Look! Something Shiny!

YAGP

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:26:28 GMT

OK, so the zombie game is sort of on hold while I figure out a couple of things (Like how to get enough gumpion to write up thousands of room descriptions, for one, and how to code the badge display system, for another.), and I've got a job now (I drive masseuses around), so it's time for Yet Another Grand Project.

This one, which I undoubtedly won't finish, is to breathe some life into an old project, namely, irongamersguild. See, earlier this evening, I was moving files around, when I was reminded that we have this odd little film called River City Rumble. It's sort of a parody, and sort of an homage, to River City Ransom, which was this NES game that enjoyed a pretty big following. I never actually played it, but about thirty seconds of Google, followed by about two hours of playing it, fixed that right up. It reminded me that not only were there a lot of good games for these old systems, but a heck of a lot of them were utterly missed by the gaming world at large.

Thanks to emulation, and the wonderous power of my very good friend the internet, This need no longer be the case. But how would you know which games were worth playing, and which were great big steaming piles of electronic excrement? And why would you want to sift through the crap to find the gems? I mean, the crap games are CRAP. And while you can sometimes tell a game will be worthless from the title (say, for instance, Where's Waldo), often times, it's not so simple. Princess Tomato in The Salad Kingdom, for instance, is a agame well worth playing for those fans of Uninvited, De Ja Vu, and Shadowgate, but you'd never guess that from the title or cover art.

So I've decided to start with the NES, and play and review EVERY GAME that was released in America for it, in alphabetical order. I fully expect to be bored beyond belief during some parts of this process, but I feel the end result will be an entertaining read for all, whether you like video games or not.

So, uh, here we go!

OMG. Best game EVAR

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:28:11 GMT

OK, so here's the deal. you hvae to play this game. It might actually change your life. Never have I seen such an amazing combination of elegance in design, stunning visuals, and outright action-packed adrenaline-pumping awesomeness.

Seriously. this is the best thing since, fuck, I don't know, Galaga.

Be sure to listen to the entire song at the end, if you actually manage to finish it.

The 45th Hour

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:34:45 GMT

    Nearly 45 hours since I last had a smoke. The first three days are supposed to be the hardest. If that's the case, then I'm golden.

    I went into this quit with knowledge that none had offered to me prior. See, it turns out that one of the many effects nicotine has is to halve the effectiveness of caffiene. Someone like me, who tends to be a heavy coffee drinker, is apt to spend his first several days of not smoking in the midsts of a caffiene overdose, as well as nicotine withdrawal. It makes the withdrawal seem a hell of a lot worse, it turns out.
    Which isn't to say this has been a cake-walk thus far. Every time Im waiting for something I end up wanting a smoke. Not a lot, just, like, I think to myself "Oh, I should have a smoke." Then I laugh a little, because that's not something I do anymore. Also, there've been two or three stressful moments since I stopped, which have made me damned near irrational. S'cool, though. I didn't snap, or kill anyone, or even really handle things badly, I think.
    I've been having a hard time concentrating, as well as keeping still, also, yesterday I had a lot of odd non-cigarette cravings. I desparately wanted potato chips, for instance.
    What I think has really made the difference for me thus far has been both the caffiene knowledge, and the way I've walked into it. I didn't get rid of my tobacco, for instance. It's sitting right here. And I haven't told myself that I can't have it. If I really want to have a cigarrette, I will. I've just decided I don't want to.

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:15:50 GMT

    It's 12:45, and I am smoking.
    I am smoking what, at the moment, I hope to be the last cigarette of my life. I've been reading smoking cessation literature, and one of the things most of them suggest is to start a quitting journal, and to use it as an outlet, as continued motivation, and as a reminder later on of how much quitting really sucked, so as to give me a reason to not start up again... I've already got a journal, so I'm going to use it.

    First, however, an apology: To Sarah, over the next few days, if any of my previous attempts are at all accurate, I'm going to be an utter asshat. Please, please, please, do your best to not let this get to you. To my family, I know how many of our ranks have fallen to cancer. I stood outside and smoked while it claimed Grandma. I didn't know what else to do, and cigarettes had become something comfortable. I was a coward, and I'm sorry. To myself, I put my body through a decade of smoking, knowing full well that it was making my life slowly more difficult. Damn, man, I hope, reading this in the future, that I've succeeded, and that you can run again.

    Everything I've read says that I should record all of my reasons for wanting to quit. I wake up in the mornings now, and spend about twenty minutes coughing up wad after wad of phlegm. That's no fun. Either is my inability to run more than about two blocks without getting seriously winded. I look forward to the freedom to run, to a longer, healthier life, with better-tasting food, a stronger libido, faster healing from injuries... Mostly I want to run. I used to be really good at running. I was fast. Really fast. I'm going to be fast again. And lean. I'm not worried about the associated weight gain, because as soon as I can breathe (studies show 33% lung capacity increase in just 90 days) I'm going to run. A lot. I'm tired most of the time, which may be a result of my smoking. close to a pack of cigarettes a day, non-filtered, for, like, five years, means that I'm getting a fuckton less oxygen than I should be. That's supposed to start improving in as little as two weeks.

    I understand the next three days are going to suck. I know there will be mild, but constant pain in my abdomen, I know my temper will significantly shorten, I know I will seek conflict. I know, chemically speaking, why these things happen. I often say I am more than a chemical machine. Now is my chance to prove that my brain chemistry doesn't own me.

    This is my choice. I do not intend to tell my roommates to stop smoking around me. I do not intend to force anything on anyone. I invite them to tell me to go away, as a matter of fact, if being around me over the next few days becomes unbearable.

Tomorrow I'm going to the grocery store for fruit juice. Apparently the acids in orange, lemon, and cranberry juices help to flush the body of nicotine and end the physical withdrawal faster.

Here it goes now: The circular motion. Rub it.

Game Development

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:57:44 GMT

OK, so t's been a long time. Here's what I'm working on in-between filling out job applications and basically trying to forward myself financially.

A long time ago, Sean "Squidi" Howard started posting game ideas he'd never have the time or patience to work on himself. some of them are really actually quite good, and one in particular has repeatedly struck a chord with me as something I'd want to work on. Conveniently enough, his site states that any game idea he posts there is fair game, "No Strings Attached." And so I've decided, with the aid of my discovery of the game creation engine BYOND, to actually set out and build the damned thing (The Communist Zombie MMO, for those of you who were wondering).

As for the moment, I'm less concerned with the heavy authoring that goes into a MUD, and more concerned with the nuts and bolts of how to make the thing work. There are a few ideas inherent to the game, and I'm going to go over them, and how I propose to deal with them, in this post.

First off, his idea involves eschewing character advancement in lieu of player advancement. To this end, he suggests an extensive "Badge" system. Withing the confines of BYOND, this involves saving the contents of a database for each player, with simple binary switches for each badge. Player-side, I can create a GUI window which will display a badge-grid, for easy visual reference. Keeping track of these accomplishments won't be at all hard. Coming up with them is another story, but as I said, the authoring waits for another day.

The Idea which I initially thought of as preventing the game from getting off the ground is what gave me the impetus today to actually work on it. He has an idea of occasional random events which start off optional side-questy things, such as a shortwave radio transmission coming in from some folks trapped in a gas station on the edge of town, or similar things. In order to convey the idea of a world out of control of the players' hands, I figure the idea can be orchestrated thusly:

1. First we create a global event loop; basically a count-down timer, which we set to one week of real time.
2. To each random event, we attach a random number generator, which ranges from 1-6048000 (BYOND measures time in 1/10 seconds. that's the number of second-tenths in a week.)
3. We instruct each event to occur at the given increment during the countdown.
4. If no-one is there when the event occurs, they missed it.

Expanding on this structure, we can determine the overall rarity of events by instituting a second event loop to increment once per week. Rarer events can be keyed to both this event loop, and, once the required increment for the second loop arrives, to the weekly one, so that they will only be dropped into weekly rotation once in a while. The end result is a world in which a lot of things happen, but many aren't discovered by players for quite a long time, especially those events keyed to a certain type of room, or to a single room. this can lend a static list of possible events a certain mysterious quality, preventing any new addition to the game from being discovered immediately and reliably, and preserving a sense of exploration for players. we can add to this effect by NOT including a global chat channel, which has the additional benefit of making players feel isolated: a staple of the zombie genre.

Further event rarity can be implemented via more event loops, leading up to an Apocalyptic Loop on which are several potentially game-ending events. Literally. The end result of failure of the player base to follow an Apocalyptic Event to it's successful conclusion is that a global message is sent out, or perhaps a series of global messages, ("Suddenly, the night is lit glaring white with an incandescence of unimaginable proportions".. "There is a sudden roar, followed only by the ringing of your ears!" ... "Everything, your own body included, is violently destroyed in a wave of wind and fire!" )and the game is shut down. This makes for a perfect time to update, adding more events, more locations, and so on.

Ideally, the more common events should be vastly numerous, to ensure that even a small player base finds at least one or two each week. The more common events should also be smaller. The larger and more rare an event, the more rooms it should be keyed to have some sort of notification in. The Apocalyptic Events should trigger in such a way that they should never be able to take the player base by surprise, but should also be huge challenges to complete successfully. I picture the world ending utterly about once a year or two. You've got to be able to shut down once in a while, yes?

Certain of Squidi's ideas I have no interest in implementing. He had an idea that the game should punish you for quickly acquiring new badges by having zombies become more and more aggressive towards players who consistently and quickly achieve. Boo. I have no interest in punishing players for enjoying a game, or even striving to find and unlock things. I understand that the idea was set to prevent someone from looking up badge requirements on a wiki or whatever, and waltzing through the game, but enough of the badges can be set to random occurrences that I don't feel that would be much of a problem.

The things I believe: Politics.

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:07:48 GMT

So tonight I sat down and started cleaning up my bookmarks. You know, you bookmark a page for one reason or another, and two years down the road, it's a dead page, or you have no earthly idea why you saved it in the first place? Anyways, at some point or another, I ran across this:

Jiihad!

I have no idea why I saved this. None whatsoever. and after looking at it a few times, I decided to check out the page it was on. Neal Boortz's website, apparently. Neal Boortz is one of those conservative talkshow hosts. He's pro-Bush, anti-Anything not Republican, and believes that anyone who believes in global warming (or it's younger, possibly more accurate sibling, Global Climate Change) is anti-capitalism. I may be wrong on that last point, but it's the impression I got from reading his news page.

I read through his page for a while, as well as several pages he linked to. Oddly enough, his was the least crazy. He actually tells you on his front page to not believe anything you hear on his radio show, or read on his web-page, unless it "is consistent with what you already know to be true, or unless you have taken the time to research the matter to prove its accuracy to your satisfaction." He even chides the reader by saying "This is known as 'Doing Your Homework'". He's got links to pictures of Barrack Obama dressed intraditional Muslim clothes, but appears to be basically against caring about them, choosing rather to focus on what he sees as shortcomings in Obama's policy, and accusations of corruption. So, I don't agree with the guy, but for the most part, I don't think he's a whacko, and I don't think he's commiting outright falsehoods.

But here's the thing. like any time I read something one of these political cheerleaders writes (and I'm not really limiting myself to the right-wingers when I say that, There are plenty of liberals who are just as short-sighted and unwilling to listen to facts), I get angry. I get even angrier when the sites are open to comments by random folks. These people make me angrier than angry. But tonight I realized, that they're making themselves heard. So tonight, I present to you, Great Electronic Ether, the first of an indeterminate number of posts:

I think, for the most part, that I identify as liberal. I understand that in order to have money to spend on being a government, the government has to get money from it's people. That's why we have tazes. I believe in higher taxes for the rich. I'm not going to ask that we tax them down to my level, but damn, if I was making a quarter-million a year, I don't think I'd mind paying another ten grand in taxes, or even another fifty. two hundred thousand dollars is more than most people can ever expect to see from a year's pay. You're still wealthy, bucko. I don't begrudge you your money but think of it this way: You're incredibly lucky to be born in America, a country which has, in one way or another, contributed over and over to your ability to be wealthy. Now show some gratitude, and open your wallet.

I also believe in immigration reform. I believe it should be easier to immigrate legally into the united states. While I'm not able to find numbers on the cost on short notice (Google for some reason only wants to tell me about immigration *to* Mexico), I understand that legal immigration is quite expensive. I feel we would be able to eliminate much of the burden placed on us by illegal immigrants if we simply offered immediate Tax ID numbers to any foreign national who wanted in, allowed them to work anywhere they had the ability to, and placed them in a slightly higher tax bracket until we had the costs covered, plus, say, 25%. Take most of the money we spend on deportation now, and spend it prosecuting the ever-loving hell out of anyone who's paying people non-livable wages under the table. Also, require, by the end of some arbitrary period, basic competence in spoken English. For those people that want to, say move their elderly relatives to live with them, we allow them to extend their tax-increased term to cover the cost of inputting their old person into whatever databases, and boom, there you are. The elderly can be exempt from that whole "learning Engish" thing. I honestly don't care if your 78-year-old grandmother can't speak English. In fact, I think old folks who don't speak English are awesome. If you don't, well, that's on you. you tell me how it hurts America to have some old person unable to speak English, and I'll happily change my stance.

I'm not one -hundred percent liberal, however. I won't, for instance, tow the line of gun control. I'm for an armed America. I don't think making laws about guns will keep them out of the hands of criminals. I mean, jeez, that's why we call them criminals, right? You want to own an assault rifle? Cool. Buy a minigun and a few bricks of C-4 while you're at it, if you're so inclined. Assuming, of course, that you can get the licenses that I think we should have to have. No recent (say, in the last 15 years) history of mental illness, no violent crime convictions at all, and no more than a certain number (Not really sure what I'd want that number to be) of any other non-vehicular convictions of any sort.

Health care? Look, universal health care works. Every time I've seen numbers that seem to suggest otherwise, I've checked on them, and the fact of the matter is they never pan out upon closer inspection. Single-provider government healthcare. Good stuff. Now, I realize that would put a lot of honest, hardworking folk out of work. And I don't suggest that we do this overnight. Start with a government-run alternative. Run it as a non-for profit, with enrollment being as simple as a check-box on your tax form, with an added yearly taxation of a percentage of your earning, decided by tax bracket. Allow people to choose it, or choose not to do it. I guess (and I could be wrong) that over the next thirty or so years, the privately owned insurance companies will find it harder and harder to stay in business. If I'm wrong, no harm done. The government office fails, and we go back to doing things the way we are now. I'f I'm right, well, then everyone's got health care in the space of a generation, and the lay-offs we see from the private insurance companies will happen slowly enough for those workers to find other employment.

The Economy is boned. I know it. You know it. The American People know it. Everyone seems to think handing everyone a few hundred dollars is going to make everything better. The housing market lost tens of billions of dollars for American homeowners. Six hundred dollars, even if everyone gets it, means nothing in the greater scheme of things. I really don't know how to fix this. It's a giant loss of illusory wealth. it think it will be a long time before we recover from this, but in the mean-time, we need to focus on making sure that everyone has what they need to live. What exactly that means, I'm not entirely sure, but health care is a start, certainly.

Oh! The war! Right! I'm pro-military. Very much so. I believe we should have a large, well-trained, and well-equipped military force. I also believe we should keep out collective military nose out of places where it doesn't belong. Saddam Hussein was a shitty man. I'm glad he's out of power. But why couldn't we continue our long-standing tradition of deposing one dictator to install another one? Nowhere in history has any country transitioned from despotism to democracy. It doesn't work. as soon as we pull out, there will be utter chaos. I'd love to see our troops home, but realistically, we've got to own that country at this point, and continue martial law there until such a time as we can figure out how to reconfigure socio-politcal reality in such a way that we can leave any kind of stable government there. Democracy can't just happen. it's got to rise naturally from the ashes of a slightly less complicated form of government. The war in Iraq is short-sighted and stupid, but now it's our cross to bear. In twenty years, it'll be our children's cross to bear, twenty five years after that? Our grandchilden's. Look upon our legacy.

I'm pro-choice. Don't use abortion as a contraceptive afterthought. But use it if you feel you need to.

I'm pro-stem cell. In addition to the stem cells we harvest from aborted fetuses, we also get them from the afterbirth from live babies, and can now somehow manufacture them out of skin cells. There's no more controversy there. You want to prohibit the use of aborted tissues? OK. Sure, go ahead, the fetuses are no less dead for your efforts, but ban that all you want. Just don't ban the research on the stem cells we can get without doing harm to any life or potential life. That's just plain dumb. The diseases we may be able to cure using stem cells are numerous, and if you ever get Alzheimers, I'll remind you every time you forget about it that legislation you were in favor of is preventing a potential cure for your disease right now, and you're going to die as a result.

I'm pro-torture. Yeah, that's right. Under certain circumstances, I think we should torture folks for information. I strongly believe, however, that physical pain is no way to torture folks. eventually, they'll say whatever you want to hear, whether it's true or not. They'll tell you that two plus two equals five, if you'll pardon a 1984 reference. Psychological torture, on the other hand, is perfectly OK in my book, as is physical torture which doesnt cause actual harm. There should, however, be some sort of oversight, as well as a process to get clearance to use such techniques, as well as a very well defined set of circumstances outside of which torture is not permissable.

I'm also pro-death penalty. I think that it needs to be done on a federal level, and that death row inmates should have to be there a long, long time (say, a minimum of ten years) while an independant investigatory commitee does their damnedest to prove the innocence of the condemned. Yes, ten reasonable men found that there was no reasonable doubt that the condemned committed the crimes of which they were accused, but I'd like to leave no room for people whining about innocent people put to death. Plus, hey, look at that, I'm creating new jobs!

Disagree with me on any of these points? I welcome your input, as long as it's level-headed and not inflamatory.

Wow, does being a renter suck.

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:19:00 GMT

As many of you know, we have been having continued problems with our apartment building. Tonight, after bening yelled at by our drunken building maintenence guy, I sat down and typed out this letter to our landlord, who is also his long-time signifigant other. I have previously tried leaving notes for her on her door, but he intercepts them, and acts like an asshole.

Basically, I'm posting this here in the hopes that people might be able to give me ideas as to what I might say differently. Many of the issues I'm adressing are kind of touchy, especially since I'm dealing with her lover's addiction. So yeah, if anyone can give me an idea as to how to be more diplomatic about the whole thing, or maybe have something to add (I'm a bit frazzled at the moment. I may have told you something which I have forgotten). Anyways, here's the letter.

Laura,

First off I would like to thank you for your patience on the money we continue to owe on the deposit and month of back rent on our unit. The job market has been horrible as of late, and your understanding on this matter is a great comfort as we continue to labor under a single income.

Lately, however, a number of problems have arisen which I feel need addressing. A number of repairs and basic finishing tasks have been neglected on our apartment. Light fixtures are bare, there is a hole in our living room ceiling which leads to an un-insulated attic (costing us I don’t know how much extra to keep our unit heated), the room by the fire escape has no doorknob, the door jam in one of our bedrooms is broken, and has been since we moved in, and there is still a dripping leak in the water-heating closet. In addition, the laundry room is in a state of disrepair which has caused us no end of dismay. Today the dryer failed to work at all. I deposited two dollars in quarters before I realized it was not my error causing it to fail to function.

Nor are these the only issues. I have previously hesitated to bring up John’s continued drunkenness with you, as it seems primarily a personal issue. It is, however, an issue which affects the tenants on a very basic level. I have, on a number of occasions, been threatened by John, mostly with eviction, but once with physical violence. On all of these occasions, he has been inebriated. We are often disturbed by his volume. He plays music loud enough during the day that we cannot clearly hear our television set, even when turned up all the way. And his yelling at night, both at you and at random people in the street has made us embarrassed to have friends over to our home.

I feel that if changes are not made, then perhaps renegotiating our rent at a lower rate is in order. I am assured that I can legally seek an injunction to this effect, but would prefer that it be negotiated out of court. Or, if truth be told, that the problems simply cease.

I understand that as a friend, and long-time partner of John, you may feel that he deserves forbearance, but I urge you to think of him in the context of an employer. An employee who leaves vital tasks incomplete, and who harasses your clients is surely more of a detriment to you and your earnings than he can possibly be an asset. I also understand that you encourage him not to drink. He is obviously invested in his addiction, as he has taken to hiding beer in the storefront unit the two of you use for storage. He even borrowed two dollars from me recently, without telling me what it was for, and then had me drop him off at a liquor store, so he could buy more beer.

Please understand that I bear neither of you any ill will. John, when sober, is a good person, and you’ve been nothing but wonderful. Were John to sober up, I’m sure we would have no grievances at all. Thank you again,

Michael Burch

In other news...

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:23:14 GMT

I just got back from yet another Job Interview. This one didn't go nearly so well as the others I've been on, I think, which is sad, because of all the jobs I've interviewed for, this one was the best combination of close enough to get to and cool enough to want to do I've yet run into.

Money is really, really, really tight. So, tight, in fact, that I think we're about 4 grand in debt since we moved here. We've payed a grand total of one non-rent bill. Total. that was three months worth of phone and internet. Gas, Electric, and so on have gone entirely unpaid.

I stopped on the way home to fill out an ap at a wendy's. There are other fast food joints in the area. I'll hit those up next. I never wanted to flip burgers for a living. I really didn't, but the way things are, I'm not likely to get any other job. By an large, the qualifications employers are demanding are skyrocketing as the economy gets worse.

Mom went in for surgery not too long ago. She tried to give me a call late last night, so I'm going to call her back now and see how she's doing.

More posts as events warrant.

Something I think about.

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:16:45 GMT

The word "Hacker" is one that's managed to change a lot over the years, and it means different things to different people. To me though it will always mean this: A person who uses something in a way that it's designers did not intend, or produces a result with something unimagined by it's designers.

I think Stephen Scott is one of the coolest hackers the world has ever seen. The device he hacks? The piano. As evidence, I offer you Entrada.

Enjoy.

Random URLs make Mike Happy.

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:53:59 GMT

Sometimes, when I'm bored, I type random URLs into my browser, so see what will happen. Sometimes nothing at all happens. Sometimes I find more boring porn, and sometimes, just sometimes, I strike digital gold. Silicon Valley Tea, if you will. Well I should prolly pack up my bags and move to Beverlee, because this morning, I found the greatest site to ever happen to music.

Pandora Radio is amazingly amazing. Here's the idea: You put in the name of a band, song, or composer you like, and Pandora searches the Music Genome Project for it. If and when it comes up with a result (I was able to stump it with both Texas Faggot and Monkey Steals The Peach, but it recognized Splashdown, The Minibosses, Universal Hall Pass, and The Trouble With Those Mothra Girls) it creates a radio station, with that selection, and others that share a bunch of qualities with it. For instance, I ask it for Pink Floyd, and it first plays Dogs, and tells me this:

"To Start things off, we'll play a song that exemplifies the musical style of Pink Floyd, which features [several things that Pink Floyd's music typically features, like the chosen instruments, tonal variation, and so on]"

Then it plays other songs, sometimes also by Pink Floyd, and sometimes by other bands, that while they don't sound like Pink Floyd, they are in many ways similar, and as such, if you like Pink Floyd, you'll like them too.

Too add to the likelihood that when you turn on your radio station you've had Pandora create for you, that you'll actually like what you hear, you can tell it, while a song is playing, that you really like it, and that you want to hear more by the band what did it, that you don't like it, and to edit the station's playlist to include fewer tracks like it, or even that you've heard this particular song once too often, and you'd like it not to be played for a month. You can also add another band to the station, as well as all the bands they would play for you connected to that new band were it the seed for a new station.

One word of warning, after you've toyed with it for about 15 minutes or so, it'll suddenly stop playing, and ask you to register. Don't worry, it's not a pay service. But you'll have to register to continue playing with it.

Final note: No download required, so if your boss is cool with you fiddling with your station during your lunch or whatever, and cool with you listening to music the rest of the time, then guess what? You're golden, even at work!

Rock out, my brothers and sisters, rock out. And remember, one of these days? End of the world if you don't visit a website I suggest. That's just my curse.

Whoo! Adventure!

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:54:06 GMT

So lately, I've been driving Sarah to work. This serves a few purposes. One, it cuts her commute, which allows her to get more sleep in the morning. Two, it normalizes my sleep schedule into a decidedly diurnal state. Three, it lets me drive in the near-western suburbs, which, since I've moved here, I've discovered are a blank spot in my internal map. (I Know the far-west suburbs fine, and Chicago itself? a cake-walk. But the near east suburbs? they're like a black hole in my head, which only the expressways cross.)
This morning however, we're about halfway there, and I have a blow-out. I've know my tires probably needed to be changed for quite some time, but I've just not had the money, and honestly, I'm more worried about the headlights and taillights. Anyways, I pukll off into this parking lot at the corner of route 64 and route 171, and think about what to do next. I look under the carpet in the back of the van, where I thought our spare tire was located, and no dice. Also no tire. We call Sean, who has to get immunized against India before going to India in a month, and can't really come to drive Sarah to work, because he'd miss getting his shots. We call Rob, who, because it's daytime, is not awake, and does not answer the phone. We call Devin, who similarly does not answer. I call Mom, who is in Washington, and can't really do anything. I call Dad, who can't walk because he recently and involuntarily decided to take up floor gymnastics, and pulled every muscle from his ass to his ankles. We sat in Denny's and laughed at our misfortune.
Then my mom calls back, and tells me to check UNDER the car for a spare. I hadn't thought of that. It was there. The polite, funny, and attractive empioyees of the Jiffy Lube that I was parked next to agreed to let me use their warm, dry garage to change my tire, and then, once I was in there, actually did the whole thing for me, while I flirted with the one female member of the team. They did so free of charge. Nice folks.
Sarah was an hour late for work, and I have a crappy donut spare, but all in all, it could ahve gone much worse.

Survivors, part 1.

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:39:40 GMT

    Had it really been that long? Long enough, certainly, 20 years. But not so long that what had once been roads should look like this. Kendra mused idly about how much the Earth must have hated civilization to fight so hard against this, arguably their greatest achievement. Two decades of freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw, had turned what had been long strips of concrete and asphalt into nearly unnavigable stretches of uneven rubble. Even now, the wind and snow tore away at what was left. In another twenty or so years? Perhaps nothing would be left.
    Pulling her scarf up a little higher against the cold, Kendra picked her way towards the ruins she had come to search. Once it had been a hardware store; she searched her memory for the name. "House Station"? Had that been it? Something like that, anyways. Now it was a shambles. Probably everything of value had been taken long ago, but it was always worth checking. Just last month, that Belmont kid had brought back a full tank of propane from outside some old gas station. They were still trying to find something to hook up to it, sure, but propane!
    The glass doors of the old building had been long-since shattered, and wind howled through the aisles of the store, carrying little drifts of snow, which settled against looted shelves. Kendra tried to envision what it had been like. Tried to call back images of the world before, and failed. All she could really remember was climate-control. Not too hot, not too cold; a comfortable seventy-two degrees, year round. That and man-made sound. Everywhere. All the time. That, however, she didn't miss.
    Flipping back the mitten ends of her gloves, and pulling down her scarf, she fished a cigarette from her jacket, and lit it. Thank god for small favors, she thought. As the only smoker in her enclave, she would probably never run out of decades-stale tobacco. It had been hard to get used to, sure, but had almost become an acquired taste. Almost. At least she didn't gag on every drag anymore.
    Pickings were slim. A box of nails, a couple loose screws, some of those interchangable screwdriver heads (the star-shaped kind), warped lumber, three ancient candy bars, and so on. The only mildly good find? A garden trowel. four-and-a-half miles of walking. And only this to show for it. Perhaps they'd all come back for the lumber. Years of exposure would probably make it decent timber, at the very least.
    Kendra packed her findings into her knapsack, and was heading for the exit, when her nose suddenly stung with the unmistakable scent of Them.

    They were outside.

CRAZY LOGIC PUZZLE!

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:04:17 GMT

OK, here's a puzzle for all of you. See if you can figure it out without Google. Google makes you weak!

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.

* It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that some god is not asked any question at all).
* What the second question is, and to which god it is put, may depend on the answer to the first question. (And of course similarly for the third question.)
* Whether Random speaks truly or not should be thought of as depending on the flip of a coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely.
* Random will answer 'da' or 'ja' when asked any yes-no question.

It's gonna be so much fun!

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:21:07 GMT

Every word in this post is a portal to somewhere else. I know, you loath these posts, but I don't care. I love making them.

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:30:55 GMT

View Poll: Filter time!

Development!

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:04:30 GMT

OK, so I've started development on my game. I figure I ought to put this bout of insomnia to work, right?

I've decided that I want to take all the things I love about other PBBGs (Persistant Browser-Based Games), and try my best to smoosh them up into one great big monster of awesome and win and god. So let's start with the games I love, and what I love about them.

KOL

1. Consistant Expansion. KOL is getting bigger and more complicated all the time. For a long time, there were updates every Tuesday, which added at least a little content, and sometimes added a whole frigging lot of content. I plan to update about every two weeks, adding at least a little to the game.
2. Referencial Geek Humor. KOL is made of this. My game? not so much. But I'll tip my hat every once in a while, because it amuses me to do so.
3. Minimalist Design. KOL uses stick figures and simplistic art to great effect. I'm mostly going to be using colored rectangles.
4. Imbedded Chat. KOL takes this a bit farther than I intend to. I'll have an imbedded chat room, with multiple channels, but I don't think I need /foodcourt, or /haiku

TORN CITY

1. Sequentially Revealed Content. TC opens up to new players very slowly. I plan to have Palma: Age of Expansion do the same thing.
2. Hidden EXP. TC gives you no indication how far you are from levelling up. Ever. It also has a few different levelling schemes. This keeps Hard Spades from being all optimal. Filthy Optimizers! If KOL's troubles with SuperSpades are any indication, I'll have to avoid encouraging them in any way.
3. Imbedded forums. No external PHP forums! those are icky! Sign up for one site. get the forums along with the site. You're good to go!

OK. That's good for a start. I want there to be a few other things as well. I want there to be the ability for a player or group of players to semi-permanantly change the face of the world. I want the world to be 99.999% unexplored, and explored in time by the players. I want technological and magical development to be dynamic and slow. And I want to be able to make money, without limiting non-donating players in ways that make them feel like they're playing a demo. So how to acheive all of these goals?

Well, first off, we want players to have a finite amount of things they can do per unit of time. I plan on allocating energy to the players 1 point per minute, with a maximum storage capability of 1500, or just over one day. This will allow me to limit the speed of game advancement. I can offer to permanantly double energy storage capacity for a donation, which also allows me to make money, and sacrifices very little in the way of limiting development.

For the Exploratory requirements, We release the players into a small city, located on a penninsula. the extent of the world they can currently see consists of the city itself, it's immediate surroundings, and an archipeligo just south of it. all of this is laid on a grid. travelling inside a city expends no NRG (Energy, for the remainder of this musing) but travel outside is energy intensive. 1000 NRG per grid cell to begin with (modified for heavy terrain if neccessary). Later, this will become cheaper, as technolgies and magics which speed travel are developed. Travel into an unexplored cell reveals the nature of that cell to the player that explored it. Players may also buy or sell exploration data at a cartographer's guild, which maintains a map comprised of all the exploration data that has been sold to it. Once a certain number of players (to be adjusted based on the total number of active players) has knowledge of a cell, it becomes common knowledge, and is added to every other player's map. The early expense of travel, coupled with a large enough world, ensures that exploration will take a decent amount of time to complete.

In this way, we can also delay the introduction of new content. Players perhaps will have to discover a specific location, or complete a specific even in order to "unlock" the next feature of the game for all players.

Next we have the Guild System. Players wishing to start a guild will choose from a number of focii, to include Magical Research of one of several branches, Technological research of one of several branches, Social Club, Construction, Cartography( Remember the cartography guild? I figure you can slow things down another few notches by allowing players to maintain several competing services), Mercenary Services, Arenas, and so on. Guild applications will have to include somewhere between 5-10 players, which will prevent a million little guilds popping up and being useless forever, and will be housed in a sort of Guild apartment complex, until they build their own Guild HQ. Guilds will have a fairly heavy upkeep, which will prevent old guilds which have become useless from hanging around forever.

Finally, we have research and development, both for the magic and tech research trees, and for urban sprawl. All of this, beyond a certain point, will be in the hands of players. All technology will be researched in guilds devoted to such, and such guilds will divide their research time between any number of the technological spheres. The same goes for Magic. The important difference between the two is this: once a tech prototype, or pure science development has been made, other guilds attempting to develop it will have a much easier time of it. This trend continues for each successive guild or individual who develops the new device or advancement. Magic, however, will not have such an advantage. The 1000th time a spell is researched is only marginally easier than the first time.

Construction of new buildings will be handled by Construction Guilds, which will compete for contracts in the same way that real construction contractors do. The ease and efficiency these contractors build with will be determined by the devices they own, as well as the engineering knowledge they possess. Initially, there will be an NPC guild for this function, as well as guilds for several other essential functions, until such a time as sufficient PC guilds for those functions are formed, at which point the NPC guilds will dissolve. At no point will technological or magical research be performed by NPC Guilds.

Eventually, the government will be handed off to Player characters. The goal is to have a game entirely run by the players, with only the framework to guide them.

INITIAL GOALS

1. Code a login/password registration with confirmation Email. Assure that data from such arrives in the appropriate table.

2. Code the necessary tables for character storage. Attributes, knowledge tables, inventory tables. property ownership, etc.

3. Set up external forum.

4. Code the framework for the tech and magic trees.

5. Code the city interface. The game can run without exploration, if necessary.

6. Implement Research, Social, Arena, Construction, Law Enforcement, and Merchant Guilds.

7. Set up game gaol for cheaters, spammers, trolls, and fucktards.

MID-RANGE GOALS

1. Design and code the world map interface. Implement Cartography, Supply, and Mercenary Guilds.

2. Implement Chat rooms.

3. Expand the tech/magic trees.

4. Implement internal forums. Do away with the external forums.

5. Probably realize there's something fundamentally wrong with some itegral part of the framework, and start over from scratch. (really, this is pretty realistic. Most new games hit a point where they have to reset. until that point. it's called OPEN BETA)

LONG-TERM GOALS

1. Assassinate the king, run a brief period of anarchy, then move into a democratic republic comprised of PCs.

2. Introduce, via exploration, other sentient races. Implement Diplomatic Guilds.

3. Polish the baby up to a fine sheen. Possibly commission artwork for various things.

4. Do the rock dance, Paul.

Sam Hall: A monologue for creative purposes

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:08:47 GMT

    Heh, yeah... That's some funny shit.
    Wait. What? Why am I not smilin'? Shit, man. Look at my face. No, really. Look at my fuckin' face. It takes hours just to carve it up enough to talk. Once a fuckin' week, I sit down with a buncha' knives and some fuckin' sand paper, and I carve up my fuckin' joints so I can keep bendin' my arms and legs. I cut my cheeks enough to eat and talk. I sand down my fuckin' eyelids, man, so I can keep lookin' outta my fuckin' eyes.. Yeah, my fuckin' eyes. You can look at those too. I'm pretty fucked up, huh? But now? Now you seen 'em? Now you can't look away.
    You know what the real funny shit is, though? My skin? My eyes? For my whole life, my momma told me-
    Hey, Fuck you. I know what my momma is. You think being a hooker makes her less of a person? Say another fuckin' word. I will feed you to the fuckin' rats. You don't know what it's like, bein' a woman. Shit. I don't either. But I sure as shit don't disrespect what I don't fuckin' understand. Now where the fuck was I?
    Oh yeah. My momma. She always said to me, she said 'Sam, don't you listen to what they say. Those things make you special'. Well, my momma, as much as I love her, didn't know shit about special. See, her family never had any of this shit. It's all from my old man's side of the family. And, well, way I hear it? They're real special. See, I only just found out who my old man is. Turns out? He's not a very nice guy. I'm not too fuckin' fond of him. But he's just not too nice, you know? There's a fuckin' lot worse out there. Turns out? He gave me skin tough enough to handle the shit that was gonna be thrown at me, and an extra fuckin' eye he had layin' around, so I could see past the bullshit. The fact that they've done nothin' but made my fuckin' life miserable? Let's just say he didn't give me his fuckin' sens'a humor.
    Thing is, Charlie, I'm only now startin' to understand my place in this fuckin' world, and you ain't got nothing to do with it. You're small shit. You and your friends been fuckin' with me my entire fuckin' life. And I been puttin' up with it way more than I intend to from now on. Capische? I don't have time to just beat the fuck outta you guys any more. Now on, you and your little shit friends bring shit to me and mine? You're gonna fuckin' burn. And I mean that. Literally.
    For now, Charlie, you're gonna run away and hide like the small shit you are. You feel the fear? You want to run away already, but you can't even bring yourself to fuckin' blink. Don't worry. In a minute here, I'm gonna turn my back, and you'll be able to run. Holy shit, charlie, will you ever run. But before you do, remember this: You ain't seen fuckin' nothing. you don't know what I can do. And I can do so much to make your life hell, Charlie. So fuckin' much.
    I'd say I'd see you around, man. But I tell you what, you better hope I fuckin' don't.
    Now.
    ...
    Run.

Stuff I may not have told you about the move.

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:26:06 GMT

OK, so I leave ahead of the girls. I'm driving the van, and they're driving the moving truck. I sleep at rest stops, get gas when I need gas, and generally fight off boredom by any means necessary (Mostly by trying to match speeds with attractive women. Did you know that the prettier you are in Montana, the faster you drive?) It's your average cross-country trip. America is a sometimes beautiful place, but the northern part of it is a wasteland from the Rockies all the way to, uh, Chicago, pretty much.

But just outside Minneapolis, things start to get really, really interesting. Suddenly, I smell smoke. Not the cigarette smoke I've been smelling on my unwashed self for days, but a new, more plasticky kind of smoke. I look down, and sure enough, my dashboard is on fire.

My.

Dashboard.

Is.

On.

Fire.

I just wanted to make sure you didn't miss that last bit there. Smoke is pouring out of the interior of my car. So I pull over into a closed weigh station, turn off the car, and pretty much tear apart the dash to figure out what the hell's wrong with it.

OK, a little backstory: When I got this car, the headlights were a little finicky, and the brakes were worn down so badly that my mechanic wouldn't let me drive away after replacing just the pads; he pretty much forced me to replace the rotors as well, but I don't blame him. They were ugly. But the car was free, and I pretty much expected to have to do some work on it. Anyways, as I drove the car more, The headlights got a little worse. And a little worse, and a little worse, and a little worse. By the end of our time in Washington, I had to shove my hand into the hole in the dashboard that was provided for fuse panel access, past the fuse panel, around a sharp piece of plastic that, having ripped open my dashboard, I now know exists for no other reason than to piss me off, and grab some wires that connect to the headlight switch, wiggling them around, in order to coax the car into turning on the headlights. Honestly, I'm making it sound a hell of a lot easier and more comfortable than it was.

Flash forward. Here I am, dismantling my flaming, hissing dashboard, and what I discover is that the cluster of wires which connects to the headlight switch, and the plastic sockety thing that holds them in place, is on fire. I end up having to remove that part of the dash entirely.

So here I am, in Minnesota, at sundown, and I've just removed the bit of my car that connects electricity to my headlights. What's a guy to do?

I take stock of my assets, and besides the hollowcorse cloak and wheelbarow, I've got several boxes containing computer bits, clothes and foodstuffs, a few swords and sticks, an unholy stink, born of an unholy union of my own unholy body stench and the unholy portal to whichever level of hell burns the hottest that's opened in my dash, and a jar of peanuts.

In the end, I decided to sacrifice a computer power cord, and use the copper core to re-connect my headlights. I used one of the swords to saw through the cord, then used my teeth to strip it. then I chose the two most charred looking connectors, and bridged them. Bingo. Headlights. I was unable to incorporate the peanuts, clothes, or stench into my ghetto-y fix.

So I start driving again towards Chicago. Everything is going fine, until just outside of Elgin, where I suddenly notice that there's something glowing right about where I made the bridge. Sure enough, moments later, my dashboard is on fire again. I get off in Elgin, and try to figure out what went wrong. But I can't see a damned thing. See, as well as headlights, that cluster contains contacts which provide power to the dash lights, the dome light, and the tail lights. I only had headlights, when I had them. So, at 2 in the morning, in my home town, I wander the streets for about an hour, trying to figure out who's awake and can lend me a flashlight. In the end, noone's awake, so I head over to dad's place.

I knock on the front door at dad's place, and the dogs go absolutely bugshit. I was counting on my dad being a light sleeper, and not waking up his wife, who believes me to be an honest-to-god sociopath. No hope of that now. The kitchen light comes on, and then, about ten seconds later, turns off again. I stand on the porch for a minute, feeling nervous and stupid, then decide I'll just sleep in the car, and drive home in the morning when I don't need headlights. But as I'm walking away from the house, the cops pull up. They don't stop me, they just shine lights at the yard and porch. Now, this, I think, is kinda funny. So I walk up to the cops, and tell them that they're looking for me. I hand them my ID, which still says I fucking live there, and they call and tell my dad and his wife that it's not some crazed drug-addict casing their house, it's his son, not casing the house. Dad comes out, I tell him what's going on, he grabs me a flashlight, and tells me not to come back. Since then, he hasn't returned my calls or emails.

Anyways, I figure out what went wrong, drive the car to Chicago, and, Robert's your fathers brother, I have an apartment.

Ta Da!

More details about my life

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:07:37 GMT

OK, so I' still looking for work. I've got a mohawk, and I'd kind of like to to keep it, so I figure on applying at various retail outlets and record stores first, but I can shave it off if I need a "straight job"

Tonight I'm going to Too Much Light makes the Baby Go Blind, which, for those of you who don't know, is 30 plays in 60 minutes. Sarah feels a little tired, and so she might not go.

As a side project, I've decided to relearn HTML, and to learn SQL and PHP, so I can build my own browser game. Some of these things pull in immense amounts of money. Hell. Some of the really crappy ones pull in a lot of money. I figure, knowing as much as I do about game design, I can go ahead and make something that will be a satisfying game experience, for just about any type of player. I've already got an outline, and a list of sequential goals... and today, I wrestled Apache into submission. (Apache is a web-server program, which will allow me to test the game on my home network before renting server space.

I've always wanted to make games for a living. I figure I can do this in my spare time, and if I make a product that people like, eventually quit my job (I'm not really going to jump into his full force until I've got one) and do it full time. Honestly, I'd like to think I can get to b as big as Asymmetric, which makes KOL, but I don't yet know if that's within my reach.

Meanwhile, I'm working to reconnect with old friends. That's going marginally well. Sean's coming over tomorrow afternoon, Rob's been out a couple of times, and I've been to see Annie. Trying now to get together with Sisco, Laine, and Carrie, but so far, that's not been easy.

I think I'd also like to see Tony again. I saw a chess board yesterday that I almost bought for him, but I haven't seen or even spoken to him in ages.

The Return of The Son of The Bride of More Webgames

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:27:19 GMT

OK, time for another post, and this time, I've got a bushel of games. A bushel, I tell you!

As an added bonus, I've linkefied my older webgame posts, to add direct links for the games, with a couple of exceptions.

Without further ado, the games!

Gladiatus: Hero of Rome
First on the block, we have this, an arena combat game, with a couple of added twists.

In Gladiatus, you play the part of a brand new gladiator. You fight in the arena to win fame, glory, and filthy, filthy lucre. You spend your blood money on equipment and training, and then fight some more. It's a bit like every other arena game. This one has a few added bits however, which make it a touch more compelling.

Firstly, it's kinda pretty. Where most browser games are text-only, or include poorly-drawn or google-searched images, this one includes some fairly attractive hand-painted bits for just about everything. It's not breathtaking, but it is a welcome break from the stock crappy graphics. The inventory and shop interface is smooth, Click-and-drag fare, reminiscent of Diablo. Battles, on the other hand, are blow-by-blow text affairs, and while mildy entertaining the first few times, lose their value pretty quickly.

Second off, it's got just a schmear more content than you might expect. In addition to battling in the arena (which, as a non-supporter, you can only do every 15 minutes) you can also do quests for the locals, and mount expiditions to various nearby locales, where you fight something, and upon winning, are rewarded with nifty swag.

Gladiatus has not one, but two supporter systems. The first is a premium membership, which speeds up play, and awards you with a daily wage based on your level. That'll cost you four bucks a month. The second is Rubies, which is premium currency. The game tells me that all things can eventually be bought with normal gold, but that rubies will let you but stuff that's more powerful than your current level would normally allow to spawn in the stores. You can also use rubies to instantly refresh the stores, rather than waiting an hour like you normally would. These cost eleven dollars for 80, or about 14 cents each. I'll never pay a cent to this particular game.

Dig'n'Fight
Next up is Dig'n'Fight, an html port of teh classic BullFrog game: Dungeon Keeper. In DNF, you play the evil overlord of a dark dank dungeon, dug out by devilish demons, developed over days, and alliterated by yours truly.

In all seriousness though, this is probably one of the most attractively built and well-balanced territory games I have ever seen. The monsters are beautifully drawn and well-animated, the interface is intuitive and nearly snag-free, and the pacing works well enough that I keep wanting to go back and play some more, to unlock the next bit of stuff.

Basically, the game works like this: You have a team of imps, which digs out new areas for your dungeon to fill, and which mines gold to pay for, well, everything you do. So you get some space, and some cash, and you start developing rooms. The first four rooms you get are your dungeon heart, which, uh, is the heart of your dungeon, the portal, through which you hire minions, the chicken farm, where you raise the food which feeds your minions, and the sleeping room, where your minions keep their meager belongings. Once you've established these four, and enlarged the latter two enough, your first minion becomes available. You are then told what you have to do to get your second minion, as well as being told the requirements for developing the next room.
Play continues in this fashion. Dig, expand rooms, hire minions to defend your dungeon. Oh, and send those minions to raid the dungeons of your foes. Good times to be had by all. Except my foes. I crush them under my heel. Well, not my heel, my unstoppable horde's heel... heels.

Anyways, DNF has a supporter system. It works a lot like Travian's. You spend cash on points, which then get spent on temorary upgrades to the way your dungeon works. Cheaper rooms, cheaper recruitment, cheaper training, speedier minions, and so on. What I like about the supporter system here, however, is not the options for enhancement themselves, but the way they made them fit the theme. They're all magical artifacts, like the Ring of Flirtation, or the Hammer of the Handyman, or the Burning Eye. Nifty.

OK, I have a few more to review, but I'll have to get to them in the next few days, because I am very, very tired.

Formalities

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 04:42:26 GMT

I'm alive. Still looking for work, So is Lori. Sarah found a job out in Rosemont.

There you go.

I'M IN CHICAGO!

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:51:53 GMT

OK, I had a like 10 paragraph thing about my harrowing trip from Seattle, but fuck it. the compy I'm on (a VAIO from 98) keeps randomly jumping to other page, and tossing the cursor around into bad places.

I'm here. I'm alive, and I'm going to need a massive amount of help getting my crap into my new place, which is on the third floor at 2358 S. St Louis ( corner of 24th street, and St. Louis. It's not far from Cermak)

I expect that the beautiful Sarah, and the also beautiful Lori will arrive here in about an hour or two, and they've got two households worth of stuff.

Show up, and you will be rewarded! With something! Tangible! I promise!

I'm not sure what that something would be, but hey! Free Something!

i has a cell fone!

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:36:41 GMT

It's got all kinds of wiggy extras, and unlimited nights and weekends. Those, by the way, start at 7 o'clock. I also have a fair number of daytime minutes, because I'm gonna be job hunting here in a second.

Call me! Here's the number:

773-642-5217

Bratwurst Casserole!

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:24:43 GMT

OK, So I'm moving right? Halfway across the country, see? And we have all this perishable food, ya know? So I look in the fridge, and decide that I'm going to cook some of the perishable food.

We have bratwursts. And I'm thinking to myself "Self, all you know how to do with brats, really, is grill them, and you have no charcoal."

Then I realize that this is the perfect time to whip out the innate cooking ability that has been handed down to me by the savant-chefs of old. I duck into the nearest phone booth, and emerge half an hour later (most of that was the drive to the booth. it's in the Horseshoe cafe in town) as Super Hobo Kitchen Fantastic Man!!!

Over the course of the next hour, I concocted, using the limited ingredients in my kitchen, a Fantastic dish. Here's what I did:

I took 2 cartons of chicken broth and brought them to a boil in a large pot. I then used the boiling broth to cook Acini De Pepe pasta.

While that was cooking, I chopped one onion, and melted a stick of butter in a skillet. Yeah. a whole stick.

Once the butter started to bubble, I tossed the onions into it, along with two heaping teaspoons of jarred minced garlic. I heated and turned this concoction constantly until the onions were tender.

About this time, the pasta was done. I drained it, catching the broth in another pot. I put the pasta into a baking dish.

Returning to the onion-butter-garlic soup, I turned off the heat, mixed in about two tablespoons of mustard powder and a libera squirt of dijon mustard, and put about four super-heaped spoons of bleached white flour into the mixture, mixing until what I had was more like a paste. I then slowly added milk to the mixture, about half a cup at a time, stirring until an even consistency was achieved, before adding the next bit of milk. I continued this process until I had a medium-thick sauce.

I tasted the sauce, found it tasty, but obviously lacking in something, so as I always do in that situation, I whipped out my trusty jar of MSG, and added a good-sized dash to the sauce. Then I tasted it again, and found it perfection incarnate.

Now came the brats. I sliced the entire package of unprecooked brats into about 1cm slices, and tossed them with the pasta.

I spread the sauce over that, and topped off the whole thing with crushed rice-and-corn breakfast cereal. Tossed it in the oven at 350 for 35 minutes, pulled it out, let it cool for a few minutes, and ate the thing.

I win at cooking.

More Webgames

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:34:08 GMT

Well, I said there'd be more, and there are. So many more, in fact, that it was high time I made another post.

You may wonder why I'm "wasting my time" with something like this, and if you are, I'll tell you. And if you aren't well, I'll tell you anyways.

See, most of the web games out there have a bribery system, wherein you vote for them on one or more "Top X Webgame" Sites, where 'X' equals a multiple of 100. These sites list a massive shit-ton of webgames, and claim they the games listed are the best of the best.

Bullshit. The games listed are, 9 times out of 10, the games which offer the best bribes for voting. After sifting through a few of these sites, I decided to start playing as many as I could stomach, and to give you, dear readers, my opinions on them, good or bad. So, Without further fondue, here are the games...

Shields-Up

OK, Fuck saving the best for last. Of this group, this is easily the best. SU is a galactic trader/pirate/manufacturer/miner/explorer/privateer/governer game. It's everything I've ever wanted from a space game, with the exception of fully-animated free-space dogfights, which are really, really hard to accomplish nicely in a web browser. SU features an easy-to-use graphical interface, a multi-tap notepad with namable tabs, almost 6000 players (small!) three galaxies (big!) 300 in-game items and commodities (bigger!) and many, many career builds (biggerer!). Turns are allocated per hour, and used like tissue paper. You have enough space in your "fuel tanks" for one week's worth of turns, so daily play isn't at all necessary... That said, I have trouble staying away for enough time to get even a third of my tanks filled.

SU strongly encourages Specialization. At least in the early stages of the game, choosing a skillset means utterly neglecting all the other skill sets. Want to be an asteroid miner? Then don't invest a bunch of points into manufacturing or combat or planetary exploration skills. Seriously. I've had a little (very little) success playing a hybrid fighter/miner, but even then, I've had to neglect the skills that would be necessary to mount any kind of shields on my ship.

Early mistakes, however, aren't game-killers. you start the game with one IP (I don't know what the I stands for. They're skill ponts) Reset, and you earn another every twenty levels. This means that every twenty levels or so, you could change career paths with a fair amount of ease.

Like nearly all webgames, this one has a supporter system. The supporter system in SU allows you to drastically increase your fuel storage and/or fuel accumulation rate, invest in a chuck of fuel right now, buy additional IP Rests, or buy new ships! (Ships are by far and away the most expensive thing in SU, but I can't imagine that they would take more than a couple weeks of dedicated grinding to afford.)

This game is in open beta, so there is a small chance that when it hits 1.0, players will be reset. Supporter Items, however, will remain whether there is a reset or not.

Legend Of The Green Dragon

Some of the older people here may remember the days of the very first Multiplayer games. The ones Hosted in the 80s on BBS's. LOTGD is a decendent of one of those games, called LORD, or Legend of Red Dragon. If you don't know what that entails, I can elaborate... And I will!Give me a second! damn. Anyways...

Legend of the Green Dragon is a game where you wander into the woods, fight monsters, increase your level, and eventually take on the Green Dragon Herself. Then you die, are reborn, and do it all again. There are a number of diversions to take part in,(such as buying bigger and bigger hats... not because they do anything, but just because having the biggest hat is bragging rights) as well as a little strategy here and there. You have a small (10) number of turns allocated to you per game day, (two days per game day, starting at 11AM and 11PM CST) and you get an extra turn every time you fight a monster which fails to hit you for teh entirety of the battle. It's all pretty simplistic.

The more times you've killed the Dragon, the bigger you get. You keep a little bit of power from previous incarnations, and it's all pretty groovy. I don't know. I'm not that into this one. Older players may get off on the nostalgia factor, and hardcore diamonds might like the e-penis factor, but all in all, I'm just not that impressed. For what it is, it's well designed, and I do like the "<foo> lunges at you with <bar>" monster descriptions. Some of them are pretty funny, especially in combination with the end-of fight-text.

Try it if you want to, But I'd be suprised if you were still playing it two weeks later.

Torn City

"Congratulations on your picking Thorn City as your new home!" The pamphlet said. It blew across the dirty street on a zephyr which also carried wanted posters, and hand-printed advertisements for local gun shops and dog fights. I listened to the faraway sounds of everyday TC life: gun shots. sirens, screams, explosions. Shaking my head, I grabbed the line of grocery carts I was retriving for my place of employment: Wally's Grocery, and headed back in."After work," I thought, "I'm gonna have to knock over that convienience store on 115th."

TC is a game wherein you play a citizen of the most crime-infested city ever imagined. Liberty City? San Andreas? Nothing compared to TC. Nearly every citizen of TC is a hardened criminal, and noone gives a crap about anyone but themselves. It's like a microcosm of the internet as a whole.

From the get-go, TC doesn't seem like it's going to be worth playing for very long at all. The graphics, where they actaully exist, were obviously mined from a Google Image search. The interface is beyond uninteresting, and the forums show that most of the players are as uninteresting as they are stupid. But behind the masses of idiots, and the dull interface, is a surprising amount of good game design.

The game is basically centered around three meters Energy, which you use to perfrom strenuous activities such as training at the gym, attacking other players, busting people out of jail, and enrolling in classes(?), Happiness, which to a large extent determines how well you do at anything you try, and Nerve, which is used up whenever you attempt a crime. Nerve is returned to you at 1 point every 5 minutes, and the maximum value is determined by level, Happiness is returned to you at varying rates, depending on what you do for a living, how nice your house is, and so on, and has a maximum value determined by your house, and Energy is returned to you at a rate of 5 points every fifteen minutes, and has a maximum value of 100... Unless you pay them money.

Experience in TC is utterly hidden. You have no way of gauging how much your actions are affecting your overall experience, which to a large extent, prevents power-gaming and exploits. There are a large number of crimes, many of which are hidden at the beginning of the game, and reveal themselves to you when you complete certain objectives, like succeeding at a certain crime a few times, or reaching a certain level in a certain career track, or via random events.

The previously mentioned supporter system speeds energy accumulation, increases energy maximums, awards a few points which can be used towards in-game items and perks, and adds a blacklist to your account.

If you can get past the glaring shortfalls, this one's worth a shot.

I'm going to have to cut this one short, because my sister just showed up to visit. I'll be back to tell you about a few more at a later date.