anti0pposite's Journal
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
anti0pposite's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | | 10:02 pm |
So I'm done with Math for the rest of College (and by extension, hopefully forever). I got a 2.5 in MV Calc, and then 4.0's in The Information Society and Introduction to Interpersonal Communications. Can't remember if I mentioned it here earlier, but there's a large overlap between pursuing a Computer Science education as well as the specialization in Video Games, which is out of the Comm Arts college, and the new Comm Arts major called Media Arts & Technology - concentrating in Games, Web, & Interactive Media. I'll already be taking somewhere from a third to half of the required courses/credits for the new MAT-GWIM major, so I decided to enroll in it, meaning that after 3 years of college I'll have a dual degree in CSE & MAT-GWIM, with a minor/specialization in Game Design & Development. Hopefully all will run smoothly, and that won't come crashing down in my face :P I'll basically be taking 20 credit semesters, which along with any more summer school I take, as well as the 34 credits I brought in from AP exams, will get me the required 150 credits by the Spring of 2010. I'm being told it'll be a real pain, especially with the upper-level courses, but I've been so fucking bored so far, starting out with 13 credits last Fall, upping to 16 for the Spring, and then taking 10 during the doubly-paced Summer Session #1. I'm just eager to find a courseload challenging enough to where I actually have to study or do homework, where I can't get away with just an hour of cramming before each exam and walk out with a 95, or write a paper in less than 2 hours (on Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes, no less!), and 4.0 the paper. I would desperately like for a valid excuse to not get a shitty campus job just to soak up my incredible number of free hours. The longer I've been in college, the more conceited I've become. Neither the students nor the professors have impressed me, or even matched what I had at my High School, the sheer quality of which has been made increasingly apparent to me. I almost masochistically hope that I stumble upon a courseload that just crushes me, just so I can find something academically humbling. bleh GameCamp's been going well so far, nothing too interesting to anyone outside that environment. I'll be heading back up to East Lansing the week after the 15th of August, into my nice little Designated Single, which will be such a nice change from having a roommate. Besides that, not much solid news. | | Monday, May 12th, 2008 | | 10:50 am |
I disagree with Histrionic and Schizoid, but there was no real in-between for some of the iffy questions, and I guess I can blame the OCD for me wanting to keep answers consistant :P This next one was much less impressive, i.e. the war in Iraq, as it didn't distinguish between support of starting it v.s. support of finishing what we unfortunately started, so I had to go with oppose, and it called me a liberal! :O Your dating personality profile:
Practical - You are a down-to-earth individual who is not impressed with material excess. You care about the stuff of like that really matters.
Liberal - Politics matters to you, and you aren't afraid to share your left-leaning views. You would never be caught voting for a conservative candidate.
Athletic - Physical fitness is one of your priorities. You find the time to work athletic pursuits into your schedule. You enjoy being active. | Your Top Ten Traits
1. Practical
2. Liberal
3. Athletic
4. Shy
5. Big-Hearted
6. Funny
7. Intellectual
8. Romantic
9. Wealthy/Ambitious
10. Sensual
| Your date match profile:
Conservative - Forget liberals, you need a conservative match. Political discussions interest you, and a conservative will offer the viewpoint you need.
Practical - You are drawn to people who are sensible and smart. Flashy, materialistic people turn you off. You appreciate the simpler side of living.
Outgoing - Shy and timid people are not who you are after. You need someone with a vibrant personality to breathe life into a relationship. | Your Top Ten Match Traits
1. Conservative
2. Practical
3. Outgoing
4. Funny
5. Sensual
6. Traditional
7. Athletic
8. Intellectual
9. Big-Hearted
10. Stylish
|
Take the Dating Profile Quiz at Would I Date You | | Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | | 5:00 pm |
way too fucking nervous
Tomorrow is my last final. Physics 1 was on Monday, wasn't too bad, Programming Intro 2 was Tuesday, that went well, and War & Revolution was today, wasn't too bad. Tomorrow is Discreet Mathematics, which shouldn't be any trouble. Saturday I get to fly down to New Mexico to hang out with my mom and meet the first boyfriend she's had in... fuck, like... 6 years? I'll spend a week in Taos, then fly back Friday, move into my summer dorm, and start MV Calc. I tried to get permission to take my Statistics for Engineers course alongside MV Calc, because talking to a couple senior CSE majors has revealed that the class is easy, and doesn't even require basic Calc, but the STT department is hardcore about MV Calc as a pre-req. Maybe they need to feel important or something? I dunno. I looked a bit into getting a summer job related to programming, but all there is is Web Design stuff, which I don't know, and don't want to know, so I guess I'll just be twiddling my thumbs most of May and June, with my 8 hours a week courseload. Things with that girl from my Programming Into 2 class (Jessica's her name) have steadily progressed, compared to my normal progress towards relationships with crushes. We talked a fair bit during the last few Labs, the Lectures, etc. After the exam Tuesday she asked me where I lived, and as it was on her way she offered me a ride, which I accepted. I also managed to muster up enough courage to add her as a friend on Facebook. And all this, for me, is a great deal of progress. I'm cripplingly shy whenever it's related to a girl that I'm this interested in. She's staying her for summer school, but isn't taking MV Calc, and I don't think we'll be in the same classes next semester, so I've been trying to figure out a way to stay in contact with her without coming across too strong. Her AIM screen name is on her profile, but I'm not totally sure how appropriate it is to get it off there for the purpose of light chatting. As a solution, though, and a genuine one, not scrounged up out of desperate threads, I might offer her my Discreet Math textbook, since I remember her saying she's taking that next semester. I don't know anyone else who's going to be taking it, and I won't need it after tomorrow. That's about it for news. Current Mood:  anxious | | Monday, April 14th, 2008 | | 9:37 pm |
Eclectic Collection of News!
Well, second semester of college is almost over. Recently announced was a course for Programming for Video Games that'll be taught every other fall semester starting fall 2008, with Multivariable Calculus and one of a couple 300 level courses as pre-reqs, neither of which I have. Problem is two things: I came to college to learn how to program for video games, and the next time the course is offered is after I graduate (Fall 2010), so after scouring teh intarwebs for online or Austin-based equivalences and not having much success, I've decided to stay here at MSU for an extra month and a half to take a condensed Multivariable Calculus course, which means I won't be able to go spend a week in Dallas with my old friends from highschool, and I'll have to miss the first three weeks of GameCamp, which makes it more strenuous for everyone there. On the bright side, I might be able to get my Statistics class out of the way as well, and having both Calc and STT out of the way will free up my schedule for when I plan to take 3 or 4 high level CSE courses all in the same semester, for multiple semesters :P So that'll be interesting. I've also got me a new crush, this stunningly gorgeous girl in my CSE class (honestly, I can't fucking stress enough how gorgeous she is), who also seems to be pretty sharp and level-headed. I've talked to her a few times in the lab, mostly helping her with programming. Of course, I'm incredibly shy, so unless she's harboring some secret attraction to me, and planning to act on it aggressively, I doubt anything'll happen. Which might be part of the reason I got the Just Shy; Not Antisocial (you can talk to me!) shirt off of XKCD's store :P There have been a few events that all have the possibility of implying she likes me, and a few I-caught-her-looking-at-me/She-caught-me-l ooking-at-her/We-happened-to-glance-at-e achother-at-the-same-time moments, depending on whether you tend towards Optimism or Pessimism, but honestly most of it is probably me clawing desperately at thin threads of reality as fuel for my day dreams. I've also ordered Pathologic off of Ebay, since all the sellers are in the UK, and nobody on Amazon ships to the US. I dunno what it is about that game, but half-way through the Eurogamer review I decided to go through the trouble of acquiring it, and have since stopped looking up anything about it. I truly believe that Video Games have incredible potential as art, and even if so many of the games that reach towards that are flawed and buggy as hell, I think it's pretty important to learn from both what they get right and what they get wrong. Also, I started listening to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and while I'm enjoying it a fair amount, I would highly recommend that people not take this post as a recommendation for it. I love it, I think it's great, and I am fully aware that in this case my tastes are just plain fucked up. Dischordancy and odd juxtapositions and home-made instruments and nonsensical, angry, angry Dadaist lyrics and noise music are for some reason really striking a chord with me. | | Monday, January 28th, 2008 | | 10:33 pm |
Another copy and paste from Facebook
"From Jan 18th to the 20th, I participated in the Wolverine Soft 48-hour Game Jam up at UM campus in Ann Arbor. We brought 13 people from MSU, and the teams were limited to 3 people, so I volunteered to be by myself. I decided to make a text adventure, incorporating the contest's them of "Honoring Stephen Colbert". I had a short, simple, unbalanced 10-room version done by Saturday morning, and after a long, painful attempt to incorporate graphics to make up for the small size and low quality of it, I decided to re-make the whole thing, doubling the number of rooms and increasing the variety and quality of the gameplay. The end result was Bearea 51. I think it turned out pretty well, but the popular vote disagreed :P http://entity.ummu.umich.edu/~wsoft/events/48hourcontest5/ The version I officially submitted had a couple problems, though, so since the contest I've spent a few hours fixing and improving some things. This version is much better for many small, but important reasons. http://msu.edu/~starksad/games/bearea51.zip Feel free to share any comments/criticisms/bug-reports :P" The source code is all there (in Python), so let me say, just in case someone glances at it, that I didn't use any pre-made libraries or modules not standard for Python, and I've never before made a text adventure, or really anything like this. That said, I'm exceedingly proud of the fact that I was able to make this entirely without outside help or online tutorials. The previous two games I worked on I was part of a team, and while I was proud and happy about the experiences, the fact that I was all alone in making this is kinda special to me, as I can now, definitively, say that I can make a game totally from scratch, albeit one without any kind of fancy .exe or graphical components :P | | Monday, January 21st, 2008 | | 12:53 am |
Well, I just got back from the third Game Jam, the official one. MSU brought 13 people, 3 people per team, so I volunteered to be a lone wolf, seeing as I'm experienced enough to accomplish something, but not experienced enough to lead a team. So I decided to make a text-based adventure, since I still haven't learned how to integrate art and audio with programming, and this would be a neat test. I'd once tried to make a text-based adventure in Java some years ago in high school, and had given up after like 30 minutes. I decided to use Python, as that has really simple, convenient input/output, and I wanted to keep those two particular things to a minimum of hassle. Python also facilitates the production of massive amounts of code over a short amount of time. It's also relatively easy to install on the language, so it makes distributing the game itself easier. The theme announced at 7 was "Honor Stephen Colbert". I probably started programming around 8 or 9 Friday night, worked up a storm. At some point around 3 AM, my memory stopped recording, and next thing I know it's 8 in the morning, and I've coded a fair amount, and I know what it does, and I can work with it, but I for the life of me have no fucking clue what's going on, because I didn't remember programming. By 9 AM Saturday morning, I have a fully functioning, fully beatable text based adventure, with extremely simple environmental and combat interactions, and a very narrow parser (I think is the right term). Bearea 51 had you infiltrate a small 10-roomed base locationed in French-Canadia, where bears were attempting to hybridize a grizzly bear and a polar bear. Nothing too insanely creative, and I had fun naming things like Bearracks and Ursanel and Pawory. I think there was enough cheese in it to put someone even mildly lactose intolerant into a coma. I then spend from 9 AM until 5 PM trying to figure out some way to give the thing a GUI, to display some moving-photos-cutscenes, and after incompatibility and unclear tutorials and breaks to read and being depressed, I decide to start over. The game was funny for me, as I'd made it, but it was a very, very simple and limited game, and the code design wasn't as comprehensible as it could have been. So I then reworked and restructured the whole thing, removed a lot, added a lot, refined a lot, doubled the number of rooms, varied the gameplay a pretty decent amount, did some mildly interesting things with the parser, and had a decently interesting layout and flow to the base. Added enough extra cheese to make someone become lactose intolerant (high-ranked bears were Ursaffers instead of Officers(!!!), the Bearracks was littered with Ursanol effects, a low-score at the end of the game resulted in Stephen calling you Bono). I was very pleased with the results. Anyway, I'll post more later, and I'll clean up some of the minor issues in the game and release it, in case anyone is interested. I'm so tired that my eyes hurt so much that sleeping will be hard, but I think I learned enough from the experience that it was easily worth it. :) | | Thursday, January 17th, 2008 | | 10:40 am |
Copied from a Facebook note
"Now that I've finally learned how to use my webspace, and also have spare time, and just feel like it, I've uploaded the two games I've helped make during the Spartasoft Game Jams I've been to. For those unaware, a Game Jam is a contest to see which team can make the best game in 48 hours. The first one was back in mid September, the second was in early November, and a third is scheduled for sometime this month. The games are rough, and still had problems when we turned them in. We've decided not to fix said problems for the online release, because we want to show only what we accomplished within the 48 hours. The games are also kinda massive, because we didn't really put effort towards being efficient with our art assets. The games require Windows XP, DirectX, and these two thingies listed below: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a7da4763-6807-4bd5-8d18-18c60c437f93&displaylang=en Blood and Bronze is a sidescrolling action game with the story loosely being that the Spartan statue on MSU campus has come to life to defend MSU from evil things. Arrow keys move left and right, space jumps, 'a' is attack, and 's' is block. The player has a health bar on the upper left of the screen. The collision for the boss is broken, so he can't be killed, and even if he were, there's no win screen. This was our first game. 53.7 mb to download, a whopping 193 mb when installed. http://msu.edu/~starksad/games/bnb.rar Sticks of Fury is another sidescrolling action game, with the story loosely being that Spruce Campbell must cleanse the North Pole of evil. Arrow keys control movement and jumping, the mouse aims attacks, left click swings the sword (sword must be moving to do damage), and right click fires the [shot]gun. The player has 10 health, but this is not displayed. The collision for this is all kinds of messed up. From the left, it's fine, but from the right the hitbox is far in front of the enemies. Also, the final enemy is accidentally too far away to attack or be attacked, so the game is again unbeatable. The interesting thing about this game is that all the animations are actually animations. We used a tree limb-joint system to pose the player, and then various joint rotations for our animation. It's not flawless, but it was a lot more memory efficient than the sprite sheets from Blood and Bronze. 28.3 mb to download, still 67 mb when installed (because of the Credits Screen, which must be seen [and heard]!) http://msu.edu/~starksad/games/sticks.rar Enjoy :P" I posted this on facebook a week or two ago, and forgot to post it here. Don't expect anything exciting, this is all just rough stuff. Our focus as a team was more on the process of making everything work than on being original or well balanced. The Official Game Jam is being held this weekend in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, so that'll be interesting. | | Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 | | 3:16 am |
Happy New Year!
bleh My grades ended up being pretty decent. I passed all my classes, ending with a 3.28 GPA from the 13 credits of courses. Next semester I'm upping it to 16, and the classes are more interesting, so that should be nice. Tomorrow (well, today), I'm driving from Austin to Dallas to see some friends, and then from Dallas to E. Lansing, Michigan. I'm pretty excited about having my car up there :P I did the registration stuff, and the sticker is waiting in the mail at my dorm. Things with Andrea (the girl from the game dev club) went... sour. It's a long, weird-ass story, but I can safely say that I'm pretty sure that almost all the fucked-up-edness was derived from her end of things. That long, painful (well, frustrating) process kind of put off my advancing things with Shannon (the girl from my biology class), both due to confusion and me not being an asshole, and I'm not sure how that's gonna turn out. But I'm not angsting over this too much. What really bothers me is that I can't get that girl I met on the plane out of my head. I ended up tracking her down (I think) based on college info and her first name, but I've yet to message her to confirm this, for various reasons. Despite those setbacks, though, and some weight gain on my part (possibly imagined), I'm glad the way 2007 went. I met a lot of really cool people, learned a fair amount, saw a lot of interesting movies, read a lot of interesting books, played a lot of interesting games, and listened to a lot of interesting music. I like who I am right now better than who I was a year ago, and I have deeper friendships now than I've ever had before, and right now that's all that really matters. So, Cheers! | | Monday, November 26th, 2007 | | 2:29 pm |
Various Things
Thanksgiving was kind of meh. I flew down to New Mexico to see my mom and sister for a couple days, and all the driving and flying and jet lag both took away from quality time, and made the quality time that I did have less worth having. Not horrible, just... New Mexico, for me :P The most interesting part was a girl that I met on one of my flight legs back. She was attractive, funny, intelligent, and a gamer girl. We ended up talking for a good part of the flight, and everything I threw at her was caught and tossed back. We started a conversation about Bioshock, and I find out that she's played Condemned and SS2, and she's read a lot of Ayn Rand (she disagrees with most of it :P). We talked about the symbolism of the game, and the overall theme, and various levels and experiences. Our topics went elsewhere, and our views converged an insane amount, from our taste in games to books we've read to our views on sex in our modern culture. She was cute, talkative, bubbly, and full of self esteem, and she lacked a verbal filter. Instead of being optimistic, she was a pleased pragmatist. She had hyperactive quirks and mannerisms. And I forgot/chickenshitted-out-of getting any of her contact information. We were separated getting off the plane, and then as I was looking for the gate for my next flight, we saw each other as she was headed into the bathroom, and waved. She made a motion to walk over, then hesitated, and I made a motion, and then hesitated, both out of step with each other (damn Biological lag), and that was that. Only part of it was any interest in a relationship with her. People that are genuinely as I described, without any apparent major flaws, are incredibly rare. I'm beating myself up more because I fucked up having a really interesting friend than out of any love interest. It's the most disappointed in myself that I've been in a... really long time. I honestly can't remember the last time I made such a stupid mistake for such moronic reasons. I need to fucking get over my shy/nervous tendency to come across as disinterested to people that I like in some way. I tried finding her on Facebook, but there are some retarded search limitations that make it hard. Apparently, advanced search only works for people in my networks, aka Michigan State University. I forgot the name of her school, but it wasn't MSU. It also doesn't help that there are eight different ways to spell her first name. *sigh* I guess 'Various Things' was a bit of a misnomer for this post. Current Mood:  frustrated | | Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 | | 8:18 pm |
Future Play
I've officially registered to go to my first GDC-type event along with a group from the MSU Game Dev club. Future Play doesn't look to be too exciting, but it can't hurt, and I'm sure I'll have a good time at it. I've never been to Canada, either, so that should be interesting. We're gonna leave for Toronto on November 14th, the conference starts on the 15th, and then drive back either Saturday or Sunday. I had some kind of major depressive attack last Sunday night, but it was so sudden, and so gone by the morning, that I'm pretty sure it was a hormonal flux or some other kind of chemical trigger. The issues that depressed were and still are valid, but it was like I was unable to keep things in scale and perspective. *shrugs* It's gone now, but it'll be stamped into the ground if I do well on my Calc II exam tomorrow morning. The possibility of failing out of Calc II is a major shadow on my horizon. And that's it for news :P | | Thursday, September 13th, 2007 | | 2:59 pm |
Notepad
Well, I finally got the bright idea to keep a little notepad for writing down game ideas. I've been carrying one around that contains my class schedule, and I noticed that after that first page the pad was unfilled. I've written down past iterations of a couple of these ideas in scattered locations, now strewn across the continental US, and I did a presentation on a modified version of one of them my second week as an attendant at GameCamp, but now they're all updated and in one convenient place. I'm really incredibly surprised that I didn't think to do this earlier :P | | Friday, September 7th, 2007 | | 11:37 pm |
Bioshock (The lightest of spoilers)
Well, I've beaten it. Fantastic art, fantastic sound, fantastic music (for the most part), fantastic voice acting (for the most part), and fantastic animations. The gameplay is also pretty fun and frantic. I pretty much stayed with the wrench the whole game, installing strength, stealth, and defense tonics, and only really used the electro-shock combat plasmid. I found that ammo was too scarce/expensive, it took too long to kill enemies, and it took too long to reload or switch ammo types for guns to be useful except vs Big Daddies and boss battles. The game is challenging, though. Playing through on hard, I must have died at least 50 times. I think one particular fight against a big daddy I used up 10 incarnations before I managed to kill him. The game would be flat out impossible if it wasn't for the Vita Chambers, though perhaps they should have toned the game down instead of adding them. Unfortunately, the game really doesn't do anything new. It takes from System Shock 2 in so many ways: level design, level structure, character upgrades are similar, the respawn system is the same, the audio logs, ghosts, and intercoms work the same, the gameplay is the same, and even a great deal of the story is the same. The middle of the game also really started to drag for me, though the pace was picked back up. And how much the game is related to Ayn Rand's work is thematic, at best. All of the characters either use other people for their own means, hold some value above themselves, initiate force against others, or devalue themselves through subservience to others. Well, I guess McDonaugh or whatever his name fits the mold. But the message that the game is actually sending isn't the dangers of following an ideology to an extreme: it's the dangers of not following it far enough. McDonaugh seems the only one who a) Isn't afraid to confront reality, b) Holds his happiness and life as his highest values, and c) does not initiate force against others, or ask / manipulate them to live for his sake, and within the game he is the only person who doesn't act destructively. But that doesn't lower the quality of the story. It just diminishes it's applicability as a life lesson. Overall, the game is very well made, and pulls a lot of things together in a way that works and seems natural, and I do see it as an evolved form of FPS's. And do not be mistaken, it is an RPG, in so much as the choices that you, the player, make within the game affect, both tangibly and intangibly, the status and abilities of your character, both short term and permanently. But it still doesn't really do anything new. It is nowhere near as 'new' as Thief, or System Shock 1 and 2, or Deus Ex, or Half Life, or Super Mario 64, or Ocarina of Time, or Darwinia, or Uplink, and for this reason I cannot justify a score higher than 90%, though it for sure deserves 85% as a minimum. Personally, I'd put it at 90%. | | Friday, August 31st, 2007 | | 6:45 pm |
Patton
Mr. Bungle Fantomas The Dillinger Escape Plan EP All fantastic Bands/CDs, none of which I enjoyed the first, or even the first several, times that I listened to them. The most difficult for me was Fantomas, which is probably because they are the Patton-affiliated band that I started with, and definately rank among the weirdest music I've ever heard. It took me about 4-6 months to actually start enjoying them, moving beyond just curiosity. I started with Suspended Animation, that 30 song tribute to cartoons and the holidays of April, moving next to Director's Cut, an avant-garde take on old, notable soundtracks, then to Delirium Chordia, the 72 minute soundscape with the theme of surgery sans anesthesia. And finally Fantomas's first CD, a soundtrack to a non-existent WW1 Sci Fi comic book. Mr. Bungle came next, first with it's Carnival Jazz Metal, then with the over-saturated anti-pop, and then with the avant-garde metal/sci-fi soundscape, followed by Patton's collaboration with The Dillinger Escape Plan, the weird mix of math metal and Fantomas. The thing is, I bought none of these CD's because of Patton. I saw his name mentioned online regarding Fantomas, but it never clicked. I looked up Mr. Bungle both because of Somniloquist's recommendation and because they were said to be the roots of Fantomas. And I picked up the DEP EP as a recommendation from a record store guy while looking at that band (recommended from several sources, but I've tried and just don't like them). And then I find out that apparently Fantomas heavily influenced Tool's 10,000 Days, which has some of the best songs that I think the band has done. And now I've just received a shipment containing Tomahawk, the first Patton CDs that I've boughten because of his name, and which I expect, true to the pattern, will take at least a week for me to start enjoying. His music may be difficult to digest, but I'm slowly sinking towards a point to where I'll have enough CD's to listen only to his work, and still keep things fresh. And I won't mind. I stopped listening to Korn because of the goth-emo and how seriously they took themselves. I stopped listening to Linkin Park because of the emo and how seriously they took themselves. I stopped listening to Kidney Thieves because beyond some catchiness, there wasn't much depth to their music, either structurally or lyrically. I stopped listening to Rage Against the Machine because of the annoying lead singer and how seriously they took themselves. I stopped listening to Nine Inch Nails because of all the goth-emo and how seriously they took themselves. I stopped listening to A Perfect Circle because of the subtle emo and how seriously they took themselves. I've almost stopped listening to Tool just because of how seriously they take themselves, though 10,000 Days has deviated from that, and I suspect I now realize why. Detecting a pattern here? The thing is, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, and the DEP EP, beyond the random noises, cartoon sounds, and laughing voices, have found a strange balance between serious and comical. The music itself, once both the music and the lyrics are analyzed, is almost always completely serious. It's just that Mike Patton seems to have found a way to take the music seriously, instead of taking himself seriously. Combined with his talent, that's incredibly formidable. It's a bit weird, that much is incredibly obvious to me. But I'm getting to a point where I'm only listening to a single artist, not out of choice, or because I'm a fanboy, or to be cool or underground or rebellious, but because it's such unique and fantastic music. Eh. Anyway, I just finished my first week of college at Michigan State University, majoring in Computer Science, and hopefully getting minors in AI and Game Design/Development. I have yet to meet too many people, but as I'm a) an introvert and b) here for the education/degree, that doesn't bother me too much. | | Sunday, August 26th, 2007 | | 11:42 pm |
Fuck You, EB Games
Okay, so I knew I was coming up to Michigan before Bioshock was released, but I didn't know any stores up here to preorder the game at. I wanted the collector's edition, so I knew I had to preorder it. So I was going to have someone in Austin pick it up and mail it to me. Well, that got delayed, and when my dad finally got in today to pick it up, he found out that they sold it on Thursday. He was with me at the preordering, so he can verify that they gave no warning on this, and I know they didn't call to warn me. So we look around on the internet, and besides Ebay, the only copies of a CE to be found are on Amazon for $140 and up. I told my dad it wasn't worth it, but being a business guy and very much pro-consumer, he ordered it off Amazon, and is sending the bill the EB's CEO. So I guess I'm being avenged in some way. But I'm still a bit disgusted by EB, not because of me wanting Bioshock, but of them just so nonchalantly screwing a customer. | | Saturday, August 25th, 2007 | | 11:07 pm |
Well, I drove up to Michigan from Friday to Wednesday, taking a route from Austin up through the upper peninsula down through that bridge that connects the two parts of Michigan. There's been orientation stuff going on, and classes start on Monday. I got a laptop for school from my dad, and I guess it's turning into my new gaming PC, since it has Vista and is pretty decent hardware wise, though there are enough older games I haven't played that I'm keeping my desktop PC for a long time. Stalker is interesting. I picked it up last Saturday, and I've been plowing through it. I just killed the Brain Scorcher. My only complaint is that the AI you're supposed to escort barrels forward and leaves you behind, which makes it difficult to keep them alive. But beyond that, it manages to stay consistently difficult, interesting, and freaky/scary. It's kind of what Boiling Point should have been in regards to a lot of things. GameCamp's been over for a couple weeks, but I had a really great time. It's like being around all the cool/rational/socially capable/knowledgeable people from the internet, rolled into a handful, and now they're all several states away. As such, I've made a Facebook to keep in contact with them and all the people I knew in high school. (Adam Starks if anyone is interested) My copy of Bioshock was supposed to arrive on Wednesday, but my dad left town, and my step brother didn't pick up and mail my preorder before heading out of town. So now I have to wait until Tuesday to play, though I've got more than enough games to pass the time until then. | | Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 | | 11:59 pm |
Dice Rolls
Something I've been thinking about recently has been the concept of forcing upon the player a dice roll concerning life and death. Within the last couple months, I've tried my hand at FF3 on the DS and I've beaten God Hand, among other games, and they stand out as polar opposites largely for this reason. In FF3, my experience was thus: Random battles, with random opponents, with it being random who attacks first, random how much damage you do, and random if you successfully flee. Within the very first level, the player is forced into that kind of situation without the ability to save. By the time you reach the boss, it's almost completely arbitrary how much health, XP, gil, and potions the player has left. One person, playing the exact same way, could end up fucked one time and on a red carpet the next, all because of chance. In God Hand, my experience was that I chose pretty much everything. If I went into battle, there was a prime showing every single action an enemy was going to make, and a possibility for how to avoid it, and most of the time how to counter it. If an enemy was blocking, and I broke his guard, 100% of the time he was stunned afterward. So I could make an intricate battle plan where I engage two enemies, using quick jabs to try and make one of them guard, then break the guard, launch one into the air, and do a mid-air roundhouse to send them both flying off of a cliff. Now, it may not be the easiest plan to carry out, and I may fail a lot, but if I practice, and get good, I can carry out that exact plan 100% of the time, without fail. Another thing in the game is that some of your moves are multiple moves, like mach punch (a series of 5 punches). Normally, when an enemy blocks, if you hit them a certain amount of times, they counter. Some enemies take 5 hits until they counter, while others take only 1. So when I incorporated the mach punch, there was a dice roll. Playing on Hard mode, I can die in one hit sometimes, and it may result from a tough enemy blocking mid-mach-punch. But even though that's a life and death dice roll, I can still choose to avoid it. It is not forced upon me. I can put something else in my move set that is only one hit. Now, I can understand where random things have places in games. God Hand has items appear randomly and inconsistently, GTA has cops randomly appear around you, and Deus Ex has snipers randomly hit you in the head. But at no point in Deus Ex are you forced to run down a hall towards an aware sniper. At no point in GTA do the spawning cops start with one-hit-kill weapons. And God Hand's random item system seems well tuned enough that no player is really left behind. FF3's has almost no redeeming qualities to it. Now, I realize that my future in the game industry is still a ways off, and nowhere near guaranteed to be a success, but that doesn't mean it too early to take lofty notes. And one of the things I've learned this summer is that it is at no point justifiable to force upon the player a life or death dice roll, or even a crippled or well-off dice roll. Never. We, as an industry, moved away from the Door 1 of Death and Door 2 of Life a long time ago, and though I don't see us sliding back in anytime soon, I think a lot could be learned from God Hand about exactly how to stay the fuck away from those doors. | | Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 | | 10:43 pm |
A good chunk of this was already on the forums, but oh well
"I just beat God Hand, and it is seriously one of the best and most entertaining games I have ever played. It's like an improved trip through the nostalgic 80's brawlers. Enemies are plentiful, the environment is interactive, fruit is what heals you, and it's all to the sound of surf rock.
The style, corniness, and such are great, but so much of it's greatness is in little details. For instance, fruit heals by %, so even if you've upgraded your HP from 100 to 1000, the fruit still heals you decently. If you die in an area, you restart it with full health and a roulette orb, even if you finished the last area with no health and no orbs. You get to save frequently after every boss battle and pretty much every area. Enemies don't throw out a single cheap shot, meaning that you can learn the signs for every thing that they'll do, and avoid or counter it with practice.
Most of the game is you trying to beat an area and failing, but something you notice is that each time you try, you make additional progress. There is rarely one specific spot that you just can't seem to beat, and even if you are temporarily stuck, the game still manages to make it fun to play through the same area over and over. It was the exact opposite in God of War. I got just plain frustrated at some parts when I was playing through on difficult settings, but without difficult settings it isn't difficult.
After playing GoW and other games, I see gaping flaws. They're great, but they're also frustrating, whereas God Hand has somehow found a great formula to make a game extremely difficult, but never frustrating, and as someone pursuing a career in game development, I've learned a ton of lessons from this game about how to simultaneously provide a challenge and not punish the player. This game just flat out makes me happy."
It's actually kind of interesting that Clover started out with Viewtiful Joe, which I found just frustrating and not fun in parts (especially with limited continues), then moved to Okami, which was incredibly easy, and then centered in on God Hand, which is damn near perfect in terms of difficulty.
Anyway, I picked up Harry Potter yesterday, and am so far 6-7 chapters in. It's good, but getting up at 5:45-6:00 A.M. and working till 6:30-7:00 P.M. for the past two weeks drained my eyes of their stamina. Otherwise, I would have done the same as I did with The Half Blood Prince, aka get the book at 2:00 PM and finish it at 6:00 AM, with 3 hours of non-reading in between due to being in a car and eating food.
I only have one more week of work left, and it's the week after this. The other camp sessions have been canceled. So after that's done (and I'm not sure who'll be there to work with me), I'll have time off until around August 15th, when me and my mom'll drive up to Michigan for college.
Shit, this is a short summer. :( Current Mood:  pensive | | Saturday, June 30th, 2007 | | 12:29 am |
Since Somniloquist hit the nail on the head by recommending Fantomas and Mr. Bungle to me, I decided to check out other recommendations of his, namely Melvins and Dillinger Escape Plan. Houdini by Melvins seems alright to me, so it's gone on the back burner for later, and I also really like the D.E.P. EP Irony is a Dead Scene, but their debut album, Calculating Infinity, is still merely tolerable most of the time, so I've been listening to it alot to see if there's some taste within it that I can acquire. I was also told today to check out the Butthole Surfer's earlier stuff, and I've heard mention of a band called CAKE, though I try and limit new bands to 2 at a time. | | Saturday, May 19th, 2007 | | 2:49 am |
:D
Well, I just finished High School. I haven't graduated yet, mind you. That's in a week. But I'm exempt from all my finals, I turned in my last grade for my only regular class on Thursday, and I took my last AP exam this afternoon. And I've confirmed my job at GameCamp over the summer, which basically means that I'll get paid $X >= $250 for playing video games and making sure attendees don't break/steal them, and maybe helping/supervising them when they work on their design documents. Or at least, that was how my internship went for the two weeks last summer. I've picked up, and beaten a number of games that I've been meaning to get to. Ico, which I loved, is the first game I've ever played that tells a story in a way that is truly unique to video games. I actually got anxious and fretty and worried when I had to be seperated from Yorda for long lengths of time, and half-way teared up at the cutscene at the end of the castle sequence. Eternal Darkness, on the other hand, blowed. It was a half-decent, mediocre game, but it seriously lacked in explaining things to the player, and it couldn't seem to make sense (such as path-of-faces statue orders, aka Why did Roberto see more statues than Lindsey, especially a statue of Lindsey himself, when the plan of evil obviously progressed linearly, or what the freaking hell the Tome of Darkness actually was (unless there was a small one line I missed somewhere)). The overwrought and poorly characterized dialogue definately didn't help, and neither did the flashy, simple 'magic effects' that seemed to be the biggest achievements of the cutscenes. Especially not during the unskippable cutscenes, which may need to be watched over and over until you figure out what to do (such as with the fucking Guardian of WW1, which took way too fucking long even with multiple FAQ's employed ). Maybe if there was some kernel of joy in the game, but the sanity effects go pretty much unused except in the middle of a sanity-draining battle. And I already mentioned Rez, and then Okami, which is better-balanced, more mature, longer, and more of a challenge than Zelda. I also downloaded Jade Empire off of Steam, and thoroughly enjoyed that, and I recently beat Event 51 of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the first time EVAR, unlocking Battlefield.(!!!) And I just beat God of War 2 on God, and from my taste of Titan, it will be a long time before I make any more progress there. There were some situations that shouldn't have been in God of War because they just weren't fun, but overall it managed to take the GoW formula, and drastically improve and expand upon it, with the Greek mythology actually serving to enhance the gameplay rather than just being a name they threw onto something totally unrelated (fighting Perseus was freaking awesome). Oh, and Mr. Bungle has officially become my favorite band (for the time being). Sorry Tool, but I finally found great music that doesn't take itself too blatantly seriously. So aside from that not-to-be-named game, I've been pretty blissful for the past while. :) Current Music: Backstrokin' of Disco Volante by Mr. Bungle | | Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 | | 6:18 pm |
|
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
anti0pposite's journal