I Think I Have an Idea! (Chose What You Say Part 1)

Some of you foke might have played an RPG game once in your life. A lot of RPGs have a single flaw, an emersion breaking flaw. What happens when you walk up to a character and hit “e” or? (or whatever the use button is) A windows appears, someone says something, and you are given three or so  options. This can be extremely emersion breaking and character breaking for obvious reasons. What if you could type down what you wanted your character to say? Instead of saying, “I want to buy something” You could say, “Yo, got some crack”  This would  greatly contribute to your characters personality. I plan on building a simple, short RPG in Python. The RPG will be more of a tech demo than anything, but I plan to build on it later. Right now I’m learning the fantastic language of pygame, and I hope to have a base engine done by the end of the week. In Part 2 I’ll talk about my ideas of how to make this work.

Dwarf Fortress 2010 is Here!

The first major Dwarf Fortress release in 2 years is here! There have beens some major changes, and  I can't give my opinion yet because I haven't played much of it. I did put together a Dwarf Fortress installer executable for those of you that don't like extracting the files to a folder and creating a shortcut. Also packaged is a version of the May Green Dwarf Fortress tile set and (accidentally) a sample save game. You can download it here. Feel free to redistribute it, but link to this post if you do.
EDIT: Files is broken. Working on a new one.

Internet and Free Infromation

With the rise of the internet we are seeing one thing becoming more and more popular, free information. Back in the 80s and early 90s what did you do when you wanted to know how tall the Empire State building is? You spent $5-$20 on a tourists guide the the Empire State Building or asked a friend. (who usually didn't know) With the rise of the internet things have changed. For a small fee every single month you gain access to an answer to almost every single answer you can think of. All you have to do is Google it, the only price is having to look at a few adds on the side of the page. Yes, the information is not free, you have to pay a monthly fee, but you pay the fee for internet access, not for information.

• Why Information is Better on the Internet.

Information is  better on the internet because it is FREE and, most of the time,  written by people like you, people with a sense of humor. OK, I was joking, information isn't real free, there is a cost. That cost is having to look at an add.Unless you are watching a video are have some mental disorder which causes you to stare at adds for long time spans, adds do not take any of your time, money (unless they convince you to buy something)  or energy. Anyway, in a tangible form of information such as a newspaper or magazine, there's still adds. 

•  If both internet Information and Tangible information have adds why do I pay for tangible information? 

I can think of 2 answers for this question. First, the cost for producing Tangible information is much higher. Unlike Internet information whose only cost is a one time payment for a computer and writer, (both of which you still have to pay for when producing tangible information) you have to pay for printing and shipping, two very large fees. Secondly, tangible information is, well, "tangible." It's much nicer to curl up in bed reading a magazine then it is to curl up in bed browsing a website. Screens haven't been perfected to the point where they are easily readable in the dark and over long periods of time without eyestrain. 

•  Will it always be like this?

No, I don't think so. I think tangible sources of information such as magazines and news papers will die within the next 20 years. E-Readers are on the rise, and with 3Qe (I know I'm spelling that wrong) screens, reading without eyestrain will no longer be a problem. With 3g networks you can look up information with these E-Readers anywhere in the US. I'm eagerly looking forward to these great days of free information that will allow humanity become much smarter.

Road Trip! Family Gaming

This is LotusEliseGeek with this new segment called road trip. Kids, you want parents to play games. Parents, you don't like the games and you don't understand the controls. So, what do we do? We find the middle ground. Fun games, easy controls.

So, you kids may think, "Oh boy, here comes a Wii celebration." No. That's right. I'm finding games for ALL consoles.but lets start with multi console.

Band Hero. This is a music game from the Guitar Hero series. There are four band slots. So a drummer, a bassist, lead guitar, and vocals right? But wait! Oh NO! Your mom wants to sing, and so does your sister! What on earth are you going to do? Not to worry. Band Hero let's ANY combination of people play. So two singers, a bassist, and a drummer? Sure! Go ahead! What is also fun is that Band Hero mixes the songs from oldies to modern hits. This means that a wide age group can hear the songs they listened to when they were kids. One more thing. It's E10+. This means that the music is not ultra cussy and the game is more fit for the family. So, that's it. Let's take a road trip!

Breen, A Perfect Villan

With the recent death of  Robert Culp, the voice actor who played Wallace Breen in Half Life 2, I decided I would write something as a tribute to this great voice actor. The most obvious thing I could think of was a tribute to Breen, in my opinion one of the most famous villains of video game history.

• What makes Breen a Great and Memorable Villain?
• His Appearance (Which Also has Evolved into A Story About My Hope for Breen)

Take a look at him, doesn't he look really bad[censored]? Most importantly he looks human. He looks like someone you can relate to, a friend. This is one of Half Life's tricks. In the beginning of the game his is a friend, a hero. When you are exposed to the resistance you learn the opposite. Breen is a traitor to humanity, a friend of the enemy. Someone who you previously loved is now someone you should hate. I personally held hope for him unto the end. I loved Breen and I wished that he would break away from the evil combine. It wasn't tell I met him in the Citadel that my hate emerged as a fiery weapon.  I wanted to destroy him.   

• His Voice

I can clearing hear him saying, "Do what is right, Dr. Freeman." In his calm, soothing voice that is laced with deception. Of all video game characters, it is his and Alyx Vance's (another great character) voice I remember. In the beginning of the game that voice was a friend to me. It soothed me in my quest to figure out my purpose. In the citadel I hated that voice. I stopped to listen to it near the terminals so my anger would build. I would then unleash my anger into the terminal, utterly destroying the voice until I came to the next terminal. The voice was the same, yet different at the same time. I could now hear the deceit I had heard when I first came to City 17. 

What did you think about Breen? Was he someone who filled you with hate? Did he trick you in the same way he tricked me? What do you think made him a memorable villain?

Wat I've Been Playing

Sorry about my absence, I've been working on removing the  cow from the office. You may be asking me "ÖMG wat are ye plyin lolololo?" so I will answer this grammatically incorrect question with one word. (2 words really) Torchlight.

"Heavy" Rain

Couldn't help but chuckle when I saw this.

Source

Knife Fight 2.0

Breach, a Multiplayer FPS to be released this summer for about $25, is taking Battlefield Bad Comapny destruction to a whole new level. Unlike BF:BC2, players will be able to destroy everything.

 For the first time, virtual warriors can punch holes through floors to get the drop on enemies below, breach both interior and exterior walls, crush enemy fighters by collapsing ceilings and balconies, and even shoot away individual bricks to create “shooter’s holes.”

My favorite thing about this? Being able destroy floors so I can drop in on unsuspecting  teenagers.

The Mad Driver: LotusEliseGeek

Hello to all you who are not there! I'm LotusEliseGeek, and I’m doing some mod reviews for DrMadMan here. First, I will be talking about the mods he recommended to me. Let’s start with the Unofficial Star Wars Battlefront II Patch v1.3. This patch is absolutely necessary for any other mods out there, so if you are thinking about downloading one, listen up. This is a generally good mod. It does not tinker with most of the gameplay. The main changes are dealt with the visuals. The hud gets a blue background, and some units are modified. The changes the managaurd so that he has a cape, and the clone commander so he looks like a commander and not a clone marine. Basically, the modifications make the units look more accurate to the movie. My one pet peeve is the imperial officer. His gun is solid black, no texture. Ugh! It’s just so weird to have a solid black gun! Anyway, the mod also works online, which is great. No hassle, just go online and the mod will not affect your playing.

This mod is definitely worth getting, especially if you want other mods. And with that i'm done! I'll come back with Star Wars Battlefront II: Extreme!

I Would Like To Welcome.....

Lotus!! Lotus will now be helping me on my unread blog! Lotus is pretty, but not as awesome as me. You might have met him in the Gamespot forums or in a game or two as "MobiusBlaze" "Mobius546" or "LotusEliseGeek" He is an avid The Battle for Wesnoth and Star Wars: Battlefront 2 player. He pretty much completely stinks at anything he plays so don't worry if you meet him online. He doesn't exactly meet the "mad" criteria but I let him in anyway.

Python is for Awesome People (read:nerds)

To those of my non-existent readers, If you came here to read about video Games don't read this post. I have recently been learning python and today, this very special day, I wrote my own, completely original program! The program does one very simple function, converts any number from any base system , (except for binary) into decimal! It took me around 6 hours to do, but the joy at completion was worth it.

I still have some work to do. I need to add a GUI (I have no idea how to do this but I'm learning,) and make it stop displaying the number as a list (A very simple task). Here's a link to the code for those who are interested. http://pastebin.com/Gkg1RuPq