GameLog 70

Puta's still playing up on boot, so I've been leaving it on for the past couple of weeks. Went down to Andrew's for a 5 day holiday so I had to turn it off for the trip and I never got it back up. Replaced it with a GTX 260 which surprisingly worked straight away. No power updates, no graphics driver issues. It's a little sluggish in WoW, but it's caining TF2 and TrackMania.

Little Big Planet (8h) - Made a new level called Sackboy Cannon: See how far you can shoot yourself. Basically a launcher on one side and a ratchet on the landing pad so that you collect more points the further you shoot. Simplistic, but I got 9 people playing it within 5 minutes of it being posted, so I'm impressed by the immediacy of the publish / feedback process. Almost done the story mode I'd say as there's little room left on the globe.

TrackMania Nations Forever (8h) - More circuit racing.

WoW:WotLK (8h) - BundyBear, 72 Warrior.
Finished up Borean point. Running around in a Murloc costume was awesome!

War3:TFT (5h) After playing some TD over the weekend, I felt the urge to run through DotA AI version again. The latest incarnation has the AI's levelling much faster than you can, so it becomes a race against time more than a better approximation of a DotA game. At least they can hold their own though, didn't manage to win a game against insane bots.

Z+Angband (4h) - New version of the Zangband code with more work on the outside and quests.

Depths of Peril (3h) - Hearing it mentioned in a top 10 list for games of 2008 I needed to check it out. I like the faction dynamic, but some things are too similar to diablo that it shows up the interface. I'll be giving it another go though.

Game On! arcade (3h) - Spent the main part of Saturday at the Game On! exhibition at the Queensland library. The setup was spread over 2 levels with old arcade machines and handhelds on the bottom level and most of the console stuff on the second level. The highlight was the original SpaceWar! game emulated from the PDP-1 version. It's quite advanced in terms of game concept, design and fun compared to pong.

So many great arcade machines there from my childhood. Tron was awesome, as was 1942 and Asteroids with a vector monitor. It reminded me of nearly purchasing a Vectrex as my first console purely because it had inbuilt asteroids.

Of interest was a large absence of PC games. Although there was presence of Spore and The Sims, there were some junky console games there that could have been replaced with genre' defining games (Eg, no MMO or RTS at all)


Kongai (2h) - Showed Fr. Andrew how to waste away time playing Kongai instead of Desktop TD.

Guitar Hero: World Tour (1h) - played a couple of songs at Andrew's place on the 360 version.

Crowing about FPS skillz

Interesting article about the latest remote control guns used for the US army:

The accuracy of the fire, and uncanny speed with which the CROWS gun moves so quickly and deliberately, is due to something few officers expected. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls.

Now all we need is a remote fetching device (named NINJA) that goes out onto the battlefield to collect the phat lewt ...

Talent Identification

Are you, or one of your friends, Australia's next world champion or Olympian?

Wow, searching for Australia's next superfish with an online test? I wonder how many Crikey Steve's are going to be doing laps in under a second?

Maybe I'm just cynical.

(Would have been more funny if it was a flash game)

Bored

I'm bored.

Bored of the games I have, bored of the games I'm finding to fill the boredom.

I blame crunch month. 6 top notch games all in the space of a month festooned my PC and PS3 and the desire to play as fast a possible to clear space for the next game was incredible. I don't think I've been through a month like that before. Now it's over, I'm wondering if the Play & Expunge mechanic is still in my system. With no new games left and nothing on the horizon I'm wondering if I've cleared space in my calendar for a game that doesn't exist.

Usually when I get bored looking at the row of game icons it's time to add another, however I'd really like to get back to finishing Fallout, or pick up the FM season that's ready to go, or make a new LBP level. Instead I find myself downloading a new angband variant, or old indie games, or stuffing about on Kongregate.

Hopefully I'll get the GTX 260 on Saturday, and that will be the spark to get back into FC2 or Fallout. I'm also hoping to get some games developed while down at andrew's place, but the schedule is looking pretty full already. That would be the most effective venting of boredom though. Make a game yourself.

Contribute.

GameLog 69

War3:TFT (8h) Had a LAN on the Sunday after church with Sam, Joseph and Levi to celebrate school finishing. After a bit of demoing of the new stuff, we settled on tower defence and battleships.

WoW:WotLK (7h) - BundyBear, 71 Warrior.
Almost nightly sessions with Sandy.

TrackMania Nations Forever (6h) - More circuit racing.

Little Big Planet (2h) - Cameron's fave.

World of Goo(2h) - Fiddling through level 2. Damn OCD's.

Early Childhood OECD figures

A new UNICEF report out shows that Australia is ranked 3rd last, only gaining 2 out of 10 assessable criteria. Some of the criteria looks a little odd, like 1% GDP on ECS. Why would the amount a country spends on early childhood be a criteria? How does that take into account stay-home moms? In fact the majority of benchmarks indicate that you should be using childcare. What about a mentor / student ratio of 1:2 as it is in our home?

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ISTP ?

Just ran a typalyzer check on my blog to see what personality type it thinks I am. I've gone from INTJ to ENTP in my recent repeats of the test for Uni, but I've never ended up Sensing over iNtuition before.

I can relate to The Mechanic, but I could also relate the the others too. Maybe my blog highlights my analytical side?

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

GameLog 68

Puta's been playing up recently. First it was a blank screen on boot ~2 weeks ago that a reboot fixed, then 2 reboots to fix, to now about 1/2 hr of fiddling just to get the screen to come up. It's the 8800 dying a slow painful death. Hopefully a GTX 260 is on it's way soon...

Fallout 3 (7h) - VRBones, Level 13. Got a GECK, got a shock, woke up in a strange place with 700pounds of crap stored in a cupboard.

Little Big Planet (6h) - Cameron's fave.

TrackMania Nations Forever (4h) - More circuit racing.

WoW:WotLK (3h) - BundyBear, 70 Warrior.
Another quick session with Sandy. Scott's down too, so he's playing it lots.

Guitar Hero: World Tour (2h) - Band with Sandy. Also found out the drums are broken :/.

World of Goo (2h) - Back up to level 2.

Football Manager 09 (1h) - Gateshead ECN XXth - Barely loaded up the game. Haven't even played a match.