Developmentally Challenged

I just started week 2 of my first extended vacation. I think I am starting to get the hang of it, but it’s taking some effort. I haven’t taken any vacation longer than a week since, well, I’m not really sure when; school, summer jobs, internships, then I came to Eugene, where I’ve been for a little over 4 years. 4 PC/Mac titles, 1 Xbox title, 1 Xbox 360 title, more engine work than you can shake a stick at, a bleeding edge lighting system, and a paper publication later, I am ready for a break.

I’ve been staying in Eugene, hitting golf balls, painting Space Marines, and doing other intentionally useless things. My Rock Band 2 band, ‘F*** Half Pixel Offset’, has been kicking some ass. I discovered that the Rock Band 2 Guitars work rather well with a guitar pick (I’m using a medium pick because it’s what I had, I’m wondering if a softer pick may work better). It’s a bunch more fun, and more comfortable. My main issue is the rather fast strumming, like 1/16th notes. Sometimes it is just perfect and behaves exactly like it ’should’, and sometimes the pick seems to get caught up just a hair and mess up the rythm. I was never very consistent with this on the real guitar, however, so I’m going to assume user error.

I picked up Warhammer Online since a few college roommates/friends were playing it. We played Dark Age of Camelot, back in the day, and so it has been fun to smash around. There are many features that they have improved upon, and added to the MMO genre that I think will become ’standard’ in the way that many of the approaches first taken by World of Warcraft are now widely used.

I am a big fan of the Public Quests. These are mini events which can be accomplished by any number of people, simulataniously working tword the same objectives. Individual contribution to the objective(s) is tracked by the event, and at the end, loot is awarded based on this number + a random number. If you don’t win any loot, it assigns you a bonus to the next time you complete that quest, to aid in your roll. It’s pretty well balanced and very cool.

There are static abilitys which are called ‘tactics’ which do things like +80(scales w/ level) strength, or (my favorite) +33% chance to build bloodlust. You have a certain number of tactics slots, per type of tactic. It also has tactics ’sets’ that lets you set up 10 different sets of tactics to easily switch (there are stipulations on switching). This feature lets you re-configure your character to fit a more specific need, in a way which allows for hundreds, if not thousands of possibilities, while still being balanced (or balance-able). It is not exactly how I would chose to implement it, however the problem that they were addressing, as well as the solution they provide, is quite impressive.

Well there is nothing that needs doing, so I am going to get to it.