I hate being trendy

There has been something bugging me for awhile now but I’ve been too lazy to actually research it. I now find myself faced with the choice of going off and doing said research or risk humiliation when my dearly held opinions turn out to be based on unfounded information and conjecture.

. . .

If you had any doubt that I would take the later of those two choices, there is a whole slew of links along the right of the page that will take you other sites and I invite you to pick one because I want nobody reading my stuff who has even the slightest notion that even the smallest iota of a well thought out point would appear in any of the rapidly firing words that I am typing in what can only be described as a mish mash of run on sentence after run on sentence pouring forth with no end in sight especially in this one which appears to being doing so well that I have decided it is a sort of challenge to see just how long I could go. Yeah as soon as I thought about what I was doing it ended itself, lucky escape for us all.

Before I go on about this thing that is bugging me I want to say right up front that I think the whole notion of hating big evil corporations simply because they are big evil corporations is way too trendy. There was somebody going off on Starbucks today for what in the end, after you removed all the adjectives, seemed to come down to just that reason. I prefer to hate them because in Australia when you ask for a Venti Vanilla Coffee Frappuccino you get a cup that in America would be called a Grande. For those of you who don’t speak Starbuck-ese, a Venti is a large and a Grande is a medium.

Like all Americans I prefer my beverages in as large a size as possible. I would go so far as to say if they come up with some giant refrigerated (a Frappuccino is cold drink along the lines of an iced coffee slurpee) tank that I could strap onto my back and drink through hose, I’d be all over that.

So now that we got that out of the way and it is clear I’m an evil capitalistic bastard lets get on with picking on Microsoft. As so many people do pick on Microsoft, I felt it was important to let you know I wasn’t doing it to be trendy.

We would like to put the Microsoft “Games for Windows” logo on the Fury box.Why?

I don’t honestly know. I can’t think of a single person who would look at a PC game and see the Windows XP/Vista listing on the system requirements but still not buy the game because it didn’t have the “Games for Windows” logo on it. Microsoft has such a solid reputation especially with this whole “DirectX 10 only graphic feature” thing they are getting game companies to promote that turn out work not only just fine under DirectX 9, but in most cases run better under DirectX 9.

Just assume we want said logo for no other reason than that is what I’m telling you.

In order to qualify for the distinction of being a game worthy of such high branding we have to follow a set of standards. Its one of these which is bugging the hell out of me and really the point of this whole post which it is nice of me to finally get around to don’t you think?. Microsoft appears to think it’s a good idea to mandate that any files you save out from your game, for example screenshots and log files, have to be saved in a certain directory.

The first part of the reason is sound, if the user doesn’t have Admin permissions to the machine you can’t save them to the game’s own directory within the Programs folder.

I get that.

But the next part is where they lose me. I’ll preface this torrent with the fact that I’m basing it all on Windows XP and haven’t a clue what Windows Vista may or may not do differently.

Microsoft says that you must save them under the following path
C:\Documents and Settings\Joseph\Local Settings\Application Data\MyGames\Fury\...

The “Joseph” directory being what ever your user name happens to be. Besides being over half a dozen directories deep before you get to the Fury directory, two of those directories along the way are hidden! Local Settings and Application Data are hidden directories by default! I’m looking at the Joseph directory under Documents and Settings and I only see Desktop, Favorites, My Documents and Start Menu. I don’t see a Local Settings directory. I don’t see anyway to unhide directories. How does Microsoft expect Timmy’s Dad to figure out how to get at his screenshots?

"Sorry little Timmy. I know you took that cool screenshot of you pwn’n newbs and you want to parse your combat log, but I can’t seem to find where it saved them. The manual says there should be a Local Settings directory here but I don’t see it."

I would prefer something like a My Games directory under the My Documents folder. Though I never did understand why things like My Music, My Pictures, etc. where all under the My Documents folder and not in the same directory as the My Documents folder. But what do I know?

Little Timmy by now has gone back to World of Warcraft, whose makers don’t seem to care about the “Games for Windows” logo and save their screenshots where ever the hell they feel like it. They also probably sit around drinking Starbucks Frappuccinos all day in Venti sized Venti cups. Bastards, all of them!

Patch Rules

Patching Rules

1. Never patch on a Friday.

Reasons:

A. The next two days are the weekend and there is no one in the office to fix all the things the patch broke in the game.

B. Lots of people don't have school/work on the weekend which means there are going to be even more customers upset with your company when they can't play because your patch broke the game.

Hellgate London Ads

Last year I decided to not buy Battlefield 2142 because of the Adware type stuff EA were putting in the game. It has been recently announced that Hellgate London has the same Adware. If you had it on a list of possible Christmas presents, please remove it. Thanks.

I am okay with the in game advertising to an extent. Business is business and capitalism makes the world go around. I also understand that they are keeping their data gathering autonomous, not trying to find my identity. But that information they are gathering is valuable as is my time viewing their ads. If they want me to allow such practices they are going to need to do two more things:

1. Pay me for it. I am not going to pay full retail for a game, possibly a subscription AND allow them to just have that information and subject me to advertising. They are making money off that information and those ads so some of that needs to be passed on to me. They can't have their cake and eat it too... well not my cake anyway. Hmmm how about, they can't sell their cake to me and eat it too.

2. Change their EULA agreement in such a way that states they do not have the right to change the agreement at a later time. Currently their EULA reads in such a way that gives them a lot of wiggle room to change it and the data they collect at any time in the future. That just won't do. The cake's ingredients should not change after the transaction is made. I'm okay with vanilla or lemon cake, but I don't want them switching it to chocolate at some later time.

Here is hoping they don't do this to Crysis. Can't really think of a cake analogy for this last bit... How about if I said the wish I made when I blew out the candles on my cake was that they don't do this to Crysis! I should have quit while I was ahead.

I Post All My Own Ideas

I noticed Kotaku has split up to have an Australian Version. My link over on the left used to just be www.kotaku.com but it would translate to www.kotaku.com.au for me when I used it. I’ve edited it to be us.kotaku.com which is the direct link to the U.S. version.

What’s the deal though? Why? It would appear at a cursory glance that the U.S. version of the site appears to be exactly the same except with more stories. The U.S. version appears to have all the Australian specific articles as well. It’s just the Australian version that has less stuff. What is up with that?!

Okay, that isn’t really why I gathered you all here this evening. Back in April I did a 10 question interview with Australian Gamer. I also managed to get myself into a bit of controversy when my fictional story in a ‘relationship’ thread was nominated for the April Post of the Month. I found myself going up against another post that was really nothing but a number of parody pictures of that guy from the move ‘300’ yelling “This is Sparta!!!” I found out that he didn’t actually make any of those pictures, he just collected them from across the internet and posted them. I said something about that in the thread.

Here is my original blog post about it. Go and read that PotM thread and ask yourself who is being an ass. You might even be tempted to say nobody. But I certainly don’t see any of my posts as being overly rude.

Okay jumping forward to the present day. The October Post of the Month thread. About halfway down you’ll see this post from El Taco:

Because it's a shirt+faceplate, I'm expect Joseph4th to come in here, make one post, get angry at me for winning then never posting again.

What an ass.

Why did he do it? Why did he say my name and summon me so? He's young and doesn't know any better. Now the first version of my response was a bit over the top and probably a wee bit too cruel. I toned it down quite a bit during the editing stage. I also was originally planning on changing the faceplate in the picture as well as the t-shirt. I was going to turn it into a Del Taco faceplate but since they don't have Del Taco in Australia it would have been a lot of Photoshop work with little humor value in return.

Anyway here is the link to the October PotM thread so you can read it all for yourself. Share and enjoy.

The White Stuff

Somebody awhile ago hooked me up with a song called “Code Monkey” by Jonathan Coulton. By hooked up I mean they had it, I listened to it, and that was about it.

Today I was watching the latest Zero Punctuation episode which reviews The Orange Box from Valve – you know the one with Half-life Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. If you haven’t seen this or other Zero Punctuation reviews I highly suggest you stop reading my prattling and go on and watch something truly funny.

Anyway, at the end of the latest review Yahtzee Croshaw, the English nut job on the loose somewhere in Australia who is the creator of Zero Punctuation, mentions there is a song at the end of Portal by Jonathan Coulton. I hadn’t made the connection of the Code Money song with Jonathan until I looked him up on iTunes. Yahtzee (really now, are we expected to believe that’s the name his mother gave him?) describes Jonathan’s music as upbeat folk rock about robots. In addition to the music, Jonathan also has his own podcast called “Thing a Week”. I am guessing the name was a way to force him to put a new one out each week, good idea.

Now that I’ve gotten all that written down I suppose I should mention that besides the Code Monkey song I haven’t listened to anything else Jonathan has done. None of his songs, none of his podcasts, I haven’t even read his blog.

I just wrote this to remind myself to check them all out later. I was going to just put these links into an email and send it to myself. But I plan on doing another post about Fury’s launch with various press reviews and such once it’s finished rolling out in all the stores. I didn’t want to have two Fury focused posts in a row, disregarding the tangent in the last one about Pancakes and the Sausage versus Bacon jihad. I thought this post would make for a nice bit of filler between the two. It’s the white stuff in the middle of an Oreo if you will. I'm not sure what it is, but it sure makes the cookie taste good. Joseph likes Oreos.

Fury Unleashed & Pancakes!

I was going to put up a counter on here for Fury's release but its all still kind of nebulous. What it comes down to is that Fury will be out sometime between 12:00 Noon PDT October 16th and Friday depending on if you bought it online versus when various stores stock their shelves.

Now 12:00 Noon PDT is 5:00 AM October 17th here in Australia. Some of us are meeting at Pancake Manor for breakfast at 4:00 AM because... well... pancakes man! PANCAKES!

Pancake Manor is actually a converted church. It was originally St Luke's, a Romanesque Church built in 1904 and designed by J.S. Murdoch. It was lovingly refurbished in 1979 into the Pancake Manor (I think the sign out front actually says Pancake Cafe).

I have to wonder what somebody who went to that church over 100 years ago would think if was sitting there, saying the Lord's Prayer or some such, and suddenly had a vision of the future. Can you imagine him telling people that he had been given a vision by the Lord and the Lord's message was, "Would you like sausage or bacon with that?" Oh you can just imagine the war and strife that would follow from that!

Actually it would probably be more of exactly what we already have today. The general divide between the sausage or bacon factions. Then more trouble with the sub-factions arguing about crispy bacon versus chewy, some big war with the sausage patty versus link split. All that trouble with everybody forgetting about the main point of it all which is the PANCAKES!

So anyway, Fury is finally hitting the shelves. When you aren't stuffing your face full of pancakes I highly recommend picking up a copy. I fully expect to see the Sausage versus Bacon clans represented in full force in the game.

Going to Sydney

I'll be in Syndey this weekend for Supanova. I haven't really had the time to look into who is going to be there until now. Comic wise we have Stan Lee by video conference... Marv Wolfman, unfortunately I don't have anything of his here in Australia for him to sign. Whilce Portacio, don't think I have anything of his here either. Something seems to be up with ComicBase because it isn't showing me all of the issues for people I'm working for. Going to have to go over and post on their tech forum.

Bruce Spence is going to be there, he was as the last Brisbane Supanova. I really wish I had something cool from Road Warrior (Max Max 2) for him to sign.

There is a Fury billboard up in Sydney that I want to try and get to see.It is on William St. near the corner of Boomerang. Click on the pic for a much larger version.

Speaking of Fury, I've also been doing a few questions a week over at Game Arena. Here are the links to part 1 and part 2. Part 3 should be going up anytime now. We also announced some major changes to some of the game systems last week which you can read about here.

I would love to go back and edit this to spice it up, add that JBHIV humor, but Snipers aren't going to set their own selves on fire! Don't call Homeland Security, thats just my way of saying I'm going to play Team Fortress 2.

Re-Hacked

Way back when I first started this blog I was annoyed at the way it put a one pixel border around all my pictures, especially my picture over there on the right. I had drawn in the drop shadow on the white background and the border ruined the effect. I was way too lazy to search though Blogger's template HTML code that was way more advanced than the HTML code I had been familiar with years before. So instead I just put some simple HTML code into one of the 'about me' sections of my profile that loaded the picture and the links that used to be under it.

Not so way back, but still awhile ago, a friend pointed out that I don't have my blog's name nor my own name written as text very often and therefore I'm not easy to find on search engines. I could fix that but updating so fields in my profile but I found out that Blogger no longer allows you to to put HTML in any of those fields. So if I changed anything on my profile it wouldn't save. In order to get the new picture up I had to rename the new .jpg file, over writing the previous 'Blond 2006' picture.

So to make a long story even longer I fixed it all yesterday. I nuked the HTML in my profile, updated several fields; notice all the posts are signed "Joseph B. Hewitt IV" instead of "Joseph the Fourth" now. I still didn't use their layout because it makes the picture really small. I re-hacked my picture and links back in. I do like the way it says my name now instead of 'About Me' like it used to. It was quite the pain figuring it all out though, comment out a line... see what changed... change a line... see if it worked... There were times I was screaming and shouting at the computer so much Connie thought I was playing Team Fortress 2 again.

I did find a bug though. I was dismayed at the profile's lack of choices for profession categories. For a Game Designer I expected to there to be something like 'Software Development' or at least an 'Entertainment' category but there isn't anything close. I chose 'Not Specified' but it doesn't save and always resets back to 'Accounting' which is the first option on the list. Horrified at being listed as an Accountant (sorry Becky) I switched it to the very generic 'Technology' category.

Scott at My Extra Life is doing the judging on his Jack Thompson Photoshop contest this weekend and posted all the entries. I was a little disappointed at all the dodgy ones. I was hoping to see a few really grand entries but most of them seem to have been given little thought and were pasted together using MS:Paint. I guess I am more used to seeing the quality Photoshop Phriday stuff on Something Awful.

Jack Thompson's First

As you may have heard, the online comic strip My Extra Life is doing a Jack Thompson themed Photoshop Contest. Jack has even already sent them a Cease and Desist. Not a legal Cease and Desist mind you, more like doggy threat. But as pretty much everybody and his favorite video game character knows, he has no legal leg to stand on. So just like his (actually filed) Cease and Desist, 5 PM Friday deadline filed against Rockstar Games regarding what he claims is a reference to him in the game, it too is being ignored.

The whole thing reminded me of the Hustler Magazine, Campari ad parody that implied that the Reverend Jerry Falwell had sex with his mother. This is the ad that sparked the lawsuit: Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988) which went all the way to the Supreme Court and inspired the movie “The People vs. Larry Flint”. So I decided to throw together a Photoshop entry for My Extra Life’s contest basically recreating that same ad parody with Jack and video games as the focus. If you follow that last link to the lawsuit, you can see a scan of the original parody ad this is based on.

Now you might think that wasn’t really any real ‘Photoshopping’ done. But I want to point out that that the joystick and Atari game were not originally in the photo with the Campari. I also had to match the lighting; note the silver-ish highlight reflection on the bottle to match the Atari game? Okay still not anything all that difficult and probably not a ‘contest winning’ entry but I am thinking it should at least get an honorable mention for the historical reference. I still hate all that dead space on the right caused by having the joystick there, but that is the best picture of the Atari Joystick I could find that I could match to the Campari photo.

Oh and btw Adobe, the publisher of Photoshop, discourages use of the term "photoshop" as a verb because that undermines the company's trademark.

Robert Jordan

I just read on Slash Dot last night right before leaving work that Robert Jordan passed away. I personally gave up on his Wheel of Time series a few years ago which is a big thing for me. Usually when I start a book or series I will finish it even if I absolutely loath it. But I got just tired of where the series was going (or wasn’t going I think was more the point) and gave up. I used to use the Wheel of Time books as a good example of how popular writers still need good editors to keep them in line. I still read (listen to unabridged) a lot of Stephen King’s stuff and I just can’t help but wonder sometimes how much better the books would be if he had an editor that said, “I don’t care if you are Stephen King, cut out this fluff and pick up the pace!” like I’m sure his editors were able to do in the early days before he was the success he is now.

Anyway, back to Slash Dot. I was reading through the comments on the post and there are some very harsh parting words for Mr. Jordan.

In the spirit of the man, friends and family of the deceased have requested that his eulogy be tedious and poorly written.

God finally finished Book 11, said "Are you fucking kidding me?", and whipped out the Smite Stick.

So this means I'll get to wake up my girlfriend like this tomorrow:
"Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news: Remember how you were worried the 'Wheel of Time' series would never end? Well, you don't need to worry about that problem anymore ...."

After that it sort of deteriorates into arguments regarding those types of posts.

I did notice this passing shot at George R.R. Martin.

I hope George R.R. Martin is paying close attention.

I love his "Song of Ice and Fire" (The Dwarf, in the toilet, with the crossbow, heh.) There was some talk when his last book came out in 2 parts that he was starting to show signs of " Jordan 's Syndrome" Maybe this will help him focus. (and get the damn thing written).

I don't want to sound cruel or insensative, but if Mr. Martin passes on before finishing his series, I'm going to follow him down to hell and I'm bringing a typewriter! Now I really hope Mr. Martin goes on to live for many many years to come because 1. I kinda hope that for everybody, I'm not a death wishing on others kinda guy, 2. Because I do really enjoy his writing and am really looking forward to Dances with Dragons, and 3. I'll really feel like crap for having said what I just did about hell and the typewriter!

Oh and one last thing I wanted to say. The Wheel of Time series was one of the first really big fantasy series to be released unabridged on audio and for that I will always place it on a pedestal, even though I stopped listening to them. The readers, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer, were excellent and I absolutely loved the accents they did for the characters from different regions in the world especially the Seanchan.

Oh my GOD! Is that what I sound like?!

Yesterday I was the guest on the latest episode of PALGN’s Podcast. It is a good example to show how much of my legendary wit is due to extensive editing and rewrites.

PALGN – PAL (as in Europe and Australia PAL TV signal as opposed NTSC TV signals used in the United States… which doesn’t really matter as much anymore as most newer TVs can accept both signals) Gaming Network – is one of Australia’s most popular gaming publications created in 2002 as an answer to the US-centric nature of online games journalism. This is their 3rd officially scheduled podcasts, as opposed first ones they released without ‘officially’ schedule them. I’m not sure what that story is, iTunes is showing me six episodes total. I downloaded one of the earlier ones before going on the show but only listened to about half of it. Been doing a lot of writing lately and I can’t listen podcasts or audio books while writing. I’m just going to imagine something went down akin to the buddy cop movie scene where the captain calls them into his office and yells at them for being wild and out of control, telling them that the Mayor and/or the Commissioner is on his back and that they have to get these podcasts officially scheduled or he’ll have their badge!

Anywhere here is the spiel:

You know that feeling you get when you take a left down the strip in Vegas, pass the Bellagio, and somehow find yourself in Queensland desperately searching for a decent fajita, paying the bills by working on what was originally pitched as a Korean MMORPG but is now an MMO with a multi-million dollar prize pool backing it? Yeah, I hate it when that happens ...

Featuring special guest star Joseph Hewitt, Senior Designer from Auran, we also unleash the Fury and discuss his experiences working with Sony, EA, Westwood, and Sierra as well as on a variety of gaming classics including Command and Conquer and Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception. As if that wasn't enough, he also helped support Star Wars Galaxies at launch, complete with inside info on how life was in the trenches - the man's got game. Literally, actually - most in their original boxes! (Read More)

Right click to download the podcast
Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via iTunes

What is the secret of comedy?TIMING!!! Hmm, that works much better verbally. What makes stuff work better in print is rereading you stuff, massive editing, removing the fluff, moving bits around, giving it time to settle and then coming back to it and editing it again, rinse repeat. It is definitely the edits and rewrites that gives me my pacing and timing. Live on the air I fell apart, I just didn't have that magic.

Okay, so it wasn’t THAT bad and I did have a lot of fun. It was a blast actually and I may appear on their show again in the near future. There were more than a few things that we were talking about where I was thinking that I had debated and researched those issues before but just couldn’t access the information. Just now I went back through my old blog posts and found two of them. So while you are listening to the region coding section here is my post Console Modding versus Region Coding from August 1, 2006. Then when we get to talking about TV shows and view on demand stuff here is my post Av4st Y3 Scurvy Dogz! from September 12, 2005 on the subject. As you can see; I’m much more deadly and to the point in print. Hopefully with practice I can get my verbal game up to par. If anything, not having to worry about all the spelling mistakes should give me a leg up.

The Fourth

I was playing Fury on our live beta servers the other day and found out that one of the guys in my pick-up group posted about it on his blog. So I decided to use it as an opportunity to vent about GTA IV.

It may not be immediately obvious how the two are connected. Here is a link to his blog:

What I want for the Gravity name/FURY discussion
Gravity Gaming. Home of Team Gravity - Saturday, 08 September 2007

© Gravity Gaming. Home of Team Gravity

Zero Punctuation

A link went around the office the day that I thought I would share. Zero Punctuation puts out these little flash movie game reviews that are pretty funny. He was picked up by Escapist Magazine which now publishes a new one every Wednesday. He has put up three of them for the Escapist so far and I think three before that. My favorite is still the first Escapist one which reviews ‘Heavenly Sword.’ I highly recommend giving it a look-see.

There is another thing that I feel I should mention though. While going to the sites linked above to get the URLs to make the links. I experienced an odd computer pause and keep getting little ones as I tab back and forth through the sites. I think… and I am just guessing here… that it may be caused by the large flash “Fury Challenge Beta Event” adds that came up on the Escapist site. They are new add that I haven’t seen before and show some scenes from the cool “School of Life” Fury video.

People have asked me about the death move in that video. He stabs her through the throat, why then break her leg? The answer is the same reason he then jumps up onto her shoulders and flip her over into the wall... because thats the point of the death blows in Fury. They are finishing moves, equivalent to spiking the ball in the end zone. They are a clear statement to the other player that not only did you kick their ass, but you took the time to sign your name on their right cheek with your sword while you did it. Slash! Stab! ...yours with love, Joseph... BAM!

It’s Getting Close

Check out this picture from the news section of Penny Arcade today (Aug. 1 2007) with the Fury booth right there in the upper right!
I think that might be me over on the right side of the booth. See the Fury 'F' logo on the booth endcap? I think I'm the guy right above that wearing the black shirt with the white blur on it (the Fury 'F' logo again) talking to a guy in a blue shirt.

There is a good write up of PAX 2007 as a whole at Slashdot with a big section on Fury.

I'll be honest: Fury came at me from nowhere. I'd read about it before coming to the show, knew that it was approaching an Open Beta, and that it was a free-to-play PvP title. That was just about all I knew when I sat down to play and chat with Fury's lead designer Adam Carpenter.

When you're trying to quantify Fury's gameplay type, it's better to think less about online RPGs and more about first-person shooters. Fury has essentially taken the swords and sorcery milieu and dropped that whole cloth into an FPS schema. In each match, players spawn in, rush out, and slam into each other in extremely fast altercations. Everything is fast; from character creation to combat can be just a few minutes. MORE

There is also some good coverage of Fury at the 2007 Cyberathlete Professional League Summer Event last week over at eSportsTV.

We are getting set up right now to have the servers up and running for tonight when the first paying customers of the game will be able to log in. The game is still beta but these will be the players who have pre-ordered the game. I also just found out that the 'Customer Service' button on the main screen links to a site that isn't connected to our CS Tool yet, so if you have any problems use the Customer Service link on the website, not the button in game. The good news is that the problem is already fixed in the latest build.

Remember there are just two weeks left till Fury Challenge. So get in now and get some practice in!

A tale of PAX 2007

PAX was awesome! We had lots of people checking out Fury. A seat never stayed empty for more than a few minutes. We were passing out Fury beta disks like… like umm… like we had brought enough for everybody at the show! At one point Tony and I headed over to the LAN room to hand them out and on the way over we passed the booth where Wil Wheaton was signing autographs and I handed him one as I went by. He looked up at me a little baffled, glanced at it, and then confusedly said “thanks?” So just remember when you are battling it out in “Fury Challenge” that could be ‘Uncle Willie’ kicking your butt.

I have heard that Wil’s keynote speech was great, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet (actually I’m listening to it while writing this). I didn’t really do anything at PAX except work the booth. I walked around once before the floor opened and once again a little later. I bought some t-shirts and the first Bone episode: “Out from Boneville”. No, it’s not porn. It’s an adventure game based on an independent comic book series by Jeff Smith.

The trip on the other hand was a nightmare. Our flight out of Sydney was canceled because our pilot broke his toe playing tennis. So much for arriving a day early; I knew we should have flown Qantas! Then our computers didn’t arrive until about 2 hours before the show opened. We had to set up the computers, install Fury and create noob friendly Incarnations on all the characters. At one point I’m trying to hook up a monitor and I see a bright red blotch on the white table.

“Hey that looks like BLOOD! Hey it IS blood! There is blood all over! Hey somebody is bleeding! Who is bleeding?!”

The answer of course was me. I was bleeding. I must have smashed my cuticle while stuffing wires into the hole to where the computer was underneath. It was just a little cut but it must have been bleeding for awhile; because it was all over my hand and the table. So when we say we put our blood and tears into this game, we are telling at least half the truth. And if you don’t believe me I’ll cry.

Home Sweet Home

I am back from PAX. The show was great but I am exhausted. I'll do a full run down on the whole thing later, I'm just too tired to do anything big at the moment.

I did, however want to link to this interview on Grrl Gamer with the amazing Connie Hewitt.

Also I found this flash game called HEWITT.

One year in the making Hewitt is complete & is the most epic adventure game we have created since 'Griswold the Goblin'. Help Hewitt find a girl for the dance in this awesome adventure RPG

What did I ever do to deserve this?

Current Entertainment

I finally finished season 3 of Deadwood. I had heard that the final episode was quite the let down; but I was hoping that with such lowered expectations it would still be okay. But it was SUCH a let down I didn’t even realize it was the finale! There was still another DVD and I thought there were more episodes. I mean its building up to this big confrontation… building and building… and then nothing, it’s over! The final DVD is just extras. I thought I had missed a DVD and went back through the box.

It reminds me of the thing I didn’t like about the movie Gladiator. The whole movie they are building up my expectation of seeing the armies of the Roman Empire marching on Rome but then it never happens. If they do ever make the 2 movie length episodes to finish out Deadwood they better be EXPLOSIVE! …of course by then the momentum they built will have been spent.

I just started in on the third season of Entourage thanks to my friend James from work. I didn’t think I’d like it but I really do. I like the way they keep it upbeat. I like the way the writing moves it along. I keep expecting something really bad to happen to Vince’s career and there to be this dark turn to the series but it doesn’t happen. Sure things go wrong and there is the natural up and down flow, but it always manages to land on a positive note without feeling fake or like its undeserved. There are also lots of hot women flaunting their body in every episode.

I also just got the audio version of the latest William Gibson novel, Spook Country, from Audible, but I’m saving it for the plane trip to PAX. No direct flight this time – Brisbane to Sydney to San Francisco to Seattle. Same thing for the way back. I don’t know how I ever survived these trans-Atlantic flights without my Bose noise reduction headphones and unabridged audio books. But I’ve been meaning to try and track down a real email address for Audible to tell them their website layout sucks. Seriously if any Audible marketing people are scanning the web for mentions of their site, YOU WEB SITE LAYOUT SUCKS! Seriously give up the vertical columns and give the titles some room to breathe. I’m tired of having to click on each title to read about it. Do you know why if you click on the book to the right you go to Amazon instead of Audible? Because when I am browsing for what title to purchase, I have Amazon open in another window to read up on the book and see its reviews.

Oh and since I went on about Audible, let me go on about the Bose headphones. They RULE! ...except my wife got a better pair. When she went back to the states for E3/EIEIO I begged her to take my headphones for the trip but she was scared she would lose or break them or something. But halfway through her trip she went out and bought her own pair and they are newer tech and sound a little bit better. They also have a rechargeable battery while I’ve had to take stock in triple A’s. I’d steal hers but she got the ‘on-ear’ model and I prefer the ‘around-ear’ ones. It is probably a good thing she didn’t take my pair with her though, because she did lose her iPod on the plane. So if there is anybody from Bose people scanning the web for mention of their products, send me a new pair and I’ll pimp them from now till George R.R. Marin finally finishes the Song of Ice and Fire series… yeah THAT long!

Fury Challenge - $1,000,000 Pre-Release Tournament

Fury is holding a $1,000,000 tournament as their open beta event. The tournament will run the last three weekends in September. Hop in, try the game before release, and hopefully win some prizes. read more | digg story

This is me testing digg.com's 'Blog It' feature btw. The Fury Challenge tournament was announced at the Fury Party in Sydney last Monday. There is a similar one in Brisbane tomorrow (Thursday) that I'll be going to. They are parties to show off the game (and our FHM cover model and 33rd most beautiful woman in the world, Fury Model, Siobhan Parekh (link maybe not safe for work.)) to retailers and some lucky fans who won tickets.

Hair Today

I got an updated picture up. The problem I'm having is that I'm a funny looking freak!... but that is besides the point. What I meant to say was back when I first put this blog up, I set up the picture in Photoshop to have a drop shadow on a white background. I'm big on the clean white background with drop shadows, notice that I drew the Thottbot logo the same way. When I uploaded my picture to blogger it displayed on the blog with a black line around it. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the line in the template right away, so took it out and then linked it into one of the text fields of my profile using HTML.

Unfortunately, Blogger no longer lets you have HTML in your profile text fields. It still works, you just can't save it anymore without it giving you an error message that the IMG tag is not allowed. Even if I open my profile now and try to save it without any changes, it gives me that error. I host that picture on my own site though so I just saved over the 2006_blond picture with the new one and viola new picture.

I have since found the HTML that caused the black line and figured out how to remove it. It will just take some work to undo all the custom hacks I've done to the template especially since I'm not really all that good with HTML and got it all working with lots of trial and error.

"Hmmm wonder what this line of HTML does? type type type... reformatting my AHHHH!!! Put it back! Put it back!"

I have thought about going to one of the new blogger templates since they make it much easier to add stuff, but again that will take lots of work. I'd have to save out all my links and figure out how to get the resizing code to work again. Notice how if you restore down (that's what that's called? The middle Window's button in the very top, upper-left of the screen between the 'minimize' and the 'close X' buttons. The mouse over tool tip says 'restore down'. I could have sworn there was another word for that.) and then shrink the width of the window the main text area of my site stops before it starts overlapping the blue, left-hand border. If you go to other standard Blogger blogs and do the same thing, their main text area will keep sliding over till it hits the left edge of the window.

Anyway, there is the new updated picture. As you can see I am no longer blond. You can also see that the dye used to match the bleached areas back to my natural brown is fading and that I am due for another session at Orb Hair, my hair salon. What was the end result of being blond? Did I have more fun? Hard to say, maybe if I wasn't in constant state of 'crunch time' at work and got out more I have better data.

PAX '07

So I'm going to the Penny Arcade Expo later this month. Its the 24th through the 26th in Seattle. If you are going to the show be sure to stop by and say hi and play a few rounds of Fury.

By the way I don't have the blond hair anymore, boy what a bad idea that was. It just killed my hair. I was wearing it back in a pony tail on occasion and so much of my hair broke off it. Anyway, its back to brown and hopefully on the way back to being healthy. I really should update that picture over there.

Oh and we announced the subscription model:

The game will be available from both retail and online at standard retail pricing from October. It is free to play with regular free content updates, plus an option to subscribe for additional benefits. Importantly, all players, regardless of subscription status, have access to the most powerful items and abilities in the game. Subscription offers additional benefits, choice and flexibility.

You can read the full press release on our forums.

We got pretty well slammed over on Kotaku over it because they seemed to be under the impression that we said it was going to be completely free "end of story." When asked by the press we have always said that we were still working on the subscription model. Though there is an interview of Tony sometime around March where he let slip that it was going to be Free to Play with an optional subscription, but I couldn't find it with a quick Google. But seriously it is free, you can play the whole game without any missing features or abilities that affects your play/power in the Warzones in any way FOR FREE! There are just extras for subscribers who are willing to shell out a little money to pay for those servers, bandwidth and my paycheck. Its being talked about all over the forums so if you feel like discussing it the previous link above to our forums is a good place to start.