End of the Road
It’s been fun bouncing around blogging sites and jazzing about games, but it’s time for me to grow a little. I’ll be posting exclusively on Margin Jargon from now on. It’ll be a little more versatile on topics, but video games will still be covered. So come check it out and let me know what you think.
This sister site on blogger (Guy Speak Beaver) is an exact replica so don’t worry about missing anything new.
How Self-Help Can…Help the Self
Self-help books are a cliche aren’t they? For whatever problem, issue, or circumstance it seems that their’s a self-help book targeted just for that person. Most of the time these books are authored by so-called self-help celebrities or talk show hosts looking to expand their range of influence and viewership. So why in the hell would ANYONE considering reading one of these books? Well their is the validation angle; someone who has self-diagnosed a problem and seeks to validate their guesstimation. Their is also the desperate angle; someone who is desperate for answers in their life and turns to said books to tell them what is wrong and how to fix it. So why would someone skeptical of this genre read one of these books? The simple answer is, because they want to know if they can actually help.
In my boredom one evening last week I was pilfering my personal library for something to do. I came across the book, Live Like You Mean It by Ken Wasco and Ellyn Luros-Elson. If that title doesn’t jump out to anyone who is twenty-four and with-out a life plan I don’t know what will. The book itself was lent to me by my mother who, bless her heart, is trying to help. When I received it I didn’t think much of it. “Another self-help book that maybe someday I’ll read.”, I thought. Well last week happened to be that day.
I want that 30 minutes of my life back! NOW!
So uh, yeah, long time no write? I know, incredibly corny for some sort of pseudo-return-post.
I would like to say, “Well I’ve been so busy traveling the world, making billions of dollars, and solving the world’s problems.”, but I can’t. I’ve been “doing” lately, in tandem with thinking a lot. HEY! Get your mind back up here sicko. When I say “doing” I mean doing things like working, bettering myself, organizing, and analyzing. My thoughts run the course of, “Who am I?”, “What am I?”, “Where do I want to be?”, “What makes me happy?”, and “What gives me meaning?”. Some introspection and a lot of outward searching has helped quite a bit. I mean I’ve moved forward with some things. I’m now able to grasp situations much more effectively and gauge them on prospects and solutions. So…progress?
What I mean to say is that I’ve been looking to different issues and problems in my life and seeking solutions to them. Everything from my mental state, to general health, to college; it’s all part of the nest of tangle wires that I’m slowly deciphering and pulling apart.
Cha, cha, cha, changes!
“What a long strange trip it’s been”, doesn’t even begin to describe events that have happened over the past few weeks. It’s like my life’s been sent back in time to 2006 and I’m reliving my life the way it SHOULD have been. Even though that would be nice, I suppose all the things that have happened to me since then have brought me back here. What is here? Here is a mindset I was in 2006, my goals, my dreams, and my tastes. I’ll skip the more mundane elements and jump straight to the big game changers.
Well, if you were not aware, I’m currently enrolled in college. After much frustration I started my first semester in fall 2010 pursuing an associates degree in science to parry into a bachelors in computer science. Things were, as much as I could tell, in line and on track. Once this current spring semester started though I fell into one of this most difficult portions of my life. Living on my own for the first time, balancing school, work and free-time was quite the difficult task and I descended into the most severe depression I’ve ever felt. I questioned my life and philosophies asking myself if I was on the right path or even doing what I wanted to do. Over many mistakes I finally decided to seek professional help for my mental issues. For the first time in a long time I can feel the full range of emotions. In this new light I rediscovered art. I saw it in a new way and knew that my talent needed to be pushed and worked on. I feel like this is what I want to do.
What to do, what to do
Cataclysm new info! Beta Update Patch Notes! Worgen /lol sound file! Headlines like these are hard to escape these days. We’re in full beta swing with Blizzard giving out and implementing new content all the time. So what’s a beta tester to do? Test is the simple answer to that question, but I’m not just some PuG’r who can just drop his live server toons and play the Cataclysm beta. I have two raiding guilds I’m in and have made some amazing progression in ICC 10/25. So help me god if I don’t kill Arthas before Cataclysm comes out. It’s been my long distant fantasy since finishing Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne all those years ago. Now I don’t want to defeat Arthas because I don’t like him, I want to defeat him because he is such a good character. With all the build-up through out Wrath of the Lich King he has become a larger then life villian and given the oppotunity to kill him I find it hard to believe anyone would pass that up. It’s a close to a long drawn out chapter in Warcraft history.
This strong inclination is clashing with my desire to test and experience Cataclysm. Another factor for me is realizing that whatever I accomplish and whoever I level will not be transferred to the live servers. A bit of a let down considering how much work people are putting into beta testing. I suppose that’s the price you pay for beta testing. Even still though, the experience of seeing what many others cannot and being able to give direct feedback that is considered while still building the game is an honor. As a long term fan, scratch that, disciple of Blizzard and it’s design and story philosophies I can’t say how good it feels to be chosen for such a task. I don’t see myself as the sole tester, but I’m definitely not in the majority of players who play WoW.
I’m rambling on about this to give you guys a taste of what it feels like to be me and be put into my shoes. As someone who is so enthralled by the worlds Blizzard creates it’s a tough choice to make when so many options present themselves, and you want to master each one. If their’s a bar of some kind, it must be filled and if their’s new content, I must go through it. These are my afflictions and I kind of enjoy them.
Change WoW Servers v.1
For a while now I’ve been messing around with different WoW servers. These run the gambit of the official servers to level 255 servers. The simple process to change which WoW server you connect to is done by modifying your “realmlist.wtf” file and deleting your “Cache” folder. Modifying your “realmlist.wtf” is super simple. Just open the file in any text editor and paste in the info for the server you want to connect to. After switching servers so much you get a little tired of digging into your World of Warcraft folder and modifying the file, (especially if you’re using Windows).
So I loaded up Automator and created a workflow to handle this. I first had to create a folder that held all of the different realmlists and Cache folders. Then I created two workflows, one for deleting the current realmlist and cache folder, and one for copying the desired realmlist and cache folder. This worked pretty well except that they were two different workflows and still required me to select the file from the directory. After a little work I combined the two workflows and had it remember the last location you looked. This worked even better except for one annoying action; having to wait for Automater to load. So I decided to make a Applescript executable to handle all of this with a simple click of a button to do all the work for you. This is my first original Applescript and like any piece of code can be improved. I’ll cover those after the screenshots and source code.
"The first screen the user sees"
This is why I play.
Whenever I see a conversation about video games that revolves around how it affects culture, society, or the human psyche it’s almost a given that the question of why we play video games comes up. Usually the question is asked with the intent of receiving answers that come in broad strokes like, “They’re an escape from reality”, or “I like to have fun.” Yet we rarely see that same question asked pertaining to a single game. Why do you play Call of Duty? Feel yourself stuttering? (I suppose you have to play Call of Duty to feel that way though.) It’s a little harder to answer the question when it is pin pointed on one particular game. You could just answer in broad strokes again, but that would feel more like a cheap answer then a real reason. Now the reason I’m probing this question is because it relates to something I’ve found to be a complete oddity. The way I decide to make characters in WoW has completely flip-floped, and I wanted to see how you all feel about this subject.
PC Problems
In case you haven’t heard, the newest talking point and controversy in the video games scene is Ubisofts new DRM. Essentially it requires you to have a constant internet connection to play the game. They do this so it has constant authentication that you’re playing a legitimate copy of the game. It also stores your saves in the cloud so you can’t use legit copy game time with a pirated copy. Now while so many people are up-in-arms about this, it’s not what I want to talk about today. It’s just a piece of a bigger pie I’d like to chew on. And that is PC (or Mac, whatever your choice) as a legitimate gaming platform.
“PC gaming is dead” was a mantra a lot of console developers were spouting a few years ago. Citing low game sales and the consolidation of the PC market down to MMOs. While numbers don’t necessarily lie, it doesn’t quite indicate a death of the PC market. It also doesn’t mean the PC market is doing great. It’s a whole different beast entirely. Pockets such as MMOs and gated communities like Steam, Impulse, and Games for Windows are succeeding whereas titles that release by themselves tend to do much worse. So does that mean if you’re going to make a game that you look to have commercial success with, you need to be on one of the multiple gates communities or be an MMO? In short, yes. By putting games together in some semblance of a store you allow developers to advertise their game in some way, and make it easy for the consumer to browse and search for your title. Maybe they want a good RTS game, so they start searching through the library of games and stumble upon your game. It’s that easy. Compared to searching Google or their game news/review site of choice the former is much more accessible.
Help Desk
Last couple of days I have been tackling problems I have had with WoW and Starcraft. While I did find solutions, they were so out of the way that I thought might help some of you and republish them here. Be mindful that these issues and solutions might only work on Macs. I have no idea if they work on Windows. First up if WoW.
Terrain Skin Mapping Error
This error seems to be random in how it starts, but once you start seeing it, things just get worse and worse. Thankfully Blizzard has made a post about this and detailed the fix which is quick and simple.
Starting the Journey
The new years resolution is a tradition I never truly embraced. I made the vague resolution to complete some far off goal and never ended up doing it. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. This year it’s going to be different though. This year I have an obtainable goal I actually want to complete. The goal being to create at least one game this year.
I’ve voiced my interest before in game development and design, and while I haven’t exactly been sitting on my hands; I haven’t put my thoughts and skills into practice. So far nothing is set in stone other then the end goal. Most likely this game will be for mac or flash because of the easy development, but this could change. While I would like to complete one of my own original games, I may just get to clone games this year. I’d like to blog about some of the development once things kick off, so look for that, and once I have definitive information on a name, release date, and system I will let you know.
So cheers to the new year and here’s to everyone reaching their resolutions. To the year of change!
