So, let's look at those 'resolutions' again.
Watch as few video game streams as possible
Fairly successful on this. Generally I've been watching while eating, so I couldn't have really been doing anything else, or when I'm waiting for something else to happen. There are a few games/people I like to support by watching, such as Shining Force, which keep me coming back to Twitch.
Play no League of Legends
Check.
Regularly stream play-throughs of unfinished games from my collection
Not done any of this yet. I'm not really sure how to pick a first game, among other issues.
Update: Emily picked Phantasy Star Portable as my first game to beat this year.
Record and submit a speedrun or two
I have been streaming speedrun attempts at El Shaddai, which has been coming along nicely. It still needs plenty of work before it becomes good enough to submit to SDA, but I feel like I do occasionally play well.
Create a working prototype of a strategy game
No work on this so far this year.
Re-build and re-style my website
I've made a few notes, but other than the gaming page, nothing to show.
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Sunday, 3 January 2016
Lag.Gaming
In light of what I said about making sure I actually play games this year, I've set up a simple tracking page on my website which will be useful once I start in earnest. The idea is to track progress in each game and give links to VODs. If I need some more information later, it's easy to add to.
Monday, 14 December 2015
Twenty Sixteen
Looking ahead slightly, I want to do things a little differently next year.
I realise that the amount of time I spend watching video game streams, particularly League of Legends, is excessive. In fact, I think League in general is a huge time sink that doesn't provide me with all that much benefit; I enjoy the game (playing and watching), but it's just too much of an involvement necessary to get better, and I have so many other things to do that I can't justify it any more.
I have many ongoing projects that would benefit from more attention. The most obvious is my ever-growing collection of video games. It doesn't make any sense to continue buying them when I have over a thousand yet to beat, many hundreds of which I haven't even started! I'd also like to get back into streaming regularly, and this seems like the most obvious way to do it.
Speedrunning still appeals to me, however disillusioned I am with Speed Demos Archive and Games Done Quick. I have a few runs at various stages of completion, and it would make me feel like a better gamer to research them further or actually finish them. Occasionally people have also let me know that they're interested in the games I've picked up, so it would be some entertainment for them, too.
There's also two large programming projects; the strategy game I'm working on with some help from Emily, and a new website. The game is nowhere near done; it has much engine development but little content yet, and it's not possible to play a full battle so far. It needs many, many hours of work to be usable and a couple of multiples of that to be good. I probably won't be able to finish it in a year, but I could put a large dent in the needed work. This would also help me improve as a programmer, adding the ability to appreciate projects of greater scope.
A new website has been something on my mind for a long time. My current site doesn't really show off what I know about HTML and JavaScript, so it would be neat to revisit it as a showcase alone. The functionality is what I really want to improve... I've been putting more and more focus on it being a decent repository of video game information, and to that end it keeps track of game prices, collection data and now I'm starting on linking games together that share characters. I want to take this to another level and make it possible to define collections of games by certain companies, or about certain events in history, and so on. This time I want to design the website properly from the beginning, leaving enough room for extension but not relying on a hodge-podge of techniques.
So, to recap:
I realise that the amount of time I spend watching video game streams, particularly League of Legends, is excessive. In fact, I think League in general is a huge time sink that doesn't provide me with all that much benefit; I enjoy the game (playing and watching), but it's just too much of an involvement necessary to get better, and I have so many other things to do that I can't justify it any more.
I have many ongoing projects that would benefit from more attention. The most obvious is my ever-growing collection of video games. It doesn't make any sense to continue buying them when I have over a thousand yet to beat, many hundreds of which I haven't even started! I'd also like to get back into streaming regularly, and this seems like the most obvious way to do it.
Speedrunning still appeals to me, however disillusioned I am with Speed Demos Archive and Games Done Quick. I have a few runs at various stages of completion, and it would make me feel like a better gamer to research them further or actually finish them. Occasionally people have also let me know that they're interested in the games I've picked up, so it would be some entertainment for them, too.
There's also two large programming projects; the strategy game I'm working on with some help from Emily, and a new website. The game is nowhere near done; it has much engine development but little content yet, and it's not possible to play a full battle so far. It needs many, many hours of work to be usable and a couple of multiples of that to be good. I probably won't be able to finish it in a year, but I could put a large dent in the needed work. This would also help me improve as a programmer, adding the ability to appreciate projects of greater scope.
A new website has been something on my mind for a long time. My current site doesn't really show off what I know about HTML and JavaScript, so it would be neat to revisit it as a showcase alone. The functionality is what I really want to improve... I've been putting more and more focus on it being a decent repository of video game information, and to that end it keeps track of game prices, collection data and now I'm starting on linking games together that share characters. I want to take this to another level and make it possible to define collections of games by certain companies, or about certain events in history, and so on. This time I want to design the website properly from the beginning, leaving enough room for extension but not relying on a hodge-podge of techniques.
So, to recap:
- Watch as few video game streams as possible
- Play no League of Legends
- Regularly stream play-throughs of unfinished games from my collection
- Record and submit a speedrun or two
- Create a working prototype of a strategy game
- Re-build and re-style my website
That's enough for a year.
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
More
Well, I guess the other presents arrived!
Another book; Love Songs of Early China, a translation and commentary of some very old poetry indeed. I'm primarily interested in this because of the linguistic angle, but the poetry might be interesting too. :D For some reason, the book has no entry on GoodReads, so I've added one.
For a while now, we've had this annoying issue with the PS3 where it refuses to play some of the PS1 Classic titles I've bought from the UK PSN store. To that end, we now have a PlayStation TV! And... they still don't work, because for some reason many PAL PS1 titles don't support the PSTV. Argh. Well, at least now I have a way of playing Vita games! The memory card just arrived today, so it's time to download everything that it'll play, I guess.
Another book; Love Songs of Early China, a translation and commentary of some very old poetry indeed. I'm primarily interested in this because of the linguistic angle, but the poetry might be interesting too. :D For some reason, the book has no entry on GoodReads, so I've added one.
For a while now, we've had this annoying issue with the PS3 where it refuses to play some of the PS1 Classic titles I've bought from the UK PSN store. To that end, we now have a PlayStation TV! And... they still don't work, because for some reason many PAL PS1 titles don't support the PSTV. Argh. Well, at least now I have a way of playing Vita games! The memory card just arrived today, so it's time to download everything that it'll play, I guess.
Insignificant Birthdays
Good morning! It's the day after my 29th birthday and I'm suffering from the tail end of a cold, so let's do this. I'm reliably informed that not all of my presents have arrived yet, but I already have plenty to talk about.
As many already know, the past couple of weeks I've been playing Destiny because Emily was kind enough to buy the Digital Collector's Edition for me. My experience with it so far has been quite positive; there have been a few connection issues but nothing to serious. I've since beaten all the main story missions for each expansion and enjoyed the whole thing. Coming in, I knew it was some mix of FPS and MMO, so I expected something like Planetside. However, PvP is strictly opt-in and not very emphasized, so it's really more like Borderlands. In fact, the game is so heavily like Borderlands it makes me wonder if some of the development crew was shared. Maps are reused ruthlessly, guns and gear are semi-randomly generated, the missions are structured the same way, there's a skill tree for each class (well, Destiny has subclasses), the overall atmosphere is grim but there's a fair bit of humour, PvP sucks... I'm sure there's more. Nevertheless, definitely a fun game with some decent challenge (haven't done a Raid yet) and excellent web/app support. Recommended if you like Halo and Borderlands.
My other "present" so far consists of almost the entire Malazan book series. I randomly found the first novel in a Waterstones a couple of weeks ago, and now I have 14 of them. My interest in them was sparked by Chester Bolingbroke, so hopefully he's a good judge of taste. They're pretty long, even for epic fantasy novels, so I'm settled in for the long haul. I'll probably bring a few to America on our next trip.
As many already know, the past couple of weeks I've been playing Destiny because Emily was kind enough to buy the Digital Collector's Edition for me. My experience with it so far has been quite positive; there have been a few connection issues but nothing to serious. I've since beaten all the main story missions for each expansion and enjoyed the whole thing. Coming in, I knew it was some mix of FPS and MMO, so I expected something like Planetside. However, PvP is strictly opt-in and not very emphasized, so it's really more like Borderlands. In fact, the game is so heavily like Borderlands it makes me wonder if some of the development crew was shared. Maps are reused ruthlessly, guns and gear are semi-randomly generated, the missions are structured the same way, there's a skill tree for each class (well, Destiny has subclasses), the overall atmosphere is grim but there's a fair bit of humour, PvP sucks... I'm sure there's more. Nevertheless, definitely a fun game with some decent challenge (haven't done a Raid yet) and excellent web/app support. Recommended if you like Halo and Borderlands.
My other "present" so far consists of almost the entire Malazan book series. I randomly found the first novel in a Waterstones a couple of weeks ago, and now I have 14 of them. My interest in them was sparked by Chester Bolingbroke, so hopefully he's a good judge of taste. They're pretty long, even for epic fantasy novels, so I'm settled in for the long haul. I'll probably bring a few to America on our next trip.
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Nottingham Spoils
Just got back from a weekend in Nottingham! I'm slightly sad that I didn't get to see the video game museum thing they have there, but Emily and I had a pleasant enough time, and also bought some games from the local CeX:
Aside from that, life has been progressing at a stately pace. I still have plenty of games to talk about in my queue, but progress has been slow on my own creation. No speedrunning news; Ultima II still bugs me, and El Shaddai is in the back of my mind.
- Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom (360) - don't know much about this one, other than that the series is well-respected
- Mass Effect 3 (360) - for when I get round to finishing 2
- Shadows of the Damned (PS3) - Emily was interested in it
- History - Great Battles Medieval (PS3) - Not sure how a strategy game will play on a gamepad, but I'll give it a try
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII (PS2) - bit of a jump from 4 to 8, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it
- Rise to Honour (PS2) - an action marital arts thing starring Jet Li, could be fun
- Astonishia Story (PSP) - an action RPG, hopefully it's good
Aside from that, life has been progressing at a stately pace. I still have plenty of games to talk about in my queue, but progress has been slow on my own creation. No speedrunning news; Ultima II still bugs me, and El Shaddai is in the back of my mind.
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
Crawlin'
Dungeon crawlers! They're one of my favourite types of games to play, even though they utterly terrify me. Some of the classic RPG series started (and often continued) as first-person dungeon games, such as Ultima, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Pools of Radiance...
On a side note, Pools of Radiance (and its sequels) were just released on GOG for a fair price. I highly recommend you play them if you have a spare... few months.
Anyway, Japan has been inordinately fond of dungeon crawlers ever since they were introduced. Also, their general culture is more accepting of grindy games, so a huge amount of them have been developed since the 80s when personal computing really exploded.
This long introduction is so I can talk about Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl. It's a party-based dungeon crawler set in a reasonably-well fleshed out generic-medieval-with-magic setting, and it's one of the games I wanted the 3DS for originally. Atlus seem intent on remaking every game in the DS Etrian Odyssey series, so I'm pretty sure I'll follow them as they get released. Interestingly, part of the remake seems to be adding a more story-heavy mode along with the 'classic' build-your-own-party mode that crawlers have had forever.
The story is quite well written, with varied (and mostly non-stereotypical) characters and decent voice acting. I can't impress upon you enough how rarely that sentence is true for RPGs. I played on the 'Picnic' difficulty, which really is very easy, so I'm definitely going to have to play through it again with my own party and on Normal or even KICKYOASS or whatever it calls the top one. Monster encounters are usually interesting, the classes are all quite different, and character growth is fulfilling. FOEs are a clever addition to the crawling formula - visible monsters that roam in specific patterns, requiring forethought to get past, or brute strength to beat. Picnic makes them quite reasonable, but on Normal or above they can destroy you at short order.
Overall, a good game, worth the time it took to beat. I definitely recommend playing through Story mode your first time, and not skipping through the cut-scenes or dialogue.
On a side note, Pools of Radiance (and its sequels) were just released on GOG for a fair price. I highly recommend you play them if you have a spare... few months.
Anyway, Japan has been inordinately fond of dungeon crawlers ever since they were introduced. Also, their general culture is more accepting of grindy games, so a huge amount of them have been developed since the 80s when personal computing really exploded.
This long introduction is so I can talk about Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl. It's a party-based dungeon crawler set in a reasonably-well fleshed out generic-medieval-with-magic setting, and it's one of the games I wanted the 3DS for originally. Atlus seem intent on remaking every game in the DS Etrian Odyssey series, so I'm pretty sure I'll follow them as they get released. Interestingly, part of the remake seems to be adding a more story-heavy mode along with the 'classic' build-your-own-party mode that crawlers have had forever.
The story is quite well written, with varied (and mostly non-stereotypical) characters and decent voice acting. I can't impress upon you enough how rarely that sentence is true for RPGs. I played on the 'Picnic' difficulty, which really is very easy, so I'm definitely going to have to play through it again with my own party and on Normal or even KICKYOASS or whatever it calls the top one. Monster encounters are usually interesting, the classes are all quite different, and character growth is fulfilling. FOEs are a clever addition to the crawling formula - visible monsters that roam in specific patterns, requiring forethought to get past, or brute strength to beat. Picnic makes them quite reasonable, but on Normal or above they can destroy you at short order.
Overall, a good game, worth the time it took to beat. I definitely recommend playing through Story mode your first time, and not skipping through the cut-scenes or dialogue.
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