melkathi

If you fund Danny boring, I don't dare ask your opinion on Sansa

You moved homes or moved off the couch? ....just another quiet day here. The later is a prerequisite for the former I moved out of the chair in front of the computer in a tiny corner in a way-too-sunny-to-see-the-screen backroom in a little house in Cyprus and celebrate my geekness by moving into the quintessential batcave called Mum's Basement - which for me is lockated in Greece - as I send out CVs during the job hunt. The whole thing will be made a bit easer by my parents moving back to Cyprus again after the holliday

Playing the Eden event in Anno 2070. Love the Deep Ocean expansion as it added more career levels to the factions and gave me awesome things to work for: unlocking the Eden Initiative top ability that makes my colonies immune to disease and saves me from building hospitals

I moved

Happy birthday!

I am stuck on level 3-8 at the moment.Which means I jus don't want to finish another level with over 50 deaths as I did the Temple of Doom level

As a quick break from work (last day is getting hectic) I'd just like to add a small commet on your last post (and if I find time I'll PM you a bigger post ). Your wife is a teacher? Perhaps a different insight might help your parents then. My mother is a teacher, my father is a professor and everyone they know is one or the other. What my experience is from growing up in this whole education environment is that people get used to their role and have trouble to switch it off outside work. They don't even realize that they are still in teacher mode or are entering teacher mode. It's taken me a long time to smile through some family or friends of family moments without getting seriously annoyed. If your wife teaches 8 year olds for example (or whatever class she teaches, it hardly makes a difference), she spends hours every day being the one who by default has to explain things, has to know things better and has to have the experience. She is daily in an environment where she is expected to know everything and admitting ignorance on a subject may not really be an option. For us non-educators, that attitude can be quite a challenge in a social context. But it helps realizing that it's part of how the job shapes people and it doesn't mean they are arogant or do not value others. Then again you are a teacher too, if I remember correctly? Then I am just typing stuff you probably know But it may help your family get over the resentment.

I always counted the Ishar series as part of that genre as well

That's the good thing about blogs, you can always write more

That just means that you don't know what really is for you A) Heretic, calling Alpha Centauri a novelty game B) Most of the Daedalic stuff has been getting rather good reviews. At least the Whispered World and Edna I have seen praised quite a bit.

In what kind of situation? I too thought getting refunds from steam would be near impossible. I got a refund for Darkspore one day before launch. The reason I gave them for wanting a refund was "I only just realized this is being published by EA." Fastest refund I ever got I also got a refund for some Gotham City Impostors dlc that Steam was selling, but the Live Marketplace had region locked and was in fact only available in the US. Interestingly enough, this took a few days for the refund to be approved, with me sending them screenshots to prove that the item really is region locked.

You had one job! I love Deponia. I'm seriously considering it my game of the year. Got it now. mBought the Daedalic pack as I only had Whispered World so far and it was cheaper to buy the whole pack than not to buy the game I already own

Apparently GoG just updated Alpha Centauri with the Alien Crossfire expansion (for free). Downloading the new installer. If this is true, Christmas came early for me.

Well if you get Dungeon Defender as a bundle during sales it costs far far less than 50 and is a real steal. Though I need friends to really play it. Still lvl 71 on my aprentice and far from even that on my other characters. Looking forward to the new christmas DLC.

So, are you guys ready to give some more advise? I am pondering how to best handle things. I usually played campaigns where I'd let players do whatever they want after an initial session, making things up on the spot based on their actions. This time round I actually know what I basically want them to do (even though I don't particularly care how they reach the goal) and that is a bit terra nova for me. The basic outline is this: A series of murders has been happening. Bodies of victims have been dumped all over the city, seemingly at random. What they have in common is that all have been killed with a single blow from a sharp object, all victims are completly unknown and they mostly wear pretty outlandish clothing. The players inadvertently stumble upon and interrupt the killer as he is about to stab his latest victim. The killer, suprised, flees the scene. Obviously he isn't happy and after he rallies himself, he is going to be after both his original victim and the people who interrupted him. The victim is completly disoriented and has no idea where they are and what is going on. This could just be shock, or the killer truly does magicaly teleport his victims to the city before killing them. Either way, the players should soon find themselves in the middle of things, as various factions are trying for their own reasons to find out what is going on. Eventually the players should need to flee the city and embark on a quest that will send the person they saved back home and at least put an end to the killings, even if they probably won't be able to get on good terms with every faction. So far my thoughts are these: the kingdom only recently came out of a long war (the 6 year war over Oz, which saw the emerald city razed and turned into a penal colony with prisoners doing hard labour in the emerald mines). With there still being fear of enemy agents, spies, terrorists, a curfew would make sense. Because of the incident with the serial killer, the players are caught outside after curfew and the city guards have been rather trigger happy with all the talk about a serial killer stalking victims in the fog. This should make sure that players are on the run from the guard and can't just go to the next watch-house. If over the first few sessions I introduce a few factions until I have 3-4 factions plus the guard involved, it should make the city hot enough for players to take the road. Once on the road I guess it should be fairly easy to come up with interesting things that happen along the way. I guess the real problem is: how do I keep the serial killer a constant threat without there being a real combat situation with him, so I don't need to find reasons why the players can't kill him?

GoG just went crazy. End of the World Sale for the next 23 hours 50 minutes

Riot Games is issueing "pro-active" refunds. Kinda wierd comming home and getting a surprise-refund for something you never remotely considered requiring one for.

Your workplace sounds a bit schizophrenic

I just hate playing games on a grid. It kills it for me. Had a big argument about the realism of someone in a combat situation being able to target the fireball at the exact spot where the blast will burn the kobold but not the big barbarian looming over it.

Need to finish my Age of Wonders playthrough. Need to finish Walking Dead. Need to reach sector 8 in FTL. Need to finish Giana Sisters: Twisted Dream. Need to finish The Book of Unwritten Tales. Need to do some questing in The Secret World. Need to earn questionite in Champions Online. Need to build some sort of time stasis device so I can do all that gaming.

Finished writing my internship report for my masters. Fixed two typos in it and spend yesterday formatting it. Looking forward to re-doing the cover page when I get home from the office. My deadline is the 31st, so I am feeling really wierd being done two weeks early. The people at the office threw a "going away" party since this is my last week here. Where party means having drinks at 8am. And drinks means having one, far from full glass. Now I need job...

The guys and gals over at Black Forest Games send out an email asking for fans of the game to share their christmas wishes with the world So since I troll their forum and they put up with me, here goes: The Giana Sisters: XMas stand alone level: http://d1hris5kk3wy8s.cloudfront.net/GianaSistersTwistedDreams_Xmas_Demo.exe And the soundtrack file for the level in mp3 and flac: http://d1hris5kk3wy8s.cloudfront.net/GianaSistersTwistedDreams_Xmas_MP3.zip http://d1hris5kk3wy8s.cloudfront.net/GianaSistersTwistedDreams_Xmas_FLAC.zip Merry Christmas Hope people will have fun with it. ----------------------------------------------- And since you may ask what this is. The game is a platformer that was funded through a kickstarter in August. It is a platformer reminiscant of both old school mario and sonic. You play as Giana and travel through a dream/nightmare world, collecting crystals as you go and trying to *spoiler*. But Giana has grown up... well, has become a teenager. The nightmares she had as a little girl no longer scare her, while the cutesy things she liked as a kid she now rejects. As a result she has control over her dream. You can switch seamlessly between the two dream version, changing the environment, the enemies and your abilities and the soundtrack. Cute Giana in the nightmare carelesly spins and twirls through the air, while angry punk Giana bashes and dashes through things in the nice dream world. It's a challenging game and ramps up the difficulty. It's absolutely gorgrous and the twisting through dreams actually does work seamlessly. If you read this far, thanks

We got send a report on public opinion in anticipation of a two day summit. They send the report after the end of the summit... What am I to do with the information now? *sigh*

I find ASOIAF criticism funny sometimes. You know those discusions where group A says the later books are terrible because not enough people are dying anymore, while group B is saying that the series is terrible because too many people are dying... I am a bit disappointed that the wrong people are always dying. Probably why my favourid quote is:

Oh yeah. I keep forgetting that.