Not much to update really
Well not much has happened recently really... no shoddy games to complain about... no amazing feats accomplished. Not even had an amazing sandwich recently, although i did have quite a good toastie last night.
Started doing Arena battles in WoW, they are acctually quite fun although its usually a damn tough battle until one person from the opposition is dropped. Jen, Fox, Beldri are all leveling now to come join us on some fun runs...
Did some more work on the Php game, then the people who host us decided to bugger up their servers
Me: "Have you changed any PHP/Server settings in the past 48 hours?"
Them: "Our engineers have assured us nothing has changed"
So why in hell have half my sites suddenly gone and imploded? it ended up someone had removed the filename postfix or whatever, which meant all the pages stopped operating, but they still never admitted to changing anything.
OH! i also started watching Battlestar Gallactica in a spat of boredom the other week, and its quite good, up to season 2 episode 2 at the moment, im saving it for when i got bored again then i will watch up to season 3.
Also recently had a LAN night at Jodes house with everyone, we played Supreme Commander...
Its a good game, but its a bit TOO epic for an RTS game, you tend to spend most of your time zooming in and out and building air units as ground units are waaay too slow to use for offensive attacks. All in all worth a play, but dont expect it to last < 2 hours in a match...
Cough, Splutter… stuff
Last week alot of us came down with some crazy flu thing, it wasn't your normal flu as it came with extra portions of dizzyness and aching, also with a helpping of the barking cough.
Anyway after that past we had snow everywhere, which didn't help things, although it did look pretty on the way back from work on the mountains.
Not much to report really, MINT SAUCE... whoa
If you dont know what MINT SAUCE is then you haven't lived yet, go out and get something close to a sunday lunch; then just whack mint sauce all over it. Its AWESOME...
Went back to playing Oblivion last night before Lost came back on TV, quite a good game, although it can get a bit mundane after a while....
Roger Roger out for a bit, got some more work to do on the Phpmorpg game...
Neverwinter Shite 2
Just before i go on and rant and point out some MAJOR things that really pissed me off about this title let me just backtrack to when i was about 13 and had Baldurs Gate...
Baldurs gate was an awesome game, quite possibly one of the BEST PC RPG titles ever, well maybe not ever but for its time it was awesome. Oz and myself used to spend many GCSE revision periods playing that classic, trying to uncover new areas in the world and trying to level up a bit...
The game mechanics were great too, you could control everyone individually or just select everyone and make them do what you wanted, the controls for people were kinda like a RTS / Diablo mix, it worked well though and i praised it then and im still praising it now.
Neverwinter Nights 1 was also an awesome game, I wasn't a GREAT fan of the actual campaigns in the game but i enjoyed the multiplayer element and have also played on a few PW servers... The main thing that this game had going for it was the engine. It was robust, quick and well developed, this in turn let everything else function well, the UI was great as were the way everything just seemed to fit in the game.
So at this point let me just say that after reading alot of previews of NWN2 i was being told by some people it was going to take the best bits of BG and the functionality of NWN and put them into a big cooking pot and create some awesomeness.
However they didn't, what they did create was a steaming turd. Im sure they were rushed to release the game, so i can forgive a few problems here or there, and as a developer i can appreciate how long it must have taken for them to redo alot of the old engine.
Jode starts a multiplayer game and first thing that pisses me off is the fact that he keeps opening doors and going places and im dragged with him, whatever im doing is dropped and discarded. I can cope with this as BG had a similar system, HOWEVER in towns or areas that contain other smaller areas you could wander round as individuals, it was just major areas you had to stick together on.
Then the dialog screens, not the fancy movie style ones... they are quite good, but the normal small dialog boxes are annoying. Im a player in a LAN game, the party leader goes and talks and BAM im locked out of my whole UI, i cant do anything... i have to wait until i can resume my level up.. or check other peoples stats, or walk to my place i was wanting to go.
Why in hell cant they just stop you entering into another conversation or leaving an area when in dialog with someone? this is SOOOO annoying when you are in a high dialog based area, unless you are the main character you may as well go watch some TV as you cant do ANYTHING until hes finished yabbering with some whore about the price of potatoes.
You may be thinking that its not a major hassle just make sure you are not doing anything when you go to talk to people... ok so we have now got to coordinate every bit of dialog so neither of us are doing anything... too much hassle, i wanna keep leveling up while hes chatting, i wanna sort my inventory out while hes talking... i would also like to check up on other characters while hes talking and maybe sort out their inventory or spell books.
Moving on from that, there is the constant grimace of the UI...
WHY?
The NWN 1 UI was awesome, it did everything you wanted and more, but now its a bag of beards, its like they got the original one and then just cut it up into little pieces flushed it away, and kept the sticky pieces that wouldnt flush. Then crayoned over it with some 3 year olds half eaten crayolas.
The portraits, WHY use 3d ones... its a fantasy game, not a realism thing... i know for a FACT that ALOT of people have complained about this, they did this in KOTOR 2. Why get rid of REALLY good 2D portraits to replace then with horrible 3D portraits that look like those bad ID pictures you always get...
The UI always resets itself too, i want to bring my quick cast bar up and keep it on, as im a cleric... If i dont heal people die, so the quickest way for me to heal without overloading my toolbars is by the quick cast bar... awesome!
Not so awesome when it keeps vanishing everytime we load a new area or something else that causes it to just up and vanish. I know i could just press the F key, but as im ill at the moment and just want to use the mouse it would be nice if there was a LOCK UI button or something to keep it all where i want it.
Speaking of settings another GEM i found the other day was the pointless 3 button box in the options. WHY is there a box with 3 radio buttons that has no text... this game is on its 3rd update yet it still has missing areas in its menus.
By this point im sure you are all getting a bit bored of me ranting, but im gonna make a few more points that annoyed me then leave it up to you people to decide if the game is acctually a piece of crap or not.
Another annoying thing is if you go and talk to an NPC as one of your minions, BAM you are teleported to their spot and YOU are talking... if you wanted to talk to them yourself you would have done that to begin with...
Online play has been butchered now that you have to download module content to play on peoples servers, ok cool it allows for more customisation as its no longer a tileset system for exteriors, but does it REALLY look that much better that it warrents removing one of NWN's best features... simple online play?
Get the update, login, find a server, play... now that is ruined. You have to track down their site and download some crap to play it, then realise its crap and leave... If they update areas im assuming you will need to download more updates too from them.
Well im gonna stop ranting now, let me know if anyone else loves/hates the game..