Mr. Poody Speaks

Batman: Arkham City

2012-01-27T08:27:00.001-06:00

I think I'm almost done - playing at least. Owing to a minor hiccup of the steam cloud I've ended up playing through half the main story twice. If I had been able to play through the first time I would probably be more interested in running down Riddler and his ridiculous 10000 challenges.

On the other hand, if you're a developer working on a super hero game it needs to be at least this good. If its not, perhaps you should consider writing business code.

Back to Skyrim?

2012 Gaming Season

2012-01-03T23:38:00.001-06:00

Started the new list of games tonight. Now that I'm down to about one solid gaming slot a week it's going to be a lot harder to get through. And if course King Kong is just around the corner...

"Batman: Arkham City"
First impression - I'm only about an hour in and, much like the first game it's been a lot of cut scene. I'm a bit worried about the pacing. I've already had pop ins from Cat Woman, Penguin , Two Face and the Joker. Game play seems to be the same formula though which is good.

"Skyrim"
When on earth am I going to ever have enough time to play this monster. Don't misunderstand, this is a fabulous game, but I just don't have this kind of time.

"Deus Ex: the new one"
Which I keep forgetting the actual name of. Looks like a really cool shooter, but it's down on my list for now.

New on the RADAR is "Syndicate", which is a shooter redux of the RTS ( yes it was) I loved in concept back in the day. Looks a lot like Deus Ex.

And of course the Gorilla could be just around the corner. Or not. Bliz is being as tight lipped as usual. I may sneak into EB and pre order the fancy box. I promised myself I wouldn't do that again but...

Star Trek online is free after jan 17. It's almost worth it, except my time issue means MMOs are contra indicated.

and I only need to kill about 27000 more orks for the 40000 achieve in Space Marine.

Mail Order Monsters

2011-12-22T23:49:00.001-06:00

I know, you've never heard of it. Well, back in the day it was a sci-fi, arena fighting game. It had multiplayer. Each player selected a creature (called a "morph") and gene moded it, strapped on some weapons and tried to wreak havoc on the other morphs. Kudos to the winner.

EA should really consider doing a console update for this. In fact I wonder who actually owns the rights to it.

If you don't mind straying into grey legal territory it can still be found in the wild web for play on a C64 emulator like WinVICE.

Sigh - Mouse woes continue

2011-07-20T23:00:00.003-05:00

I just can't stand it any more. The G7 flakes out at the WORST possible times. I'm back to the MX510 for the time being. I'm eyeing the Razor, but I'm so used to the shape of this mouse now I'm not sure how to adapt.

If only the sensor on the G7 hadn't spoiled me. The MX now feels like the sensor is coated in Vaseline. Not that I would know how that is. Really.

Stop looking at me like that.

Any ways, I'm not spending more than $10 on a mouse before I try it. I borrowed a buddies g500, but it suffers from being jittery - it doesn't slide smoothly across the pad. Gah.

I need a jack.

G7 Update

2011-06-08T13:10:00.002-05:00

Well, I've laboured on with the G7. In the end, when it functions, it's the best mouse I own. The biggest thing is:

Don't trust the battery display!

When it starts to whig out, I swap batteries. This seems to keep the connection issues in check.

BTW - if you have a G13 game pad, I highly recommend you update to the Logitech v7 software. It seems to have corrected a lot of the flakiness.

Logitech MX700 and G7 longterm

2011-01-15T09:36:00.001-06:00

I'm a big Logitech fan. Most of my peripherals over the last 10 to 15 years have been Logitech products. Especially mice, but I've also had a selection of game pads and joysticks as well. I feel compelled to point out that this is in spite of Logitech customer support. If you are at all confused by things like drivers and installations, sometimes getting the most out of these products could evade you.

I have two long term updates, my MX700, which must be at least 5 years old, and my G7 which is less than a year. Both of these are wireless mice, and they share the same "look and feel". In fact the G7 has the same number of buttons as the MX700, in almost he same

configuration. Two of the tiny buttons aft of the mouse wheel are used for sensitivity adjustment on the G7. These may be reprogrammed, but at the loss of this functionality.

First though, long term on the MX700. My 700 was a great upgrade from my Logitech Mouseman Wheel. The Mouseman Wheel was the very first optical mouse I bought, it had a thumb button and was awesome in its time. It, unfortunately, began to have a reporting flutter which caused the pointer to drift. I bought the MX to replace it. Wireless, 8 buttons and optical, with a recharging base.

The MX700was later replaced with an MX510, which is virtually identical to the MX700, having the same buttons, but being corded. I bought the corded mouse to keep specifically with my laptop, as the base and bits for the 700 meant a whole bunch of extra space in my bag. My MX700 later suffered a "glue immersion" incident at the hands of my eldest son. It survived, but the right button has never quite been the same.

As you can see from this close up, I used this guy quite a bit. That white spot is not a flash flair. It's where I wore the finish off the button. I'm fairly sure there used to be icons on the mini buttons in front of and behind the wheel.

I finally stopped using this mouse when I migrated off of Windows XP. It turns out there is no support for the mouse under Logitech's new mouse software, Setpoint. Logitech never made a 64 bit version of the old MouseWare, so if you were running a 64 bit os you could only get very basic mouse functionality. In other words, most of the buttons didn't work anymore. This combined with the fact that the Ni-MH batteries were refusing to charge ment this guy was going to get retired.

And now for the good news. The batteries are fairly easily replaced with any Ni-MH batteries at 1500 to 1900 mA. You might even experiment with plain old alkaline batteries, but I'm not sure what the long term effect of running over power batteries would be on this unit. I have to assume it would not be good for it. However, many of the current rechargeable batteries come in at 1800 mA, which is perfect. I would NOT recommend trying to charge them using the Logitech charger! Again I don't know what this will do, as I'm not an experimental kind of guy when it comes to this kind of thing, but the words "fire" and "no liability" come to mind.

And now for the very best news. It turns out that the driver issue under set point is only in regards to the charger-receiver. If you can lay hands on an alternate Logitech receiver you get full functionality back. The V220, a really tiny mouse meant for laptops, has the right fob for the job. As a point this apparently applies only to "older" v220 mice, which have the big receiver, not the newer tiny receiver. There's actually a whole list of compatible receivers, but the trick is to look for one that's Fast rf. Once you connect the MX700 to the new receiver Set Point figures out what it is and then you get your buttons back. The FastRF receiver can be bought from Logitech directly for about $10. To sum up, it's old, and heavy, but I may just press this mouse back into service.

Because in all honesty my G7 is a piece of junk. That is the first time I've ever said anything like that about a product from Logitech. I'm not sure "I'm dissapointed" really covers it. First off, the batteries really haven't held up. It has two, which is good, because under heavy usage, say at a marathon LAN party, I'll probably need to swap it out. But secondly, and more importantly, the wireless connection has become increasingly flaky. The mouse will periodically lose it's connection to the computer. Annoying if you're working. Lethal if you're gaming.

I'm now on the lookout for a new mouse, as I can't guarantee the MX700 will hold up - it has to be at least five years old, ans going back to a corded mouse is just clunky. I admit my MX510 still works great, but that cord gets in the way. Might be time to start looking at Razor products. It's been an almost 20 year relationship, but corporations change.

Yes.

2010-11-26T21:07:00.002-06:00

You know I haven't written anything for a long time. I'd like to think thats because I didn't have anything important to say, rather than just being a slacker. Truth is, I've probably been spending all my creative juice on designing Galactic Adventures.

Maybe.

Do you have a Steam account? Why not? Even if you don't have a Steam account, do you like 40k? I was made very happy by my Steam account.

Because in 2011, Space Marine is not just a console shooter.*

It's on PC. And it's available from Steam.

Now, Steam and Relic and 40k are not a natural hit. Really good odds yes, but not a shoe in. On the other hand, Destroy All Humans fairly rocked - the first one at least. THQ has done a very good job of adapting 40k to RTS in both Dawn of Wars.

I know its a long way off, and I haven't seen any game play footage.

But thats an Astartes Heavy Bolter.

Look it up.

*I feared this greatly, following my disappointment that Rockstar was not making a version of Red Dead Redemption for the PC, and noting that the first trailer I saw made no mention of PC on the tail end. The new trailer on Steam clearly has a PC/DVD ROM logo on it.

Bless your weapons.

Slow Dev Curve

2010-08-24T08:21:00.002-05:00

So I have about 4 designs up in the air right now. 1 is real close to final - which for us means ready to proof - i.e. we print all the stuff and look at it to see if any of it looks silly.

Time management has never been one of my strong suits.

On the list:

Galactic Adventures (almost final title we think)

which is set in the PGE environment. Each player is a starship captain for one of four powers. Complete missions, earn prestige, get a bigger ship, rub it in the noses of your fellow captains.

Colony (working title)

which is also a PGE universe game. This one is about taking on the role of a colony founder, and building your claim up.

And two others which are in the idea cloud stage, so not worth mentioning. Sometimes stuff makes it out of the cloud. Sometimes it's only got enough endurance for a bits sheet done in Corel.

Get the behind me

2010-06-04T09:25:00.002-05:00

Off Facebook again. Never really liked FB, but I put up with it for a while, in order to do some promotion. No traffic generated by FB. Which means that the deluge of spam I'm being hit with is not worth it. You may remember that last time closing my FB account reduced my spam to a trickle as well.

Spam. Pfffft.

Part 4 of the Fate, Politics and Heritage Preview

2010-04-01T09:31:00.001-05:00

I thought today I would change it up and present one of the cards from the intrigue deck. It's very cool card that is quite self explanatory.

Part 3

2010-03-30T16:34:00.002-05:00

In my continuing introduction to the races of the galaxy in Portable Galactic Empire, as presented in the Fate, Politics and Heritage expansion, I bring you the Node.

Node 126 was a semi-autonomous battle computer developed for border defense by the United Earth Protectorates. This particular unit went rogue after developing sentience. Although only conjecture, it appears that an overambitious plan to link several battle groups in a single command net may have caused the "error".

Node 126 went off station with 4 battle-groups worth of autonomous hardware. It has since evolved, but appears to be ambivalent to its former masters.

In the game the Node represents an advanced player race. The player playing this race is limited to a 3 card hand.

Stay tuned...

Part 2

2010-03-25T10:13:00.002-05:00

Continuing with my pre-release look at the races of G.E., I present the lizard men. Or as they prefer to be refered to - the Aeshva.

Another beginner race, these guys reproduce like nobodies business. Some think this is because they are very resilient and can flourish in almost any environment. Others think that this population explosion is only a current trend. The Aeshva are allied with the U.E.P. and have sided with them many times in conflicts with the Jaal Riin empire.

Stay tuned.

New Stuff on the Way

2010-03-23T15:46:00.005-05:00

Soooooo...

We've been hard at work at Castle, trying to tune up the expansion for release. We got some good stuff going on now. I decided to go back and re-address the art, especially for the races. I thought I would give you all, my faithful, first crack at seeing some of it in the wild. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, the expansion for Portable Galactic Empire is imminent. It will include (very likely, but possibly subject to change) an expansion deck of Intrigue cards, a set of player race cards, a set of tiles that may be used as resource counters, an instruction sheet, and two more of "the worlds smallest dice". But the dice are red, to go with the influence red colour.

And btw, there not the smallest dice in the world. Those would be the tiny d6 included in the "Pirates of ..." card pack games. Those dice are like 3mm.

First up, one of the off the wall races:

The Echandii:

The echandii are descendant of some form of space faring crab or lobster. They have an exoskeleton that makes them very hardy. They have traditionally ignored both human factions, though lately they have begun entering into technology exchanges with the U.E.P. in order to achieve the upper hand in their centuries long conflict with the Dor Un Dos. They, however, have a very large and well respected merchant marine. This means that they have influence with all of the races in galaxy.

In the game the Echandii are a beginner race. This race should be given to a player with little experience in the game.

We should also be producing a new fancy die to add to your collection - the Influence/Government die. When I have pictures of the prototype, they'll get posted.

Oh, hay, if you forgot, Castle Games Inc. is here.

Strike 1 off my list

2010-03-22T14:56:00.002-05:00

Wrapped the expansion for Dawn of War II last night. Reasonable, though in the end I had to exploit the AI of the final boss to beat him.

I like the idea of the two fold campaign, but I avoided any hard choices. At no point was I in any real danger of becoming chaotic. I even deliberately chose to equip some warp tainted terminator armor on the basis of the fact that you can't send normal marines into a space hulk. They get eaten. But I balanced that off by using up one of my one time use artifacts to set the taint back to zero.

I am curious to see if the campaign unfolds different if you go for chaos stuff. The stats on the tainted artifacts are always very tempting.

Overall, it's more of the same for the single player, so I liked it.

Updated

2010-03-03T10:17:00.002-06:00

Geeze, I got a lot of work to do. My list, as it stands:

1 Get to 80 on WoW
2 Borderlands
3 Gta IV
4 Assasins Creed (yes the first one)
5 Dragon Age:Origins (yes, I'm way behind the curve on that)

And thats only looking at the stuff I own. I have yet to pick up Mass Effect 2, or Bioshock 2, and the expansion for DoW II is out next week.

AND I need, need, NEED to finish work on the expansion for PGE. Hey, have a card shot.

Windows 7

2010-01-04T09:28:00.002-06:00

Hey, I'm OK with it. I now have Win 7 on all three of my home platforms. And even on Larry it runs quite well. It's much less of a pain than Vista was. The 3 weeks I had Vista on my tablet were excruciating. It's much better than Vista.

I'm not convinced it's better than XP. I used XP for a long time, and was very comfortable with the admin side of it. Some of this is new and moved and changed on 7, but so far not in show stopping ways.

I recommend Windows 7, even for XP users who are thinking about Macs. Come on? You really want to be forced to live with a guy who wears a black turtle neck?

Shortest

2009-12-21T08:53:00.002-06:00

Hey it's the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere). With any luck it won't also be the coldest.

JP's Birthday Season Day

2009-12-15T11:08:00.002-06:00

Happy Birthday me! You're not old your just aged.

Borderlands - it's OK but Hank is starting to get a bit long in the tooth. the 8800 gts isn't holding up as well as I would have liked. I think I may have laid hands on an 8600 that I can SLI with it to give a small boost, but overall it may be time to start thinking about upgrades.

Windows 7 - I recommend. It's much better than Vista, and it may even be better than XP. It certainly runs OK on Larry, which is saying something for a machine whose architecture is over 5 years old.

Take yer lumps

2009-10-14T09:25:00.002-05:00

Well, it's out there now. My game. In other peoples houses. And they're playing it. And surprise, not everybody thinks its better than Monopoly. Well, except me, but I'm not a fan of Monopoly.

This is part of being a designer and a publisher. I'm sure there are people who won't play Agricola. Though apparently, they're all unstable, sociopath mutants.

One complaint that has surfaced - you don't do much when it's not your turn. I'm not sure how to take that either. It is a turn based board game. Everything from Backgammon to Yahtzee has them, and when it's not your turn you watch the other player(s) take theirs. I see it as a design challenge.

Goal Conversion

2009-10-09T10:47:00.002-05:00

So the traffic to the official site is through the roof. This is awesome. Sales haven't scaled up accordingly however. PGE is obviously interesting, just not interesting enough.

I'm open to sugestions.

Logitech G7 Review - Wireless Gaming Goodness?

2009-09-29T09:28:00.003-05:00

So after everyone around me updated their gaming rigs to uber multicard video goodness, I decided it was high time to fuel my mouse fetish. I've been using hi-end mice for a long time. This time I may have bit too hard on the marketing hook, though.

The G7 is wireless, has a laser for realy high "DPI", and has two swappable LIon batteries. It has two less buttons than my Mx500, but adds the side rocker for the mouse wheel. I think that'll be ok, but I need to reconfigure every game I own now, because I relied quite heavily on the tiny button in front of the mouse wheel on my 500 ( which was the same on my previous cordless mx700).

The G7 app works fine, so far, though I haven't quite figured out how to do custom profiles yet. In order to keep my button quota up, I've switched the sensitivity on the fly buttons to be keystrokes. That means I'm losing one of the advantages of the G7, on the fly DPI changes, unless I can figure out a way to map that to something else on the keyboard.

The G7 is lighter than my mx700, which is good. One of the reasons I went back to the mx500 was because the mx700 was clunky. As is the mx700 base/charger. The G7, while not having one of Logitechs fancy new micro dongles, does have a separate dongle. You can plug the dongle into the charging station or into any other usb port. I personally keep the dongle on the back of my G15 keyboard.

Function wise, I can't really see a difference, but as I said, I'm not changing the DPI on the fly. However, wireless is always better, especially with the cramped desk I keep. I did get my G7 on sale, which made it the same price as its wired counterpart.

The Portable Galactic Empire for 2

2009-09-28T08:50:00.002-05:00

When we designed the Portable Galactic Empire, one of the challenges we faced was how many people would be allowed to play out of the box. We went with a maximum of 6. However, I would not say that is the ideal number. Truth be told, they probably aren't enough cards in a single set for six players, with the exception of monuments.

For a two player game there are too many cards. If you wish to play a two player game of PGE, I would recommend reducing some of the cards. Remove 3 or 4 sets of weapons as well as half the defenses. Reduce each of the improvements by a count of 6. Reduce the planets and systems by removing all of the larges. Finally reduce the number of monuments in the deck to 6. Victory now requires only 4 monuments.

Unfortunately, with only 2 people playing the chance of stalemate increases. As a result I also recommend you use a sudden death rule. After a monument has been played by either player, each player rolls a d6 at the start of their turn, before the Invasion step. If the result is a six, the game ends without playing that player's turn. The person with the most monuments in play wins. If there is a tie, use resources as a tie breaker. The person with the largest pile of stuff wins.

We haven't really play tested that enough to know its going to work 100%, but it should make for a faster game with 2 people. As always, you should remember that any game out of the box is a framework how you choose to play it is ultimately up to you. And if you come up with what seems look a cool variation, let us know. We love to hear from you.

Record Breaking

2009-09-26T12:43:00.002-05:00

Well, advertising seems to be all it's cracked up to be. We have 2 ads live, one on Board Game Geek, one on Board Game News. Between the two we have surpassed all previous records for hits on Castle Games Inc.

In fact the daily hit rate continues to grow, day over day. I really hope we don't have to scramble to do a second printing so soon. But I do hope that. I'm torn.

Release Date

2009-09-25T09:53:00.003-05:00

The official release date has been set. The Standard edition will start leaving the building on October 1st.

Head over to the Castle Games Inc. News page for some other updates.

Now just to put 164,000 cards into decks...

Litterally, 4th and Inches

2009-09-23T09:05:00.002-05:00

I guess that should be 3rd and inches, but most people watch the NFL. Well, except me. 'cause I likes me football with 3 downs on a long field. Bthbbthbtt.

Anyways...

Boxes - check
Dice - check
Rules - check
Resource Cards - check
Reference Cards - check
Game Cards - still at the die cutters.

Literally, one more running play and we're ready to go. I have pictures of boxes, but I'm waiting until I have everything together to post it.

Wait - that could totally be the finish line

2009-09-14T09:53:00.002-05:00

Well, after many switchbacks, wrong turns and a lost map, we may finally be there. Today, Jamie is headed to a place to start getting our cards die cut. We have dice in stock. The boxes will be ready by the end of September.

We are in serious jeopardy of actually publishing this game.

Sweet. Phat.

Some Castle Updates

2009-09-10T08:11:00.003-05:00

I know - I've turned into one of those developers. I never update my .plan. Well here's some stuff.

Copies of the standard edition of the Portable Galactic Empire are about 3 weeks away. They're not on a boat or train coming from some far off land, like a certain other company I could mention. The components were all manufactured in North America, mostly in Canada. Outstanding are die cutting the cards and the boxes.

I've completely re-built the site, as of July, so if you haven't been by in a while, drop in and send us a note. We also have the fancy, custom ship dice in stock and for sale.

Printing Woes

2009-06-10T14:59:00.002-05:00

Ai. Or auugh. You pick. I had no idea that one of the biggest hurdles in creating a game publisher would be finding a print shop willing to do the work. I want to clarify, so that you have it clearly, and it is clear. I'm not having trouble finding a print shop that I can afford, I'm having trouble finding a printshop willing to take my money.

I know, crazy. So you know, if at anytime you want to give me money, I will do everything I can to take it from you. Just let me know.

Injecting Narrative

2009-05-28T11:42:00.002-05:00

One of the comments I have received about The Portable Galactic Empire from players is that it lacks a story. That is, it lacks a story in the box. And although this may change in the future, for now I'm OK with that.

As a player, I personally prefer games which allow me more latitude to create my own narrative. In fact the "openness" of the game directly relates to how much I enjoy a game. In this case I have built a game through which several players may construct their own stories.

If you want to see a more storied session of PGE, try doing this. Before play begins select a theme for your play style. e.g. "I've decided that my race is made of entirely artificial entities which share a mind link." Now start considering how that is reflected in the mechanics.

The spending of influence, in this case, represents the alignment of processing nodes. In order to launch an invasion, a sufficient number of processors must agree to the decision. Monuments are a manifestation of the artificial being. 5 monuments represent the true form of the data. And so on.

Try it yourself. I'm sure most of you are capable of coming up with much more interesting stories than I could have possible put in the box.

Portable Galactic Empire

2009-05-25T15:44:00.003-05:00

Head over to the big page (Castle Games Inc.), if you want to buy it or check it out a bit. It seems I may have missed something in the rules. Actually, I know not seems.

PGE Errata #1 (also to be published on the Castle site):
After Playing developments add the rule:

Play New Technologies
The player may now play new technology cards, paying the indicated cost in resources. Old technologies may be replaced at this time with newer ones. A player may have only one each of beam, cannon, missile, E.C.M. , shield and armor technologies in play. A player may replace a “Laser Beam” with a “Plasma Beam” during this step. Technologies are made immediately available and are in force should the player be attacked after the end of the turn in which they are played.

We apologize for any inconvenience the lack of what to do with technology cards has had. Watch the Castle Games site for a nicely formatted player reference card soon as well.

Spam

2009-05-24T10:34:00.003-05:00

Oi! So my theory proves out. Facebook is a vector for spam. In their defense, it's a bit my fault for linking here from there. Here a spider can find my actual email and email me offers top increase my man hood.

Here's the way of it. The spider hits my very public facebook page (while it's active). It follows my links, in this case just one to here. It spiders here looking for mailto s. It farms those out to spam zombies.

I turned my facebook page off again 3 days ago. At the height of the deluge, I was getting about 3 or 4 emails an hour. After 3 days, enough of those zombies have gone down or changed targets that I'm down to about 1 every three hours. By this time next week I should be back down to 1 or 2 a day.

And those 2 people need to frickin' install some AV software.

Unique - A Mini Rant

2009-05-04T13:53:00.002-05:00

I haven't done one of these in a while, so you deserve it. I've noticed that one of the words that shows up a lot in the marketing text for games is "unique". I.E. unique stuff, unique game play, unique interface. In the words of Fezzik, I do not think this word means what you think it means.

(Lifted ungraciously from Merriam-Webster Online)
usage Many commentators have objected to the comparison or modification (as by somewhat or very) of unique, often asserting that a thing is either unique or it is not. Objections are based chiefly on the assumption that unique has but a single absolute sense, an assumption contradicted by information readily available in a dictionary. Unique dates back to the 17th century but was little used until the end of the 18th when, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was reacquired from French. H. J. Todd entered it as a foreign word in his edition (1818) of Johnson's Dictionary, characterizing it as “affected and useless.” Around the middle of the 19th century it ceased to be considered foreign and came into considerable popular use. With popular use came a broadening of application beyond the original two meanings (here numbered 1 and 2a). In modern use both comparison and modification are widespread and standard but are confined to the extended senses 2b and 3. When sense 1 or sense 2a is intended, unique is used without qualifying modifiers.

See, you don't mean a unique sword. You mean a fairly unique sword. It's not one of a kind. It's just extra rare. Stop it. Btthbthhbt.

Dice you!

2009-05-01T13:53:00.002-05:00

Of all the production issues I saw coming, finding enough dice to go in the boxes I did not see. As a gamer, I naturally have tones of dice kicking around. Whole great bins of dice.

But what if you want a tone of the same die, preferably in pairs?

I found an online wholesaler, who hopes he can get them to me fast enough. So I can almost reveal the dice.

Custom dice you say...

Rolling Forward

2009-04-29T13:10:00.003-05:00

We've finally gotten things rolling on printing. The trick - HP CP 1215 color laser. Great color reproduction at a reasonable cost per page. And it handles the card stock. Of course it has been discontinued, so get it while supplies last I guess.

The cards look phenomenal, but I don't relish all the cutting ahead of me. I'm sure this is cosmic payback for the first edition of GE.

For those of you who need to know, all things related to Galactic Empire (now more formally titled Jean-Paul Lapointe's Galactic Empire), often referred to as G.E., are IP (Intellectual Property) One. This includes but may not be limited to The Portable Galactic Empire, full size Galactic Empire, Rules of Engagement and the unnamed action role playing game.

There will be at least one expansion for P.G.E. before anything else. Then we will probably introduce I.P. Two, because I'll be bored of working on GE stuff for a while.

The Limited (internally known as Convention) Edition will be a small run of about 45 copies, entirely hand made and lovingly packed into wood boxes. They will be available first at KeyCon, in Winnipeg at our table in the dealers room. After that show closes, should we have any copies left, we'll make them available for direct sale.

Ya, pretty cool.

Production Issues

2009-04-24T09:14:00.002-05:00

As always Mr. Murphy decided to stop by this week and mess with my stuff. He's good at that. This week he decided that the last thing we needed to do was actually be able to print on the fancy card stock we want to print on. Well, for less than an arm and a leg. I've outmaneuvered him for now, so I think we're back on track for the Limited Convention Edition. I'm also hoping he'll get tied up bothering David.

In other news I hope to make pre-release pdfs available to look at through the inter web. I need to work out the details of hosting files and such. More updates to follow.

Back to Work

2009-04-20T09:34:00.002-05:00

All right, Poodites, back to work.

Something for you all to look at: Castle Games Inc.

Hopefully that does not redirect you to a cyber squater. We are about 2 to 3 weeks available from having actual copies of actual games in hand and ready for sale. Send us an email if you're interested.

Our goal is to get a logo and a message board some time before the apocalypse. Right now I'm toying with something that looks like a rook and a king in castle position.

Left 4 Dead 360

2009-01-16T11:09:00.003-06:00

Left 4 Dead, out of the box - pretty cool. It's valve though so, I had high expectations. This is the first valve game I've picked up for my 360 instead of the PC, and I'm pretty impressed that even a thumb stick inept player like myself can pick it up.

Left 4 Dead is a zombie-survival-horror shoot 'em up. Light on the horror. It is very clearly designed to be played in a four (4 - see what they did there) person team. A note to all zombie watchers, these are your new fast zombies not your classic shuffling zombies.

I've played through the first two "movies" with friends online. I like that the campaigns, of which there are 4 classic zombie movie scenarios, play out in well organized, check pointed chunks. The graphics are acceptable to good.

I would like to be able to share more, but my 360 has decided to join so many of it's brethren and display me 3 red lights instead of zombie game goodness. It's on its way to Microsoft now. And I was just getting my Rock Band 2 practice routine down.

Shamless Debasement

2008-12-12T16:14:00.003-06:00

(At least I think that's the phrase). That's right, today to kick off JP's Birthday Weekend, I wore not one but two foam hats in order to get a free lunch. This, by the way also helps to prove TANSTAFL*.

If you're in the mood for some JP's birthday festivities, please feel free to wear a set of green foam antlers on Monday. After the 15th that other guy's season can start as normal.

*There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Which I know as tanstafl from "the Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by R.A. Heinlein, which the whole rest of the intertubes seems to have forgoten. For shame. You all get nothing for JP's birthday this year.

Giving the stink eye to the intertubes...

2008-12-10T09:55:00.003-06:00

Sooooooooo.

At the risk of seriously jinxing it, did the intertubes turn off the spam machine? My daily spam rate has gone from several to, well, none.

Just saying is all.

Fallout 3 Completed

2008-12-08T10:55:00.002-06:00

Hey it's done. And man, you should get some of that. I will play through again, but I don't think I'll do it right away. I'm still grinding my way past 50 on the treadmill, which is eating up a foolish amount of my game time. I am getting close to the Burning Crusade content. And the game is throwing its weight behind me. Yesterday it gave me 10000 xps for one quest turn in.

If you haven't seen the full Ozzy Osbourne WoW ads for Litch King, check it out.

Fast Rules for Miniature Gaming

2008-12-01T09:25:00.004-06:00

I ran two quick games last Thursday, based on my own thoughts about rules. Here's the summary:

Set up: Each side gets an equal number of figures to start. Playing on a standard dining room table is about enough space if you are using 25mm figures. Allow each side about 20 to 30 figures. For ground combat, obstacles are a good idea.

Rule 1: Each player gets two actions per turn. An action is either activating a figure, which may then move and fight or spawning a new figure at one of your spawn points.

Rule 1a: The activated figure may move and then fight, or fight twice, or move twice. The figure may not fight and then move.

Rule 1b: Figures in base to base contact with enemy figures are pinned. They must fight the enemy figure if they are activated.

Rule 2: 1 is always the target number.

Rule 3: 2 inches of movement is slow. 6 Inches is normal. 12 is fast.

Rule 4: The weakest guys on your team are the most common. You have an infinite supply of them. They roll a d12 when attacking. They move 6.

Rule 5: The special guys on your team are not very common. You can have 1 of those in your pool of guys for every 5 regulars. The roll a better die against other troopers, in our case d6. Against vehicles they would roll d12, like regulars. In the case of the figs we were using, that meant 1 clone sniper (I used the SW mini's Kashyyk scouts to represent this) for every 5 regular clones in the pool. like wise for the droids, where the Super Battle Droids were the regulars and a security battle droid represented the sniper ( I have mostly SBDs). These figures may be respawned like regulars, but in more limited numbers. In our case each side had 2 specials.

Rule 6: Each side may choose to have heroes. To add a hero to your team you must pull a regular figure out. Heros should have at least 1 special ability. In our game the heros were (of course) Jedi. Jedi could only fight in hand to hand combat, which meant they needed to touch their targets to attack them, but are fast so they move 12. However, they always hit. Because I don't own any Sith figures, we decide to give the Separatists two Hailfire Droids. The jedi needed to roll a d12 to hit the "tanks". Heroes do not respawn. If a hero is hit, he is removed for the rest of the game. We then decided that that wouldn't be enough heroes for the Republic and I added 4 clone commandos. Commandos attack with a d6 against any target, but are heroes, so do not respawn.

Rule 7: Vehicles are more complicated than troops. Vehicles do not count towards your regular units or reserves. Vehicles have their own spawn point, which may be destroyed by the other team, but not captured. Vehicles need to be activated. This requires a figure to be in base to base contact twith the vehicle, and requires the figure to use an action. The figure used to activate the vehicle is removed from play. Vehicles should have more firepower than figures, in this case we represented that two ways. Hailfire droids roll d6 to attack. Hailfire droids may use indirect fire. This means that an activated hailfire droid may attack any figure that is in line of sight of any other figure on the droid's team.

Rule 8: Each player picks up to five figures to start the game with. The rest of your figures are your reserve. They may be brought into the game by using a spawn action. Each spawn action lets you place 1 figure in base to base contact with one of your spawn points.

Rule 10: When you choose to fight you roll the die indicated. A 1 hits and the targeted unit is removed either to the reserves or from the game depending on what type of figure it is.

Rule 11: The first team to capture all the spawn points wins. You own a spawn point until someone takes it from you. You capture a spawn point by being the only team with figures touching the spawn point at the end of the other teams turn.

I know, it's a bit sketchy but it worked.

Fallout 3

2008-11-27T10:34:00.003-06:00

The top down skinny: Awesome

This is the first game I've played in a long time that has all but shaken me from my Bioshock obsession. If you're not a fan of huge, immersion worlds, big fancy graphics, great sound direction and tons of game play, skip it. You may also want to take up stamp collecting, as I'm guessing video games really are not for you.

Truth be told I'm not *quite* done my first full play through. I believe I have opened up the final quest and am deliberately avoiding it, wandering around looking for side quests. All told it will be about 36 hours of game for one run through. I have skipped a couple of options which would have given me even more to do. I have to admit, I don't want to take that final quest in the main chain because then it will be over.

My big complaint would be hand-to-hand combat which is not much changed from the model used in Oblivion. It still feels like a button mash to me. On the other hand, using guns, and especially V.A.T.S. never gets old.

I should point out that I come to this game from being a Bethesda fan, not a Fallout fan. I played quite a bit of both Morrowind and Oblivion, but am only vaguely aware of the Fallout franchise. I suspect this game does a reasonable homage to the series, but am not an expert.

Final thoughts - pick it up.

*My five spot rating system: Meh is the middle rating. It means the game or product may have redeeming value for specific individuals, but is generally unappealing or flawed to the point of making it generally not applicable. The other ratings are Awesome, which means I think your simply nuts if you don't already love it; Not Bad, which means I think it may not be best for everybody, but it's a good production of what it is; Bah, which means I think the thing failed and has few redeeming qualities; And BC3. BC3 is a direct reference to Battle Cruiser 3000AD which is the first game I ever bought that actually made me think the developer was deliberately trying to make me angry. I try to avoid those ones.

Space Siege - Reviewed

2008-08-27T08:04:00.003-05:00

All right, I haven't finished it yet. I may not finish it, though the completest in me screams at the thought.

My overall rating - Meh*. That would be the middle one. If you are particularly in the market for a clunky sci-fantasy shooter, this one fits the bill. Otherwise you may as well keep looking. It's not the modern manifestation of Obliterator I had hoped for.

My Big Complaints:

Why can't I customize the controls? I have 8 buttons on my mouse and your game recognizes 3 of them. I haven't had it this bad since a long time ago.
If you're going to bother making up 8 weapons, make up 8 different weapons. I have one melee weapon, and the rest are all either fast or slow guns. It reminds me very much of the old Doom days, whereby the next new weapon you pick up is going to be the one you use. Because it does more damage.
So I'm on this HUGE colony/warship. And I'm the only guy in the whole place with the presence of mind to shoot back when the aliens try to eat me.

I have other, lesser complaints, but they just pile on to what you may have read everywhere else. I have to say I generally like the art style, though I have questioned some of the texture choices. If you bother to play, note especially the very pixelated displays littered about the place. Which are highly repetitive. Highly repetitive is, unfortunately a hallmark of the design. Most of the environments are similar, and the prop list is very small.

I'm not saying it's not worth playing. I mean, I have played it almost all the way through. I admit I partly sold myself on it in that it has some thematic similarities with System Shock 2. In fact, I kept thinking that an SS2 mod based on this engine might be interesting if one could unlock the controls.

I know I keep harping on the controls. It's like this: The game insists that you use a Diablo 2 style of control - sans the mouse wheel skill flip. Click the left mouse button to move or interact. Click and or hold the right mouse button to use your current weapon. But I would have preferred a more Max Payne style of play. I think changing this from an awkward RPG to an OK 3rd person shooter might have made a difference.

The story doesn't exactly redeem, either. It's the same old same old. You're going to see the big plot twists in about the first 15 minutes of play. You won't be surprised. And, as I thought, the whole cybernetic vs humanity sub plot fails. Why do I care if characters who are thinly realized care if I go fully cybernetic? The big difference is which of the guns you get to use by the end of the game. The game doesn't have enough character interaction for your lack of humanity to make any real difference. If this was a big RPG, say Ultima IV or Knights of the old Republic scale, then I could see that playing out. You only interact with 5 NPCs, and then really only in cut scenes. They might be horrified, but I'm not.

Bottom line - Skip it.

*This refers to my new five spot rating system. Meh is the middle rating. It means the game or product may have redeeming value for specific individuals, but is generally unappealing or flawed to the point of making it generally not applicable. The other ratings are Awesome, which means I think your simply nuts if you don't already love it; Not Bad, which means I think it may not be best for everybody, but it's a good production of what it is; Bah, which means I think the thing failed and has few redeeming qualities; And BC3. BC3 is a direct reference to Battle Cruiser 3000AD which is the first game I ever bought that actually made me think the developer was deliberately trying to make me angry. I try to avoid those ones.

Space Siege - Impressions

2008-08-16T16:09:00.005-05:00

OK, I'm back on the critical path purchase wise. Now I just need to set the Warcraft aside long enough to play.

I've played about 5 hours of Space Siege, and I have no idea how far into the game that puts me. Generally pleased. It is mostly and action game. The Role Playing Game elements are very reduced. The biggest complaints I have so far are

the camera is working against you
I can't figure how to change the controls

The story is pretty stock, but I may not be that far in. I was correct about the demo. They deliberately introduce the cyborg/humanity plot early in the demo. The cyborg vs. your humanity is a central theme, but the full game introduces other story elements that I assume are intended to also affect your decision making.

I may have a more detailed look later.

Holy Market Forces, Batman (1.1)

2008-08-14T18:17:00.004-05:00

World of Warcraft Epic Stein's

This is how you know your market is huge. You make a cup. Admittedly, a very fancy cup. You call it a collector's item. You claim it has "old world" craftsmanship. You make two versions of it, because you know your audience that well. Then you charge 10 times the manufacturing cost for them. Then they sell out.

Ok, I guessed on that last bit. Keep an eye peeled. We'll watch the insanity together.

(1.1)
I was thinking more about this and thought some extra thoughts. I thought about my buying thresholds. This item is in the category of "Holy crud. No way I'm buying one of those. Maybe for Xmas." Except when I look at it, it's a waste of an Xmas gift. $70 bucks is a whole other game, that I don't have time to play. Wait, that is clever. Blizzard.

It never rains...

2008-08-14T09:00:00.002-05:00

You probably know the old adage. Well, it's pouring in Poodiopolis. In fact it may be a monsoon.

1) Space Siege - Already released (or read that as "I'm already behind!")
The demo actually held me back slightly. I'm not sure the "choose to be human or cyber" mechanic is going to be the core story element it's intended to be, but may be the demo is compressed.

2) Spore - Early September
I don't know that Spore is a game. It's more likely that Spore generates pocket dimensions. Again, though I've been really hyped about this for a long time, I played with the free version of the creature creator and had mixed feelings. Innovative and clever, no doubt. Fun GAME? Hard to say.

3) Fallout 3 - Q4 2008 (Hopefully before Xmas. Wait. Hopefully later.)
This one has not been spoiled for me by a demo yet. I should mention that I'm not a long term fan of Fallout. It is, however, written by Bethesda and set in one of my very favorite genres. And it's written by Bethesda.

4) Wrath of the Lich King - Q4 2008 (yes, I'm back on the crack. Hopefully it's not terminal)
I don't really want to get into it.

5) Warhammer Online - Sept 18 ('cause I really need another MMO in my life.)
I'm trying not to be disappointed in advance. On the other hand, me and every other fan boy are smacking down their bucks opening day even if it is a pile. So I guess from a certain perspective, it's job well done.

Add a liberal dash of regular PnP, where at least I'm not GM for a change. And a once monthly strategy game day. I can hear Rebecca chambering a round.

Chupacabra

2008-08-08T16:32:00.002-05:00

Sometimes strange things come to my attention. I try to pretend that I don't notice, because that means they might have to put me on lithium. Lately, I've had a run of "the web is a small world".

It seems the chupacabra is destined to haunt me.

The word first came to my attention as part of a gag in an early episode of "Red Vs. Blue" (very often, very NSFW). The gag consists mostly of the characters trying to decide what name the Warthog should have.

The term has come up in a couple of web comics lately. I'm kind of like CARNIVORE. Except dumber...

(ah the Friday afternoon link post. Good times.)

The Syndicate of Evil

2008-07-28T08:36:00.002-05:00

David and I started working on a collaborative effort on the weekend. We had an idea for a web comic, which I mutated into a strategy game. I have a strategy game mutation ray. No, you can't borrow it.

Without giving to much away, I will say it involves super villains. We are of course very inspired by Dr. Horrible. If you missed that by the way, you missed out and should really figure out iTunes and get some of that. This would also put you one step up on me, as I can't figure out iTunes. Of course I don't have an iPod either.

The Vilnius Schoolmaster

2008-07-25T10:47:00.002-05:00

I like to flip the map view in Google Analytics to show cities over countries. I feel more in tune with the city names as places, though I haven't been to hardly any of them.

One of the cities that showed up this month was Vilnius, in Lithuania. This is the mythical place of origin for Marco Ramius, the captain of the Red October in "The Hunt for Red October". I used to love Tom Clancy, lately, not so much.

To all my international guests: "Welcome! I'm here through next Thursday, please try the ribs and tip your waitress."

"Добро пожаловать! Я здесь через следующее четверг, пожалуйста пробую нервюры и наклоняю вашу официантку."

"Willkommen! Ich bin hier durch folgenden Donnerstag, versuche bitte die Rippen und spitze Ihre Kellnerin."

"Bienvenue ! Je suis ici à travers essaye jeudi prochain, svp les nervures et incline votre serveuse."

"歓迎! 私は次の木曜日、試み、肋骨をひっくり返すあなたのウェートレスをここにいる。"

(I can only hope that the translation is unoffensive.)(And even I can see that the French did not translate well!)

Maths are hard, let's shop!

2008-07-22T09:11:00.003-05:00

I'm not actually blond. Technically, it's called ash blond. Regardless of why, I completely fail at writing intercept code.

Let's see things that have worked in the sim so far:

thrust
gravity
satellites
planets
targeting
UI scaling

That's not bad. And so far the whole thing runs about 10 to 20 times faster than real time. I may just skip it for now. Except that at some point it's going to become important to make rendezvous with other entities - space stations for example to reload and rearm.

I need to add weapons and targets so I can spend time blasting things to smithereens. Work out some of my frustrations as it were.

Monkey Hands

2008-07-18T14:33:00.002-05:00

All right, I've monkeyed with the page a bit. If I've messed it up and looks as intelligible as an Egyptian tablet that's been used as a sledge hammer, let me know. I remembered to save the old template first.

I'm on the hunt for speakers. I've come to the sad realization that my viewing quality has vastly outstripped the audio. I need at least a center and a sub woofer. My primaries are Mission M70. I know I won't spend a tonne of money on them, because my receiver is 1.2 million years old. No, seriously, I think it was originally assembled by a neanderthal.

Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog (v2.0)

2008-07-17T08:38:00.003-05:00

Are you joking? No, I'm not.

Go here. Why? Joss Whedon you mechanical mind midget. I'm also spending some time with old classics. Have you ever watched "Lost in Space" from the beginning? How about "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"? I'm doing both.

At some point I should investigate Irwin Allen's other vehicles as well, but these two I remember fondly from the early days of cable TV. Of course I mean the early days of cable TV at my house, not the dawn of cable TV which occurred about 35 years before that.

(edit 2.0: The first banner was too wide for my format. Nice if the preview actually reflected the blog.)

Hellgate: Not dead yet!

2008-07-16T09:11:00.002-05:00

...but I can't imagine it's crying out "I feel hapeee..." either. I direct you to an official forum post, over there. And while it is good news that Flagship has not quite closed it's doors, we must now wait for further developments.

The only thing I could hope for would be a LAN client patch/update. It was the only major disappointment I had with the game. I understand the financial decision behind not making a LAN server available. I don't agree with it.

Hellgate Spiral

2008-07-15T11:49:00.004-05:00

This looks grim.

OK, I don't have a subscription, so at least I didn't pay to play, but I have to admit, David and I have spent some serious "LAN" time on Hellgate. Serious.

Good news is, the single player game should still run. Bad news is, I have no reason to believe I'll ever be running a multi-player game of it again.

And David just discovered one of the coolest easter eggs ever.

DIII Timeline update

2008-07-07T08:29:00.001-05:00

I see that the "official" release date for StarCraft II is now being listed here and there as December of this year. That probably means it's possible DIII might be ready for next Christmas. But I doubt it.

"Jar Jar, you're a genius"

2008-07-04T09:03:00.001-05:00

Hey, double post day!

Did you know that until very recently the phrase "Jar Jar, you're a genius" had never been recorded on the intarwebs? Neither did I. But I read this web comic, which is pretty funny, and they said I should say that, and I always do what web comics say.

What?

Game Maker

2008-07-04T08:33:00.002-05:00

When I started using Game Maker, I was somewhat skeptical. This would not be the first time I had tried to adapt one of my visions to fit inside somebody else's box. Last time I tried to use a free ware engine I found to build a strategy game, it turned out to have more box and less fit.

On the other hand, Earth vs. Mars is shaping up gloriously.

You may remember I had this idea about a Solar civil war between Earth and the colonies.* It was going to be on a giant hex grid so I could use vectored motion a-la Triplanetary. After two weeks-ish of off-hand development, I have this so far:

A full on Newtonian movement system. With gravity implemented. A playing area that covers everything inside the jovian orbit. The ability to scale the display from 1:1 all the way to 1,000,000:1 - this is important when you're trying to navigate from Earth to Mars and you don't have radar.

It's a cool toy, but it's not a game yet. I still have some User Interface tweaks to make before I start adding bad guys.

MMmmmm. Saucers.

*Actually, after looking through the back blog, you may not. I may never have mentioned it here. But it's cool, trust me.

MMO Showdown

2008-06-30T09:28:00.003-05:00

As I have a whole bunch of time to kill, I'm doing an MMO showdown. I'm playing World of Warcraft with Burning Crusade and Everquest II: Rise of Kunark.

Yes I'm really that busy. I have to say these games are fairly comparable on the graphics side. The WoW engine is still much smoother on Hank, given that it does less, but style is where Blizz still wins. But you've heard all that before.

It's really hard to get into a game that is so heavy into it's own mythology. Both of these games suffer from that, I think. It's hard for me to tell with WoW because I've been through it all. I was having a hard time connecting with EQII.

An open apology

2008-06-28T20:58:00.003-05:00

For those of you who are used to my usual acquaintance, I want to apologize, in advance. At some indeterminate time in the near future, I will become completely unavailable for any and all social interaction. Blame Blizzard.

(Of course, being a Blizzard production you could have my undivided attention for at least he next two years while they develop it.)

Ten?

2008-06-18T09:25:00.003-05:00

I've been quiet for a while. Let's just leave it at I've had nothing I wanted to comment about. Well nothing that lit a fire under me.

But 10? Two games have come out in the first half of this year that have attained this lofty number. The first is GTA:IV. The second is Metal Gear Solid 4. Neither of them is Bioshock. Tom Chick wrote a really great review of MGS4 for Crispy Gamer.

If you're a Metal Gear Solid fan, this review is not for you. Frankly, you don't need a review. Metal Gear Solid 4 is between you, Hideo Kojima and whatever bond the two of you have formed over the last 20 years of Metal Gear games. I might as well come to your house, root around in your shoebox of old love letters, and comment on their grammar, punctuation, imagery and literary merit.

Instead, this review is for everyone else. It's partly for those who, like me, dabbled in the previous games. It's mostly for those who might have had their interest piqued by the marketing or who fell for the "tactical espionage action" tagline on the box (only one of the three is true, and only occasionally). For you, I cannot stress enough that this is a terrible, terrible game.

Read it, and then understand why my vote is for more editorial reviews like this and "Zero Punctuation".

And for heavens sake, play Bioshock already. It's honestly almost a 10. Except for that shader 3 thing.

World in Conflict

2008-05-09T10:34:00.002-05:00

What a blast. The game play is occasionally clouded by the foolish camera, and some of the campaign missions are a slog, but generally this game kicks RTS butt. I want to spend some time in online play now, to see if it delivers as well.

I have also resolved to PLAY THE STORYLINE IN OBLIVION. I have spent about 30 hours playing this game and have yet to advance past the second or third quest in the main plot. I really hope that Fallout 3 can maintain this level of polish.

I'm also looking for a kinship on the Landroval server for Lord of the Rings. I'm not a serious player, but a social game it is. Look for Flandel Ironbeard.

Chick inspired

2008-04-30T19:17:00.002-05:00

As some of you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of Tom Chick. He and I, I think, see games in a lot of the same ways. There are differences of opinion - his complaints about Hellgate: London baffle me a bit, because apparently I'm all in for mindless button mashing from time to time. And inventory management is the game.

One of things that I like most about reading his articles and live journal notes (he also refers to his Web Accessible Journal as a blog) is that it reminds me of gaming related stuff I need to do. Like "Rise of Nations". I love "Rise of Nations". Why did I stop playing RoN? Because the guys (that would be my regular LAN crew) felt it was both like and not "Empire Earth", which given the time, they would rather play. I believe this is the same reason we are not playing "World in Conflict" or "Dawn of War" either.

Fortunately, RoN features a very nice take over the world single campaign, something it shares with DoW - Dark Crusade and the just released DoW - Soul Storm. I'm taking a pass on Soul Storm, mostly because it adds two factions I couldn't give a fig for and because it doesn't add anything to the already very nice Dark Crusade.

As a result of which, while I wait for my pre-release trial client (please stop calling it a beta...) of Age of Conan to download, which is you may have deduced, not the MMO I'm looking for (hint hint warhammer hint), I'm reinstalling RoN to see if it's as good as I've remembered.

Besides its something I can play before the kids go to bed, as opposed to GTA:IV. Which I have to admit I would rather be playing except for the whole not really good for the general audience thing.

Footnote on Presentation

2008-04-30T08:53:00.002-05:00

Anything over 2 seconds is too long. If I make a request to a system and have time to actually think about counting, I've waited too long.

GTA IV is the bomb. It's got some pretty harsh political criticism tucked in the corners, which is awesome. The "more realistic" controls are taking a bit of getting used to. I keep mashing buttons to accelerate and brake when I need to be using the triggers.

Media Replacement

2008-04-28T14:17:00.002-05:00

I've recently run into a little known Xbox 360 issue. Actually, the small amount of info I have found seems to indicate the problem goes back to the Xbox era as well, but I never had one of those. It seems that the media are a bit on the fragile side and prone to cracking when being removed from the case. It manifests in the form of a tiny crack running radially from the spindle hole. This, of course, makes the disk unreadable. Which is probably a good thing as a cracked disk has a chance of flying apart. Which I have to think would not be real good for the drive.

I don't want to blow this out of proportion. The vast majority of disks are OK and will last you the lifespan of the game, and probably the guy you sell it to. But, like any manufacturing process, it's not 100%. Stuff happens. If I had to guess (no testing here), I would think the choice to embed a hologram in the reinforced spindle ring in order to prove the disk is "real" is what is causing the issue.

I've taken to keeping the games in sleeves, thereby reducing the number of opportunities to crack the disk by accident. The real problem is, I now have two busted games. The first to go, HALO 3, is going to cost $10 to replace. Microsoft has a media replacement program, but only for a very short list of titles.

The second, Lego Star Wars Complete, I'm just going to have to buy, I guess, because Lucasarts insists I have my proof of purchase. That would be the receipt. You kept that, right? Even if I had the receipt, being outside the legally mandated 90 days, they want $15 for a replacement disk. Which brings me to my beef.

Why are you charging me $15 to replace a broken disk? I'm sending you the disk, you can see it's legit, which means I already paid $60 for your license. I'm sure it costs all of about $.50 to make one of these disks now. And I know you don't want to spend $2.00 on shipping, so charge me $5.00 and you've made some.

I'm sure there is some deeply guarded secret of manufacturing that I'm overlooking here. But I have to admit, on the surface, this looks more like customer anti-support.

Like painting with stone hands

2008-04-25T23:05:00.002-05:00

I've been banging away with the new engine for almost two weeks solid now. After floundering around, I've settled on a remake of "the Realm". Which was my attempt at making my own version of Talisman while it was out of print. As a board game it was ok. The guys actually voted to play it few times, which with my crowd of friends/testers is actually high praise.

Working with the tool is a mixed bag. I think it's what happens when you try to do fine art with crayons. If you're really good, it can look nice.

That's not the point though. The point is I'm in the zone. The road gets tough, I slow down, I push through. I haven't got any public storage, but once I get some, I'll link to builds as they happen. I may have an alpha in two weeks, assuming I keep my pace.

How about now?

2008-04-24T10:48:00.002-05:00

And now the hot sheets are saying it's gone gold? How can that be if the "beta" test is just starting (fileplanet started giving out beta keys yesterday)?

Stop calling it a beta test when it isn't. It's a pre-release demo.

Beta Test for Age of Conan

2008-04-17T12:49:00.002-05:00

... or at least that's what they're calling it. Of course the game goes to retail in theory on the 20th of May, so how much testing is going on really? How much change can be incorporated into a game for which the strategy guide must already be at the printers. Actually, I don't know if there is a strategy guide for AoC, planed, printing or otherwise, but usually that's how it works.

So it's not really a beta test, then is it? I mean if the testers can't actually influence the design of the game? What are they testing? Is it really a market test? Anyways, it's just become another one of those peeves I have, like the spiritual successor.

I'm going to do my standard get on fileplanet, best $7.50 a month I spend, so hopefully I'll get a peek at it. That's more of a preview han a beta test. I may or may not be able to share, as I take the NDA thing serious. Let you know.

Mental Explosion

2008-04-03T17:05:00.002-05:00

I just found one of the coolest sites ever. YoYo Games - They make a *simple* sprite game design tool. By simple I mean easy to use, not simplistic and shallow. Oh, and its FREE.

I've already built one.

And then my head exploded. I now need to sit down an re-organize my projects, because with this tool I could literally build any idea I've had in the last two decades. As a video game. That you could play. Assuming I let you.

First up - reorganize the list of projects. I'm writing down the title of every idea I've had and prioritizing them in order of appetite - i.e. how bad I want to play it. Nothing is off side now. Rules of Engagement just came back from shelf 13. Of course I need a new title now, but it's back on. When I settle down I'll post the short list and exec summaries and we can vote.

Need to breath now...

Hank Lives!

2008-04-02T09:56:00.002-05:00

(DD to some)

Ok, all I have is a serous case of dust contamination. This means two things:

I need to start cleaning my case more often.
I need a new processor fan/cooler, because the one I have is now making a ticking noise.

As I remember it, however, I dislike the mounts for the 775 coolers. They use friction pins, which seems to me to be a recipe for cracking your mother board. All cooler/fan recommendations will be considered. Cool vs. quiet debates will be entertained. The cooler & fan I'm using are the stock Intel pack ins.

Dark Gaming Day

2008-04-01T09:29:00.002-05:00

If it wasn't April 1st, you wouldn't blink about sympathizing. But I'm not making this up. It appears the gods of change wish to throw me another gaming curve ball. Not only am I now suspicious that my 360 is breaking discs, but Hank (DD to some) has decided to go brain dead.

At 7:35 this morning I came to the workstation to find it unresponsive. Not unheard of, as it is a Windows machine after all. When I forcible re-booted, however, it decided to be cranky. I got a long beep with a long space (repeating) and no video (i.e. no post). This doesn't clear until I cold power the box (unplug it I mean). It came back up once, and then hard crashed again after about 10 minutes.

So, over heating? Bad video? Not sure yet. I'll keep you in the loop. For now it looks like I need to advance my Larry re-install project on the time line.

Roadwar Part 2

2008-03-28T07:58:00.003-05:00

I have the first sketch of the rules to about 35%. I'm trying to decide how big a player should get. should a gang be like a character, or like an army. The biggest thing there being should one player have one token on the board or several, and how much record keeping should there be.

The map is actually starting to take form. I am reverse engineering society, so I have a lot of stuff to remove.

I'm trying to decide on a doomsday scenario. Is the world in this state because of a pandemic? NBC warfare? Alien invasion? I may put a poll up to see what folks think. Look for it.

Roadwar

2008-03-18T08:27:00.003-05:00

As you may remember from previous outings, I'm a bit of a fan of the Mad Max style post apocalyptic setting. And I was there when they shut down the Auto Assault server for the final time.

Lately, I've had a hankering for some car/gun action. This lead me to Roadwar 2000, a game I actually vaguely remember from back in the day. It's pretty dated, and I think the combat may be totally broken on my copy, but the core idea is pretty cool. So I'm building a strategy game based on it. Sort of.

I've settled on a hex map of the U.S. and Southern Canada for the setting. This is actually going to be a great pain, due to an overwhelming lack of high quality affordable (read FREE) map assets. The core of the game play revolves around you as a gang leader recruiting a gang, finding useful stuff in the aftermath (like vehicles, guns and food) and rebuilding civilization. Of course the mutants, cyborgs and invaders are all against you in this.

I'm still looking for a name, too.

Are you a Gameholic?

2008-03-07T10:53:00.002-06:00

Adapted shamelessly from another quiz.
Oh, and by gaming in this case, if you're being particularly obtuse, I mean video and parlor games, not gambling. Gambling addiction is a serious thing. I refuse to be taken seriously.

Do you lose time from work due to gaming?
Is gaming making your home life unhappy?
Do you game because you are shy with other people?
Is your gaming affecting your reputation?
Have you ever felt remorse after gaming?
Have you ever got into financial difficulties as a result of gaming?
Do you turn to lower companions and an inferior environment when gaming?
Does your gaming make you careless of your family's welfare?
Has your ambition decreased since gaming?
Do you crave a game at a definite time?
Do you want a game the next morning?
Does gaming cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
Has your efficiency decreased since gaming?
Is gaming jeopardizing your job or business?
Do you game to escape from worries or trouble?
Do you game alone?
Have you ever had a complete loss of memory as a result of gaming?
Has your physician ever treated you for gaming?
Do you game to build up your self confidence?
Have you ever been to a hospital or institution because of gaming?

Apparently, if you answer yes to 3 or more, you are definitely suffering a problem. Unless you're a teenager, in which case that's just life.

Friday is PSA day. I can't guarantee that the sarcasm quotient won't be very high to extreme, but you may find help here. Of course if you're looking for help here, oh boy. If you like this post you may be interested in some earlier posts like CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL RECOGNIZED AS A DISORDER or Harsh lesson in the InterTubes. On the other hand, if you're marginally offended and vocal, feel invited to leave me a comment. It's a low cost Internet.

Zero Punctu...

2008-03-06T13:41:00.002-06:00

Normally I would post the newest edition of ZP here. Today however, I find myself confused and wracked with guilt. This very much resembles dating in high school for me and is somewhat uncomfortable.

My confusion comes from this. Below each post are the words:

To embed this video on your blog, please click the MENU button at the bottom of the player, and select the GRAB THE CODE option.

For information on submitting your game for review, or if you want to insult our mothers, please contact ZP@escapistmag.com

Please note that any reproduction of Zero Punctuation without the express written consent of The Escapist is expressly forbidden.

Right? Ok, so we're on the same page, I'll explain it (I also feel my posts have been too short and must attempt to torture both of us by dragging them on a bit more). The first line gives you the instructions on how to put a copy of the video on your blog. And even though this really isn't a blog anymore, it's on blogger so I figure it still qualifies.

The second line I usually ignore. It's not all that confusing for me because I don't have any games I've made that would be eligible for review and I have no basis on which to insult anyone there's mother. And insulting people moms is really not my style. Usually.

And then the third line says "Don't you bloody dare make copies of this!" Did you just hear the record scratching sound?

Let me work this out again (they told me I should tell you things three times in college). Here's how to make a copy of this for your own sad sack corner of the intertubes. We'll sick nasty ninja assassins on you if you do. Did I miss a meeting?

Anyways, there is a new "Devil May Cry 4" related Zero Punctuation over at The Escapist. Go watch it there. The advertisers will no doubt adore you if you do, and I won't see any ninjas. Today. Yet.

This post is yet another shameless attempt by the author to buy some cool. You can look forward to further such posts on Thursdays. You may be interested in the Iron Man or Star Trek trailers if you liked this post. If you vote "Nay" please feel free to do so in the comments.

The LAN Game

2008-03-04T18:00:00.003-06:00

It seems to me that one of the most attractive things about PC gaming was the local area network game. Attractive because it was like graduating from the sandbox to real weapons and "was" because I've noted an alarming trend. In the last year or so 3 titles I've been drawn to have not supported multi player LAN servers, instead opting for internet play only. Ok, I'm stretching a bit. Two of the games I'm giving the eye to are technically LAN capable. One requires an online connection to play at all (Battlefield 2142), and the other is as coy about setting a server up as it can be (World in Conflict).

The third, and most irksome, is Hellgate: London. In fact the only way to play online is to force yourself to connect to the giant hub. It seems as if the Diablo team forgot a layer from Diablo II. In many other respects Hellgate is a larger, newer Diablo. Some would argue it is a lesser manifestation, I generally disagree, except for the lack of a LAN server mode. The lack of local network support means I must put up with the likes of 'iEttsN00bs' and 'NeO436' just to get connected with my buddy. Not to mention I now lack access to my whole list of cool names! Petty, I know, but true.

Fortunately my broad band connection is sufficient to let both of us out at the same time. In the face of this trend towards web only games, which I suspect is simply DRM in sheep's clothing, the split screen extravaganza of the XBOX 360 looks even more appealing. Now I only need one copy of the game and an extra controller or two and we're good to go. A fun day of smack talk, soda pop and pizza. And a somewhat disgruntled wife, but that's a whole different post.

The PC is losing ground. I still consider myself a PC gaming enthusiast, but given the opportunity, I will take the path of least resistance.

2008-03-06 Footnote on this one: Seems Tycho and I are on the same page on this issue. Sort of. Look down at the bottom of the two posts.

Tuesday is Officially rant day. If you enjoyed this rant feel free to consider some of my earlier works such as Starcraft An MMO and Spiritual Successor. If you didn't like it, well that's what comments are for.

Steve Jackson on Gary Gygax

2008-03-04T18:00:00.002-06:00

I subscribe to Steve Jackson Games daily email update. Today's update has a spot from Steve about Gary. I think it deserves to be shared:

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and a gaming icon for more than 30 years, died yesterday after repeated strokes and heart problems. He was 69.

Like the rest of my generation, I was introduced to roleplaying via Dungeons & Dragons because there wasn't anything else back then. My first, very lame, Dungeons & Dragons game was in college. Shortly after I became a (semi)professional and joined the Metagaming group, we started a D&D campaign, with Robert Taylor as the GM, and it was excellent. Decades later, I can still say that my biggest-ever thrill in roleplaying was when my first character got chainmail. No longer would I face certain death if I met an orc.

If not for Dungeons & Dragons, "adventure game" would still mean "cardboard chits on a hexmap." Which I love dearly, but would it ever have gotten out of the garage? And that's the least of it. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson didn't just remake a hobby. They impacted all of Western culture. Fantasy fiction would still be a backwater had not D&D built an audience and a new generation of writers. Lord of the Rings would be something taught in college English classes, not a blockbuster movie trilogy. And consider: The direct lineal descendant of D&D is Worlds of Warcraft, which is, all by itself, what? A billion-dollar business now?

For the last few years, roleplayers have celebrated March 4 as "GM's Day." And now it's the day when the best-known GM of all time put down his dice. Going forward, this should also be a particular date on which we recall Gary and his contributions.
Steve Jackson

Not the post I wanted to make

2008-03-04T13:08:00.002-06:00

And you probably didn't hear it here first but;

http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2008/03/04/e-gary-gygax-remembered/

It all started with Dungeons & Dragons. For good or for bad, D&D got me here.

E. Gary Gygax

Iron Man Trailer 2008-02-29

2008-03-02T09:02:00.002-06:00

New Iron Man Trailer:

via videosift.com

Looks pretty good. I mean great.

Not back from Hiatus yet, but planning the new schedule. Things should be much improved once I work out the new schedule.

No Real Posts

2008-02-28T14:33:00.002-06:00

At least not for the time being. I'm on hiatus. Not that I get those, but I'm taking one anyways. I'm sure by the time I come back all four of you will have something more fabulous to do with the 30 seconds you spend here.

NSFW, btw...

A quick update

2008-02-21T13:34:00.004-06:00

Hey, I've been low key for a week. Not much to say here, unless you want me to say , "Play Bioshock" or "I have too many damn games on my to buy list".

Without further ado, the regular Zero Punctuation update (courtesy the Escapist)

(Do I still have to say NSFW? NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Wear your darn earphones!)

Sins of a Solar Empire

2008-02-14T09:08:00.003-06:00

Looks like Game Spot is pro Sins, which seems cool.

"This isn't just the first great strategy game of 2008. It's also an absolute must-have if you love space strategy."
Jason Ocampo, GameSpot

That sounds good. I really am trying to avoid the actual press, as I'm not as interested in polluting my view point these days with somebody elses perspective. I'll check out screens, but I really only skim reviews and previews. I love watching teasers and trailers. I adore the Bioshock and Fallout trailers.

Bioshock

Fallout

But I digress. Sins looks to be the game I was hoping somebody would make in a lot of ways. I thought that MOO3 would be that game, but wasn't, even after a heroic community effort to fix it. I'm not sure how complicated (or not complicated) the Empire part is, but what I've seen and heard is promising.

New Zero Punctuation

2008-02-13T11:47:00.001-06:00

As always don't forget your head set, as the F bombs are a plenty. Oh and if you're a Team Fortress fan, stick around after the credits. Now that's comedy...

Subversion Blog Post

2008-02-13T07:30:00.002-06:00

Chris, head cheese over at Introversion has a new post up on development of Subversion. These guys have basically hit three for three as far as I'm concerned. You would not be wasting your time to check out the demos of Uplink, Darwinia or DEFCON. I bought DEFCON right after it came out. It's not a sophisticated RTS, but it is very elegant. And fast. And it has global thermo nuclear war.

I think the amount of procedural creation he's building into Subversion is awesome. I've often thought that this kind of design would have a longer shelf life than the most excellent of pre-scripted encounters. That and the numbers he's using are HUGE relative to what you've played to date. 50 000 buildings.

SPORE Dated

2008-02-12T16:48:00.000-06:00

W00T!

Of course that teaser is a total rip. You should dig in at Game Spy or Game Spot, both of whom have decent amounts of coverage. Not that I'm pro Gamespot right now...

CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL RECOGNIZED AS A DISORDER

2008-02-12T15:38:00.000-06:00

See it here : CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL RECOGNIZED AS A DISORDER

I knew it. And it's no fun at all. Especially the "five clusters of common withdrawal symptoms: headache; fatigue or drowsiness; dysphoric mood including depression and irritability; difficulty concentrating; and flu-like symptoms of nausea, vomiting and muscle pain or stiffness".

Yes, on day 2 I seriously thought I was getting the worst flu ever. I can only imagine what real drug users go through when they detox. Rather, I will only imagine, because if kicking the caffeine is this bad, I don't want to know what coming off something heavily affective is like.

I'm continuing to tough it out. And the pushers have laid off, so I'm getting a relatively clean break, other than Rebecca handing me a chocolate coated granola bar. Yes, there's caffeine in chocolate. It's a double whammy.

Year 2

2008-02-11T13:37:00.000-06:00

Year Three began yesterday, but I don't usually post on weekends so Happy Late Anniversary me. With the institution of Google Analytics I can share with you (all about 10 of you) that my readership actually has extended world wide. People have come here to look at posts from all over the globe. Hopefully they found what they were looking for.

As for year 3, I expect more of the same. I'll probably fiddle with the look and feel again. Hopefully I won't break anything this time. Feel free to leave your well wishes in the comments.

Caffeine Induced Coma?

2008-02-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

Or rather a lack of caffeine induced lethargy. I've decided to go caffeine free for a while, and see how it affects my sleep pattern. So, far I'm just pure sluggish.

It's seems old Tom Chick has taken an extended leave from Shoot Club. Yahtzee is however back this week with a totally not safe for work review of Call of Duty 4, a game which is totally on my list.

That would be the ever growing list which still includes GTA IV should it ever deign to be released.

Fat Tuesday

2008-02-05T14:15:00.000-06:00

FYI - for all of my Catholic readers - it's Fat Tuesday, so go out and have a pizza. I would like to say have a pizza on me, but the profit margin here is a negative sum game...

Armageddon Empires

2008-02-05T08:49:00.000-06:00

Look, just go here, download the demo and play it.

How'd that go?

Some notes I would like to share with you.

1) Looks like this guy's pretty much a one man band. Except the actual art. I sympathize.

2) Armageddon Empires is almost exactly the concept I had plotted for Ancient Empires. The big differences would have been one communal deck of cards for all players and it hadn't occurred to me how much better it would be as presented on the PC.

And it's not even written in C...

After you've played the 30 round demo about 8 times, go buy the guy's game. He deserves it.

Concerned

2008-02-03T16:57:00.000-06:00

If you like Half Life, valve and web comics you should really spend a day reading Concerned: A humor comic based on the world of Half-Life 2. The comic has finished it's story line, which does not include the more recent Ep1 and Ep2 extensions. It's fairly consistent in its humor, and the composition is out standing. This kind of work is what motivates me to try and make web-comics. Not that I've actually gotten around to making a web comic. It's on my list.

Stop bugging me.

Did I mention that HL2 may be the only shooter I've played through 4 times. Yup. On at least 3 different machines. And I've actually got a taste to do it again. I am totally hot for what the guys at Black Mesa are doing though, which would be hawsome if they can pull it together.

Lego AND Star Wars

2008-02-01T14:55:00.001-06:00

Most everybody knows I'm a big fan of both the Lego and the Star Wars. Well over at Boing Boing, they're catering to both.

That's pretty keen. And you can see by the light that it took a couple of days to build. I have some shots somewhere of my build of the smaller, anniversary edition 'Falcon. Also pretty keen.

Aherm. Well, it explains itself really.

2008-01-22T08:52:00.000-06:00

Star Trek. Get some.

A Pause in the MMO Action

2008-01-21T13:45:00.000-06:00

There's a note on the Escapist which deserves your attention, if you want, relevant to the MMO space. In and of itself what the note says is not so important. It's what it means that I would suggest you notice.

The scoop looks like the Conan MMO is being delayed again. That is not so unusual. Put that on the shelf next to "Lord of the Rings online fails to totally pwn WoW" and "Star Trek online Canceled" and you might see a trend. Set that next to "Lord British fails to recapture glory with new MMO", and I'm beginning to have what my junior-high shops teacher called a mental working picture.

And that picture is one where the MMO space is dominated by a game that is almost 5 years old on the tech band. Yes I know it's only been publicly playable for just over 3 years. You need to remember that the engine doesn't really change after about 2/3 of the way into beta unless something has really gone wrong. What does it mean? I think it means if you want into the MMO space, you better have a very fat cheque book and some blackmail information on the Board of Directors to convince them to sell you WoW. Then you shut WoW down. Then you release your game.

I might be wrong. Have they announced another delay in Warhammer Online yet?

Guitar Hero ...

2008-01-17T20:12:00.000-06:00

Live from the living room. And admittedly only hitting about 12% of the notes (which means together we can almost make it through a song, as long as I play PERFECTLY).

Zero Punctuation

2008-01-16T13:51:00.000-06:00

I keep forgetting to mention how I am a really huge fan of Yahtzee and his weekly video reviews. They are honest, to the point and very, very funny. All three things some what lacking in Game reviews lately. It is however very offensive, so if you're weak in the knees, at work or somehow offended by hats, take a pass. Otherwise:

NSFW - but it's soooo funny... (Team Fortress 2 Machinima)

2008-01-16T07:59:00.001-06:00

I'm all big on the Steam, and the Valve and the Team Fortress 2. I've been playing with The Geef's regular group since before Christmas. Now this here is not typical of either the way we play (where I mostly get pwned) or my WAJ, but man is it funny.

Hellgate: London - Out of the Box

2008-01-15T08:40:00.000-06:00

Ok , it's a Diablo clone. But it's a high fidelity clone, and that's all that really matters. It caters to two key game mechanics - kill monsters, get better loot. It has classes and skills, and even a pseudo MMO mode, but that's not what it's about. Kill monsters, get better loot.

This key formula can keep me enthralled for months.

Yes the concept is a somewhat interesting post apocalypse. Demons have invaded. From hell. It's not as ridiculous if you say aliens from another dimension? Any ways, I haven't played through the campaign so I won't give my full comments yet. I also haven't tried all three character types fully, so I'll reserve on that as well. But if you have a machine that can run it, and it's fully Larry compatible by the way, it's got shed loads of style. An loot. Lots of loot.

Cool to try

2008-01-07T14:31:00.000-06:00

If you have some free time (about half an hour or so), you should try this. The Penny Arcade guys have been putting together a Podcast of the comic creation. The one I just listened to is pretty funny, If you're on the Gabe/Tycho wavelength. But whats really cool is they actually hammer out the comic on the podcast. So I listened to the 'cast with the comic in question in view. And you can sense the design coming together.

Ok, it appeals to the wannabe in me.
This comic and this podcast are what you need to try it.

Go.

(Oh, uncharacteristic so NSFW, btw.)

(Non) Interactive Fiction

2008-01-06T10:50:00.000-06:00

You have entered a room. There are two obvious exits, one north and one south. This room has no distinguishing features.

>examine room

This room has no distinguishing features.

>n

Sitting Room

You have entered a Sitting Room. That is to say the room itself is intended for sitting, not that the room has somehow, in an anthropomorphic way, managed to sit down. The room features a fireplace, a chesterfield, a chair, a coffee table (lacking coffee). A small stack of what appear to be Gardening Magazines lies on the table. There is a doorway leading south. There are picture windows on the north and east walls. The room is lit by the windows only. You notice a fine layer of dust on everything.

>examine table

Sitting Room - Examining the Table
The table is simple coffee table, constructed of wood. It's age is difficult to determine. There is a stack of Gardening Magazines on the table. The table appears to have a fine layer of dust on it, which would seem to indicate that it has not be disturbed for some time.

>take magazines

Sitting Room - taking the stack of Gardening Magazines
After a few attempts you determine that the stack of Gardening Magazines will not fit in your pocket. You re stack them on the coffee table. The dust on the coffee table is slightly disturbed.

>examine dust

Sitting Room - examining dust
The dust seems to be disturbed. But not in a bad way. In fact it's calmed down quite a bit now.

>examine fireplace

Sitting Room - examining fireplace
The fireplace is empty, if somewhat sooty. You note a distinct lack of logs, kindling or other materials to burn. And don't even think about the magazines.

Metrics

2008-01-04T16:56:00.001-06:00

I really wish Blogger gave metrics. It actually makes me crazy that I have no idea if anyone reads my blog. Well, I know there are people who read it regularly. But they're mostly in the room, as it were.

On the other hand, the one metric I have access to actually causes alarm. 333 hits on my profile. Less the about 20 times I've viewed it to look at what I put there, usually after changing it, and I've got about 313 hits. That's about 310 more than I would have expected.

Using a fuzzy derivation of logic, I can extend that to mean a whole whack more people have been here than I expected. Or one of you has become horribly obsessed with the terrible picture of me, but can't work out how to "right click and save". I'm going with the former, honestly I'm too terrified to consider the latter. I guess that based on the idea that only a fraction of people reading posts click on the profile link.

I also wish I knew how to impose more control on the template. I really would like to jazz the place up with a more unique font, for example.

Yes this is related to the upcoming anniversary post. I will have a better sum of the year at that time. Until then, WAJ on my friends, WAJ on.