Mum's 65th is over. My B Cat course is over. GenCon is over. Benanna's wedding is over. Outlaws will be back to Cambodia soon. All the big things this summer needed to yield have done so. It's time for a new plan and this is it.
Chom Isis
God, it so nearly ready, it hurts. Those that have had a fiddle (I expect no-one to admit to it) will see how much work has gone into it (and there are twice as many screens/methods/functions in the admin system) I really need to get this bastard finished. It's going to be good. very good. It's going to be a little unbalanced but that doesn't matter at first, we can change that later. For my own requirements of closure, I need to get this done. I'm not setting a target but I'm bloody well getting on with it.
Icar
I know what I need to do here. Put all the books together and create B&W images for the inside. Then get it onto Lulu (or another POD) because people want a hardcopy that's easy. This is going to take a backseat for the moment as Chom is the new priority.
Icar Epic
The title for the book I'm writing on and off while reading my OU Creative Writing coursebook. I have an overall plot that players can spoil but twists as if they are. It's my plan to become a proper sci fi novel author. A mid-term plan, of course. First chapter drafts will be available for comment soon. The uber plan would be to give up this programming madness and take on writing full time.
Saving for Mortgage
The last of my student debt is paid off this month. Finally, I get to see some of this salary I earn. Bar paying off the bed this month, I will be able to throw cash into ISAs, high interest accounts and so on. The goal is to have the deposit and costs all ready for when the outlaws return and the housing market starts to turn.
Web work
I am still doing paid web design, I should really set myself up a design page or something. I am going to get better and more efficient at getting the work done. It's not going to interfere with anything else. I must earn the extra money to go towards the house deposit - it's the only good way of avoiding negative equity.
The Vigilantes
Sadly, our dummer has gone to New Zealand to learn to fly bigger aeroplanes, so the Vigilantes are going drummer-less. Should be interesting. Keeping the bass practise ticking over, practise most times I go to the gliding school. Getting funkier on the bass as I can slap and pop to a certain extent now.
The Piano
I'm approaching Section 2 of my piano book and am getting better in leaps and strides. Need to work on reading the bass clef. Once I get Section 2 done, I'm going to buy myself a piano book with music in it I might recognise. Failing that, I'm going to write up some of my favourite metal for the piano. I can already play some RATM, now for Korn etc.
Spore's arrived
Scratch all that, my life is over.
Comments
Good Luck
Spore's bloody good. Kate and I experienced the Civilisation Effect of sudden and immediate time loss. You can see the things we made here:
www.spore.com/view/profile/brainwipe
I'd recommend it to anyone who thought Civ was quite good. Apparently the game is all about the space conquest bit in the last section and I haven't got that far yet. All the stuff leading up to it just sets you up for that, which is a cool idea.
Ah spore it looks fun and my copy is sat there tempting me
it would show up just before I have to fly off to the states again, luckily I think it will run on the work laptop :D
I get a server error when attempting to view your creations...
I'm going to give Spore a go. I played with the Creature Creator a bit, and it would be nice to see the little fella's evolve.
That said, if they are not completely carnivorous killing machines I'll be very dissapointed with myself.
Skunty was just saying about the DRM in Spore causing some considerable ire in the community, care to comment?
Nibbles, you get three installs before you have to call EA. I don't think this is a problem for me but it's fucking stupid. The game is great, though. By all reports, the game is tilted heavily towards the space colonisation stages, with the early stages being a fast and simple way of constructing your race.
Rob, you need to come up with better names for your creations...
Which is a bit of a shame, given that creature design/evolution was the thing I was really looking forward to and it's hopelessly simplistic and uninvolved. I'll give the game another try next time I have a free evening, but my first few hours left me pretty underwhelmed.
@Aggro, you have to play it a long way through to see the results of the rather simple choices you make early on. You can't judge the game by the early stages because you've not bedded down your creation, nor can you see the results of your choices. It is simplistic but then it has to be because the combinatorial options are so large, it would be impossible for you to detect how your decisions have affected the long game.
@Pete. Wives are wonderful things.
I've played it through to the space stage in two ways due to an unfortunate crash, I did herbivore and omnivore.
The cell level is quite restrictive you have only a small amount of dna money so it's very tricky even with all the parts to make exactly the creature you want to. The creature creation is quite fun and you get more dna money so it's easier to shape things how you want though you still have to run around collecting parts from the ground or from other creatures either through social actions or attacking them. The creature sections of the game are not terribly interesting a set of hunts for parts with some simon says games or all out battles. They are fairly short tho and then it is on to tribe which starts to be more of a management sim then civilisation which is pretty much all management. The space stage is where it get's more indepth than the other stages. With terraforming and trade and battle with your little self designed spaceship that can be upgraded. It is pretty hard tho I seem to always get loads of people attacking me and it get's to the point where you are constantly having to fire fight chassing off massively superior forces by dying a lot but wearing them down by attrition. I then have to spend all the money repairing the colonies and then things repeat. Maybe there is an easier way of doing it maybe with better weapons upfront things would be more straightforward.
It's an interesting game with a lot going on but it does kinda feel like the only level with sufficient depth to it is the space level. Though the other levels move along fast enough that you probably wouldn't get too bored with them since they are over pretty quickly.
The creation system for creatures buildings vehicles are all pretty good. I felt the tribe costume one was a bit lacking in options, and the civisation theme song thing is a bit silly.
It's a pretty inventive game and I quite enjoyed it s far even if the space stage is proving a little tough.
Of course there has been a bit of a furore over the drm in this game with a load of people spaming the amazon scores down to 1 star.
To behonest this is not the worst case of drm mass effect was much more draconian and at least it doesn't exhibit the cannot play the offical game due to the disk security authentication being written by monkies so that it rejects official copies of the game
Ea have released a load of the prototypes that they used to develop spore some interesting stuff there
http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes
My copy has arrived this morning, so it will be installed tonight, and my carnivore/aggressive/predator/military/warrior race will soon be progressed!
Death to all, mercy to none, and all that jazz...
one thing the space level of spore really lacks is an autosave because otherwise you spend ages setting up your empire and buying all the toys teraforming the planets then it crashes taking you back to the last save of your game which could be hours previous or in some cases all the way back to the cell stage.
I can't help but feel that this game does nothing particularly well. It has an element of city of heroes as well where I spent more time playing the character creator because bashing together dodgy heroes/villains was more fun than the game proper.
I think nothing in this game has any depth to it.
Most of it can be boiled down to either a crappy simon says game or a dodgy combat game. The space thing is fairly simplistic compared to say "Sins of a Solar Empire" you can't make fleets or have space stations you can teraform which is fun but most of the missions devolve to the same kill this or collect that.
It feels a bit black and white ish as a game grand concept that ultimately doesn't deliver more than hints of what it promised.