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What the.. what an amazing day! Sunny, yet not too hot. Breezy, but not too windy. It's the perfect day to be accosted by my allergies!! I was sneezing so much this morning I could've sworn a popped a blood vessel. Guh.
Apart from that, it is actually quite a nice day out there.
Ended up watching a number of movies last night, including parts of Lost Highway, and parts of Heavy Metal, and parts of some Michael J. Fox Vietnam movie.. The kicker was the Crusade episode which was a great X-Files spoof. I was laughing throughout the whole thing.
Lost Highway was pretty twisted. I mostly saw the beginning and the end, in reverse order.. which oddly made sense, in a bizarre twisted way. I had already seen the end of Heavy Metal, but this time I actually caught more of the beginning and middle of the movie. I found the plots usually to be a little.. thin. The ideas were interesting tho, but I've been exposed to so much anime that this stuff seemed.. less interesting. (Yeah, pampered with good animation) the Vietnam movie was interesting in bits, but I didn't see enough of it to make a conclusive comment.
I never did go shopping for food.
Oh, seems like there's a problem with NT SP4. Some article on Techweb has the details if you're interested. Found out about it on ArsTechnica.
I might as well get this off of my chest, that workaround with Rouge that Laz mentioned is really a cheat. The game designers never wanted the players to be able to save their games since it would make the game ridiculously easy. Thus, it's a cheat. In fact, in just about all the games I've played, I have tended to keep my finger over the quicksave button, making sure I have a copy of my game after just about every action that I make. Does it take away from the game play? I don't know. Does it make the game less realistic? I don't know. Does it make the game easier? Yes.
For example, playing Baldur's Gate, I just about save before every encounter and in the game, whenever you have a conversation with someone, you are usually given several choices. By saving and reloading, you are able to determine the most ideal outcome for your party. For example, the first time you meet Merl at Feldpost's Inn.. I would never have gotten him to settle down had I not known that it was possible to talk out of my situation (weirDo told me) and try out every combination of answers. Took a little while, but I got through.
Mind you, I don't use it all the time. For example, when I met up with the Nashkel Captain (I forgot his name), I actually figured out his riddle and didn't have to "cheat".
There are many games that allow players to save just about any time in the game. This can usually make the game too easy for those quick savers/loaders. On the other hand, there are games that will not allow the player to save during the mission (Aliens versus Predator, Space Hulk, Mechwarrior 1-3). This can make the game too hard, especially in AvP. However, saving methods do depend on how the game itself is set up. In the Mechwarrior series, it makes sense to only allow the player to save before or after a mission, but not during. However, in games such as DooM, and most first person shooters (FPS), only allowing the player to save after a mission or level is madness! Some of those levels are massive, the frustration level is very high if you reach the end, only to be struck down by some cheesy trap. On the other hand, the fact that I was able to save at anytime in DooM (and the lack of respawning), allowed me to scout a room, reload, and then clear out a room, with minimal damage and effort. One interesting approach can be seen in the recent Final Fantasy games, where you game only save the game at certain "save points". This allowed people to save within a map, without giving the player the power of literally controlling fate. If FPSs had save points as opposed to levels, I believe that the game can become more challenging without making them impossible. This of course depends on how well placed these save points are. One thing I liked about FF7 was that you picked up a "mobile" save point at the end of the game where you could drop anywhere. However, not knowing how much further you had to go meant that you didn't want to drop this save point haphazardly. So instead of having save points in a FPS, I think that the player should be allowed to have a certain number of "save credits" where they must spend to save a game. Difficulty can be adjusted by adjusting the number of credits (as well as the standard difficulty of enemy AI, etc.). Perhaps you can find more credits as you progress through the game, or perhaps these credits are fixed for each map. Perhaps you can carry them through levels.. the possibilities, although finite, are still quite numerous. I have not played a game yet which uses this method of saving. Perhaps it has been used and failed miserably. Perhaps it's too difficult to implement (I doubt it). Perhaps I'm blowing wind out of my butt. But I think it should be checked out, just to add another dimension to those games out there right now.
On a side note, allowing respawning in games has the same benefits and problems. I remember playing Ultima, and Final Fantasy and comparing their pregenerated and random encounters. This can be compared with DooM and most non-nightmare level FPS games with their lack of respawning. In DooM there was no respawning. The only difficulty level where there was respawning was at nightmare, and nobody could survive long at that level. Without respawning monsters, the game let me leave some items behind until I could pick them up once I've cleared all the monsters in the level. For that reason, it made me very frustrated when I was playing System Shock, since I was expecting more of a FPS as opposed to a first person adventure. I was able to save at any time, but there was no point to go back for that one tiny ammo clip, because 15 mutants would've respawned by then. It was a good (and freaky) game, but I was so much expecting a DooMesque style game that I stopped playing the game before finishing the first level. That's too bad, since after playing Half-Life, I think System Shock would've been an interesting experience. In Ultima and Baldur's Gate, the monsters respawn, but they always respawn in the same locations, so once you figure out where monsters appear, you can avoid those areas. In Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star, the encounters were all random, so you couldn't be sure if you'd bump into some nasty creatures or not. I prefer the latter method of respawning monsters, except that it gets quite frustrating when you're coming back from an adventure and some dumb random encounter wipes out your party. What I would like to see, would be for.. say for example there's a town that's surrounded by a forest of monsters. You go out there and bump into a heck of a lot of random monsters. But, as you start killing more of them, the monster population should diminish, so that the number of random encounters should drop, eventually approaching zero in the limit (if you desire to spend the rest of your life and the lives of your offspring finding that last enemy in the area). I think that's a more realistic encounter method than standard respawning, and gives the game a bit more of a challenge than non-respawning. Mind you, it also depends on the game itself. It made sense that in Quake, once you cleared out a room, the room remained empty. Of course, that's because the AI is pretty dumb, and the creatures weren't smart enough to wander around the level as opposed to waiting in their little holes so they could pounce on you when you passed by. In a FPS, I don't think respawning is the key, but very mobile enemies. They shouldn't just wander around the room, but they should be able to wander the entire map, like bots. In Half-Life, if one marine sounds the alarm, the rest of them home in on you like a pack of hornets (Mmm.. hornet gun..) and it shouldn't matter if they were at the other end of the level, they should join in the hunt. THAT is realistic, and boy would it be interesting. So when you start attracting attention by killing off a few guys, the rest of them will come after you, with a vengeance. It's you versus the world after all, and you don't want to face the world all at once.
The saving method I mentioned before shouldn't be too hard to implement, but the group AI may be a bit more difficult to program. Still, it's a consideration, and I would like to see a game that will challenge the player, without having to resort to cheap traps, huge numbers, or insane abilities, and without having to turn to other human opponents.
I was thinking of posting my ideas on a game forum somewhere.. but it's probably been talked to death by now.
Anyway, I forgot to mention that we should wish Laz luck in his job and residence pursuits. Go Laz Go! (We have to cheer for something considering how bad the Jays are doing..)
I feel like going out to buy CDs.. hrumph.
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