I haven't posted in a while. I need to post about how France is awesome. Yes, France.
Until then, enjoy Schrodinger's Wolfman.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
XNA Games for sale on an XBox near you
I've been watching the XNA news for a while. I haven't yet made the time to seriously play with the XNA Framework itself, but I love the idea. It's very cool that hobbyist programmers have a relatively easy way to write games for the XBox 360.
Soon the hobbyists will be able to sell their games on XBox Live.
That rocks.
Soon the hobbyists will be able to sell their games on XBox Live.
That rocks.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Great questions
There are some great questions, worthy of being asked over and over again.
Last night I watched American History X. Ed Nortan gives an amazing performance. In it, Avery Brooks' character Bob Sweeny poses one such question:
Has anything you've done made your life better?
Last night I watched American History X. Ed Nortan gives an amazing performance. In it, Avery Brooks' character Bob Sweeny poses one such question:
Has anything you've done made your life better?
Monday, July 14, 2008
New Laptop for work
I am currently working on site. They gave me a new allegedly-portable laptop. Check here for the speculations!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Mom's Eulogy
I've been silent for a while now because I haven't been sure how to follow up my last post. Somehow, posting about Super Mario Galaxies or my D&D campaign seems inappropriate.
My mother recently posted Mom's Eulogy. You can find it here:
http://mammahead.blogspot.com/2008/02/remembering-mom.html
My mother recently posted Mom's Eulogy. You can find it here:
http://mammahead.blogspot.com/2008/02/remembering-mom.html
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Friday, December 21, 2007
Mary Noble
About 3 weeks ago my grandmother passed away on her 88th birthday. It was very sudden. The night before we were all talking and laughing at dinner as normal. That morning she got up, got dressed, and made her bed. She never went anywhere without making her bed.
We all loved my grandmother very much, and we all miss her. She was an amazing woman who had an amazin life. She left home at 17 to get a job to help support the farm. She was working as a switchboard operator in LA on the day the Japanese bombed Perl Harbor. She ran a college bookstore that made a tremendous amount of money.
She saved everything. She had ration books from world war 2. She kept every card her husband ever gave her. She had my mother's Kindergarden report card.
We had a memorial service for her last week with just a few local friends and family. My sister made a great video using pictures from my grandmother's (extensive) collection. I hope to have it linked here at some point, but we're having some trouble getting it on the intarwebz.
I loved my grandmother very much, and I miss her.
We all loved my grandmother very much, and we all miss her. She was an amazing woman who had an amazin life. She left home at 17 to get a job to help support the farm. She was working as a switchboard operator in LA on the day the Japanese bombed Perl Harbor. She ran a college bookstore that made a tremendous amount of money.
She saved everything. She had ration books from world war 2. She kept every card her husband ever gave her. She had my mother's Kindergarden report card.
We had a memorial service for her last week with just a few local friends and family. My sister made a great video using pictures from my grandmother's (extensive) collection. I hope to have it linked here at some point, but we're having some trouble getting it on the intarwebz.
I loved my grandmother very much, and I miss her.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Mr. T and Shatner vs. World of Warcraft
I didn't know you could fit that much awesome onto a web page
Goodbye old man
Yesterday we had to put our dachshund to sleep. His health had been deteriorating for some time.
Dachshunds make wonderful pets. They have a lot of personality. They're awfully cute. Due to the way they are built they also tend to sound a lot bigger than they are. You can even race them if you want to.
When they get older they tend to become grumpy old men.
I'll miss you old man.
Dachshunds make wonderful pets. They have a lot of personality. They're awfully cute. Due to the way they are built they also tend to sound a lot bigger than they are. You can even race them if you want to.
When they get older they tend to become grumpy old men.
I'll miss you old man.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Autobots wage their battle...
...to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.
In our microwave.
At least, that's what Frangelica told me. Last week our microwave broke. Today we had a repair guy in to look at it. He told Frangelica that the Megatron wasn't getting enough power from the Transformer, and we'd probably need a new microwave.
In our microwave.
At least, that's what Frangelica told me. Last week our microwave broke. Today we had a repair guy in to look at it. He told Frangelica that the Megatron wasn't getting enough power from the Transformer, and we'd probably need a new microwave.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Stranglehold part 2
I've been trying to replay Stranglehold on the "normal" difficulty setting. I managed to make it to Chicago.
Stranglehold isn't the game in my head. It isn't the game that the demo promised. It appears to be a game about moving forward slowly and using cover. At least, that's what it is in the higher difficulty settings.
At this point I'm not really sure what it's trying to be. It's not the crazy stunt game I thought it was. It's certainly not Gears of War. It's trying to be more cinematic than that.
I think at this point it's a game I need a break from before I get frustrated enough to take it to EB and trade it in, or put it up on half.com.
Stranglehold isn't the game in my head. It isn't the game that the demo promised. It appears to be a game about moving forward slowly and using cover. At least, that's what it is in the higher difficulty settings.
At this point I'm not really sure what it's trying to be. It's not the crazy stunt game I thought it was. It's certainly not Gears of War. It's trying to be more cinematic than that.
I think at this point it's a game I need a break from before I get frustrated enough to take it to EB and trade it in, or put it up on half.com.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Stranglehold
I recently finished playing through Stranglehold. I wanted to like it a lot. It reminded me of Max Payne, in that it was probably the best action movie I played through this year. However, Max Payne was a better game, even with the really annoying dream sequences. For those of you who haven't played it, Max Payne is an awesome shooter that makes you feel like you're playing through an action movie. Except when you're in one of the two dream sequence levels, where the game becomes a bad platformer and is about as much fun as getting a root canal.
Now then, when Stranglehold is good it's awesome. You get to play as hard boiled detective Tequila (voiced and modeled after Chow Yun-Fat). The slow motion effects are great. The game even gives you style points for effective kills. The environment is full of destructible objects, some of which you can use to kill bad guys (for crazy amounts of style points).
It also has more than it's share of bad points.
At it's core, Stranglehold is about killing hordes of bad guys while doing cool stunts. When Stranglehold focuses on that core it's a lot of fun. When it strays from that core it's frustrating and very not fun.
One of the most frustrating levels has trip lasers all over it. What's a trip laser? It's a laser that is attached to an explosive. If you cross one you die. Congratulations, restart the level. It's the first level where you really have to be careful about where you put Tequila. One misstep and boom, yer dead. Up to that point the game has trained you to be mobile. Slide on carts. Slide down banisters. Leap through the air. And then it kills you on the trip laser level.
After a while someone decided that Stranglehold needed to be more like splinter cell, in that you need to be sneaky and inch forward to live. Again, this goes against it's fun core. The level in the ruins towards the end of the game is particularly bad. The game puts you in what looks like it was an urban war zone before you got there. Most of the level looks the same, and the spaces are very confined, so not conducive to crazy cools stunts. It is conducive to having a ton of guys shoot you from cover, however.
Stranglehold also sometimes becomes a "hunt the foozle" game. The bad level here actually comes pretty early. The game drops you off on an island, and you have to hunt down and destroy several drug labs. Several hidden drug labs. In a large area that's hard to get around in, in part because every area looks like every other area.
So when the game is cool, it's very cool. And when you hit some of the more frustrating levels it makes you want to repeatedly punch the designers who are responsible.
If there's a lesson to be learned here it's this: Stick to the fun core. Get rid of anything that doesn't relate directly to the fun core of your game.
A second lesson might be: Chow Yun-Fat greatly raises anything's level of awesome.
Now then, when Stranglehold is good it's awesome. You get to play as hard boiled detective Tequila (voiced and modeled after Chow Yun-Fat). The slow motion effects are great. The game even gives you style points for effective kills. The environment is full of destructible objects, some of which you can use to kill bad guys (for crazy amounts of style points).
It also has more than it's share of bad points.
At it's core, Stranglehold is about killing hordes of bad guys while doing cool stunts. When Stranglehold focuses on that core it's a lot of fun. When it strays from that core it's frustrating and very not fun.
One of the most frustrating levels has trip lasers all over it. What's a trip laser? It's a laser that is attached to an explosive. If you cross one you die. Congratulations, restart the level. It's the first level where you really have to be careful about where you put Tequila. One misstep and boom, yer dead. Up to that point the game has trained you to be mobile. Slide on carts. Slide down banisters. Leap through the air. And then it kills you on the trip laser level.
After a while someone decided that Stranglehold needed to be more like splinter cell, in that you need to be sneaky and inch forward to live. Again, this goes against it's fun core. The level in the ruins towards the end of the game is particularly bad. The game puts you in what looks like it was an urban war zone before you got there. Most of the level looks the same, and the spaces are very confined, so not conducive to crazy cools stunts. It is conducive to having a ton of guys shoot you from cover, however.
Stranglehold also sometimes becomes a "hunt the foozle" game. The bad level here actually comes pretty early. The game drops you off on an island, and you have to hunt down and destroy several drug labs. Several hidden drug labs. In a large area that's hard to get around in, in part because every area looks like every other area.
So when the game is cool, it's very cool. And when you hit some of the more frustrating levels it makes you want to repeatedly punch the designers who are responsible.
If there's a lesson to be learned here it's this: Stick to the fun core. Get rid of anything that doesn't relate directly to the fun core of your game.
A second lesson might be: Chow Yun-Fat greatly raises anything's level of awesome.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The many talents of ninjas
It turns out that not only do ninjas flip out and kill people, they answer questions and even rob gas stations.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Iron man movie
I just tracked down the trailer for the Iron Man movie (due out next May). It looks pretty cool. Not as cool as transformers, but still pretty cool.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Ptolus Evolved updates
I just posted a mountain of information to the Ptolus DMing messageboards.
We'll see if I'm laughed off the intarwebz.
We'll see if I'm laughed off the intarwebz.
Back again
Well, that went quickly. I just noticed I haven't blogged in two months. I'm clearly not doing too well with those resolutions.
In the last two month I have (in no particular order)
In the last two month I have (in no particular order)
- Worked like crazy to hit a deadline
- Missed that deadline anyway
- Gone to Gen Con
- Caught a case of the creeping con crud
- Played a few XBox 360 demos
- Started my Ptolus Evolved campaign --we made up characters last week!
- Seen the movie Stardust
- Seen Transformers for the 2nd time
- Bought a copy of HeroLab and started modifiying it for use with Arcana Evolved
- Read some of the stuff I got at Gen Con (mostly the free adventures from Goodman Games)
- Starting reading the last Harry Potter book
- Finished it by listening to it on CD
Also, for the record, the Stranglehold demo is awesome. The game looks to be so awesome as to be unfair to other games. You're playing through a John Woo action movie as Chow Yun-Fat. How can that not be awesome?
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Transformers: The Movie
I just got back from seeing Transformers.
This movie is so awesome it's unfair to all the other summer blockbusters.
Seriously.
Monday, July 02, 2007
On a scale of 1 to awesome
The self destruct button ranks right up there with the USB Missle Launcher.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Our Domestic Explorer
Harley strikes again!
Frangelica and I have our own space --we've taken over the basement of the new place. The basement has acoustic tiles in the ceiling. We put Cinnamon's litter box in a closet. The closet doesn't have a ceiling.
See where this is going?
Yesterday I pulled Harley out of the ceiling.
So awesome.
Frangelica and I have our own space --we've taken over the basement of the new place. The basement has acoustic tiles in the ceiling. We put Cinnamon's litter box in a closet. The closet doesn't have a ceiling.
See where this is going?
Yesterday I pulled Harley out of the ceiling.
So awesome.
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