If you're interested in script writing, you might want to check out Celtx. It's a free, open source script writer that has some really cool features. You can write scripts in different formats (ie, stagescript, comic book, or film script), hook up storyboard art and actors/props to scenes, and schedule everything with a calendar.
Very cool stuff.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
and speaking of spore
I like it.
While not every choice you make influences aspects of later gameplay, there are some major ones. Ie, spend more time killing your neighbors than negotiating with them, and you'll end up with an aggressive, warlike tech tree when you get to later stages in the game.
The tragedy is that I find it's much easier to just conquer my neighbors than impress them with dances or music performances. My little one celled organisms quickly grew up into goofy bipedal killing machines that gave up all pretense at diplomacy and rapidly established an authortarian empire on both continents of my homeworld. It only got worse once I attained spaceflight.
Will Wright games take me to a scary place. :(
Any rate, the game itself is pretty well crafted. Replay value is in the infinite (and I mean fscking infinite) variety of creatures and cultures you can create. There's some civilization micro-management in the later stages of the game, but it's nothing major and in the worst scenario where you ignore a planet and it drops back to a T0 barren rock... it only takes about 5 minutes work to resculpt it into a T3 paradise.
Only thing I'd ding the game for is that the explanation on how to terraform wasn't clear and it's not covered in the manual. But once I finally doped it out, it's hellah fun.
Main focus of the game is definitely the space stage... most of the other stuff was kind of just phases you had to go through, but I also suspect that there's some good replay value in there. Ie, see how far you can get by being a peaceful herbivore instead of just melting everyone's face.
It's also worth pointing out that during the creature phase, as you're gaining brain capacity the size of your "pack" grows. You can charm multiple creatures to help you out. I made it through most of this stage flying solo, but decided to pick up 3 of my own buddies to help take down the last nest I had to conquer. There was definitely a "goat leg drops onto the roof of the car" moment when you realize that one goofy, almost bashful looking creature is cute... but 4 of them racing through the forest on a dark errand appear to be perfectly tuned killing machines and intent on one terrible goal that might not be suited for children to watch.
Plus, they can spit venom. :o
Still not sure I'm down with the DRM thing, but overall I like the game. Not quite what I'd thought it'd be a year ago, but it's by no means a disappointment.
While not every choice you make influences aspects of later gameplay, there are some major ones. Ie, spend more time killing your neighbors than negotiating with them, and you'll end up with an aggressive, warlike tech tree when you get to later stages in the game.
The tragedy is that I find it's much easier to just conquer my neighbors than impress them with dances or music performances. My little one celled organisms quickly grew up into goofy bipedal killing machines that gave up all pretense at diplomacy and rapidly established an authortarian empire on both continents of my homeworld. It only got worse once I attained spaceflight.
Will Wright games take me to a scary place. :(
Any rate, the game itself is pretty well crafted. Replay value is in the infinite (and I mean fscking infinite) variety of creatures and cultures you can create. There's some civilization micro-management in the later stages of the game, but it's nothing major and in the worst scenario where you ignore a planet and it drops back to a T0 barren rock... it only takes about 5 minutes work to resculpt it into a T3 paradise.
Only thing I'd ding the game for is that the explanation on how to terraform wasn't clear and it's not covered in the manual. But once I finally doped it out, it's hellah fun.
Main focus of the game is definitely the space stage... most of the other stuff was kind of just phases you had to go through, but I also suspect that there's some good replay value in there. Ie, see how far you can get by being a peaceful herbivore instead of just melting everyone's face.
It's also worth pointing out that during the creature phase, as you're gaining brain capacity the size of your "pack" grows. You can charm multiple creatures to help you out. I made it through most of this stage flying solo, but decided to pick up 3 of my own buddies to help take down the last nest I had to conquer. There was definitely a "goat leg drops onto the roof of the car" moment when you realize that one goofy, almost bashful looking creature is cute... but 4 of them racing through the forest on a dark errand appear to be perfectly tuned killing machines and intent on one terrible goal that might not be suited for children to watch.
Plus, they can spit venom. :o
Still not sure I'm down with the DRM thing, but overall I like the game. Not quite what I'd thought it'd be a year ago, but it's by no means a disappointment.
waaaagh not so much :(
Turns out that there's an issue with 8X00 nvidia cards and WAR. Turns out that this was discovered in beta, but quietly ignored. Turns out a week after launch, they still have no solution to the problem but are more than happy to crow about the 500K subscribers they've got (I thought there were 1.5 million pre-orders??)
tl;dr version: Fsck it, I'll just go finish dominating the galaxy in Spore.
tl;dr version: Fsck it, I'll just go finish dominating the galaxy in Spore.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
revisiting cuil
Almost 2 months ago, I mentioned cuil and how it offered up a different way to organize search results.
Since then, I've actually used to research a couple of topics... namely, Amazon Web Services tools, the Battle of Hastings, and how to generate UV light.
On the Battle of Hastings, it did a nice job since there was plenty of multimedia type stuff surrounding the topic. The left-right layout and page previews helped me zero in on some information, get a refresher on the topic, and then find a couple of places to dive in deeper.
On the technical stuff, though, it fell kind of flat. The UV light research turned up lots of links to what UV light is and how it works, but not so much on the "help, vampires are attacking and I need a weapon NOW!!" front. For the AWS tools, I basically got links back to Amazon's forums. Thanks a lot.
So. As things stand now, it's pretty much going into my webz toolbox as "the place to go instead of the library". Will be nice if it sticks around, but I can't say there'd be a huge impact if it didn't.
Since then, I've actually used to research a couple of topics... namely, Amazon Web Services tools, the Battle of Hastings, and how to generate UV light.
On the Battle of Hastings, it did a nice job since there was plenty of multimedia type stuff surrounding the topic. The left-right layout and page previews helped me zero in on some information, get a refresher on the topic, and then find a couple of places to dive in deeper.
On the technical stuff, though, it fell kind of flat. The UV light research turned up lots of links to what UV light is and how it works, but not so much on the "help, vampires are attacking and I need a weapon NOW!!" front. For the AWS tools, I basically got links back to Amazon's forums. Thanks a lot.
So. As things stand now, it's pretty much going into my webz toolbox as "the place to go instead of the library". Will be nice if it sticks around, but I can't say there'd be a huge impact if it didn't.
Monday, September 22, 2008
did you know..
That UV lights are really just flourescent lights with small amounts of mercury added to them? When energized, mercury emits UV photons.
Also works with a laser, too. Zap mercury gas with a laser, and you get a UV laser that can be seen when you put a piece of paper in front of it (the UV reacts with the blue fibers manufacturers add to paper to make it appear white instead of mashed-up-tree-goo-brown). But.. realistically.. who's got a portable lasers laying around?
Any rate.
If you're trapped in an Alaskan town when vampires attack, just find a mercury based thermometer, modify a flash light, and there ya go. Point the beam at a sheet of white paper and make sure there's a glowing blue dot before you go on offense, though.
Also works with a laser, too. Zap mercury gas with a laser, and you get a UV laser that can be seen when you put a piece of paper in front of it (the UV reacts with the blue fibers manufacturers add to paper to make it appear white instead of mashed-up-tree-goo-brown). But.. realistically.. who's got a portable lasers laying around?
Any rate.
If you're trapped in an Alaskan town when vampires attack, just find a mercury based thermometer, modify a flash light, and there ya go. Point the beam at a sheet of white paper and make sure there's a glowing blue dot before you go on offense, though.
Friday, September 19, 2008
other games
I also picked up Sins of a Solar Empire and Spore. Planning on giving those a test drive this weekend as go-me rewards for getting the S3sync project into a usable state and coming up with a plan to refactor the code.
first impressions of warhammer
So, got the beast installed (2 dvd's!!) and took it for a test run.
Overall, I'm not very impressed with the game. Let me give you a taste of the gameplay so far:
*) create your account with EA/Mythic (note the name.. it becomes important later on)
*) start up WAR, wait for 45 mins for the 255MB patch to download (seriously?)
*) finally get the patch downloaded, start the game, agree to the license and ToS
*) begin selecting your character and deciding which set of tusks best describes you as a hulking minion of the Armies of Destruction
*) frown as the game starts to lag during the character customization phase until it gets so bad you just give up and hit the "PLAY" button hoping it'll go away
*) enter the game and begin walking to the first quest giver only to be struck by crippling lag after taking 2 steps
*) spend 5 minutes fighting through the lag in an attempt to get the visual config menu opened up and turning everything down to lowest possible settings
*) give up when that doesn't do anything, and try restarting the game
*) agree to the ToS a second time
*) re-enter game, resume your walk to the first quest giver, and get hit with crippling lag inside of 5 steps this time
*) hunt for the in-game help feature to report the problem, and experience a complete lockup of the game and a tone that sounds ominously like a flatlining EKG machine for 10 seconds
*) wait for lag/death tone to subside, hit the help button, and begin filling out your report only to discover there's a hidden character limit on the input box labelled "be as descriptive as possible"
*) revise your bug report down into "terribad lag, bad tone + lockup, plzhlp" (all the while experiencing said terribad lag... we're talking IRC on a 2400 bps modem here, folks) and have the game completely crash before you can submit it
*) sigh, and decide to use the web form to report the bug... spend a while typing in your WAR account/pass and your EA Mythic website account/pass before noticing that in order to report a bug you have to have an EA.com account
* register with EA.com, wait a few mins for warhammeronline.com site to accept your new credentials, and submit bug report
* go whine about the whole experience on your blog that only 2 people read
It's not a very fun game, so far. :)
In seriousness, though, I did get a chance to kill a couple of dwarves and get to level 2 before things got too bad. It's got some major differences from WoW... the two big ones for me are that there's no autoattack (ie, you have to use an ability from your action bar for each swing of your weapon) which slows things down with what appears to be a 1.5s cooldown between swings. I'm thinking that it's going to be tricky to get into a button-mashing groove later on and such grooves will depend on your action bar layout as much as your talents. Hrm.
The other complaint is the orc quests are written in orc "flavor" language... which is some funky hybrid of Cockney, Sottish, and gangsta rap. It's kind of difficult to tell what the hell the plot is, and tempting just to read the list of stuff you need to go grab.
The interface is pretty well laid out, and it preserves a lot of controls and features from the WoW interface, so... at least that transition has been eased. I find the compass much easier to read, and there's a lot of stuff there natively that you had to rely on add-ons for in WoW.
Not too bad.
Other than the sever, crippling lag thing. And the byzantine maze you have to navigate to submit a bug report.
Overall, I'm not very impressed with the game. Let me give you a taste of the gameplay so far:
*) create your account with EA/Mythic (note the name.. it becomes important later on)
*) start up WAR, wait for 45 mins for the 255MB patch to download (seriously?)
*) finally get the patch downloaded, start the game, agree to the license and ToS
*) begin selecting your character and deciding which set of tusks best describes you as a hulking minion of the Armies of Destruction
*) frown as the game starts to lag during the character customization phase until it gets so bad you just give up and hit the "PLAY" button hoping it'll go away
*) enter the game and begin walking to the first quest giver only to be struck by crippling lag after taking 2 steps
*) spend 5 minutes fighting through the lag in an attempt to get the visual config menu opened up and turning everything down to lowest possible settings
*) give up when that doesn't do anything, and try restarting the game
*) agree to the ToS a second time
*) re-enter game, resume your walk to the first quest giver, and get hit with crippling lag inside of 5 steps this time
*) hunt for the in-game help feature to report the problem, and experience a complete lockup of the game and a tone that sounds ominously like a flatlining EKG machine for 10 seconds
*) wait for lag/death tone to subside, hit the help button, and begin filling out your report only to discover there's a hidden character limit on the input box labelled "be as descriptive as possible"
*) revise your bug report down into "terribad lag, bad tone + lockup, plzhlp" (all the while experiencing said terribad lag... we're talking IRC on a 2400 bps modem here, folks) and have the game completely crash before you can submit it
*) sigh, and decide to use the web form to report the bug... spend a while typing in your WAR account/pass and your EA Mythic website account/pass before noticing that in order to report a bug you have to have an EA.com account
* register with EA.com, wait a few mins for warhammeronline.com site to accept your new credentials, and submit bug report
* go whine about the whole experience on your blog that only 2 people read
It's not a very fun game, so far. :)
In seriousness, though, I did get a chance to kill a couple of dwarves and get to level 2 before things got too bad. It's got some major differences from WoW... the two big ones for me are that there's no autoattack (ie, you have to use an ability from your action bar for each swing of your weapon) which slows things down with what appears to be a 1.5s cooldown between swings. I'm thinking that it's going to be tricky to get into a button-mashing groove later on and such grooves will depend on your action bar layout as much as your talents. Hrm.
The other complaint is the orc quests are written in orc "flavor" language... which is some funky hybrid of Cockney, Sottish, and gangsta rap. It's kind of difficult to tell what the hell the plot is, and tempting just to read the list of stuff you need to go grab.
The interface is pretty well laid out, and it preserves a lot of controls and features from the WoW interface, so... at least that transition has been eased. I find the compass much easier to read, and there's a lot of stuff there natively that you had to rely on add-ons for in WoW.
Not too bad.
Other than the sever, crippling lag thing. And the byzantine maze you have to navigate to submit a bug report.
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