I’ve been teaching myself the basics of modding Minecraft. So I’ve been toying with with Minecraft file format, and as a first test of my Python libraries, I turned all the dirt to obsidian, all the water to lava, all the trees to brick and their leaves to sponge. Just… because I can. Now everyone can see what the world looks like to me when I close my eyes….
Well, I know it’s not really “house” of the day. The first two were – a house of wood the first day, and a house made of cloth the second day. The third day, I built an arch out of dirt. And today – a druid ring, built of rock and trigonometry. I seriously had to calculate sines and cosines to make the thing circular. The point is to improve the looks of my overworld. When I look out the window of my apartment in the “H”, I want to see things worth looking at. I’m done with making things deep in the ground. For now, anyway. ...
Hey, if your teenage is a Minecraft addict, we have something in common. I thought, for awhile, that I was free of Minecraft. I’d gotten bored with digging holes in the ground. Exploration was fun, but there wasn’t anything to FIND – the world would go on forever in every direction, and all the same. If everything is the same, well, might as well just stay at home. ...
I’m more interested these days in the single player RPG version of 38 Studios’ “Kingdoms of Amalur” than I am in its future MMO incarnation. My recent several play-throughs of Bioware’s excellent “Dragon Age” RPG have firmly confirmed me as an RPG nut. When companies make their IPs into MMOs, they have to have some grind in there to slow people down. In single player RPGs, you’re there to be part of a story. The very best RPGs provide a platform for your OWN story, but that’s rare, indeed. Have there been any besides Oblivion’s? ...
I’ve been wanting to write more blog posts, but every time I sit down to write about Minecraft, I end up playing Minecraft, and then it’s suddenly midnight. If you’ve managed to avoid all the Minecraft hype over the past few weeks, I hope it’s warm and cozy under your rock. The basic premise is, you’re plopped with nothing into the middle of a world that is fully moldable and destructible. At night, The Monsters Come. You must first build some sort of shelter and hide before the sun goes down. ...
Carpe Fulgur had the bad judgement to release Recettear: An item Shop’s Tale while I was traveling. But that’s okay. Recette and her mob-connected business fairy, Tear, would wait. Painting the shelves. That chocolate bar melting in the window was this guy’s inheritance from his grandmother. “Sell it,” she told him, “if you ever need the money.” It had been in his family for generations, and he hated to let it go. Bring up the offer just a touch and he might part with it. ...
There’s this thing I will always remember about Dragon Age: Awakening. Without explicitly putting the pieces together, there were plenty of hints that the new classes in Dragon Age: Origins’ expansion could connect with the old classes in exciting ways. Turning on the mage ability that drains mana from the corpses of the dead, plus the arcane warrior ability that turns you nearly invulnerable, combined with the battle mage ability that surrounds you with a swirling wind that does every kind of AE elemental damage, and you have someone that can just walk into a room and watch things die, being in fact powered by dying monsters, while the monsters just wish they could hurt you. ...
I wasn’t sure what to think about SOE’s Clone Wars Adventures when I first read of it. A kid-oriented, “freemium” MMO set in the Star Wars universe? With SOE’s Star Wars Galaxies out for years and Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic set to tear things up next year, is there really any room for yet ANOTHER MMO set in the same universe? Well, yes, there is. But then, Clone Wars Adventures is not really an MMO. It’s more a lobby from which you can select Star Wars-themed minigames, show off your latest outfits and your home, build your own lightsaber and, well, save the galaxy, one Peggle at a time. ...
Tremendously, actively fun Japanese import “Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale” has finally gained a publisher! Stardock will publish Recettear through its Impulse digital distribution network. Ten thousand people downloaded the demo after the gaming media gave it rave reviews (including me), which got translators Carpe Fulgur enough pull to get a major distributor interested. Good job, guys – I absolutely cannot wait to play the full game! ...
I got a letter today from Neopets (remember them? Facebook for kids?) warning me my account was about to meet the Great Blindingly Pink Maker if I didn’t log in pretty soon. Talk about obsessions. Three years ago, I casually played Neopets to keep in touch with my nieces Jazzmin and Ilsa. It was fun to peek into the lives of nine year olds, but I couldn’t help stray a bit and start playing some of the games. ...