Glitchcraft

A bit of an update. I'm on the mend from my sickness, which is nice. I've also spent a lot of time trying to get my new campaign started. I've picked up a couple recruits for it so now I'm up to a big five again. It's been a while since I've GMed a game with that many people, so I'm curious as to how it'll go.

Looking through my stats, it seems Minecraft's still my most popular post. Not sure how I feel about that. I'd like something more intellectual. But ah well. Minecraft is a fun game and with the varrious updates lately. With the adventure update, I've... had something to talk about.

I started a new map, intially trying to run it under my castle run rules, but it quickly became evident that wouldn't be feasible immediately.

Why?

Behold, the Glitch Lands

A short little catch up

Man, it has been a long time since I've touched this. I doubt people even care, but that's alright. I'm free enough I can try again on hunting down a regular viewership. I initially stopped updating, telling myself it'd just be till I had some news, I had none, sickness and events caused me to miss finishing my game right when schedulaed, which would'a been a major subject, then games like Deus Ex added onto that.

Now though? I think I've got news in droves. How to sum up the last month or so?

• New games, Deus Ex has been awesome fun, though I can add nothing new that's not know, its awful outsourced bosses almost ruin the game. I haven't actually beaten the game, I faff around too much with othet things to focus on it, then I think about making new characters that are built smarter. It's a mess.
• I've been spending more time on old games, trying to catch them all in pokemon, a goal I'll never achive legitimately due to event legendary and living in Australia, but I try. Mount and Blade, probably one of the most fun games ever, and most of all a recent (re)purchase of GTA 4 on the PC, as opposed to my old 360 copy. It was cheaper to get it with the episodes, rather then just get them on xbox live due to Australian point costs. Plus I don't have to deal with my SD TV and inability to enjoy the Euphoria engine, I hate it.
• My SD TV evidently hates me back, it blew up in my face when I last tried to play on it. Good riddence. Now I have... the spare old SD TV we couldn't even sell. At least it does work for non HD games.
• Jobs have been interesting. I got a big interview with the suicide hotline I've been going for, an indimidating as fuck pannel interview, But I actually did great at it. Maybe too bad. I could visibly see a bit of disappointment when, on an attempt at grossing me out with a story, I spent several long seconds debating on if I should answer with empathy and find that offputting, or misanthropic and honest and say I find it interesting, and finally picking the latter. When I got talking of plans for furthering study in psychopathology, I was offered the papers I needed to sign on the spot, I'll be attending the training next week.
• Only a few days latter I got an interview with a company I was seeking a job from a long time ago. like, years, specifically the one I stopped bothering with on being told they'd only accept 'official' jobs that I'd been paid for. The interview, just for setup, was hellish. No cothes were clean or ready, hair was a mess, car wouldn't work. I finally get in, and my interview goes okay, I slaughtered the written part but I recorded myself during the one on one part and I was a tragedy. Plus I had already made commitments with the hotline and confirmed them at this point. 
• A week later, after not only had the hotline details been done even more, I'd already completed it's online components, but I was looking into tying it directly into education, furthering it all for myself, it'd shave just a little time off the 8~10 years I kind of want to spend on study. And the motherfuckers offer me a job. It'd kill every one of these and give me 4 hours a day not spent sleeping, working or commuting. If I don't sleep in. Oh and they want me on weekends too. I have to turn this down, I'd literally have nothing to live for besides this. Maybe two years ago I'd consider this, but its three months till education again, two weeks till hotline training. And so I do.
• But then the unemployment agency find out I've turned down paid employment for filthy plebeian volunteer work. The hell I get for this is so bad I even gave up for a while and tried to see if I could get the job they were offering still. I don't. They don't care. How could I try and help with people that are suicidal (Less then 1% of suicide callers attempt suicide. Its merely potential/now criminals or the extremely depressed. Thats even less important) while furthering my life long career goals, as opposed to burning myself out of wanting to work ever, doing nothing for three months straight, quitting for education, and getting shit for quitting a job when I now have university fees to pay. Maybe after having my unemployment pay removed for 8 weeks'll learn me.I hate Excelior for this so much, I'd boycott everything they touch but since their main focus is helping with Australian taxes, I'm gonna have trouble avoiding that, for now...
• On an infinity happier note, I finally finished my long, long, long running campaign. Not only that, actually, but I got it finished in a way that I think my players found fun and interesting. A little minor drama happened but that kept it all being a happy ending, too, instead of a sad one. It had a lot of closure. Frankly I kind of surprised myself at how well it turned out. A quirk of RPGs is that endings for them are probably the single hardest thing to do. That, or a little of monster design are going to be my next post, which'll be here soon. Hopefully. Now though, my focus is on the next game.

It's been an interesting mess. I definitely do not want to have a pause like this in my activity again. There's no excuse for letting all this slide by the wayside.

Finishing up strong

I hate days where I have to go out for things like appointments. Like any some sort of misanthrope-hikikomori thing I get less and less able to be comfortable outside for long periods of time. I spent all of yesterday bouncing around waiting till the end of the day, getting nearly nothing done physically. I try and work on this by going out daily for short times but it only seems to get worse faster then it gets better.

It does give me time to think though, and it gives me lots of time to think though, and with both my friends and myself finishing up long running tabletop games and video games, this has been on my mind for the last few weeks, and is a common area of screwing up in games of all kinds.I find it a very common theme that the end of a game things just... fall apart. As the deadline looms, patience wanes, the budget shrinks, the audience locks in on things you don't want them to know, or get too annoying or any combinations of these will cause a game will lose quality rapidly. Actually this often applies to movies, TV shows and other things. You need to rush things and dump information. Remind people of things they should know. Challenge them. Its a mess and its easy to make mistakes. Or forget to bug test. I'm looking at you Obsidian Entertainment.

Unfortunately, its also the worst place to make mistakes. Its what people will remember you best for. The last things that happened and how it all comes to a close, not the humble beginnings no matter how glorious they were at the time, nor dramatic scenes in the middle. It's simply how we're wired. To that end as a person on the internet I offer my uneducated advice to all creators of things out there:

Strange reminders of childhood

Of all the game genres out there, given how much of an out atheist I am, one of my favorite genres, probably right after that Oddworld style puzzle/platformer genre that makes up my number one, I'm a fan of the god game genre.

It's a tough one to like, There are very few of the games, they're not that popular, and some of the games in more recent times (Black and White) are awful. I tend to have to make do with RTSes if I want them, but it's so fun.

I can easily remember where it all started, but a bit of backstory to explain, I'm poor as all hell, and my television picked up our four local public channels in black and white, I would always watch movies like Godzilla, horror films and sub par pornos on the Special Broadcasting Service channel, but after about 11, my mother would go to sleep and I couldn't leave the TV on making noise or I'd be disturbing her, so I would play my megadrive, (Or Genesis, if you're American) which didn't have a sound cable.

I had a pretty small selection of games, and not that many of them lasted a long time, but one I could just replay over and over. Populous. Due to my cardridge being damaged, It wouldn't even work half the time, so I would spend a half hour taking it out and putting it back in until it would start up right, and play until either I pass out or the sun came up and it was time to go to school. The first time that happened was when I realized I have insomnia.

So many hours spent, staring at that book, its likely to blame for a lot of my issues. Why I flatten all ground in Minecraft, Why I tolerated an entire game long tutorial in black and white, why I didn't replace my non SonyPS1 memory card that liked to randomly delete my saves until Final Fantasy 9 came out...

And now, From Dust is out. I didn't even know about this, let alone that it's made by the same people, but I pre-ordered it as soon as I did. Since it's finally come out on Steam, it's been what I've been playing all day.

Annoyingly, I spent yesterday pulling an all nighter, to get onto 'good' sleeping hours for things, but after being awake so long, I slept 12 hours straight and woke up finding it all messed up again, and I have an important appointment tomorrow, so it looks like I'll need to do the same again tonight.

I've already beaten From Dust, its a very short game, but it looks like it'll be fun for finding alternative ways to beat a lot of the stages, as well as venting any frustration I'll have with the appointment.

If you like god games, I recommend trying a demo at least, it's very true to the genre, but otherwise it depends on how much you value $15 for purchase. It can be VERY frustrating, as opposed to satisfyingly hard, and is a bit too absent in story, in a bad way. I like filling in blanks and interpretation, but it feels completely intangible here, so sadly this is one I think only really has game play going for it. Not entirely my thing.

Still, it'll make for a good bit of fun nostalgia.

More of the inevitable minecraft

I don't have a problem with focus, not at all. I just spent most of the last couple days shirking non job getting duties. Which is a shame, I'll soon have my group back together and have to theoretically deliver a climactic endgame of a year long campaign...

But, even when avoiding things I have to do, even when I want to do, I have a habit of getting other things done. One day I'll learn to apply this. But for now, more minecraft, this time my 'main' world I mess around on.

The inevitable Minecraft post

Like pretty much everyone else on the internet at this point (I hope. If you don't, you need to fix that.) I, and most of my friends play Minecraft.

We usually chill on a friend's server as he has a both good computer and better internet connection then the rest of us, but in celebration of my new internet speeds, we decided to test how my world would work.

We got a bit carried away and spent the entire day messing around. Ignore the creeper damage, we decided to take a break before going to get new glass.

  

It started a little weird, we spawned in a tree. A tall one at that. On some experimentation, we sound our spawn seemed to move around and encompass a general area around a hill. I'm still not sure if that's a glitch or a thing in the game now. But we decided we needed to build shelter.

We wound up with what we considered the ugliest house in all of minecraft, it was long, short and just floated in the air, save for one corner resting atop the tree. Monsters spawned indoors while trying to sleep if we didn't just wind up trapped in a wall trying to sleep. it was shaped almost like a coffin or tipped over phone booth, and wound up being dubbed the Retardis because of that.

To redeem our shame, we spent the rest of the day building around it with an equally strange building and courtyard, that ended up having a nice look to it if you ask me, very cubist and modern. Inside that top layer, protected by dirt but encased in wood is the retardis, set us so that if the house ever catches fire its shame shall again be known, but until then it will remain concealed from all.

I also built an entire house of TNT, invited my friends inside to check out how I furnished it and then sealed the door with heavy rocks and set it on fire to kill them, destroying an entire island it was on.

The inside of the new house is very nice, is sparse. We found a neat glitch that let us place torches on chests and that glass tube goes up to the dark area inside the retardis, letting Creepers or the like drop down and be pets without becoming dangerous.

Its pretty much only the house, which has one and a half sorta rooms and a work in progress courtyard for now, but it was a fun day. We may develop things further, but that will remain to be seen.

Only a short post for now

Not a lot of actual accomplishment significance has happened in the last couple days, I think I'm finally recovered from being sick so I can't use that as much of an excuse anymore.

There has been some interesting things though, the other day I checked out my ISP and it seems they recently overhauled their plans, drastically improving them without telling us. Shadey, but forgiveable when after a single phone call they give you five times the bandwidth limitations and twice the speed for less money.

I am extremely happy about this. As self admittedly internet addicted as I am, this must be what it's like to grow your own drugs.

Other news, not much. I've negected game design in favor of playing the new game from Carpe Fulgur of Recettear fame, Chantelise, which I am awful at, and finally enjoying Limbo, which I didn't try on the 360 because I've never been interested in the arcade.

Chantelise is a wonderful dungeon crawler sort of action game, I am very bad at it but its enjoyable and amusing. It's spiritual prequel from the same translators and Japanese game makers, Recettear has been very influential for amusement among my circle of friends and this has the potential to be the same.

Interestingly I found a more hard/literal translation of the original Japanese dialogue and it seems at least all the charm in this was inserted by the translators, the original was very mundane by Japanese standards, slightly perverted and lackluster jokes you'd find in typical slice of life-esque anime. I'm fine with such, normally, but I'm glad they went a bit off the rails for these games. It adds a lot it wouldn't otherwise have.

Limbo on the other hand is something I'm far better at. I think if I have to pick that sort of puzzle/platformer genre you find in games like Another World(/Out of This World), Flashback and Abe's Oddysee are my singular favourite type of game. I don't know why, but I have so much fun figuring out the exact pattern of control and timing needed to get from one cruel puzzle to another in an endless cycle just appeals to me. It's a shame its a very small genre of games.

Add on a dark and morbid world, unexplained mysteries comprising the entire plot and artsy fartsy nonsense like its entirely in black and white and its like the game was made for me.

That's it for now. I have other ideas I may talk about later that are more complex, but for now I'm just taking a break with videogames. What about you guys? What kinds of niche elements to games make you love them?

Late Night Madness

Sorry I've not posted in some time, Haven't been feeling well. I have however been keeping myself distracted with video games. Good news is this gives me a chance to talk about them. The steam sales may be partially to blame. Best news is Alice, Madness Returns finally arrived, and I've been waiting for that for a long time.

Thoon wants to be the very best, like no one ever was...

I've been feeling like crap for the last 24 hours now, slept maybe 12 of them. Spent the rest of it madly writing ideas for Psychoka, then spent some time digging up my DS and playing Pokemon Black. I really forgot just how messed up the game can be.

I've always liked Pokemon, It's the only Nintendo game that hasn't messed up fatally yet if you ask me, and that's because I ignore the console released games. One large reason is because it plays with the element known commonly on the internet as grimdark, with vague threats of unpleasent things to characters and pokemon having disturbing facts that aren't elaborated on. I'll always be tempted to run a campaign based on those parts if I could figure out good mechanics for it...


But, sometimes it's almost like Black and White take this to the point of farce. Be warned, Pokemon B/W spoilers inside, if pokemon can be spoiled.

That Advanced Networking I just did sure comes in handy...

Boy I sure do love it when half way into the day at class the network cuts out on us, ruins half the classes tests because hurpityderp hosting important things like tests on a local server is too much work, and we can't do any work for the rest of the day. So screw this, I'm looking back into volunteering for Lifeline. It's probably strange to some how I'm skipping classes on tech support and help desks but seeking to work for a suicide hotline, but if I'm going to work with faulty computers, at least ninty percept of the time won't be wasted explaining they need to jiggle the brain cables.