I’m having to use the Winddow XP virtual machine on the Mac to do character updates for gaming tonight. Stupid fucking Windows keeps asking if I want to reboot. It’s downloading updates in the background even though that was turned off. I get so aggravated with Windows.
It’s amazing how having to use an application that relies on Windows’s .NET will drive you up the wall. Even though my netbook has XP installed, the .NET installation was customized for the application I documented for a customer. The character builder from DnD won’t run on it. Times out with no error messages. The fix for this? Wipe Windows and reinstall. I have to use my virtual machine on the iMac to run character builder. (My stress levels are way lower when I don’t have to use Windows.)
I’m not even going to get started on Internet Explorer’s “implementation” of web standards. (At least, IE will finally have an implementation of SVG in version 9. Finally. They are years behind Firefox, Opera, and WebKit browsers like Safari and OmniWeb.) Too many days spent fighting CSS in IE when the site worked well in every other browser.
There are reasons why I have a Mac and like unix terminal command line (instead of installing something like Cygwin on top of everything else in Windows). Enough of a rant. I’m going out to the barn to spend time with the girls while the computer updates. Stupid thing.
I enjoy playing games: pen-and-paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons (yes people still play it), computer RPGs, MMOs, and all that fun stuff. Bioware, a game company, has a good track record producing RPGs (role-playing games). Bioware produced the Baldur’s Gate series a few years back, a well loved RPG.
Bioware recently released a game called Dragon Age: Origins for PC, PS3, and X-Box. I don’t have any of those machines, although I was considering getting a copy of the PC version to use with Cross Over Games (an application that lets you (kinda) run Windows games on OS X). I found a copy of Dragon Age for the Mac (surprise!) this week and it was 20% off. I couldn’t resist. Such a bargain!
The 9 GB download took 1.5 days to complete. Started on Monday and finished Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday afternoon I played for the first time just to get an idea of how it is.
Awesome doesn’t begin to cut it. Great storyline, good character development. Very well done. How else can you spend six hours enthralled in a game and think only two hours have passed?
New interesting feature in this game is the integration of story progress with a social network. As your character proceeds through the storyline, screen shots and quest updates are posted to the character’s profile social.bioware.com.
Stella has taken to watching me play Guild Wars (GW) almost every time I log on to the game. When she is ready to play, she sits about two inches from the monitor and watches the screen intently. She decided to help me play on Saturday when I was talking with a friend on GW. My friend used the dance emote and the character began dancing. And Stella was on!
Today started with a vet visit with Stella for her fluids. She has been so good about it. Surprising, considering that she has limited patience. If something takes longer than five minutes, she will start protesting vigorously. The fluids have made a huge difference for her: the evening after she has her fluids, she plays hard.
One night, she decided to help me play Guild Wars. This was the first time she took a noticeable interest in what was happening on the screen. Some times she would watch the cursor, but nothing major. This was different. She played for several minutes, trying to “help” my character beat a large battle.
Now she regularly helps me play, some times getting in the way. Tonight she was enthralled with the characters and screen. I have another video I’ll upload.
Last night, she chased her tail in the bathtub for several minutes.
Yup, she’s almost 20 and acts like she’s a kitten. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This list was posted on Slashdot today. Great list. I’ve played a few of the games, especially Depths of Peril which, unlike most games, has versions available for Mac as well as Windows.
Lead-in for the article:
If you are sick of the boring and overpriced commercial games, then have a look at this list. These are some of the best indie games out there, innovative, immersive, great gameplay and very reasonably priced (some are even free).
Simon Jansen, of www.asciimation.co.nz, has built an incredible replica of a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, Doctor Who‘s time machine), complete with a fold-out MAME console for playing retro arcade games.
The TARDIS MAME console is obviously a work of love and art. The attention to detail is amazing.
Me likey!
While you are visiting Mr. Jansen’s site, check out the ascii animation of Star Wars.
I enjoy odd pens and odd dice. Makes sense, since I’m a writer and a gamer. During the late 1990s, I used to play a game calle Dragon Dice. I lost my dice in one of my previous moves, and have missed playing it. I thought it had been discontinued after Wizards of the Coast bought TSR.
I recently discovered that SFR had purchased the rights to Dragon Dice. My starter set of dice came yesterday. Yay! Ah the memories! Now if I can only remember how to play…
Out of curiousity, I searched for Dragon Dice on YouTube and found this walk down memory lane:
I was randomly reading web pages and came acros a site called Photo Basement, a site that contains humourous modern day and historical photos, some times captioned and some times not. The photo sets are pretty funny. The set of what happens when geeks have kids got me laughing, especially this first image:
It is almost too much to get my mind about. But I’ve just had news that our dear Dungeon Master has passed away. Ernie called this morning, he thought we should let the fans know. He’s just sent an email out.
Gary was in his home when he gathered himself up to cross the great divide.
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