Raithe

Behind 2027 - The Cities of Deus Ex

.. and the joys of discovering that the cat has picked up fleas from somewhere

The original had Charles Bronson in the role that Statham played and Jan-Michael Vincent as the Apprentice. Directed by Michael Winner. And in the original, he dies. No last minute reprieve, no slow rewind to show an escape. He was dead, he expected it. (and yes, he still had that setup and the message left for his "apprentice")

Was listening to the soundtrack to Ferris Bueller as I was running around the village taking care of various errands. Now that's making me hanker to dig out the dvd and re-watch it.

But they gave it a happy ending! I mean, sure it was competent and fairly good for what it was. But hollywood changed it to a happy ending!

Taking the day as it goes.. Realised I was in the mood to read something fresh and pulpy, so ordered up a Clive Cussler book. Yes, they tend to be silly, but they are good clean, pulpy entertainment.

Is Cole Phelps a Psychopath? Kind of amusing in its own way... Although I'm taking it more as a bit of fun then out and out serious. But it can make ou think...

I'm amazed. We've had more comments on this thread based on the stealth mechanics in various games in this one day, then in the previous month about Deus Ex.. It's always interesting to see just what directiosn a thread will turn in..

Since we have the TOR mention, just in case no-one had seen this before (it is about 6 months old) I'll put a link in... Daniel Ericksons Quest Breakdown

One thing about the "radar" in DE:HR is that it starts off being quite fuzzy. Or at least, it doens't give you all the detail. When you start to improve various augmentations, then it'll start to add in things like visual cones of people, highlights of where they can start to hear you.. things like that. Which makes it interesting is that they combine hearing as well as visual aspects for the sneaking.. and that the AI is designed so guards will (supposedly, at least according to demo's they've given) randomly look behind them and such like. It's the little things like that that add to the overall stealth experience, not just whether there's a "cover" system or a "light/shadow" system or such like..

Well the only thing Bioware have said they want to advance as an MMO is the increase in story. They've never talked about revolutionary new game mechanics.. more about how they want to push the idea of each class having it's own unique story, how each world will have a story, and how to really get the full experience of the universe people will be playing multiple classes over time to gain that "full/different perspective". There does seem to be that odd mix of folks on the TOR forums who are either hard core mmo players.. and people who couldn't care less about the mmo and are seeing it as a continuation of Kotor, and they want to pretty much solo the game/story.

Of course miserabilist is an accurate description. Pretty much everyone born north of the Watford Gap is a miserabilist. And deservedly so because they didn't have the good fortune to come from the civilised south...

Happy birthday then.. and congratulations on survivng another year..and not getting shot at by some hot girls brother/father/jealous ex. Hm, on the slightly random... Especially for all those fans of a certain game series, I didn't realise that Pripyat is open to tourism these days... Visiting Chernobyl Visiting Pripyat Welcome to Chernobyl

The thing about ME2's cover system that most annoyed me.. was the multipurpose key. Hold space down to run..and if you happened to be passing too close to a piece of cover.. Shep would stop running and dive into cover regardless... That left me stuck on the wrong side of cover, or various related annoyances.

No no.. He's a lawyer.. he should do it via Origami.. I mean, he should have plenty of documents and lawbooks to utilise...

Made it into bed early last night.. shivvering with a temperature. Which combined with one of the hottest nights we've had in a while wasn't the most comfortable experience. Although did have some funky dreams that were interestingly weird. Very.. somewhere being besieged. Everytime the enemy would manage to get on the walls I'd suddenly wake up, feeling really cruddy, all oppressive... manage to doze off again.. Later the dreams would run into managing to throw the enemy off the walls..and I'd wake up feeling not so bad and as if I was semi-comfortable.. Just kept running that circle of dreams and wakeup throughout the night. Worst seems past at least, just got a slight temperature and annoying headache but nada major. So some fresh tea and such to help rehydrate and on with things.

,, I shudder at 4th Ed D&D. I'm just one of those few who really can't stand it. I mean, I love the art they've put in the books it's totally shiny that way. But the whole system just.. yeah.. really rubs me the wrong way for some reason.

I don't know Wals, I need something. With the way the joints have all started aching I'm hoping it's just a passing light flu or something. Yeah, it's that key to remember.. Comments in programming need to mean something to anyone who reads it, not jsut the programmer. I used to get so much grief at Uni because I'd use literature or mythology references that meant something..if you understood them. That was a hard habit to get out of....

:lol: I think part of what's been the trouble for me is the change in approach. Ada and such tended to have a very firm, planned approach to it all. And very heavy on the building the guts of it up. C# has that habit of compressing a lot of actual code behind the scenes almost. Kind of like it's made up of shortcuts and macros rather then full detailled code that you do. Throw in the .NET libraries and having to figure out which ones are useful and what is actually allowed... And these days (god that makes me feel old) the planning style differs a lot - Where once it was build the engine and guts and then work on the interface and features, it now seems to be build a loose framework, then the features, then the engine. Some days I can look at a programming challenge and get it all straight in my mind, then other times I look at someone elses code and have absolutely no clue what it all means. And dammit, I've been sleeping. Saturday I fell in bed about 5-6 hours early, didn't wake up until nearly 11am sunday.

Well its a mix of been learning C# over the last 6 months, relearning programming skills in general after x years of not using them, and the project I'm working with is in C# as well. It's a long way from Cobol, Ada and Pascal. And not to use a tautology, but damn I'm tired of being tired. The past few days I keep getting hit by waves of exhaustion and tiredness all over the day. No regular pattern to it either which is being a bit bloody annoying.

wilkommen to the interwebz!

Having some moments of thunder and short, heavy rainfall. Hm, seem to be having that annoying ache settled into my joints and slight fuzzy headache forming, but I'm trusting it's just pressure change inspired and nothing flu-like. I'm sure a cup of hot tea and something snackable will improve the situation. I need to throw myself back into some C# soon, I've realised it's actually been a couple of weeks since I had a serious play around with it.

And who is still downloading pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar?

It's all about the tortoiseshell baaaby.

There are times I wonder just how much work Wals actually gets up to.. and then he produces these ideas, and I really truly know..