Tag Archives: video games

FFXI, Foo

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Well, there goes THAT little streak of post. I’ll try to do better, blah blah, yadda yadda, you’ve heard it before and frankly I bet you’re as tired of hearing it as I am of saying it. My GOAL is to post daily (barring life interfering), but like any other goal, it’s something that you have to work at and don’t always succeed in hitting.

So why haven’t I posted since I got back into town? Something profound and rewarding? Tragic and horrible? Nope and nope. Mostly it’s just been getting back into a routine with my life. I got in at midnight on Sunday, which means I was in bed by 1am, and then up at 8 for my chiropractor appointment. Did various errands (got diagnosed with Lyme Disease at my physical, so I’m on an antibiotic for the next month, which I needed to go pick up), and got some shopping done.
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Residency

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I’m currently listening to the official Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, which is a delightful panoply of stylistic excellent music, music that evokes mood and mentality in a fashion that many other modern works simply and utterly fail to do. This is not a posting about music, mind you (though I could easily make it so), but I wanted to mention it as a segue that represents a certain mode of thought. “Mood music” if you will.

School residency started yesterday. I felt a strange mixture of dread and elation at coming back, feeling unprepared but at the same time eager to pick up a new study. I’ve been getting a lot of compliments and congratulatory comments on my recent marriage and move across the country (something that surprised a good deal of people, and has proven to be a conversation starter since). My hair still has highlights from when it was dyed this past July, which has been the source of most of the compliments (“wow, your hair looks great” and such). I dig the positive attention, but what really does it for me is the relative familiarity I’ve achieved with the other students, a familiarity that largely remains unchanged after not seeing or hearing from any of them for a full six months. At this point, I am an “old hand” at the residency, someone that new students can come to if they want to know how things work.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing this coming semester, which is a change: past semesters have had me coming in with a pretty firm understanding of exactly what I was going to do. This time, I come with a concept and that’s about it. I want to study mysticism, the mystical counterparts to several of the mainstream religions, with a focus on mysticism in the Baha’i Faith, since I have more of a direct interest in that one in particular (I’m a Baha’i, something that I’ve mentioned at least three times before on this site… do a search for “baha’i” to see where). Of course, there is another component to this study: I find myself feeling tapped creatively, and would like to find a way to reenergize and get motivated on really USING my creative resources again. So the other component, if it were to be summed up (and I’m going to have to for the study proposal) is studying the relation between spirtuality and creativity.

And yes, I am in fact writing this blog entry partially to help codify what I’m thinking. I went to my first exploratory meeting today, and found myself rambling a bit, so I want to cut down on that. We’ve got a large group this time (largest its been in several semesters), so the exploratory meetings are a bit more full than usual, leaving time as a bit of a precious commodity.
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UberCon

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For those readers that are new: read the old posts to see my prior concerns about UberCon. For the rest of you: it went far better than I had feared, but not as well as I had hoped.

Let’s get the basics out of the way: UberCon was a hell of a lot of fun. Everyone seems to have had a really good time, including myself. More importantly, many of the vendors have already expressed interest in returning, so things are looking QUITE favorable for UberCon III, to be held sometime in late March-early April. Having had a sit-down with Kevin, we’ve worked out a lot of the issues that were bothering us, and things are going to be firmed up in a more final fashion sometime in the next few weeks.

I got to meet a lot of really cool, interesting people: I had made it explicitly clear prior to the convention that I was not volunteering for anything, and was coming as an attendee. This allowed me to roam as I wanted, and talk to who I wanted without having to worry about having to be somewhere. I even exchanged information with a few, so I’ll be able to keep in touch.

The only major letdown was the number of people: we had more than last time, but not by much. This could be for a variety of reasons, and really didn’t hinder anyone from having a good time. From a business standpoint, however, it was disappointing.
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The Update of Quasi-Doom

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Ahoy there, mateys, it be “Talk like a Pirate Day!” (Arrr).

Relax, I’m not going to do an entire freakin’ post in “piratespeak”. That would be akin to the deliciously evil torture of writing in l33t, and I’m just not that mean. It’s been a while since I updated, so I DO expect this to be a fairly lengthy post, so you are hereby forewarned.

It has been nine (9) days since I last posted, and I think it would behoove me to explain what I’ve been doing. I think the best way I can sum it up would be this: go read my essay. Though it is now done (I mailed it around 2:30pm yesterday), there was a LOT of final preparations that took up the past week. This would include: finishing the last few chapters, and making requested/suggested revisions to the rest of the essay, doing a final self-crit, and printing it out. The essay is 49 pages, with bib it becomes 51. NOT included in that PDF is the other 50 pages (table of contents, cover sheet, testimonials, and examples). This is partially because for formatting reasons I did them as two separate files, and partially because I’m not making the area I submitted available to the public (I chose Senex Operis because it is relatively short at around 40 rooms, and has the most real-world research in it, as all the gladiators in the area are accurately depicted from their historical counterparts).
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Passion vs Obsession

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Before I get into the central topic of this thread, I’d just like to give a shout out to my cousin Cortney. Happy Birthday, hope it was a good one!

I’ve been sitting around the house for most of the day, not really doing much of anything. I read some email (not much, though, as I don’t have much lately), and chatted on IRC for a while (in fact I still am, in #applegeeks over on the Aniverse servers). Mostly what I’ve been doing is thinking about what is important to me, and what things no longer are, or at least not AS important. I’ve been thinking about streamlining my life a bit, organizing it, pursuing my personal goals more and worrying about other people’s expectations less. I haven’t come to any concrete conclusions yet, but I think overall it has been helpful.

Now, it’s around 8:50 in the evening, and we’re back from trying another restaurant in the area (sushi, so my choices were a little [self]limited, but I managed alright). I’ve discovered the music channels on the cable service, and have some jazz playing in the background. Now seems to be a good time to reflect.
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On Halo (and Other Things)

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This past weekend I was inundated with Halo. (For those not familiar, Halo is an extremely popular Xbox first-person-shooter made by Bungie, one of my all-time favorite game companies.) Let me explain what I mean. Early last week, I received an evite inviting me to a Halo LAN Party by my friend Robert. Now, I hadn’t played Halo in about 9 months, and hadn’t played it with ANY degree of regularity even then (I’ve logged less than 12 hours of Halo time, even after this HaloFest), so I dug out my xbox and copy of Halo and played an hour or two (long enough to get comfortable with the controller again), and then headed over to the party. Mickey opted to stay home, sending me first to see what it was like (since she doesn’t play video games, if EVERYONE there was a gamer then she’d be pretty bored). She sent me armed with pie, though, so that’s fine.

Suffice it to say, she probably would have had a ball. There was a nice mixture of gamer and non-gamer, and lots of good conversation was had before we sat down and started playing Halo. (They all loved the pie, too. With a Strawberry and Blackberry pie, how can you go wrong?)
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Musings of a Frantic Mind

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It occured to me last night, around 12:30 (so technically today), as I was drifting off to a relatively early slumber, that I had not posted. I had posted another four images, but I had not actually posted anything on the main page. So, to all three of you that even occasionally glance at this page, my apologies.

First off, congratulations to my friend Andy and his wife Emily for getting married yesterday. I hope it was a fantastic wedding, and I’m sorry Mickey and I couldn’t make it.

What did I do instead? Packed. Mickey took care of talking to various moving agencies on the phone, getting quotes lined up et cetera. That took up the mid-day, and by 5, we simply weren’t up for driving 3 hours each way.
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Games Wishlist

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This is hardly a full list of games I wish would be created, but it is certainly a start.

1. Mega Man as a console first person shooter, ala Metroid Prime and Halo. Think about all the cool weapons and interesting enemies that could be done with this franchise. Far better this than the current rehashed dead-end currently being developed.

2. Starship Troopers as a MMOG. Universal ranking system, platoon “clans”, a combination of rpg elements, FPS, and RTS (at the command level). Something similar is being done currently called “Planetside”, which looks decent, but there is always room for improvement, and this universe is a perfect choice to build from.

3. Third Person MMORPG with graphics and gameplay reminiscient of Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. The graphics in that game were non-photorealistic, which is part of what gave the game its charm. The drive for “realistic” graphics (lots of detail, dark gory characters, ala Warcraft, Diablo, EverQuest, Quake) is in my humble opinion a poorly thought out fad on the part of developers, and needs to go back to being A graphics methodology, not THE graphics methodology.

4. A reassessment and revamp of the concept of “role playing game.” There is a difference between console-rpgs, and pc-rpgs (this is a generalization, there are console style games on the pc, and pc style games on the console), and the difference primarily lies in the design philosophy applied. Originally in console-rpgs, you were essentially playing an interactive book or movie. You were essentially starring in a story, and the steps you take (with the exception of a few optional side quests) are both predetermined and storyboarded. PC-rpgs tend to leave a lot more ambiguity as to the progression of the story, leaving the player with a lot of freedom to develop as he so chooses, doing (at least in theory) what he wants. The PC-RPG seems to be in the lead in terms of number of games coming out, with really only a few (the Final Fantasy series, Xenosaga, Wild Arms, a few others) operating in the console arena. I want to see more games where the emphasis is on the story and characters, cut scenes and all. I have a suspicion that if we want the console-rpg style to survive, it needs to be redefined and delineated from the pc-rpg style.

Heh, ranted a bit more than expected on that last one. Wasn’t even a particular game I’d like to see made… it’s more of a general “I wish THIS would happen in the gaming industry!” So I guess it’s close enough to be on the wishlist.

Online + Console = Buh?

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It is official: I’m a geek. I now have all three of my consoles connected to the internet. Not only that, but it’s WIRELESS. Here’s how:

The three consoles (my GC broadband adapter just came in today) are plugged into a switch which is plugged into my ethernet converter, which communicates wirelessly with my airport station, which also acts as my router for my cable modem. Ta-da, no running cables all over the house.

Of course, I haven’t tested the Auto Modellista online capabilities yet through this set-up… I was on the beta and had connection problems, which they said they were going to fix. So when the actual game gets released, I’m like “woohoo! Online cell shaded racing at its finest!” Flip open the manual to discover that it (supposedly) requires a direct connection to the cable modem, and will not work over a NAT’d router.

What the hell kind of shit is that? Who pays for broadband in order to SOLELY connect it to the PS2? BAD Capcom! No biscuit!

I’m going to test that after I get back from my residency… too busy at the moment.