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The no doubt famous URL at which this lovely website resides, http://www.scraphammer.net/ in case you forgot, expires in ten days, and the hosting some time after that. I'm considering not renewing despite the recent first ever guest comment (on an article that is almost two years old). The biggest issue is of course that the website has stopped serving any purpose whatsoever aside from a blog. Of course, I'm not really a prolific writer so as far as blogs go I guess it is actually pretty shitty. I'm hosting a few odds and ends, but I'm willing to bet I can find other homes for those miscilaneous projects.
To be honest, blogs seem unnatural to me for the most part. I'm addressing the whole wide internet with my musings but nobody cares. Except when they do care, and then I end up wishing I had never wrote what I had. In this day and age it is all to easy to write something embarrassing and have it loiter around forever, just waiting to future employers to find and draw hasty conclusions from.
To be honest, blogs seem unnatural to me for the most part. I'm addressing the whole wide internet with my musings but nobody cares. Except when they do care, and then I end up wishing I had never wrote what I had. In this day and age it is all to easy to write something embarrassing and have it loiter around forever, just waiting to future employers to find and draw hasty conclusions from.
Sunday 2011-11-20 16:17:380 Comments
I haven't finished the game yet and I know you never asked for this but here's my thoughts on the new Deus Ex:
The overall design was obviously influenced from a lot of sources, most notably the first Deus Ex. The level design is true to the original in that the levels all feel very interconnected and there is a large number of ways through each array, much more so than "no-brainer" choices such as sneaking through a curiously man-sized air vent versus barging into a room full of burly men in strange black uniforms with Adam Jensen's sleek sneaking suit being his only defense against the inevitable shotgun action in or around Mr. Jensen's augmented face. Err, what was I talking about? Oh yes, the levels take the inter-connectivity pretty for to the point where there is even a slight exploration aspect to it. The conversation system seems to work fairly well. When I first heard about it I thought it might be a little overly restrictive but it doesn't feel off at all. It is actually interesting to try different options and see how the NPC's respond to being lead on or pushed around. Loser looking guy not letting you in the building, and threatening him only makes him mad? Try saying something nice. The hacking mini-game is neat too. I find it interesting that there seems to be no physical locks (I guess before Deus Ex 1 unrealistic future tech like a physical key based lock system hadn't been invented yet) but on the whole it isn't too bad. I do like the attention to detail in the world how newspapers and NPC comments will change based on how you completed your objectives, what side quests you have done, whether or not you did the optional objectives and whatnot although it would be great if the world was a little more interactive. Combat seems well enough put together. The cover based nonsense is very much like too many modern shooters also it integrates surprisingly well with the sneaking. Iron sights are way overused in games but I don't think they are really a bad trend. If you play with the crosshair disabled iron sights (or laser weapon mods) become pretty important. Anyway what I've noticed is that Adam Jensen dies when he gets shot. After all, people die if they are killed.
It goes without saying however that there are a few weak points in the game's design. The 3rd person takedowns are commonly listed here but I actually think they are fine. The real issue the takedowns have is the battery mechanics. Candy bars take up tons of inventory space, are pretty rare, and only partially filled batteries recharge, so of course a takedown takes a whole battery and not just half or whatever. I found myself using non-lethal ammo rather excessively simply because I wanted to preserve my elusive two-battery state for when I really needed two takedowns in a short period of time. Honestly I don't like that kind of design where players become more focused on preserving transient resources than actually playing the game. Another complaint I have is about some of the augmentations. I picked up the punch-through-walls augmentation because I wanted to be like the Kool-Aid(tm) man, but little did I know that it would ruin my zero-kills playthrough of the game. This actually brings me to my largest complaint about the game, and that is the bosses. The bosses feel out of place in a game like this one and to be honest they remind me a little bit of Metal Gear Solid bosses, though perhaps less ridiculous (They are cyborgs in DXHR, not immortal bisexual vampires). The biggest issue is I think they force confrontation and battle and with a build set up around avoiding direct combat it becomes rather challenging. Rather fittingly given how meathead the fights are to begin with the bosses have zero notable development. They show up, they lay their augmented hands all over Adam Jensen, and a million save/loads (and more profanity then a late night assembly code debugging session) later the player is forced to watch the boss they spent hours on die unsatisfying in a cutscene instead of at the hands of the player. My favorite part was when the game decided to autosave randomly moments before the cement mixer / saint bernard / annoying war vet boss decided to use the augmented machine gun in his augmented arm to augment Mr. Jensen's face. I have to wonder why it doesn't pause after loading given how long the loads are but I guess that is how things go. After [strike:3cuvuywm]suffering a major aneurysm[/strike:3cuvuywm] many attempts I was able to sprint around a pillar and circlestrafed around it using it to block line of sight for like an hour in an experience that isn't unlike WoW Arena PvP.
Overall verdict: Pretty good, though how did a meme spawn out such an insignificant line in the game? I never asked for this...
The overall design was obviously influenced from a lot of sources, most notably the first Deus Ex. The level design is true to the original in that the levels all feel very interconnected and there is a large number of ways through each array, much more so than "no-brainer" choices such as sneaking through a curiously man-sized air vent versus barging into a room full of burly men in strange black uniforms with Adam Jensen's sleek sneaking suit being his only defense against the inevitable shotgun action in or around Mr. Jensen's augmented face. Err, what was I talking about? Oh yes, the levels take the inter-connectivity pretty for to the point where there is even a slight exploration aspect to it. The conversation system seems to work fairly well. When I first heard about it I thought it might be a little overly restrictive but it doesn't feel off at all. It is actually interesting to try different options and see how the NPC's respond to being lead on or pushed around. Loser looking guy not letting you in the building, and threatening him only makes him mad? Try saying something nice. The hacking mini-game is neat too. I find it interesting that there seems to be no physical locks (I guess before Deus Ex 1 unrealistic future tech like a physical key based lock system hadn't been invented yet) but on the whole it isn't too bad. I do like the attention to detail in the world how newspapers and NPC comments will change based on how you completed your objectives, what side quests you have done, whether or not you did the optional objectives and whatnot although it would be great if the world was a little more interactive. Combat seems well enough put together. The cover based nonsense is very much like too many modern shooters also it integrates surprisingly well with the sneaking. Iron sights are way overused in games but I don't think they are really a bad trend. If you play with the crosshair disabled iron sights (or laser weapon mods) become pretty important. Anyway what I've noticed is that Adam Jensen dies when he gets shot. After all, people die if they are killed.
It goes without saying however that there are a few weak points in the game's design. The 3rd person takedowns are commonly listed here but I actually think they are fine. The real issue the takedowns have is the battery mechanics. Candy bars take up tons of inventory space, are pretty rare, and only partially filled batteries recharge, so of course a takedown takes a whole battery and not just half or whatever. I found myself using non-lethal ammo rather excessively simply because I wanted to preserve my elusive two-battery state for when I really needed two takedowns in a short period of time. Honestly I don't like that kind of design where players become more focused on preserving transient resources than actually playing the game. Another complaint I have is about some of the augmentations. I picked up the punch-through-walls augmentation because I wanted to be like the Kool-Aid(tm) man, but little did I know that it would ruin my zero-kills playthrough of the game. This actually brings me to my largest complaint about the game, and that is the bosses. The bosses feel out of place in a game like this one and to be honest they remind me a little bit of Metal Gear Solid bosses, though perhaps less ridiculous (They are cyborgs in DXHR, not immortal bisexual vampires). The biggest issue is I think they force confrontation and battle and with a build set up around avoiding direct combat it becomes rather challenging. Rather fittingly given how meathead the fights are to begin with the bosses have zero notable development. They show up, they lay their augmented hands all over Adam Jensen, and a million save/loads (and more profanity then a late night assembly code debugging session) later the player is forced to watch the boss they spent hours on die unsatisfying in a cutscene instead of at the hands of the player. My favorite part was when the game decided to autosave randomly moments before the cement mixer / saint bernard / annoying war vet boss decided to use the augmented machine gun in his augmented arm to augment Mr. Jensen's face. I have to wonder why it doesn't pause after loading given how long the loads are but I guess that is how things go. After [strike:3cuvuywm]suffering a major aneurysm[/strike:3cuvuywm] many attempts I was able to sprint around a pillar and circlestrafed around it using it to block line of sight for like an hour in an experience that isn't unlike WoW Arena PvP.
Overall verdict: Pretty good, though how did a meme spawn out such an insignificant line in the game? I never asked for this...
Thursday 2011-09-15 10:34:130 Comments
What ever could this be? A screenshot?
Neat! But how?
loljava
Neat! But how?
loljava
Thursday 2011-09-01 16:45:160 Comments
All two other users of this forum never have anything to share unless I post something first. I hope. Maybe this time they are gone for good. Was World of Tanks really so gripping? This website's updates will become more and more infrequent until it eventually fades away into nothingness. Whatever. I've been working on a few other side projects and my the fall semester has started. Oh boy, philosophy classes for General Ed. requirements!
What have I been working on? It is a secret! Well, maybe not. One of these things is some improvements to the website, which when completed will house some information about what I'm working on. You may recall the "Code Projects" section that the website had at least 900 years ago which used code similar to the front page. In the end though it was kind of terrible. The new section will be build from the ground up to have much better features such that I can post details on my bullet hell shooter that I'm working on. Whoops, that kind of slipped out. There is also something about a single player level for the now ancient Unreal. Who knows? Maybe even more...
What have I been working on? It is a secret! Well, maybe not. One of these things is some improvements to the website, which when completed will house some information about what I'm working on. You may recall the "Code Projects" section that the website had at least 900 years ago which used code similar to the front page. In the end though it was kind of terrible. The new section will be build from the ground up to have much better features such that I can post details on my bullet hell shooter that I'm working on. Whoops, that kind of slipped out. There is also something about a single player level for the now ancient Unreal. Who knows? Maybe even more...
Sunday 2011-08-28 18:23:491 Comments
I hereby proclaim that hence force this post shall pass judgement upon the massively multi-player online role playing game Dungeons and Dragons Online from the perspective of the "free to play" player. In short, the review can be summarized with a quote from the game:
DDO NPC 23323~
Oh no, Sahuagin found me!
Basically the dungeon master-like voice overs are over dramatic and kind of interesting, but the voice acting for the NPCs are terrible, at best. The ORPG min-maxing element is very real and if you don't put one point in tumble you are mad bad and need to uninstall or whatever I mean seriously. But what of the adventuring aspect? There are a lot of dungeons built out of prefabs. Not the most thrilling thing ever but at least they give them all unique voice overs and layouts so they feel fresh enough. In one quest you are collecting taxes from a crazy rich man, in another you are venturing into the basement to kill a traitor. My favorite quest involves some wizardly type in some sewers. Upon meeting him (and whenever anything appears ever, or any player talks to him) he shouts his favorite catchphrase:
DDO NPC 23323~
Oh no, Sahuagin found me!
The PvP is completely broken. Wizards two-shot everyone from a mile off. Melee is pretty good but you can't ever get close to wizard barfing shatter combos all over you. Rangers to terrible damage, healers are so boring nobody will ever play them in or out of PvP. In that regard I am really not sure who DDO (wouldn't it be DNDO? or D&DO?) appeals to. If you want a compelling D&D video game experience NWN2 is better. It has multi-player too. If you want leet MMORPG PvP then even the craptacular WoW is better.
Official verdict on every free MMO I have played: Cosmic Break > DDO > Warrior Epic > Space Cowboy Online (aka Ace Online or AirRivals)
DDO NPC 23323~
Oh no, Sahuagin found me!
Basically the dungeon master-like voice overs are over dramatic and kind of interesting, but the voice acting for the NPCs are terrible, at best. The ORPG min-maxing element is very real and if you don't put one point in tumble you are mad bad and need to uninstall or whatever I mean seriously. But what of the adventuring aspect? There are a lot of dungeons built out of prefabs. Not the most thrilling thing ever but at least they give them all unique voice overs and layouts so they feel fresh enough. In one quest you are collecting taxes from a crazy rich man, in another you are venturing into the basement to kill a traitor. My favorite quest involves some wizardly type in some sewers. Upon meeting him (and whenever anything appears ever, or any player talks to him) he shouts his favorite catchphrase:
DDO NPC 23323~
Oh no, Sahuagin found me!
The PvP is completely broken. Wizards two-shot everyone from a mile off. Melee is pretty good but you can't ever get close to wizard barfing shatter combos all over you. Rangers to terrible damage, healers are so boring nobody will ever play them in or out of PvP. In that regard I am really not sure who DDO (wouldn't it be DNDO? or D&DO?) appeals to. If you want a compelling D&D video game experience NWN2 is better. It has multi-player too. If you want leet MMORPG PvP then even the craptacular WoW is better.
Official verdict on every free MMO I have played: Cosmic Break > DDO > Warrior Epic > Space Cowboy Online (aka Ace Online or AirRivals)
Sunday 2011-07-31 17:23:330 Comments
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