Now with more obscure inside jokes and weird references than ever before.
Author Archive
Oct
10
2003
 
Amazingly Enough, This Wasn’t the Worst Mistake They Made with Star Wars GalaxiesPosted by: Mu in Miscellaneous StuffsNot updating for several months generally means I’ve been doing something amusing and having fun with it. This is mostly true… SWG is still the best MMOG in production at the moment. At least on paper. By "on paper" I basically mean that the overall design and potential (I hate that word) of the system are really good, and the level of complexity is enough to keep even nitpicky curmudgeons like myself interested for a while. My level of enjoyment (and play-time) recently has dramatically decreased, mostly because of problems stemming from bad balance decisions and absolutely terrible QA. (Note that I’m not including the customer service system here… like most players, most of my CS issued went unanswered for so long that I just stopped trying.) I feel weak. I’m playing an MMOG that Wen got me into. I’m giving money to Sony. I’m in a game based on a franchise of movies that I maybe liked for about a week when I was a little kid and was impressed by special effects. I’m probably paying royalties to the man who forced the character of Jar jar Binks on us all. All this is true, and yet somehow, Star Wars Galaxies is a good game.
Jul
04
2003
.notplan for a Project that Never Happened (as usual)Posted by: Mu in Neverwinter NightsWhat the fuck is a .plan file? I think they came into vogue after John Carmack started publishing his in a sort of weird quasi-open sourcey let-the-future-customers-know-what’s-happening sort of deal, and as a cheap way to get advance publicity. Nobody needs it anymore, since you know as soon as you let some crappy site like Gamespot know you have some sort of an inkling of an idea for a game, they’ll be hyping it up at least 4 years before it comes out anyway (if you give them enough press junkets and free food). So now .plan files tend to be pretty much primitive blogs. "I’m the lead designer of Pirate Cavemen in Space the MMORPG… wow my big toe really hurts today… don’t buy KFC food, man I hate that guy at the drive thru near the office… Hootie and the Blowfish really rock…"
Apr
02
2003
How to Get Your Live Band to Sound Better: Annoyed Listener’s NotesPosted by: Mu in Miscellaneous StuffsAfter watching Kat’s band play tonight, I realized that there were some simple things that bands should be doing in order to improve their audio performance. They were actually a pretty good R&B band, but something about sonic flaws just irritates the engineer in me. The problem is, it’s very rare that the band is even aware of these little sonic problems, as they stand on the stage being blasted by a relatively clean monitor mix and the guitarist’s entirely too huge stack they’re forced to stand downrange of. Nobody ever tells them this either, since in general your audience is not made up of audiophiles, and they’re used to this sort of live mix. The sound guy is probably not going to tell you either, since live sound engineers, as opposed to good recording engineers, are generally people who pick up a night’s work for like $50 and a beer or six, are usually half deaf, and about half of them are such bitter people they don’t give a shit anyway. Therefore, with the incredibly unlikely goal of getting a better audio experience the next time Wen drags me away from my computer, here are some useful tidbits I’ve found helpful. Note that all of this could be for naught if the venue you’re playing has SHIT gear, a SHIT engineer, or NO engineer. A lot of little places have these problems. Suck it up, I guess.
Microsoft’s project to dominate all facets of the computer industry continues as it buys FASA and manages to make a game out of Battletech that’s enjoyable for a while. The team that designed the pretty damn good Imperium Galactica 2 takes several giant steps backward in the successor, reaffirming the industry trend of making nothing but inferior sequels with higher system requirements, and my personal reluctance to buy any game ever again.
Aug
28
2002
Supar Dupar Dagger-Wielding Halfling of Knockdown ExploitationPosted by: Mu in Neverwinter NightsHave you ever bought a game that looked like it had potential, if only bugs would be addressed? Have you ever waited patiently for a patch to address bugs, and find out that what the devs release might possibly fix some bugs (but more likely not), but added a bunch more? Have you ever seen bugs posted again and again on forums, only to get one of the following replies?
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How stupid do people find those game postmortems that show up on Gamasutra or in Game Developer? "What went right: Purdy pikchurs. What went wrong: Our game sucks." What then could be more annoying than a postmortem on not even a game, but a mod for a game? What a waste of time! It sounds like a really good idea as I sit at my computer, having not slept for several days and watching Monkey Magic episodes. Monkey Magic! Monkey Magic! Monkey Magic!