafting is the center of the game, and that they have no current plans for a series of Fallen Earth novels, but everyone would like to see that happen.

Next up… the Crypt of Trailers, where we watch movie trailers and make snappy jokes, like how the new Twilight movie, New Moon, would be much better if they just added a Predator, or some Aliens… yeah, Aliens vs. Predator vs. Twilight.  Hollywood? Are you listening?

After that I got to sit and listen to a panel of writer’s talk about how fun it is to destroy the human race in the Apocalypse Writer’s Roundtable.  John Ringo, S.M. Stirling, Kevin J. Anderson, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Z. Williamson, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.  They were a very talkative and funny bunch, while also being very knowledgable and open.  Excellent panel.

Down into the bowels of the Hyatt I went to join the wife for a panel on Steampunk.  Steampunk, if you didn’t know, is the new Goth, or perhaps the new Vampires.  Everyone is steampunking it up, and it is awesome.  I’ll post some photos later as I take some around the con.  Beautiful stuff.

The third rule of Dragon*Con (the first being: shower, and the second being: sometimes you must go down to go up – if you’ve been, you know what that means) is don’t forget to eat.  Nothing ruins a party like drinking on an empty stomach and passing out early, so remember to feed yourself.  In accordance with this rule, we took a short break for sandwiches and chips.

With a full belly, I hit the Machinima panel.  I have an odd relationship with machinima.  The idea behind it is very cool – to take a game/game engine/game art assets and make a movie out of it.  Some of the best machinima, however, is clearly rendered in professional tools just using assets, while items rendered in the game engine often look stilted and of poorer quality, especially when it comes to characters talking.  Anyway, the result is that I generally don’t like the machinima people actually create, but I respect the ideas and effort that goes into their creation.  That said, Ignis Solus is just awesome:

I decided to end my day of panels with the Zombie Walk, which in hindsight was a poor choice.  Not enough zombies showed for it to be really great, and I never did complete my Francis from Left 4 Dead outfit, so it ended up being about 20 zombies walking through the con… I gave up and left them half way through.  Maybe next year.

The way a day at Dragon*Con should end is with parties, but I lost my enthusiasm for the Zombie Prom, and the line for the Time Travelers Ball was too long, so I hung out with some friends for a bit and then made my way to the All-Night (5am) Global Agenda party where I played absolutely zero Global Agenda.  Instead, I spent a good hour or more, maybe two rockin’ the mic in Rock Band.  Thank you Atlanta!  Good night!

Day One at Dragon*Con is a wrap!

Dragon*Con 2009: Day Zero

Dragon*Con

It is Thursday, the day before Dragon*Con officially begins, and like every year that means registration.  Some years it is a tiring journey downtown after work followed by a couple or three hours spent in line and then a trek back home to finish packing and sleep before making the real journey down on Friday for Con.

This year, however, the wife and I decided we’d just extend our hotel stay by one day so that our trip down for registration would end in us hanging around and meeting people and stumbling back to our room when we get tired.

Dragon*Con this year is going to be a little different for me.  Normally, I just post daily wrap-ups, but thanks to my purchase of a Palm Pre, I’ll be a little more “on time”.  First and foremost, the Pre has that awesome synergy thing you may have heard about, and what that means is that it blends my calendars from several sources into one display without syncing the calendars and duplicating stuff.  And with the folks at Dragon*Con providing a Google Calendar of events, it means I won’t really need to carry around the book and schedule, it will all be on my phone.  Next, with the use of Twitter and TwitPic, as well as Facebook, I’ll be able to snap photos from my phone and immediately get them out to all the people.  So, if you’d like to see them, here is me on Twitter, and here is me on Facebook.  I’ll try not to annoy people too much, but I make no promises.

So much to do, so much to see, so exciting… You know, the idea of PAX intrigues me, and I want to go, but I never will.  Dragon*Con is just so much… more.

Of course, it helps if you get to registration early.  They were open until 11, but they cut off the line at 9:30 at about where they estimated it would take two and a half hours to get through… we were beyond that point.  Registration opens again at 8 in the morning.  So without our badges we went down to the Marriott bar, Pulse, and hung around chatting and people watching… In New York, they say if you hang out in Times Square, you’ll see a million people walk by.  At Dragon*Con, the place to stand is in the Marriott.

Why Do I Play?

Gaming

Tobold has a great series of posts up called “Why Do We Play?” (that link goes to the summary, which links to the earlier parts because Tobold didn’t go back and put links in his introduction post) wherein he examines several aspects of gaming and how those aspect are realized.  Of course, its mostly great if you aren’t a big gaming blog reader.  Nothing in there is revolutionary, and most of it has been talked before in many places, but its not a bad read.  Here is my rebuttal, of sorts…

I’m there for the social.  I want to play with other people, and if I’m not going to play with other people, then I want a strong narrative which I am unlikely to find in an MMO and will more easily find in a single player game.  One of the things I loved about EverQuest, and I’ve talked about it before, is that the game wasn’t quest driven.  Yes, there were quests, and yes, I’ve said before that there was not a single day of playing EQ where I was not working on a quest of some sort.  However, quests are personal.  It is in their design to be so.  A quest is started by you, it is on your quest tracker, and you will complete it.  Someone can help you kill raptors and collect hides, but in the end, even if you both have the quest, you both need your own hides (whether the item is shared or not) and you will both talk to the NPC separately to complete the quest.  The reason EverQuest worked so much better as a social game than WoW or other modern games is that while a player could always be questing, the bulk of the game was in fighting monsters, and fighting monsters is something you actually do together.  When the monster dies, it may drop an item that is lootable by all group members, but still each of them loots the item for their own quest, they don’t complete the quest together, but they do kill the monster as a team.  Especially in games like WoW, when you’ve collected all your items, you are best off running back to the NPC and doing the turn in as soon as possible because the next quest he gives may very well be in the same area you are already fighting in to kill monsters you are already killing but are getting no credit for since you don’t yet have the quest.  And quests reward the player better than the killing.

To that end, I was very excited about Warhammer Online’s public quest system, where a quest wasn’t assigned to you but just happened in a specific area and to be a part of it you only needed to be there.  Of course, that game also had a ton of traditional quests and the heavy PvE and quest focus of the game, plus it being level based like most every other MMO, lead pretty quickly to people not socializing, racing through content on the traditional quests.  The saving grace of the game was supposed to be the PvP aspects, but with so much focus on PvE, and trying a bunch of PvP elements to PvE sieges, it didn’t really work too well.  Honestly, I hope they keep plugging away at the game and don’t close it down any time soon.  If they just accept that they are not going to defeat WoW at the PvE game and work on making the PvP game fun and rewarding, they might manage to carve themselves out a very nice niche, and I might go back to the game.

Despite my distaste for the gameplay of EVE Online, I am repeatedly drawn to the game because the social aspects of the game carry so much weight.  And by “social” I don’t just mean hanging around chatting with people, though I do mean that too, but in how the player economy involves interaction with other players, even when done through an auction/buy/sell interface there are still other players on the other side of those transactions.  Similarly, its why I am drawn toward Fallen Earth and why I’m so disappointed that I experience so much lag in towns.  Hopefully they’ll resolve that, or I’ll be able to buy a super PC (when I win the lottery), and I can join in.

But that’s it in a nutshell.  Of all the reasons to play an MMO, the reason I’m there is for the social interactions, and not just between me and my friends from previous games talking on our private chat server while playing in guild groups, but for the random happenstance of playing with and around other people, whoever they may be.

Movie Round-Up: August 28th, 2009

Reviews

Halloween 2:

I still haven’t seen the first Rob Zombie Halloween remake, so I’m not itching to see the sequel.  Perhaps one day I’ll catch up.

The Final Destination:

There is a fairly long tradition of horror movies utilizing 3D, but the old 3D kinda sucked.  RealD, however, works great.  It also helps that The Final Destination didn’t waste much time doing “stupid” 3D tricks like people waving things at the screen… they didn’t need to, because in a movie about people getting killed in insanely intricate traps there are plenty of body parts and death machines to fling at the audience.  Overall, this movie was probably, from a plot standpoint, the worst of the Final Destination series, but the 3D makes the whole film stand out (see what I did there).  The death scenes are just incredibly over the top, and fun to watch unfold.  Well, unless you didn’t like the previous three films.  It is sort of gross, and not for the squeamish.  I’m not sure if the movie is worth $10 ($12 in most places since they charge you extra for the glasses), but seeing this in 3D is really the only worthwhile way to see it, and when it comes to DVD/Blu-Ray it won’t be in RealD 3D but regular 3D which just isn’t as good.  So, yeah, if this sort of movie is something you’d enjoy, go see it at the theater.

Fallen Earth

Gaming

This isn’t exactly zombie news, but…

Over the past few months, I’ve been participating in the beta for Fallen Earth, an upcoming post apocalyptic MMO.  Before I get to the good stuff, let me just get the bad stuff out of the way.

The graphics.  And I don’t mean the style, but the performance.  My PC isn’t exactly new or top of the line, but I beat out their required specs and I play a great number of games released in the last couple years very well.  When I venture off by myself or in a small group, this game plays great.  But when I get to town or any large gathering of people, the game turns into a slide show.  Unplayable.  Obviously, I could buy a new PC, but my PC should be enough to play if I turn all the effects off… it doesn’t help though.  Even with minimal settings, low resolution and playing in a window, the game gets better, but never what I would call good in busy areas.  To make matters more confusing, if I stand still in town, I can sit and watch everything run great, but the instant I try to move or turn, slide show.

That aside… Fallen Earth captures the post apocalyptic world perfectly.  First off, the world is huge, so when you run off into the wilderness, you are literally running off into the wilderness.  One day I just picked a direction and started running.  Two hours later I was still running… I’d seen one other person and some critters, some salvage and ruins, but little else.  The best part of this… I started to get worried.  Am I lost?  Where is everyone?  I’m gonna die out here… This is what a world after Armageddon is supposed to feel like.  In other MMOs I would complain about all the empty space, because those games are littered with NPCs and stuff and are supposed to be full of people, but Fallen Earth is supposed to feel empty, and it does, and it works.

The combat is a little different from your standard MMO.  Ranged weapons require aiming, and melee weapons have standard swings but need you to be facing the target.  There is no auto attack or auto aiming, you don’t automatically hit something just because you have it targeted and hit your attack button.  This makes fighting moving targets more difficult, and it makes movement matter in combat.  Speaking of movement… you know how in real life if you are running and then jump, you pause when you land?  You know how strafing is slower than turning and running?  Both are true in this game.  So, if you are looking for typical First Person Shooter mechanics of jumping around like a coked up jackrabbit all while running sideways at full speed in a circle perfectly nailing your opponent all the while, you won’t find it.  Personally, I love it.

Another aspect of the game that I really enjoyed is the crafting.  Not because crafting is so awesomely fun to play, but because so much in the game can be crafted.  If you are familiar with EVE Online, it works like that.  People go out and scavenge from the wilderness, then craft items (and the crafting is all done “offline”, meaning you don’t sit at a bench and make stuff, you just set it to be made and it will be done in time).

In fact, the EVE comparison is important, because, to me at least, this game plays a lot like a ground based version of EVE.  While I could never really get into flying around space in a ship mining materials and joining corporations, I could easily get lost in walking the Earth, surviving.

I’ll make another post later with some screen shots, but to close off this post I’ll just say that if they can get the graphics issues sorted out, or if I win the lottery and can buy a new PC, I’m definitely on board for this game.  If I could take this game’s design and put in zombies, I think I’d have my perfect MMO.

Movie Round-Up: August 21st, 2009

Reviews

Inglourious Basterds:

I’m on the fence about this film.  As such, I probably won’t pay $10 to see it.  It just looks like it might be a tad too over the top. *shrug* I’ll wait for DVD.

Post Grad:

I got to see a screening of this, and I’m glad, because now I don’t have to pay to see it.  I’m not saying the movie is bad, it is just not great.  It is about a girl who goes to college and dreams of being a book editor, only she doesn’t get the job she was after, followed by not getting any job in her field, and now she’s at home again trying to figure out what her next move is.  Alexis Bledel does a fine job as this girl, but she just doesn’t stand out.  And the plot really isn’t a mystery… from the very beginning you, the audience, know what she’s supposed to do and the journey to her finding out isn’t all that exciting.  Overall, I thought it would be funnier.

Shorts:

I really had no idea what to expect with this film.  I knew it was a kid’s movie, and I knew it was a Robert Rodriguez film (a director who keeps jumping back and forth from very adult to very kid movies), and I knew it was about a wishing rock.  I probably spent a good 70% of the movie laughing.  The movie has everything little boys could possibly want in a 90 minute story.  Some parents might object to the fart noises, the boogers, and the boys being boys, but it really is a safe family friendly movie.  Thumbs up!

Fight Zombies Mathematically

Random Thoughts

It seems that some students and a teacher or two got together and wrote a book about infectious disease modelling.  Of particular interest is chapter 4, entitled: When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of and Outbreak of Zombie Infection.

You can purchase the book, and I probably would if I had an extra $90 just laying around.  Or if you want you can read the relevant chapter here.  But to boil it down, when looking at models of containment, cure and control, the best way to handle a zombie outbreak…

Aim for the head.

EVE adding a ground game

Gaming

If you dig around this site you’ll find that I occasionally praise the design of EVE Online.  Which is funny, considering that I don’t play it.  I did, at one point, but unless you have the desire and time to get involved in the forums, corporations and politics of the game or like the economy jockeying, the mechanics of the game are fairly boring.

CCP, the company that makes EVE, is looking to change that… sort of…

Enter, DUST 514.  I read about this over at Fidgit, and here is what was said:

DUST 514, featuring first-person shooter and RTS-style gameplay, will interact directly with EVE Online, CCP’s critically acclaimed flagship MMO. This interplay between the two games opens the EVE universe to console gamers and gives them a chance to become part of one of the most massive cooperative play and social experiences ever.

The primary gameplay of DUST 514 features brutal ground combat that takes place on the surface of planets from EVE, delivering the visceral, adrenaline-fueled experience of futuristic firefights. Developed for the current generation of consoles, DUST 514 combines equal parts battlefield reflexes and strategic planning, giving commanders and ground infantry real-time configurable weapons and modular vehicles to manage dynamic battlefield conditions.

Again, CCP seems to be taking risks by trying something that isn’t exactly mainstream.  Sure, console FPS games are old hat, but the idea of integrating that console FPS with a PC MMO and tossing in some RTS style elements has my interest piqued.

This article includes a video showing what I can only hope is in-game footage of combat.

I am excited to hear more, which they say we will at CCP’s Fanfest in October.

Two Wallpapers

Pictures

So, last weekend I didn’t post any doodles.  The reason for that is I went to go see a movie at the theater (and actually pay!) and then spent most of the day running around shopping.  In the previous week, my wife’s cell phone broke, and while we were discussing what we should do about it my cell phone broke.  My wife could conceivably live without her cell phone, but I rely on mine so that I’m reachable for work stuff.  We ended up at the local Best Buy, and they happened to be running a special on Palm Pre phones: $149.  Well, we already happen to be Sprint customers and both of use are out of our contracts so we get the full sign up discount.  We just couldn’t pass it up.

Love the phones.  They are fantastic, especially for me.  I’ve got it connected to my Google mail and calendar accounts as well as my work Exchange server, I can see both calendars at the same time but not sync them, so my work never knows about my personal appointments and I don’t have to clutter my personal calendar with work junk.  Sure, the Pre is a little lite on applications thus far, but eventually that will change.  Besides, while the iPhone has a million apps, most of them are crap anyways.  Yeah, that’s a real application.  But the Pre’s got the web, which gets to most things, and its got a Twitter app and a couple of movie time apps and other basics.

Anyway, this week I spent a little time messing around and making myself some wallpapers for the phone.  I mean, I’m not 17, so pictures of hot chicks, which is what 99% of wallpapers for phones are, aren’t what I’m looking for, and besides, I like making my own stuff.  Some of my experiments were complete crap, so I won’t post those, but I will post two that I am happy with.  The first is a cut version of a previous doodle, the castle and the moon:

The Castle and Moon wallpaper version
The Castle and Moon wallpaper version

After doing that one, I spent a while messing around with Gimp and various brushes.  So, while not a traditional freehand doodle, here is the best of the bunch, and the only one I felt worth sharing.

City with Symbols
City with Symbols

Clearly, I like black and white since I’ve been in more of a “sketchy” mood lately.  The whole thing was done with a city brush, a couple of mystic symbol brushes and some blood spatter and gunshots brushes.  Here it looks sort of bland, but I dig the way it looks on the phone where it takes over the screen with the icon bar overlay at the  bottom.

Anyhow, I’m sure to make some more wallpapers, and I’ll continue to share them.