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Madness

Random Thoughts

So, the wife and I have been looking for a house. Again. We started some time last year, but it didn’t work out, then we started again and found nothing. This year we went and looked at a bunch of places but either they were too small, or too damaged.

But about two weeks ago we were told about a house which was just going on the market. A foreclosure. In fact, it was a HUD sale. So we went to see the house and… wow. It was perfect. Following procedures, I got myself preapproved for a loan again, and we put in a bid. See, HUD homes work like this, everyone who is interested fills out some government forms and puts in their best offer. Then HUD closes the bidding, reviews the applications and decides who wins.

We won!

Our House.

June Descends

Random Thoughts

I was doing really good there in May, posting nearly every day, and then June descended on me…

My younger brother got married on the 2nd, and the rehersal was on the 1st. On the 3rd, my wife and I went to look at some houses, one of which we really really like. On the 4th, we made our way to the last day of the Georgia Renaissance Festival and spent most of the day there. On the 5th, I was “on vacation” from my regular job doing work for my actual company (sounds confusing, and it is) and spent a bunch of the day talking to banks. On the 6th, having forgotten to pay rent I had to go get a money order to pay it, and worked yet again for my actual company, put a bid in on the house we like, and went to play trivia at the North River Tavern. On the 7th, I put in another day on the grind at the actual company and finally slowed down enough to watch a couple of movies with the wife (The Family Stone and Mr. Wonderful, it was her night to pick since I made her watch Shocker last time).

The rest of the week looks to continue to be crazy, and on top of all that, we are eagerly awaiting the results of our house bid which should come early next week. So forgive me should I continue to forget to post for a bit. I’ll get back on track soon enough.

The Break-Up

Reviews

Monday I got to see a sneak preview of the movie The Break-Up.

Damn it was funny. Seriously, everything you can think of that would be funny about a couple arguing and breaking up, its all pretty much in here. The end was a little bit dopey, but at least it wasn’t a cop out… and if you see the movie, you’ll know what I mean.

And I’ve come to realize I need a rating system of some sort… so I’ll have to work on that. But in the meantime, I’ll give The Break-Up four out of five whatever they are.

Dead in the West

Reviews

At the recommendation of a friend in a comment on this very weblog, I have read Dead in the West by Joe R. Lansdale.

Undead things are afoot in the town of Mud Creek and the Reverend Jebidiah Mercer figures this might be his chance to redeem his ways. This book isn’t your traditional zombies, but sometimes that’s for the best. It was a good quick read (despite being listed on the site for a week, I actually read the book in about three to four hours). I’d be interested to check out some of Lansdale’s other works.

So it gets a thumbs up from me.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Reviews

Let’s just get it out of the way… it definately wasn’t worth staying up until 3am to see it at the midnight show. If I were to use only one word to review this film, that word would be: weak.

The original pictures I saw of the Juggernaut made me cringe. I can at least happily say that in the finished film he looked a little more impressive. Although him actually using the line “Do you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” was just about the worst possible thing. Well, maybe next to the fact that they didn’t bother to show in any way that Cain Marko (the Juggernaut) is Xavier’s half-brother (or something like that, its been so long since I read an X-Men book). And then of course, Peter, you know Colossus, he’s not Russian any more appearantly. And they did the fastball special, twice, and it was stupid both times.

On the other hand, while I remained solidly underwhelmed by the movie, I wasn’t disappointed. It was exactly what I expected. The film is a fanboy’s wet dream and nightmare combined. They managed to cram in so many comic book references and characters that the theater was constantly filled with little chuckles and gasps. At the same time, they managed to deviate from the comic in so many ways that those same fanboys were bordering on tears. And of course, the plot of the movie rears its head every now and then, something about a cure and Magneto fearing a repeat of the Nazis, oh and Jean kills lots of people. It was pretty much exactly was I expected going in. Well, almost… in both the first two X-Men movies, they went to great lengths to avoid killing people. In this movie, however, when I say Jean kills lots of people, I really mean lots of people. And Wolverine too. Without blood of course, but still, lots and lots of dead people.

Hopefully when they do the Wolverine movie next, it will be good since it will only have a couple or three main characters instead of twelve with a few dozen more supporting ones.

The final word then is weak, but fun. Its not a horrible movie, but it could have been better.

Ahoy, Mateys!

Gaming

I am a mighty pirate! Yarg!!Yarr! Shiver me timbers! On the pirates versus ninjas debate, I fall firmly on the pirates side. When I was much younger, it was ninjas, but they have lost their flair. But pirates are on the upsurge. With the Pirates of the Caribbean movies among other things, the romanticism and the harsh reality of pirates is getting its due. And now of course I have given in to temptation and am playing Puzzle Pirates.

I think one of the best things about this game is that you can, if you choose, play for free. There are subscription oceans of course, for $9.95 a month (less if you buy 3 month or 12 month packages), and then there are the Doubloon oceans. In the Doubloon oceans, you can play parts of the game for free. Other parts require that you have a badge or pass to play, and those items are purchased with Doubloons, which in turn can be purchased from the game company. Of course, you can also buy Doubloons from other players with your Pieces of Eight (the money used in game). So, if you are willing to do the work, you can earn PoE and buy Doubloons from people who want to invest less time into the game. And just for fun, the games that require Doubloons are made free one or two nights a week so that you can play them and see if getting Doubloons in worth your time and effort, or cash.
Of course, earning Pieces of Eight isn’t always hard. While you might only earn a hundred or so from a sailing mission, on the nights when Poker is free, you can earn thousands of PoE in a single hand. Just last night I bought in to a table for 200 pieces of eight, and I left with over 2,000. And that was just a half hour or so playing.

Anyway, I’m still playing World of Warcraft, but when I don’t feel like dealing with it, for now I’ll be playing pirate. You can find me in the Hunter ocean (a Doubloon ocean) under the name Ishiro. Come challenge me to a swordfight.

Odd Thomas

Reviews

So, I’m not really a fan of Dean Koontz. I read a couple of his books years ago and something about his writing style just didn’t click with me. Sadly, that has not changed with Odd Thomas.

I picked up the book because it was in the bargain bin. Books-A-Million had some UK versions of a couple of his books reduced for quick sale, so I picked them up to give him another try.

Lets begin with the titular character, Odd Thomas. No, Odd is not an adjective, it really is his first name. Fitting since Odd has the ability to see dead people, occasionally have prophetic dreams, and to see dark shapes he calls bodachs which don’t appear to have any affect on the world but do seem to gather and thrive off violent deaths. And predictably enough, he sees dead people, has a prophetic dream, and notices and unusually large gathering of bodachs in his small town of Pico Mundo.

Was is a bad book? Not really. The story was engaging enough, and the characters were well defined enough, and the appearance of Elvis Presley in places in the book made me smile. But… I don’t know… something about the manner of the telling of the tale just left me… dry. With a really good book, it makes my eyes hurt. I am mildly in need of reading glasses. Regular book print held at reading distance for lengths of time will cause my eyes to hurt, even give me a headache after a while. I can counteract this by looking away from the book and focusing on something distance for fifteen or twenty seconds every five minutes or so. If a book is really good, I’ll forget to do that, and after an hour of solid reading, when I look up, my vision will be blurry and my eyes will water and hurt. Odd Thomas didn’t do that for me, not even close.

I was certain the book was going to end one of two ways, and Dean Koontz didn’t surprise me, although at least it was the better ending of the two I imagined. There is a sequel to this called Forever Odd, and I might pick it up, but I’m in no rush. It was good for a read, but nothing I’d overwhelmingly recommend.

One Character

Gaming

Would you play an MMORPG that only allowed you one charcter?

I’ve been thinking about this alot lately, mostly because I strive for a little “identity” in games. I am Ishiro in the World of Warcraft, and Ishiro is me. So far in games I’ve never run into another Ishiro (but I don’t play asian games), and only one Ishira. That means, more than likely, if you are in WoW and see Ishiro, its a pretty good bet it is me. The problem comes in with if I tire of being an alliance human priest on Durotan, or a horde undead warlock on Eitrigg, or any of the other Ishiros I have out there, I can’t change him without deleting him and starting over.

I think this is why, more and more as I think about fundamental game design, I favor a skill based system of some sort, where everyone starts exactly the same and becomes different through the choices of skills. The advantage, of course, is that if the game allows me to redistribute skill points or simply to focus on new different skills, I can be an all new person but without the crazy item swapping of class based mechanics where I have to delete my character, or the complete identity overhaul of playing a new name.

Now… take that desire to play one identity and take that to a physical limitation of being only allowed to create a single character in the game world. Again, I think I’d be in favor of it as long as my character worked like I’ve described above, where my fate isn’t decided at character creation and the only way to change is to dust off and nuke the site from orbit.

So yeah, that appears to be the direction I’d like to see games go, and the direction I’m going to take my silly Game That Never Was project.

Memory and Grouping

Gaming

Tobold, whose blog I’m reading more and more, made a couple of really interesting posts recently.

The first post is about repetition in game design. Basically, lots of MMORPG games are designed around the “fail and repeat” methodology. You fight, you lose, you try again with gathered knowledge. This can be great if you are the first, but once guides get put on the internet, chances are your guild is trying to learn the fox trot instead of inventing new dance moves.

I agree with Tobold in that games need more unique content. And by unique I don’t mean cramming a hundred developers in a room and refusing to feed them until they create a hundred unique dungeons, but instead games need a way to have content such that if you fail you can’t just repeat it, but instead it will learn from your failure or have a random set of possible design parts that combine upon spawning, if you kill all a bosses henchmen, they should have different henchmen when you return, not the same guys standing in the same places. But this isn’t something really easily done… there is a problem in that games that have tried to use randomly generated content feel randomly generated, and no one really likes RPG games that feel tossed together. They should feel like the tasks you are undertaking are important.

His second post about grouping in games details exactly one of the major issues that I have in World of Warcraft. The problem with grouping is in actually finding a group (well, not for me, I play a priest, I have half the server on ignore). So his conclusion is thus:

But even more effective would be for the developers to introduce tools that diminish the group finding time. World of Warcraft could make huge improvements in their looking for group tools. And meeting stones could be reprogrammed to work like a warlock summoning, so the first three people arriving at the dungeon could summon the two stragglers. The beauty of such changes would be that at first sight they don’t change the rewards rate at all. But by cutting down on the rewards lost to a group due to waiting, improved group finding and gathering tools would make grouping relatively more attractive to players, and lead to more positive social interaction between them. We are not a bunch of hermits preferring to play alone, it is the parameters of the game that influence our behavior and preference for soloing or grouping.

And that’s it. WoW needs a looking for group tool beyond the meeting stones, which most people won’t use anyway because they don’t want to be in queue so long that the game decides to make weird groups.