Sunday, June 02, 2013

Public service announcement

Just a little info for you guys: I'll be changing my ISP, so I might be unreachable for some days. I am not sure when, and for how long, exactly, but I believe this should happen within 1-3 weeks. Since I don't know for sure, I thought I'd write about it now, so people will know what's going on.


Here is a little animated gif as a reward for reading through that:

My dream is to learn how to moonwalk like him, someday.

11 comments:

  1. Welp I knew there had to be some cons with living on Centauri and all,
    What happened to your old provider, mind worm raid? ;)

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    1. Nothing that fancy, the new one will cost me less. Those bastards reward new customers, instead of loyalty, so I end up having to switch every year or so, to keep the bills low.

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    2. Still looking for that Crossfire expansion to this day--nearly a decade and a half later. Patience is a virtue, yes? I hope it'll be worth the wait if I ever get it some two decades later. Anyhow, the last I checked, I heard that some UK company was republishing it. This is good news but I also heard that same company bundles the game with some malicious software that makes it uninstallable and also has the very real potential of destroying optical drives. This isn't quite good news.

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    3. Honestly the only thing I would like about SMAC2 would be for it to use hexes rather then cubes..

      Thats about it really, (almost) everything else can be modded in one way or another. (and SMAX added more problems then it resolved Imho)

      Also paying for "enhanced/overhauled editions" and whatnot is honestly a waste of money (not just in case of AC),
      and mate if you got money to waste, better chuck it towards our provider challenged smut wrangler.

      Of course chances are that some kalypso-like jerk gets the right to the game and makes a new casual friendly, braindead, dlc butchered version.
      PS Or we might get a kickstarter.. *groans*

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    4. To CDGgdc: if you want to play alpha centauri and its expansion that badly, you can buy them from gog.com, they sell them together, and it's pretty cheap (and since you are patient, you can wait for a sale, and buy it for a lower price, too). And if you really want to try it, there are ways to find it on the internet, but I don't need to tell you that, do I? If you don't get it from gog, remember that you'll probably need to download a patch to make it run on modern systems.

      To anonymous: Was SMAX intended to solve some problems? I got the expansion only several years after, and I had fun with the new factions, but honestly I didn't know it had any specific goal in mind (and since I really like the game, I was kind of happy with just having more of it to play, so I didn't question the situation too much).

      Please, please, please, don't give them ideas! I am already having troubles coming to terms with the fact that they managed to make even Tomb Raider more casual (and we aren't talking about a game that had those deep and complex mechanics). I would die a little inside knowing they messed with AC.

      Well, I am not sure a kickstarter would be that bad, even though it feels like there are way too many of them right now, but as long as it works, more power to them, I guess?

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    5. What do you mean about Tomb Raider? You don't like the idea of farming the same two respawning wolves for their teeth and then using them to upgrade a pistol?
      Or the fact Lara had a meter of rusty rebar thru her flank, but pretty much forgot about it the whole game..?

      Personally I'm mostly pissed they reduced her bust size.. (priorities and all) :)

      Don't get me wrong about SMAX, more stuff = happy me, its just that their additions pretty much droped a planetbuster on anything resembling balance. (crawler rush was bad enough in AC without them adding some fifty more cheesy plays on top of it :D)

      As for kickstarters, I just don't like the whole idea of obfuscating the line between preordering and donations. (clowns like molyneux don't help)

      By the way, how did I manage to change my act from a standup routine to a soapbox one in two posts and didn't even notice, maybe I should stick to making snarky 1984 references? ;)

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    6. If I wanted to complain about Tomb Raider, I could write a short novel about it, and it wouldn't be enough. Suffice to say, they traded most of the gameplay to add cover-based 3rd person shooting and a more "cinematic" experience, and both are crappy implementation. Wanna hear a funny thing? At one point, you are captured. For some reason, ALL the guards must leave and hunt your friends, so they just give you a stern warning, before giving you a golden chance to escape. It's the start of one of those awful insta-death stealth sequence. Since I am a submissive guy (and because I actually like to plan my moves), I wait where the guards told me to wait, without moving. As soon as the guard sees me, he treats me like I am trying escape and so I die thanks to arrows raining from out of nowhere.

      This is all they managed to accomplish, despite making one of the most linear games I have ever seen, and it's really all the game is about: you must do what the developers want you to do and that's it, otherwise the game goes bonkers, or shows all its limits in the saddest way possible. Even Skyrim manages to obfuscate the seams better, and that game is famous for how silly it can get. In fact, I'd say that TR main problem is that it takes itself seriously, without having what it takes to do so.

      I only played AC in single player, so maybe that's why balance didn't bother me as much? I can imagine it being a problem, though.

      I can see what you mean with, but ultimately the problems with kickstarter are the ones people create: people fund dumb things for the wrong reasons, maybe without critically analyzing the situation, but it's their money, and kickstarter can actually be useful in other projects, so it's something I don't feel too strongly about.

      You can do a stand up routine from a soapbox too, right? No reason to worry about it. ;)

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  2. Stand up soapbox?! I suppose next you would like me to juggle flaming midgets while whistling chant de l'Oignon as well!
    (although I have been neglecting my flamethrower lately, and it would save time on my laundry chores.. hm..)

    Ehem, funnily enough my problem with the captured intermezzo was that I was supposed to be scared of a guy with a very bad accent...
    After killing ~500 wolves with a stick....
    I call that the "Far Cry 3 Syndrome".

    Or if you wanted to go mathematical, one could sum it into as DDD>C =/= Lara ;)

    As for kickstarter or people in general, is that while I understand the concept of cynicism, I think with me what you get is a lack of optimism.

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    1. I see you are great at multi-tasking, just like I am. :D

      Stupidity in cutscenes is always bad. Since I didn't play Far Cry 3, I can't speak for it, but TR really is unsufferable. I won't speak anymore about it, because I don't feel I can be constructive about it, since after a while I start raging anyway, as I remember more and more of it.

      If only they taught that kind of math at school, I am sure the world wouldn't have so many problems... :p

      We are surrounded by people that make poor choices and we all pay the consequences (sometimes we ourselves make those mistakes). I used to get disappointed, now I simply don't care. Kickstarter *can* work, I find myself happy when it does, and that's about it. I can't convince people to not part with their money and promote behaviours/products/whatever I don't like, because if I could, I would be swimming in RPGs I like, and I would see maybe 2 FPSes every 3-4 years (just to use videogames as an example).

      And trying to regulate things in a way that they can't be abused, often leads to rules so tight that even legitimate efforts can't take off.

      Damn you, now I'll be in a bad mood until I go to sleep, because you reminded me I actually hate all human beings! :P :P :P

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    2. To quote the now immortal words of Korben Dallas:
      "Are you classified as human?"
      "Negative, I am a meat popsicle."

      Remember that while you can't change people's views - you sure as hell can point and laugh. (perhaps petty, but blood pressure benefits and all) ;)

      Also since you BROKE the age old tradition of posting a anime intro vid, it falls to me to rectify that dire transgression:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-KxsdWX9xE
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNJ22_hWFqM

      I prefer the second one myself - but hey, not everyone can speak Rusky.
      (or proudly mangle it like I do :P)

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    3. I am just going to point out that my e-mail service thought the e-mail blogger sent me about your comment is spam... You are breaking my internet, stop doing that!

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