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PSP: Why 'mod' (reflash with customer/hacked firmware) your PSP?
Tue, 15 Jul 2008

This comes up on occasion, so I thought I might put a reply here rather than in private; doubly so since I've always pushed for folks to consider ethical and legal implications of their actions and have probably ranted on it before. (ie: As software developers, I believe we must be careful to do the Right Thing, since the implications of our work could cause much aggravation or annoyance. This is why it should always default to 'No' to the question 'Do you wish to format your hard drive?' More, it comes up with increasing frequency in todays busy business world and sometimes we have to stand up for the user and consumer, right?)

Anyway, for purposes of this discussion, 'modding' refers to simply reflashing your PSP game consoles firmware.. something Sony will ask you to do all the time, as they publish updates. The trick is, you can reflash it with Sony's official firmwares, or the more questionable firmware 'mods' you can download online.

First.. why would you do it, knowing there is some risk you might do it wrong and 'brick' (kill) your device?

(Note that nowadays there is little risk; even if 'bricked', you can usually unbrick your device trivially.)

There are more things as well, but that should cover why most people do it. I'm not going to go into how, as it can be easy or a right pain depending on your skill set, if you know someone who has done it, and so on. Ask me if you want some instruction and maybe I can sort it out for you but in general I worked out some methods for myself and do that. I don't really follow 'the scene' as it takes a lot of time, and 3/4 of the sceners are idiot kiddies :) (This is one thing I've commented on before.. when you get into some of these things for all the right reasons, you still have to be mindful that others are less kocher than yourself, like going to a seedier hotel.)

Anyway, all the above is just sillyness.. I really only wanted to pass a few notes to a friend, which would be:

So all this verbiage above serves merely to confuse anyone reading. But there you go.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psp ] [link] [Comments]

Retro: EAMON, one of the earliest CRPGs
Fri, 11 Jul 2008

The term CRPG refers to Computer-based Role Playing Games, such as the current Oblivion, but tracing back through Eye of the Beholder and back to Temple of Apshai and so on. The earliest examples were more text based due to their mainframe origins, and later the slow transmission rates of modems. Enter EAMON .. I've not done any history lookups here but its going back to the Apple 2 days, and I experienced it on the almighty Atari ST .. so back around 1987 or so I'd guess I fiddled with the system.

As fans of "Choose Your Own Adventure" style books (Steve Jackson ftw!), my brother was an aspiring adventure author at the time, putting together little adventure novellas on pads of paper. (You number each page, and at the end of a given page you have options that give you page numbers to turn to should you take that action. The pages are randomized to make it hard to guess where a given series of actoins may lead. Ultimately there are numerous plot endings, but usually more than a few times your character gets killed along the way, forcing you to re-start. Fun stuff.) I remember going through the Public Domain archives of local groups, and through BBS file listings all over the province (racking up huge bills all the time through long distnace charges), trying to find (well, to be honest, pirated games) some adventure authoring tools for him. There were a few systems, including EAMON, but they were just too complicated for us. Still, I remember playing a few EAMON games.

Well, t'other day I stumbled across EAMON Deluxe, a port of the EAMON system to DOS a decade back. The beauty of this is that you can still run it today on your modern PC (and hopefully someday he'll release the source so that it can be brought to Mac, Linux and so forth.) You could always fire up an emulator (Atari ST, Apple 2, C64 and so on) and play the games there but this makes things pretty easy.

Further, the lad has pulled all the many EAMON adventures together into a big archive, including user supplied reviews of the adventures. Now, I should note that EAMON was not a game.. it was a system, supplied with a few simple text adventure games. But the author supplied tools to make your own adventures and many did.. so there are literally hundreds of additional goofy little text adventures. (These are of different style than the pure "IF" Interactive Fiction games I've gone on about before; those are pure adventure games with no dice rolling, no skills per se and include such classics as Zork or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. EAMON is one of the first CRPGs, in that you play a character who increases in powers and gold and gear and so on over playtime, and also is a less lofty academic pursuit; the EAMON gamelets are not novellas in adventure form, but early examples of kill-and-loot games.) Fun for short bursts, which hits a certain spot in my heart.

One facet of the system I admire is this .. you have a character and you pick an adventure to play through; the character persists between adventure gamelets.. so while you might be in a fantasy gamelet (the majority) one time, the next could be sci-fi. The EAMON system defines the system, and suggests certain damage levels.. so while a new player might have 20 hit points before dieing, a slight damage hit is 1 damage, while a heavier stroke is 2 or 3 points, say. So you take your character including gear game to game and grow him over the lifespan, regardless of the actual adventure the character is in.

That is pretty ahead of its time.

Anyway, if you want to try a quck text hack and slash game, that plays and feels like a light text adventure, and definately hardcore retro.. EAMON could be just the thing.

I may just have to look around for some source.. porting this to a handheld could rock my socks :)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / retro ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Age of Conan MMORPG
Fri, 27 Jun 2008

Updated end of month; see below

(Aside, I'm working on a new, extra crappy simple blogging system. Fun stuff for a couple hours.)

World of Warcraft pretty much took over the "MMORPG" (multiplayer life-destroying role playing games) market, with millions of players (literally.) Thankfully other companies have attempted to get into the market as well, with most being destroyed in the process.. but competition is good. Funcom's Age of Conan is the new darling on the block, the one that will possibly dent WoW a trifle (not likely can anything dethrone WoW besides apathy which will come in time, but if any game is to get on the radar it will be AoC, or perhaps the upcoming Warhammer Online.)

AoC does a number of things right, and a whole lot of things wrong.. but in this particular market that is more the norm; the UI needs work, there are lots of bugs, etc and so on but it will evolve over time, if the players give it that much rope.. and with the voume of units sold (already a million IIRC) then it should have the momentum to carry on for awhile. Good.. competition is good, and they at least are innovating in a few ways (not many, but a few.. enough to keep things fun. Good job Funcom!)

See more ...

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / pc / mmorpg ] [link] [Comments]

Absurb: A site for cops to bitch when they get ticketed by another cop?
Mon, 28 Jan 2008

Its a strange insight into how some cops think when you can see how they gitch about their fellow officers. Its cool to see a little bit of how they operate in a classy way, and its bizarre to see some who act like children when some mere mortal tries to pull over their holier than thou asses. These seem like the guys who give cops a bad name, but it is an interesting read.

A sample I found amusing..

I really didn't mind the ticket once I knew I was getting one. I've written thousands and is it really that bad?? The thing that bothers me is 1) she showed no respect for me. All the years I have worked, the different units I've been on, the shitheads that I have arrested didn't mean squat to her. I've given breaks before for people doing 19 miles over the limit. I have even let one go for doing 150+ on LSD. She didn't know this and that's the whole idea! She should have given me the break knowing that I go out there everyday and risk my life. I wouldn't have given her a ticket!

See http://www.copswritingcops.com/home.html

[ Category: / entertainment / absurd ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: When given a moment.. what to do?
Mon, 21 Jan 2008

I must admit that I've always been a gamer wannabe. I mean, as a kid growing up I was heavy into tabletop wargames: board games like Risk, Axis and Allies and Supremacy and so on, or wargames such as Battletech. Even throw in some AD&D and Rolemaster for good measure, to help establish my geek cred. Later as I got more into coding the real game began.. well, to be creating games, and far too many BBSes, and games for BBSes.

I pretty much skipped the Super Nintendo and Genesis years and didn't really game much except for a few classics on the Atari ST and early PC... Phantasie, Sim City, Civilization, and Wizardry.. but really, as Tuxedo was heard to say so many moons ago.. "the only real game you need is gcc." (Nerd in-joke of the year.) I'd extend that to be any compiler I could buy or steal, since I was basicly hooked like a junkie on honey. And any SSI or Westwood Associates game. Anyway, I'll stop ubergeeking any second now.

The last few years I've definately indulged here and there, but as always basicly spent most of my time coding.. business applications, backends, middleware, and of course handhelds and games. I've always said I'm a great fan of gaming in the same way a football fan is a fan of that sport. Read the news, follow whats going on, and eat a lot of popcorn, occasionally playing the real thing and getting creamed by the pros.

So I buy lots of games, play them for a night or two, and move onto the next thing.. more coding, or something. Anyway. I like to want to play games but never did actually played them much.. just perpetually had a long list of 'if I only had a few more minutes I'd fire that up and relax.'

Nowadays, I desparately need to relax a little :) But when I do get a few minutes, or even an hour or two (expecting to be interupted a few times therein).. a bit of panic happens. What to do now? A year ago I had my evenings planned.. but now.. uh, what? I'm not used to this 'free time' thing I've heard about..

Other beings are human and chose this moment to watch pay per view movies with their spouse; I try, but sometimes I've just got the itch.. the need to hunt my prey on the battlefield. I should've watched Spiderman 3 with my wife the other night, but I just had to kill some elves. *shrug* Sometimes I'm only half human.

Anyway, that all said .. I still don't have very much time, but the baby does sleep a little bit now (only till 11 or 12, so as to keep us up all night but mercifully she's decided we're allowed to catch a bit of TV before we pretend to retire for the night.) So I've been spending some late night time (theres a lot of that) trying to sort out .. if I was to game, for an hour or two, or maybe just 10 minutes, what should I play?

As a huge retro fan, thats a tough question since its across the breadth of gaming, and not just the last year like most normal schmucks. But at least for this discussion we can narrow to halfway recent titles as I've already installed some retro on my devices.. Dungeon Master 1 and 2, Eye of the Beholder series, Phantasie 2 and 3, Wizardry 7 and 8. I'm good on that count.

For very short matches I can pull out a handheld (as a handheld dev, I have a bunch) so I can fire up Field Commander or Jeanne d'Arc on the PSP, or maybe Ratchet and Clank or something. I'd like to copy over some Battlestar Galactica, or Dr. Who, or My Name is Earl (despite the scientology ties) or this new Terminator TV series. So handhelds and short bursts are covered. This then leaves thoughts for if I have more than a few minutes..

Strategy games; going back to my wargaming youth, I've been a LONG term fan of the Civilization series (such as Civ IV) and other similar games.. Galactic Civilization II (not related to just-Civ) is very good. Going back a few years, the Panzer General or Master of Magic games all good too. Lots of good strategy games out there. (I don't count RTS' like Starcraft strategy at all, but they're good in their own way.. just too fast for these bones nowadays :) I really want to keep my Civ IV love going, but I think I cannot stomach the long games .. when each match takes 10 or 20 hours, thats just more than I can afford.. it'd take me months for each match.

Action; Over the year I did manage to squeeze in a couple must-plays such as Portal and Halflife 2's expansion packs. At 5-6 hours each they only took me a couple months to handle each one (*sigh*), but great times. As such maybe I should keep going into Team Fortress 2 or Call of Duty 4.. fantastic looking and playing, and lots of action. Pretty tempting there, but definately need a good block of time (by which I mean an hour or two) for these. Definately on the table still. Maybe Thief III .. stealth games usually let you hide your character and screw off in real life for awhile so thats pretty handy nowadays, and really.. stealth games are not about the action, but about the puzzling -- action is just one of the tools where the player manipulates the world to a useful state. Good times.

I've got a UMPC now through one of my dev channels .. a small PC. Not a PDA per se, since it doesn't run a custom OS like PDAs do.. it runs honest to god full OSes, so can run old games. Not modern ones, but games up through a few years ago might run on it, and still be portable and quiet.. so much so as to be playable while holding a sleeping baby. Win! So this brings in the 3+ year old games... not retro per se, but getting there. Perhaps I need to look into Icewind Dale, try to finish Baldurs Gate, or fire up Neverwinter Nights. Or maybe MAX, Mechanized Assault and Explore. Hmm... so many options.

I'll figure something out. But as you can see.. its more about the choices than the playing. Thats my curse. Why play when you can code, or think about playing?

Course, even just installing a game onto a UMPC (with no optical drive), and running it without its protection freaking out, is a chore. Thats a game, too.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / life ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Console sales up through end of December 2007.. whose winning?
Mon, 21 Jan 2008

It can sometimes be hard to find the information, so I thought I'd copy it here, from my ruthless needs. Swiped from Kotaku.

2007 Total Hardware Sales

Lifetime-To-Date Total Hardware Sales

I think the PSP Slim has that line a lot, but it always sounded like the platform was a fail; in reality, if the DS is flying off the shelves like hotcakes, and the PSP is more than half of DS sales, its by definition doing 'okay.' But with Wii sales as they seem to be doing, watch out XBox 360!

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / statistics ] [link] [Comments]

Ent-Politics: U.S. Priorities demystified
Tue, 11 Dec 2007

After a recent brief trip across the border, I would like to offer up the following:

  1. Firearms (hunting rifles, say) can be found on the shelf (Walmart.)
  2. Alcohol is found on the shelf (every other store.)
  3. Prophylactics are within locked glass enclosures (K-Mart.)

Neo-con agenda explained!

Now, one thing I should add -- crossing into the US via the Peace Bridge and back out via the Rainbow Bridge, there was no line-up whatsoever (great timing eh?) On the way in they looked at our birth certificates and waved us in, taking all of 30 seconds. On the way back into Canada the friendly border agent didn't even take our ID at all. With all the horror stories of security nightmares, it makes you wonder ..

[ Category: / entertainment / politics ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Valve's _Portal_ in review
Mon, 15 Oct 2007

Portal has the potential. Like chocolate. It knows things. Sadly, this latest title from mighty Valve of Halflife fame, is only scratching a surface where lay many itches in waiting.

(Portal is I think available only in The Orange Box, a collection including the aforementioned Halflife 2 title and so forth, plus Team Fortress 2, and all at a very compelling price. Sure, you have to bend over for the Steam system to violate your machine, but fine.. games downloading in background direct to your spinal column, is oft worth the discomfort. Or you can buy the XBox 360 version.)

Anyway, Portal is probably unique among games (how rare is that?) since it is really a puzzle game implemented within a first person shooter. Doubleplusgood. The central puzzle is that your avatar, standing at the front of some strange room, must be brought to an exit at the other end.. where 'end' is defined as somewhere else in the 3d-space instead of being opposite you. What sets this apart is the method of control the player imposes over his world is via a portal gun - a device that lets the player place two circular entrances into a wormhole into the world. Think of it like this -- placing a portal on a wall beside you and also down the hall on the floor means you could then walk into the wall and end up walking up and out of the floor by the by. Momentum is maintained, so if you jump through the wall on an angle, you'll fly out of the floor at that angle relative to the portals position on the floor. Neat. And immediately usable, as if a new limb on your body.

Suffice to say this simple mechanism is really compelling. I found myself looking at a long corridor to walk down and thinking immediately 'hell with this' .. drop a portal on one wall and a wall at the end, step through and turn around and keep going, instantly saving a few seconds of treading about. A tool like this you would simply make use of in every day life should it turn up. Second nature.

Naturally, the game puzzles are more complex than than that -- you'll find yourself dodging gun turrets (or dropping them through floors), falling onto floors several stories down so that you can vault high over some obstacle, or climbing around strange 3d rooms laid out like a jenga tower, not in any sensible square like we use. Its fantastic. Sometimes reactions must be quick as you'll be placing portals just in time to capture and repoing something, then flinging yourself through the air to an exit and so forth, but its all good. If something seems really hard and out of place, you're probably doing it the hard way. Without revealing anything, a few times I found msyelf up against somethign seemingly twitchy and hard, then realizing I could totally circumvent it via some clever placement of portals. The imagination reels with options, but Valve has very carefully constrained the levels so you can't be done them in mere seconds.. no, you must use strategy, delicious delicious strategy.

The problem is that Portal is really short. 19 levels, where the first 10 are really just two minute trainers to get you used to travelling in this erratic way. So really, we're talking about 9 or 10 actual levels, each relatively unique, that you can complete in 5 or 10 minutes. So in total, a couple hours gameplay. Still, considering this is one small part of a cheap pacakge its worth the money.. but its a steak dinner without the potatos -- you are left wanting.

I commend Valve for their usual high quality; each main level presents a new theme, and they exploit it in that session and move on. Most games would flog each theme for dozens of levels each. But in this one case, I would _love_ to see more.. even of the same. Just a few more levels without waiting for the modding community. With how short the game is, one can only assume Valve was really just being lazy.. rather assuming the modders would make their content for them rather than meeting half way. In this day and age it is difficult to go the right distance .. to provide enough content to be good, without going too far and delaying indefinately or spending too much and all that. But this is enough to make one mad.

I mean really.. if I can complete the game over a couple of very short sessions, it means someone with normal human free time could knock it off in one evening. Thats pretty sad for a title with such huge potential.

The Orange Box is excellent value, and all the games therein are fantastic.. but don't be lazy, GabeValve. Where'd those years of development go? There must be dozens of half baked levels lieing around.. you going to troll them out over months? bleh. I suppose with how little free time I have this is nice in a way.. a game I can finish! But 99% of the rest of the world expendable time.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / pc ] [link] [Comments]

Cinema: A couple very brief reviews
Mon, 24 Sep 2007

As the baby rounds past the 6mo mark we're slowly growing accustomed to our new form of what normal is. There have been some 'deer-in-the-headlights' moments when the theatres show movies we wish to see and likely won't for quite some time, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how things have shaken out. I even made a point of sitting down with my laptop to catch a couple of films. That was something.

I meant to post longer reviews after I'd seen the films, but alas time has been fleeting. At least I got to see some :)

300

Well, sometimes all of us just have to enjoy movies about big sweaty gladiators. As a kid, I was veritably steeped in Spartan city-state lore so I was even vaguely aware of the recorded history about the battle depicted in this film. But really I just wanted to see it because Frank Miller (of graphic novel fame, such as Sin City which you may have also seen a movie translation of) wrote it. (I'd like to insert a snide comment about Robert Jordans death too, but mother said I should speak positive words of other people.) Anyway, its all CG action, has great beards, shows some excellent shields mashing excellent opponent faces. Its a story of 300 (and some) versus an army 20 times that size.. but they're Spartan, and they kick ass. Its like Die Hard with spears. Awesome. (Again I meant to have some sweeping tear-inducing epic of review, but in the end, sleep dep leads to this mess :)

Hot Fuzz

Just awesome. This comes from the folks who created Shaun of the Dead so it had to be just excellent, and it is. See it now! Essentially three movements in this film -- first, the story of a sueprcop in London who makes his compatriots look bad so is shipped to a quiet little village. The dialog is snappy and with some plays-on-a-theme it works out very nicely to show the copper going stircrazy, seeing crime in every facet of every day life. The second movement is really where he does find crime in every corner of the place, and mayhem breaks out. Lastly, the final movement is where they start pwning old lady faces. You just can't get enough of two fisted pistol shootouts with old ladies, right? Again, the sleep dep changes whats in my mind to what comes out of my fingers but suffice to say - the film is quirky and subtle with fun dialog, and leads through, just as Shaun did, amusing unusual circumstances. With violence and laughs. I love these guys.

[ Category: / entertainment / cinema ] [link] [Comments]

Entertainment: Does the bad guy ever win?
Sun, 15 Jul 2007

After having just watched the latest Harry Potter film installment (in Oshawa of all places, where we derived the Punch-Mullet game), I begin to wonder.. does the bad guy ever win?

Now, I don't refer to those fine books where the bad guy is the hero (a certain Vlad Taltos comes to mind) -- I'm talking the actual opponent, the enemy, the great evil, the aggressor. Maybe he's even the good guy in the case of an anti-hero. But the other-side of the fence?

I know a number of short stories where this occurs (I Have No Mouth Yet I Must Scream for example).

[ Category: / entertainment ] [link] [Comments]

Arcade: One time, when I was in band camp..
Thu, 17 May 2007

This memory came up in IRC, so I thought I would record it here for the longer term.

Back when I was a fairly motivated coin-operated-machine collector, I knew a lot of folks either in the industry (bar owners, arcade operators, etc) or other collectors. It can be a strange hobby since you're either a leach trying for the cheapest price at an auction or lording over a destitute and bankrupt former-bar-owner. That or driving all over the countryside looking in shitty shops with rusty Coca Cola signs for filthy machines featuring silver ownership stickers with phone numbers you can call^h^h^h^hharass. Or bumping into 12 year olds whose cool old Dad had given him a rare Joust 2 machine worth thousands but finding out the kid painted black over the artwork and put a copy-board of Street Fighter 2 in. Anyway, thats another story, but suffice to say you call and bug people enough, and eventually you find some cool old codger with a 20 year old junked motorhome half buried in his backyard, stuffed to the brim with PCB-gold.

This one old fellah I used to bump into regularly at the local coin-op auction had a whole farm of treasures; he claimed to have hung around with The Beatles back in the day, and sure had a party bus buried in his backyard stuffed with one armed bandits and other awesome junk. His whole house was decked with classy gadgetry, but that too is another story.

My tunnel vision, after side-stepping his muddy guard dogs, focused clearly on his Barn. An entire barn stuffed with arcade cabinets and gear from when he ran a route and collected from the auctions over a decade or two. GOLD. The entire main floor were just cabs, as he was fond of removing the PCB (the game gutts) or collecting original cabs and putting PCBs into them. These weren't "generic cabs" but "deds" (dedicated cabs). (A Pacman machine had a Pacman cabinet, where as many later games were just generic cabinets with the decals laid on.) There was no space to walk, and everything was covered with a sheen of dust, and you could smell the .. musty barnyard odours everywhere. It was awesome, like Indiana Jones laying eyes on the gold idol. Wtih so little space, to get around one climbed up atop the machines and worked slowly across by hopping machine to machine, and as anyone whose every been to an arcade can remind you -- the tops are not flat. I distinctly recall loosing my footing and nearly falling through between a swift (?) of Star Trek (a classy vector game IIRC) cabinets.

Anyway, we worked our way across the mosaic of cabinets until reaching a wooden ladder for climing up to the open second floor, where a hill of PCBs (the game brains) lied piled atop each other willy nilly. Being a geek I tend to keep my work area orderly, and my electronics far too clean. (Ask anyone with greasy palms who goes near my PDAs and game consoles..) Seeing a stack of hundreds of PCBs just lieing around in the open air hurts the soul. After taking it all in, with rays of light piercing through holes in the wooden ceiling, I noticed a distinct pile aside the others, all neatly in a tower. They were just Atari vector PCBs (which are unmistakable to any who've seen them.) A stack of some 20 or 30 of them. Now, I mention all of this since it is burned ito my mind -- if you can see your way, lit by holes in the ceiling, you already know that the rain has been in. All of these PCBs were seeping a nice rusty puddle and surely most were ruined.

Brutal.

Anyway, he did have mounds of cool stuff that functioned, so I had picked up a dozen various game PCBs for my collection; he even somehow foisted a box of unknown boards on me so I could rip out the chips and find out which games they were. (Like fingerprint reading from the code on the chips.) Fine. He wasn't cheap either since he knew collectors were interested in this stuff, but he gave me an alright bulk deal.

The reason I write all of this is here; I don't recall if this event was the same day or another day, as I did drop by a couple of times total, but nomatter. This one occasion, he (call him Bob, since that was his name) asked, friendly-like -- "Any particlar game you've been looking for and not found? I've probably got it..."

So, says I, "Quartet." Its not really rare, but its certainly uncommon and over all the thousands of boards I'd seen I've never encountered one in the wild.

Bob, without even breaking eye contact (this is how I remember it ;), reaches over to his right into a set of slots on the wall (a customized PCB breeding area I'm sure) and draws out a mint condition Quartet 2 game PCB.

It was gorramned Kreskin.

The best, the absolute best, was the shit eating grin he had. Knowing I'd just driven an hour into the farmland boons and cralwed around a filthy barn, and he had a game he knew I'd searched for on and off for a couple years. He thought he had it.

Well, fuck him I thought; I had a game he'd been looking for a couple years for too, and it was dirt common and he didn't know that. Asshole wasn't going to give me a reacharound that day.

But for a minute, he thought he was The King.

But I was the sandwhich.

Later, he showed me where he got rid of the machines deemed to be of no use.. no value for resale, or too much trouble to fix or move. He'd fire them. He was more businessman than collector, like I, so it hurt.

We were negotiating the value and price of the things I'd picked from his Unibomber-like stockpiles. He had the advantage, for while I was the greasy sammich of his destruction, he was the guy with a Space Duel cabinet on fire, burning away behind him while I merely looked on over his shoulder.

That was my #2 game, that I'd always wanted.

Asshole.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / arcade ] [link] [Comments]

Baalzebush: Is this for real? Stunning. Just awesome. Awesome to the max.
Thu, 17 May 2007

I heard a quote, and wasn't sure so headed onto our friend Google (obviously the prime tool for terrorasts.) I'm sure this is a real site, I mean, Teh Real Whitehouse, because you just can't make up this stuff

They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Dubya. You da man.

[ Category: / entertainment / politics ] [link] [Comments]

Live: <Gurgle> Evil Dead, Musical?
Thu, 17 May 2007

So much to say and that should've been said about being a new dad and loving life and never sleeping, but with life so busy that stuff is all so easily passed by. But this. This.

Evil Dead - The Musical I have no mouth, and I must scream.

[ Category: / entertainment / live ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Where are the old school RPGs?
Sun, 06 May 2007

The baby is keeping us pretty busy so not so many posts of late, but I just have to squeeze this one in. Got five hours of sleep last night (not bad!) but taking a break from baby laundry and vacuuming to listen in on the new Rush album ('Snakes and Arrows') so I've got a moment to type. I've got the late-night shift and hate to sleep in bite-sized chunks so just stay up through two or through a.m. then go for a good coma before work. During that a.m. shift if the baby is sleeping nicely I can usually catch a bit of low volume TV but occasionally my brain is functional enough to debug my new game a little bit, or better still.. play a game. Rare pleasures indeed! This is where the PSP and such has turned in handy.. instant on and off.

Anyway, I find myself looking for a good single player old-school RPG. I've mentioned before there being at least two schools of this sort of game -- Japanese style (or J-RPG) and Everyone Else style. I'm not so into J-RPGs where you're walking a predetermined story and have overworld versus tactical turn based isometric combat. I'm a dungeon crawler. To this very day I miss Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Wizardry, you name it. Back in the day there were dozens of RPGs at any given moment.

Not that long ago we had a lot of great titles .. Baldur's Gate, heck even Wizardry 8 and the Might and Magic games. The latest Elder Scrolls game - Oblivion - looked like a recent game to scratch the dungeon romping stat-managing equipment gathering itch, but alas it puts too high a demand on my meagre machine (during real time combat, even with Oldblivion mod) for me to much get into it. There are the Neverwinter Nights games as well I suppose, so there are a couple of notable RPG entries of late. I suppose Thief III needs mentioning; not an RPG per se, but you do get to sneak around in first person stealing wallets from the unwary. Not bad.

I worry the MMORPG industry is really hurting the solo RPG one; not all of us have time (anymore ;) for such games that are designed to require real investments of life (thousands of hours very literally), yet they do have crazy stat management and gathering going on, appealing to our gamer inner core. You just can't solo a dungeon therein.

Anyway, I suppose I've half defeated my question but something is missing. No more Ultima? No more Wizardry with Sir-Tech long gone under. No more Eye of the Beholder. I refuse to see the truth, that the days of manually clicking on inventory slots in your solo backpack are gone. I like crawling through a dank dungeon, looking for secret buttons to open passage sinto the lairs of Crom-only-knows-what seeking better lootz. I want The Sword of Fargoal Undieing Firestrength to grant my Strength +10 damnit.

Given a two year old laptop, any good RPGs out there? (Yes as a retro nutjob, I know very well I can run games from just a few years ago, to a couple decades back. Now while PC gaming is down (and on a rebirth in my humble opinion!), we still have Civilization and Galactic Civilization waving the strategy flags; Dawn of War and Warhammer and good ol' Command and Conquer for RTS.)

Anyway, I'm just rambling away; sorry about that.. not nearly enough sleep the last little while :) (And I know I know, we should get a Wii and/or XBox 360 for our game fixes. Too bad, we're cheap :)

So if you can .. riddle me this -- where are the old school RPGs?

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Gaming: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Sun, 25 Mar 2007

Normally I'd open up a review with a haiku, but I'm pretty beat right now. Permit me to be brief and provide the Pulp-free version of a blog entry.

Yes yes, I'm taking some time to write up something, and also admitting that while caring for this amazing baby, I've found a few minutes here or there to play a game. Not much, but a little :) Permit my sleep-dep to ramble, and don't mind the total lack of structure please :)

Puzzle Quest is a new game for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS; it combines some elements of classic RPG's with a popular puzzle game in a smorgesbord of 2D fun. Interestingly, it works. There are really two or three kinds of RPGs .. the Japanese style (J-RPG) with its emphasis on story and console flavoring, and all the others where you have stats, item databases, and dungeon romping without a plot. Mixing with these formulas tends to annoy the faithful.. but this cuncoction is pretty darned slick. Peanut butter and chocolate.

RPG-wise its fairly simple -- you're a hero, you have to walk around an 'over world' doing quests. Standard issue. A dude in one city (blotch on the map) tells you to kill some monster in some other place (another blotch), so you wander on over and do your business. Theres a fair number of other things you can do to keep things interesting - shop for gear, build a castle, add a dungeon to your castle to capture folks to torture skills out of, and other such things. All is presented with a simple UI to get to the point, rather than hinder you with a lot of effort. Now, a lot of us play RPGs for all the effort but thats not what Puzzle Quest is about -- its a boiled down RPG for the sake of propelling you from encounter to encounter, and to provide a framework for spells and gear and such to make sense. Its like a boardgame version of an RPG, when you move your chit around picking up interesting abilities and gear, then go woop some ass. You don't go into any 3D-dungeons or the like.

Combat and research and such are all performed through variants of one puzzle game. Folks will be most familiar with it as Bejewelled, but that game certainly isn't the origin of that puzzle style. Anyway, while in those games the goal is simply to clear the board by matching alike pieces, in Puzzle Quest there is infinite depth built atop this base. Matching coloured gems removes them from the board and gives your character mana with which spells can be cast. Clear red gems to get red (fire) mana for instance. Clearing other items causes direct damage to the enemy, or gives you cash, or experience for levelling up. As you level up you get new abilities (depending on your class), and all this mana is used to fire off spells. For instance.. match 3 skulls to cause some damage directly to the enemy, or collect some (say) red and green mana and fire off an attack spell or effect.

The Warrior class for instance has abilities that turn this mana into direct attacks usually, or influence the board to effect it; ie: One ability clears a small region of the board (the squares around the target square), which can be handy so you can wait for a certain board layout and whammo it rather than working piece by piece. The Druid class is more healing oriented than direct damage, so spends its time manipulating the board, delaying the enemies moves, or healing itself. Where a Druid plods along doing slower damage to the enemy, or messing up his attacks, the Warrior is all about trying to pounce on the skull-blocks or do damage spells. Less survival in weird encounters, but everything moves along quickly. Fights are longer for the healer, but more 'under control' so gameplay feels different. Theres some depth to it .. not just the same thing over and over a la Bejewelled.. here you're working towards building sufficient mana types to fire off a spell or combo, while looking ahead to poach the pieces the enemy might need. Set yourself up with a multi-move set of combos, or work on building experience and gold for levelling up instead of going right for the enemy throat. Enemies vary in ability -- a spider can 'web' your character so you lose some turns, while a thief might steal some of your gold or do surprise attacks. All these many things occur on the game board. Cool stuff.

All in all, you're spending 90% of your time playing a Bejewelled-like game that works within the questing and adventuring framework familiar to J-RPGs. Nothing too serious, but pretty darned entertaining. Lots of cool items to buy and things to do.

And since each match is quick (5-20mins), you can play in the middle of the night between bouts of crying. Baby crying I mean. Usually, anyway ;)

I like it. I like serious RPGs usually, but I've not the time to read the back of the box of one these days. This hits the RPG and puzzle fetish in weird yet satisfyingly kinky ways.

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Music: Well, what in the name of the three rings of ferber? Er, Lullaby Renditions of NIN
Sun, 18 Mar 2007

Some days you just miss things that are obvious, while other times you accidentally tread into a doorway others have passed by for years. (Ideally when this occurs, you type 'look' and are told by the dungeon master you're either in the land of the troglo-humans or the dimension of supermodel-bimbos.) This day, however, my brother in law tread to my door and handed me this item pictured below .. an item scarcily believed to exist until it lay clutched in my sweaty fingers, like the last chocolate bar in a world where vermin destroyed the cocoa crop forever. <-- yes yes my friends, the sleep deprivation talks.

Now, I've not actually listened to it yet, but soon enough my dear friends. For now I must snuff in its . Should you flip over this CD, you see such wondrous words as 'glockenspiel', and a word that oozes 70s .. 'mellotron'. Or maybe the mellotron is the bad guy in the Transformers, I'm not sure anymore.

BTW, yes, I debated the 'baby' versus 'music' category. I might listen to this in the presence of non-unimonthians, so here it goes.

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Gaming: When did it change?
Sat, 17 Feb 2007

You see, I post one article and out pops another. Funny how that is. The rants are on people!

A thought pops into my head: A lot of games you finish (be it at the end or just when you've had enough) with relief, while others you genuinely enjoy or miss upon completion. A hearty 'wtf' to the former.

When Half Life 2 came out I thought I'd pick it up as I'd ignored much of the genre before that. A few weeks later when I emerged from the bleery eyed depths, terribly afraid of zombies and head-suckers, I was pretty spent. Good times.

RPGs are famous for 'the grind', and frankly its not an RPG to me unless you need to level up, spend time in (non-meaningless) dungeons and obsess over item statistics. I'm happy with this, and demand it, but the pacing must be ever so carefully managed lest it turn boring or tedious. As long as they play out like Dungeon Master or Wizardry, I'm golden.

I know the "MMO"s out there (for non-gamers, think Everquest, the marriage ruiner of the early 2000's) are basicly just cesspools of life destroying grind. They charge by the month, like a magazine, so they just want you to hang around. They reward grinders, people who spend serious time to get anywhere. After all, shouldn't people who play 800 hours a month win.. win more than sensible humans? A complex question that, but the answer is -- as long as they pay. (Its not about winning you see, its about keeping you around grinding - sure you get the good parts every once in awhile, like a Pavlovian experiment. In between, you get to grind away like a job at the laundromat.) These games are fun (if they weren't, lives would not be destroyed. We all know everything worth doing is worth destroying a life over, right?), but they cross over -- when you hit the wall and break away, are you more relieved than anything?

Metal Gear Solid would be a good game, were it not for the thirty-seven gajillion Cut-Scenes of Intense Boredom +5. Final Fantasy too .. too. And don't think esteemed franchises such as Gran Turismo are immune from this vinegar ... what were they thinking when introduced concepts whereby the player has to earn his licenses to get anywhere good? For that matter, easter eggs in games are awesome.. but this recent trend requiring you to clear a game in certain speeds or certain completions to 'unlock' the extras.....

Theres a lot of really great computer and console gaming going on, but go talk to Eugene Jarvis of Robotron game. Or Sid Meiers of Civilization. Get to the good parts, the interesting parts fast. We don't need to be all powerful up front, but we want to be immersed, we want to see the meat before the sun sets. We want to play, and go out for drinks afterwards. Sure, we might want to be able to play 160 hours a month like a full time job, but we do not want you to build that mechanic right in. And, one last thing -- didn't button mashing go out of vogue with Street Fighter and Everquest? I'm looking at you Blizzard.

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Cinema: _The Goonies_ - its full of awesome
Sat, 17 Feb 2007

Sorry, been an entire month since last I wrote; its been busy, I tell you.

Our little one is due in about 5 days (though rarely do they arrive on the due date itself I'm told.) I expect some day the child will look up with big eyes and ask 'What was it like when you were growing up, old man?' I know now a reply that can come easily: 'There was pirate booty, mutants, mafiaso and video games'. When the child shakes his head with disgust, I'll point them to The Goonies as proof invariable.

After a long day of chores, we crawled to the couch to check pay-per-view. It was easy to pass up such instant classics as Little Man (the Custer's Revenge of movies, a Yars Revenge it is not!), but when we stumbled over Goonies it was nearly a must watch -- I'd never seen it. The Gremlins, sure, but not The Goonies. Yes - its true - I missed a movie that was made into a video game. I know, I know my friends, it happens.

I am trying not to say 'they don't make them like that anymore', but lets tick off the proverbial fingers shall we: Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, E.T. Should you challenge this assertion, I will insert sed fingers to ears - lalalalalalanotlistening!

Let me be blunt -- some great movies were made back in the day; they had a certain ingrediant thats been lacking ever since. Yes my dear friends, The Goonies was full of teh eighties.

Watch it. Good times. Not tossing bread crumbs to the gease in the park good times, but water slides good times.

Aside: I'll see if I can find a moment to pick up this new PC game - Supreme Commander - the sequal to Total Annihilation. Like I'll have time :P

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Dining: Best west-side fajitas. West side of the Earth, anyway.
Sat, 13 Jan 2007

I briefly considered clutching this information close to my heart while rolling pig-like in the mud, but this restaurant absolutely needs to stick around. So I can tell you about it and still feel self-serving, that you and I are sharing some deep Mexican cuisine conspiracy.

Rio Grande Cantina is located in northern Mississauga, upon the east side of Dixie Road south of Aimco and somewhere north of Eglinton Avenue. A little plaza sporting a Yuk Yuks, an Irish pub, some variant of Indian restaurant.

Like pants have two legs, Mexican restaurants must have a certain look and feel when in North America, but this fine place differentiates by opening up into a little gift shop. My cynicle nature didn't care for this at first, but it's always good to know where you can - in a pinch while on the run - find good hotsauce. Still, the simple interior of most restaurants like this is welcoming and homey, so nothing to complain about here. Decent music (and not too loud), a hearthy atmosphere, and cheap tables.. good to go.

I ordered chicken fajitas (that or a three layer club sandwhich are my yardsticks by which diners are compared), while my wife ordered a beef burrito ('wet rolled' for sauce and melted cheese on top.) Its hard to really say what happened here for most assurredly sed food arrived, but it was hot-damned fantastic. We left stuffed silly, but not full and satiated .. but let me start at the beginning. We received the obligatory freebie chips-and-salsa, with warm tortilla chips and homemade salsa. Really good, and I'm again inspired to find a good sweet-but-tangy recipe so I too can have good salsa on demand. The main course arrived and it too was tasty and full of flavouring spices, without being hot. (My wife is having huge heartburn issues with the pregnancy, so keeping the hot-ness down is a priority.) Food was heaped up, fairly priced, and seriously gorramned delicious.

The place was fairly quiet at 6:15 on a Saturday evening, and no rush. (I mean, it was prompt, but relaxed so we could chill if we liked.) The chef was out and about a few times, and I had to pass along the word that everything was just peachy. We'll go back, and soon so as to not forget. Damn. Really, I wished the tummy had a latch to open up a backup storage area so I could drop in another order.

<Pats belly>"Soon my precious, soon."

P.S. I should note that Mississauga has become home to numerous Mexican restaurants of late; Mexicali Rosa's has opened up a joint, and several fast food places have popped up, including the nearly famous Burrito Boyz. Be sure to check 'em out :)

P.P.S. As a brief aside, let me humbly note that it would appear there's been a new Trancers film. Zombies and future-cops sent to the 80s ftw!

P.P.P.S. While I'm linking to goofy things, check out Christopher Walken

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PSP: I just want to know -- wheres the mecha?!
Wed, 22 Nov 2006

Usually I try to have something vaguely amusing (to me ;), informative, remotely useful, or at least personal to say. But today, this time I just want to ask something. As someone who played electronic games and video games in the 80s and 90s:

Wheres the Wing Commander equivilent? I mean, don't people still want to fly a small space-faring fighter against large capital ships? Think Star Wars and running down the trench with enemy fighters on your tail, turrets lobbing heavy munitions youe way -- fun! Descent? (Well, I could finish porting it..) Those of us from the golden 80s watched "The Last Starfighter" and we want to shoot something down. Hell, make it a Starblazer's tie-in for the retro-anime crowd.

In the same grain, we played Battletech on the tabletop and watched Robotech on the tube, and endless reems of anime mecha - giant robots, beam weaponry, machine guns, stomping enemy buildings and the almighty Death From Above jumpjets.. we need the rebirth of Mechwarrior. Bring it.

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