Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Boatmurdered
Dwarf Fortress just had a new update and it got me to poke around the net for info on some new issues. I happened across a large co-op AAR done up in the SomethingAweful forums and repackaged for easier reading. Boatmurdered was an interesting read, but when StarkRavingMad took over it became hilarious.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
GameLog 48
Football Manager 08 (14h) - Gateshead Season 4, 14th - Raked in over 100K from the friendlies as well as testing out some trialling players. Only one or 2 that are much better than the current crop, most are on par. Still haven't quite gotten rid of my dirty midfielder. 25 yellows in a season where he was playing on easy tackling means he's just not worth his great defensive stats. Played through the first 6 or so games and it's looking a little dicy. I always seem to start poorly?
UnAngband (12h) - VRBones, Level 7 Rohan ranger - After reading a lot about the level design that's gone into this variant I'm enjoying the different experience. There's simply more interesting stuff going on. The rooms have descriptions as you enter them. Most walls have features, even torches you can grab, plus there's lots of junk lying around to make it feel more 'lived in'. Coming down from FuryBand it's a little hard to get into the slower fighting mode where you can't just slice through any living object with 16 attacks a round. What seems most annoying is that certain creatures like faeries in the initial sewers seem to dodge about 19 times in 20. Lucky they can't hit the side of a barn door either.
played a couple of different characters. The obligatory pally to get used to the system, then some hobbits since it was so LotR themed. Hobbits are even worse for hitting things, so eventually I settled on a rohan human for the additional speed and a dual-weilding ranger for added damage with a little divination. Even though you choose a school of magic at the start it still didn't give me a starting book, so at level 7 I still haven't used any magic. Dual-wielding looks incomplete. It mentions using a throwing weapon as a secondary, but if I do it simply mentions that 'I know the weapon better', even with the starting configuration. Had a hunt through the code and it didn't seem to do what I expected. Instad of giving an additional strike, it alternates attacks between the different weapons per blow (except when charging, although I still haven't figured out how to do that). Maybe the dual-wielder style gives you additional melee strikes sooner?
FuryBand (10h) - VRBones LXXI, Level 29 Mutant Beorning Jedi - Finally made it past level 27 where light jedis get *identify*. Found out that most of my random artifacts were crap, but at least I know I can drop them now. The RNG pets are working wonders. They breed super fast to help initial takeover, confuse enemies to last longer and also drop goodies if they die. It'll take some serious summoners to top these guys.
Guitar hero III (3h) - keep plinking away mainly after work. Slowly improving medium songs. More of a relaxing thing than something I'm dedicated to ATM.
UnAngband (12h) - VRBones, Level 7 Rohan ranger - After reading a lot about the level design that's gone into this variant I'm enjoying the different experience. There's simply more interesting stuff going on. The rooms have descriptions as you enter them. Most walls have features, even torches you can grab, plus there's lots of junk lying around to make it feel more 'lived in'. Coming down from FuryBand it's a little hard to get into the slower fighting mode where you can't just slice through any living object with 16 attacks a round. What seems most annoying is that certain creatures like faeries in the initial sewers seem to dodge about 19 times in 20. Lucky they can't hit the side of a barn door either.
played a couple of different characters. The obligatory pally to get used to the system, then some hobbits since it was so LotR themed. Hobbits are even worse for hitting things, so eventually I settled on a rohan human for the additional speed and a dual-weilding ranger for added damage with a little divination. Even though you choose a school of magic at the start it still didn't give me a starting book, so at level 7 I still haven't used any magic. Dual-wielding looks incomplete. It mentions using a throwing weapon as a secondary, but if I do it simply mentions that 'I know the weapon better', even with the starting configuration. Had a hunt through the code and it didn't seem to do what I expected. Instad of giving an additional strike, it alternates attacks between the different weapons per blow (except when charging, although I still haven't figured out how to do that). Maybe the dual-wielder style gives you additional melee strikes sooner?
FuryBand (10h) - VRBones LXXI, Level 29 Mutant Beorning Jedi - Finally made it past level 27 where light jedis get *identify*. Found out that most of my random artifacts were crap, but at least I know I can drop them now. The RNG pets are working wonders. They breed super fast to help initial takeover, confuse enemies to last longer and also drop goodies if they die. It'll take some serious summoners to top these guys.
Guitar hero III (3h) - keep plinking away mainly after work. Slowly improving medium songs. More of a relaxing thing than something I'm dedicated to ATM.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Secret passage?
Playing through UnAngband recently looking at the level generation changes. One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot less stairs down than in other variants. I had thought the proliferation of downward stairs are to facilitate finding a quick way down as that is the more natural path for players, especially when 'word of recall' scrolls replace up stairs in the deeper levels. Without many stairs I find myself stair scumming (not in the truest sense of the word) for simple to explore dungeon that also contains a staircase down.
One dungeon I recently explored had only a couple of rooms and no obvious exits. As I was making my way back to the stairs to 'reset' the level I noticed something odd, a room with mossy granite walls also had a single slime covered wall to the south. "I wonder if that's the start of another passage?" I thought. Sure enough, searching around the slimed wall revealed a slimy passage leading to another room. Not sure whether it was intentional or not, but it stopped and made me think how cool that was. It was much more natural than blindly pressing 's' along each wall.
One dungeon I recently explored had only a couple of rooms and no obvious exits. As I was making my way back to the stairs to 'reset' the level I noticed something odd, a room with mossy granite walls also had a single slime covered wall to the south. "I wonder if that's the start of another passage?" I thought. Sure enough, searching around the slimed wall revealed a slimy passage leading to another room. Not sure whether it was intentional or not, but it stopped and made me think how cool that was. It was much more natural than blindly pressing 's' along each wall.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Fractal river basins
Doing some more research on river basin techniques uncovered the veritable motherlode. Fractal River Basins
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Linear level design
Was reading through Andrew's lament about levels and literally laughed out loud at one of the comics used as an anecdote of level restrictions
Monday, July 07, 2008
GameLog 47
Battle of Tiles (17h) - Got back into BoT while I was sick. It was an easy way to pass the time while the HDD had a long overdue defrag.
Modified the strategy somewhat this time with the pick of the elite archers frontlining the show to get as high as possible. I didn't pick up anything apart from Priests (6), Thunder Wizards (4), and a boatload of slimes if they had 250+ health. The slimes made a corridor themselves below the main archer s that if needed they can push up through to sacrifice themselves when I need to retreat. This is mainly for boss time, but it's convenient enough to just leave them there in that formation for the whole trip.
Spent aaages levelling up both mages and priests to level 50. Priests are easiest by simply backing up any melee unit that goes up against an archer. The archer stays in place happily plinking away into your meatbag while you level up your heals. Hardest thing is choosing a decent archer with damage close to maximum healing strength so that it doesn't take forever. Wizards need a squishy isolated priest to pound on for their levelling pleasure. Just need to check that the thunder defence is low enough to damage them, but not enough damage that they can't heal themselves in one turn. Takes far longer than the priests though as the damage is usually pretty small. I'm still not sure what dictates whether you get area effect or 3 range as your additional skill. At first I thought it was getting longer range if you levelled up to 50 with a 2 range attack, but that proved incorrect later on. Although the area effect healers are great, I had 5 of the suckers and I would have dearly liked another ranged one to reach the front man.
Through all the levelling I took a couple of notes in my spreadsheet about how they progressed. It looks like at each level they gain the same amount of attributes with only slight variation between different tiles of the same type. The change is nothing like the initial stat spread (~20%), so i'm still going to spend most of my efforts optimising the choice of tile based on initial stats.
The money savings were to be ploughed into a golem on the 4th level at 200,000 a pop, but with ~6400 HP it is double the elite archer at level 150. no defence is also a good thing for extra XP from healing.
Finally lost all this great buildup by accidentally closing the game with the windows close button rather than saving it. Restarted it again to find it had wiped the save. Aaaaargh!!!
Football Manager 08 (7h) - Gateshead Season 3 finished 10th - After a brief hiatus I went back in to finish off the season, only to find I had just 2 games to go. We draw the first and keep 14th place, then win the last against 12th placed Aldershot to finish 10th. Moderately happy with the season, but i don't seem to be getting any serious replacements during the off season so it looks like more or less the same team will need to make it to the playoffs next year.
We do the usual home game bonanza for next season's friendlies, getting 5 championship division teams to fleece on each Saturday with more modest Blue Square Premier team to check our progress on Wednesdays. Wigan even wants a friendly at our place after our schedule is packed, but club is flushed with cash at the moment so there's no real need to push it.
Lots of staff turnovers planned for the end of the season, but 2 unexpectedly get bought out from under me. One awesome scout was pretty hard to replace, but Gk, Atk, and Def coaches all roll over to make way for fresh blood.
First friendly in the new season has Birchall break his leg! Now I'm definitely on the hunt for a striker. Maybe Byrne can step up and play as good as his stats suggest.
Guitar hero III (7h) - The PS3 is now living upstairs and it does make it simpler to pop into GH3 for a quick session after brekky & lunch, usually with Cameron in tow for drum support. Managed to go back through easy and 5 star pretty much any song I play. I'm so close to getting a 100% too. Only a matter of time.
Team Fortress 2 (4h) - There's been a couple of new updates coming through, so I hopped on for a bit of 2FORT fun to see if there were any drastic changes. I can still top the pub charts as rocketman, but there must have been a pyro skillup akin to the medic one recently as they now can blow back rockets :/
TMNF (2h) - A little race here and there to keep the stats up
Modified the strategy somewhat this time with the pick of the elite archers frontlining the show to get as high as possible. I didn't pick up anything apart from Priests (6), Thunder Wizards (4), and a boatload of slimes if they had 250+ health. The slimes made a corridor themselves below the main archer s that if needed they can push up through to sacrifice themselves when I need to retreat. This is mainly for boss time, but it's convenient enough to just leave them there in that formation for the whole trip.
Spent aaages levelling up both mages and priests to level 50. Priests are easiest by simply backing up any melee unit that goes up against an archer. The archer stays in place happily plinking away into your meatbag while you level up your heals. Hardest thing is choosing a decent archer with damage close to maximum healing strength so that it doesn't take forever. Wizards need a squishy isolated priest to pound on for their levelling pleasure. Just need to check that the thunder defence is low enough to damage them, but not enough damage that they can't heal themselves in one turn. Takes far longer than the priests though as the damage is usually pretty small. I'm still not sure what dictates whether you get area effect or 3 range as your additional skill. At first I thought it was getting longer range if you levelled up to 50 with a 2 range attack, but that proved incorrect later on. Although the area effect healers are great, I had 5 of the suckers and I would have dearly liked another ranged one to reach the front man.
Through all the levelling I took a couple of notes in my spreadsheet about how they progressed. It looks like at each level they gain the same amount of attributes with only slight variation between different tiles of the same type. The change is nothing like the initial stat spread (~20%), so i'm still going to spend most of my efforts optimising the choice of tile based on initial stats.
The money savings were to be ploughed into a golem on the 4th level at 200,000 a pop, but with ~6400 HP it is double the elite archer at level 150. no defence is also a good thing for extra XP from healing.
Finally lost all this great buildup by accidentally closing the game with the windows close button rather than saving it. Restarted it again to find it had wiped the save. Aaaaargh!!!
Football Manager 08 (7h) - Gateshead Season 3 finished 10th - After a brief hiatus I went back in to finish off the season, only to find I had just 2 games to go. We draw the first and keep 14th place, then win the last against 12th placed Aldershot to finish 10th. Moderately happy with the season, but i don't seem to be getting any serious replacements during the off season so it looks like more or less the same team will need to make it to the playoffs next year.
We do the usual home game bonanza for next season's friendlies, getting 5 championship division teams to fleece on each Saturday with more modest Blue Square Premier team to check our progress on Wednesdays. Wigan even wants a friendly at our place after our schedule is packed, but club is flushed with cash at the moment so there's no real need to push it.
Lots of staff turnovers planned for the end of the season, but 2 unexpectedly get bought out from under me. One awesome scout was pretty hard to replace, but Gk, Atk, and Def coaches all roll over to make way for fresh blood.
First friendly in the new season has Birchall break his leg! Now I'm definitely on the hunt for a striker. Maybe Byrne can step up and play as good as his stats suggest.
Guitar hero III (7h) - The PS3 is now living upstairs and it does make it simpler to pop into GH3 for a quick session after brekky & lunch, usually with Cameron in tow for drum support. Managed to go back through easy and 5 star pretty much any song I play. I'm so close to getting a 100% too. Only a matter of time.
Team Fortress 2 (4h) - There's been a couple of new updates coming through, so I hopped on for a bit of 2FORT fun to see if there were any drastic changes. I can still top the pub charts as rocketman, but there must have been a pyro skillup akin to the medic one recently as they now can blow back rockets :/
TMNF (2h) - A little race here and there to keep the stats up
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
GameLog 46
Testing to see if the GameLog website is a more useful place to store these logs.
Football Manager 08 (15h) - Gateshead, Season 3, 12th BSP - We've won the Setanta Shield in front of 27,000 paying public to boost morale, the coffers and my profile at the club. I'm coming off contract at the end of this year so the bargaining table is open, open enough for them to accept an upgrade to the training facilities. I'm not going anywhere as although we've given up hope of advancing this season, we're set for a solid run next season. I could still finish ~10th as we're all clustered in the middle, but with 5 games to go there's no real need to bust a gut. Roll on July 1st to clean out the deadwood in the squad.
Guitar Hero III (8h) - After moving the PS3 upstairs and with Greig, Matt & Scott still here we hammered GH3. Finally got to play "Cliffs" on Medium and barely made it through. Scott's playing on medium now too, but it's easier to keep it on Easy and swap between everyone.
TrackMania Nations Forever (7h) - My lack of play had dropped my rank out to the 50,000's, but at least I'm getting 200+ points a race now if I finish on the podium. Ended up back down to the 20,000's
Battle of Tiles (5h) - Showed it to Scott and it filled in a Tuesday night while the WoW servers were down. Kept losing men to the level 3 boss, enough to piss me off and restart. Playing back on medium to see how many levels there are.
Football Manager 08 (15h) - Gateshead, Season 3, 12th BSP - We've won the Setanta Shield in front of 27,000 paying public to boost morale, the coffers and my profile at the club. I'm coming off contract at the end of this year so the bargaining table is open, open enough for them to accept an upgrade to the training facilities. I'm not going anywhere as although we've given up hope of advancing this season, we're set for a solid run next season. I could still finish ~10th as we're all clustered in the middle, but with 5 games to go there's no real need to bust a gut. Roll on July 1st to clean out the deadwood in the squad.
Guitar Hero III (8h) - After moving the PS3 upstairs and with Greig, Matt & Scott still here we hammered GH3. Finally got to play "Cliffs" on Medium and barely made it through. Scott's playing on medium now too, but it's easier to keep it on Easy and swap between everyone.
TrackMania Nations Forever (7h) - My lack of play had dropped my rank out to the 50,000's, but at least I'm getting 200+ points a race now if I finish on the podium. Ended up back down to the 20,000's
Battle of Tiles (5h) - Showed it to Scott and it filled in a Tuesday night while the WoW servers were down. Kept losing men to the level 3 boss, enough to piss me off and restart. Playing back on medium to see how many levels there are.
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