December 2005 Entries
And so another year draws to a close, a year which, by most Normal People’s standards, I’ve essentially wasted playing computer games. Personally though, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, and since I’m off for the seasonal hols today, and won’t see you all again until 2006, what better way to end the year than a gratuitous highlights flashback episode! One of the neat things about a blog, is that the back issues are all filed away automatically, requiring no extra effort on my part. 2005 then – click randomly in the Archives (left), to play along at home…
January: SOE offer the...
So, on to the latest project in Second Life. It’s all a bit weird to be honest, like I’m in some kind of Trade Skill Valhalla, being justly rewarded for a lifetime of hard work clicking ‘Combine’ over and over, but I’m still as fascinated by the potential of the system provided as ever, so I continue.
I’m vaguely aware that somewhere on this shifting plain of script-based tinkering, is an insubstantial line marked ‘Game Dev’, and I’m worried that I’ll end up stumbling over it without realising at this rate. The idea itself doesn’t appeal very much, however; the best...
Am I the only one beginning to worry at this point?:
Gamasutra: Blizzard Announces 5 Million WoW Subscribers
Sort of reminds me of the plot for a bad ‘got nuthin’ week on a long-running sci-fi serial. Wedged in between a thinly masked tale about how exploiting indigenous people is Bad Thing, and an episode where an Main Character learns Something Important about Themselves, there will be a silly episode where one of the comedy side-characters finds, or makes, a really cool thing that grows really fast, and it isn’t until it’s almost too late that they realise it won’t stop growing. Hilarity...
Just one more quickie then, before the weekend:
Slashdot Games: Err....riiiight.
I'm not quite sure what to say to that really. Conclusions to be drawn as this weekend's homework!
Aaaand, I'm spent!
Bit of drama on the SL General forum (no link…needs membership). It seems some enterprising young script kiddie has managed to hack one of the most popular in game vendor systems. And just when I was thinking of getting in to the recreational playarea equipment market.
Not sure I understand it myself entirely, but the ‘JEVN’ system is a way for people who want to sell things in multiple locations, to do so with a minimum of fuss, consisting of a number of multi panel display vendor objects, and a centralised server object to synchronise their content, and handle the transactions,...
You know, for what is essentially no more than a plank with an axle, the seesaw, as manifested in Second Life, is a surprisingly complex affair, and ended up taking me about seven goes, and teaching me far more about gaming physics than I’ll ever need to know. Still, as previously mentioned, this kind of pointless obsession is pretty much the solo content for SL.
A Walk In The Park
Description: “Hello there, SenseOfPride. I’m in a bit of a pickle! For no apparent reason, I need an accurately working seesaw, and haven’t a clue how to make it. I think it’s...
Fascinating bit here:
AFK Gamer: Legends
Foton coves all the bases there, so I won't requote extensively, but it is interesting.
I was a very passionate Everquest player back in 2002 and I remember the aformentioned 'Legends' server causing a bit of a fuss, becoming a kind of proto-RMT flame-beacon of it's time. The whole concept of there being 'one server for the rich kids, and second class servers for everyone else' got everyone, myself included, into a bit of a strop, and the boards erupted with all manner of socio-political hyperbole; mostly comparisons to Russian revolutions if I recall. It seemed...
Live Update 1.74
World
Added new respawn points at B3 and E5.
Added bank and inn at G4
Split up the market on D4 to prevent lag. Casualwear can now be found at the E5 street-market, and plumbing supplies are now available in each race’s Factional HQ, at D8 and E1 respectively.
Updated terrain for squares A4, B5 and D6; this is to prevent a possible exploit. All squares should now be completely square.
New: The Plains of Conflict! Expand your game in ways you never thought possible, as the Plains of Conflict lay ready for war! New squares at J3-M6 contain mystery and peril, and...
This just in:
Dear Neocron customer or beta tester,
Seize this opportunity and test the brand new add-on for the action sensation among the MMORPGs, NeocronEvolution 2.1 completely free of charges for 10 days.
The name Neocron still stands for first-person, dark-future, cyberpunk, massive-multiplayer action. And now a new, improved evolution of Neocron is available.
Main features of the free add-on are:
- brand new, highly detailed weapon models
- completely redesigned vegetation of the Wastelands
- new dungeons, quests and creatures
For more information, the new client and everything...
My enthusiasm for an online game that no-one else plays, and which isn’t really a game anyway, continues. As regular readers will know by now, I’m something of a butterfly with my interests, and indeed, because of this, I’m unlikely to ever have ‘regular’ readers as such, and can only apologise profusely to anyone still reading who thought this was a World of Warcraft blog, and the alarming number of Googlers who typed in ‘entropia gathering sweat’ and ended up here. (Am I really the only PE website left online?) I’m afraid it seems as if those were, like pretty...
I didn’t have to travel particularly far for the first spectacle on my tour of the illusionary world that is Second Life. Within sight of the newbie greeting plaza, to the south, stands the towering glass and concrete edifice that is ‘Nexus Prime’, and this will be one of the first things the more astute and curious newbie will notice, there at the edge of the clipping plane.
Gibson: 190, 200
(New! Interactive VanHemlock! Press your Red Button Now! The above ‘secondlife://’ link, when clicked, will fire up your copy of Second Life, if you have one installed. It will then open...
It's Carnival Time again, this time courtesy of The Game Chair:
Carnival of Gamers #9: Classifieds
(Nine already!)
Must admit, this is a blog I'd not seen before, but it seems to be a much more well-designed and broady scoped look at diverse aspects of gaming than I ever manage, featuring news, reviews, articles and more. I wonder at what point a blog ceases to be a blog and becomes a webzine, or magazine proper?
Anyway, The Game Chair is definitely at that end of it all, and the current Carnival is extensive, with twenty different articles, some from old favourites that are...
Still not ready to embark on anything substantial in Second Life yet; been fiddling with the Torus primitive mostly, which unlike its more humble siblings, the Cube, Cylinder and Sphere, is an extremely unruly beast. It comes with a bewildering array of parameters making it at once, extremely powerful, and very difficult to manipulate well. I’ll get there though, and I suspect that it is this particular pine shape that holds the key to massive ‘prim count’ reductions, and ultimately, a driveable, decently modelled, Thresher V2.
But despite this, I am not completely ignorant of the world around me, and in...