by ·Comments Off on Gaming Frustrations Part 1: Prince of Persia

I’ve held back from going off on one about computer games for quite some time now, because quite frankly there are a million and two other sites and blogs out there that will always do it better.  However, it’s probably unavoidable as I have been maintaining a lifelong love affair with games and still do to this day along with many other refusing-to-grow-up individuals such as myself who continues to baffle parents as to why we haven’t grown out of this yet.

I have a strange condition whereby over the last couple of years, I have become increasingly susceptible to marketing, advertising and the hype machine of modern society that wants you to spend money on the Next Big Thing.  I blame this on working a boring nine-to-five week and then being sucker punched by gimmicky adverts that promise a little glimmer of excitement, but that’s beside the point.  The point is, that as a result of this condition (lets call it buying-new-things-syndrome:  BNTS) I have made a few purchases that have then somewhat languished as I either haven’t had time to use them or they just haven’t held my attention for the same amount of time that I expected them to.  This is in particular relevant to various games that I may or may not have bought over the past couple of years and then left to sit on the shelf in a state of semi-completion.

Yesterday evening and this evening, to relieve a little bit of angst-ridden stress, I decided that I’d cross what I could off my “to finish” list.  Behind the cut, I shall be talking about the rebooted Prince of Persia, so if by any chance you don’t want to know the score, look away now.  There may be spoilers, although at this point, considering that the game has been out for over a year, if you even know what I’m talking about, chances are these spoilers are akin to finding out that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father*.

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by ·Comments Off on The Tortoise and ActionScript 3.0

HU-logoA while ago, I mentioned that I had written up a syllabus for my own course in programming which centred largely around C++ and then later on elements of ActionScript 2.0.  Needless to say this was a dismal failure and never quite got off the ground.

Whenever I’m studying something or have something quasi-professional that needs doing, pretty much anything else in the world becomes more interesting and appealing to me.  I understand this is not a phenomenon unique to me and it was an ongoing joke in a previous house that I lived in that you could tell when a lot of us had essay or project deadlines because the place was spotlessly clean.  This instinct to do something other than what my brain things it SHOULD be doing triggered around about the time I had something in my hands that looked vaguely like a course syllabus.

Of course, in this case, I had the last laugh over my bloody minded brain, as the poor thing jumped on to something different but that is in the same field and has instead for the last few days been trapped in a prison made of Flash and ActionScript 3.0, one of the programming languages that powers flash.

When I have something worthy of publication I will of course share, but for now I shall just have to state how much I’m enjoying finally getting some programming knowledge under my belt.  Up until now, it’s been like my dutch:  I understand more than I can speak, but I don’t understand much.  Now, my programming is at the level whereby I could probably reliably ask for directions to the railway station, even if I won’t necessarily understand the answer given to me.

by ·Comments Off on 10 Different Ways to Play the World of Warcraft
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As a point of argument to suggest that this game is probably considered mainstream by now, I picked up this image from the website of the Daily Telegraph.

I’m writing this post for three different reasons.

1)  I want to put another post up.

2)  I love Warcraft unconditionally despite the abuse it puts me through.

3)  I hear lists are fun.

It is no surprise to anyone who has played any game of any type, be it on a computer, with a deck of cards, or on a board, that everyone has different ways of playing games.  Just as Monopoly can range from a light hearted exercise in casual sparring using passive business acumen to a three-day friendship breaker ending in somebody having to call an ambulance, any Massively Multiplayer Online Game can be played in many different ways.

I’m going to look a little closer at some of the ways I’ve witnessed my own particular online poison of choice being played.

If you have absolutely no interest in online games, or in Warcraft in particular, feel free to skip this post.

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