Wednesday, November 3, 2004

And there are those who Him as the Dark Sun ... So about a week ago I started playing a MUD (Multiple User Dungeon, an online text-based role-playing game) by the name of Forgotten Kingdoms, heavy emphasis on role-play. My roommate here at the fraternity said he played it at one point and was considering getting back into it, so I decided to check it out as well. He sent an e-mail into the admins telling them that our characters would be playing under the same IP, and that we were in fact two separate people, not one person multiplaying. I started a human rogue character, with an alignment of chaotic neutral. I wanted to be evil, but they have a system where you need to have played the game for a certain number of hours (over one hundred for sure) before you can play evil, mainly to keep newbies from messing things up. I know I could have done it, though. But oh well. I had my character going along pretty well, mainly to get from town to town (since he did not have a map) I just played that he would wander the roads aimlessly. Oddly enough, I always ended up in the cities I wanted to be in according to my roommate. But at one point my step fell wrong. To move about the map, you just type the direction you wish to go: "n" for north, "sw" for south west, etc. Well, as is a common mistake, I would sometimes hit the wrong direction and wander off the road; a very dangerous thing to do at a low level. I had done it a couple times before and lucked out, but on my way to some other place, I accidentally typed "se" instead of "ne" and put myself right in front of a Hill Giant, and was killed shortly thereafter. Now when you die, your soul is moved to the Realm of the Dead. A single room, where everyone goes when they die. From here, people have but 3 options: (a) reincarnate, usually a last resort because you lose a point of Constitution for doing it; (b)find a priest, if you have met a priest earlier in the game who greeted you with his name, you can send messages to him and tell him to come ressurect your body - if this priest follows any deity, however, you are indebted to its god; (c) you can pray to the gods themselves for ressurection, in which you pretty much pledge allegiance to it. Me? I chose prayer. The first time I did it, I accidentally put a semi-colon in it, and that breaks the line, thus ending the prayer right there, so it would only about a sentence and a half long. I waited about a day (I died yesterday) to see if the gods would respond to that, thought it can sometimes take a long time for someone to respond. My roommate told me to go ahead an try typing out a longer one today, sans semi-colon, and see what happens. So I did, and about five seconds later the next thing I know is I am surrounded by four priests of Cyric (SEER-ik). Cyric is the main evil deity of the game. He started off a normal human, but grew to be an epic fighter and upon his ascension to immortality he slayed three other gods, taking their power, with a vampiric sword that came to be known as Godsbane; the sword later rebelled against him, but he maintained his power. So pretty much, I wet myself at this point. I was totally not expecting Cyric of all the gods to ressurect me. If Cyric himself actually brought me to him, I probably would have been scared shitless. I kneeled before the priests out of respect, but this is the general jist of what I got from them: A priest of Cyric gives you a robe. "Now get up and leave this place before we think of something else to do with you." Needless to say, I did not stay much longer. They gave me robe, because when you die, you lose everything you have, clothes and all, and running around naked is not becoming of a follower of Cyric. Now Cyrics emblem is simply a skull, sans jawbone, within a purple or black starburst. So pretty much, as my character learns more about this deity of which he will follow he is going to physically change. From the beginning I already made him very skinny and skeletal to begin with. So maybe I shall have his hair slowly fall out, and his skin begin to wear away revealing the top of his skull ... I think it would be cool.

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Sunday, October 31, 2004

Happy Halloween, Biatches. And I am going to spend a lot of the day playing Dungeons & Dragons. Rock. I play this a lot now, lol. I mean, I did before I ever got to college, but not quite as much. Ever since I joined this fraternity (yes, that is right, I said fraternity. Triangle owns. And no, not Delta, we do not have letters) I have started playing it pretty much at least once a week, usually twice. And now we have two campaigns going. In our first campaign, what we call the "Shadow Campaign" simply because it is in the Shadow Realm (we see in black and white, and it is a magically morphing plane! People sleeping in a wasteland, and waking up on a lake of ice was fun). My character for it is currently an 8th level Assassin. He is getting pretty pissed, though. In a party of 9 characters he is not killing as effectively as he thinks he is supposed to, so at 12th level I am going to have him start taking levels in sorcery, begin worshipping a deity (who many other characters in the party follow, so we can role-play the conversion). And the DM is allowing me to have a Hellwasp Swarm for a familiar. I am going to have them live inside my body (because they can actually do that) and come out when I need them to ... the inspiration for that was this one character in the anime Naruto who hosted bugs in his body. Between him and his Swarm, he is going to be all kinds of bad ass. The other campaign is based off the Eberron campaign setting (not expecting many to know what that is). We start at 15th level, and I chose to be a Changeling (half-human, half-doppleganger; a race allowed by Eberron) Druid. I also took flaws that I am inattentive (-2 or -4 to all Listen and Spot rolls), and I am claustrophobic. So really what I am questioning right now is ... if my character was walking into a small space, would he be too spacey to know? Lol ... This campaign is supposed to start in like 9 minutes, so I am off. Farewell, I am off to geekdom.

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Monday, August 9, 2004

It has been a while ... I am not exactly sure what to talk about right now, but I have nothing better to do, really, so I figured I would update this. I just finished reading through the Legend of Zelda for GameCube topic in Play It, because I never read the entire thing. It is dated by now, but oh well. I just found out yesterday that my older brother has an NES system, heh. I igured this out when he came over to use this computer to look up help on the Adventures of Link. He tried for a while and could not find anything. I hopped on and had the info within five minutes, lol. I feel like such a nerd when I do things like that. A cool nerd, though, none-the-less. ZeldaUniverse.net rocks, heh. I wish I still had the NES. There is just something charming about having to blow into the cartridge, re-insert the game about five times, and smack the machine to get the picture to show up right. Adventures of Link is how I got into Zelda games to begin with I think, heh. I am not sure if I have ever played the very first one, but I have played every subsequent one after that aside from any released for Gameboy and Majora's Mask. However, I have only ever beat The Wind Waker and Four Swords Adventures for GameCube, heh. Ocarina of Time is my favorite at current. I wish I could go back and play the 2-D ones. I was too young at the time to really appreciate them, heh. Four Swords Adventures for GameCube was a lot of fun, but was way too short. I beat it over the span of two or three days. In any case, I have loved them all, and I am very excited for The Legend of Zelda for GameCube. When I first saw the video Tony put up in the thread, I was laughing in tears because I was just so astonished by how dynamic the game seems to be. There were certain points where it reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings, heh. Especially with that fire beast we see in the trailer. In the topic some people showed concern about it losing the light-hearted personality that The Wind Waker gave to the Zelda series. It would all just be the serious, gritty, realism that we saw in the Ocarina of Time. Honestly, I would have no problem with that. Not that I did not like The Wind Waker, it was extremely cute and a lot of fun, but from what I saw in the trailer this game seems like it will have a decent balance of serious and light-hearted. From stills I have seen, the color put into everything is nice and vibrant. For example, in the shot where Link is knocking enemies of their horses, their skin is a surprisingly vibrant green. And also in the still where Link is facing off against what I am only assuming are the new Lizalfos on a flight of stairs, their scales shimmer with all the colors fo the rainbow, heh. There was also a screenshot that Tony posted later where Link is leaping at some sort of goblin preparing to fire and bow and arrow. The goblin just looks really goofy and awkward, especially with the way he is holding the bow. He looks a lot more like he should be weilding and axe or something. When one thinks of an archer, usually someone sleek and agile comes to mind. Not some stout, portly, green goblin, heh. Not to mention being able to knock enemies off horses. From what we are seeing, they are just the scrawny creatures. Sending them flying through the air and down to the ground is more than amusing, lol. As I am sure with most people looking forward to this game, I am really curious about the story behind it. We saw a lot of different terrains, and a lot of monsters, but I am curious as to what kind of NPC's there are going to be. I mean, we have the Ocarina of Time look with the graphics engine of The Wind Waker. Originally of course there was the rumor that this was supposed to be a sequel to The Wind Waker, but it looks more to have that relation to Ocarina of Time. I am wondering if they are ging to take after one of the two aforementioned games, or do something new? To me, The Wind Waker was very much its own game. It had the elements of Zelda games, but took it completely out of the traditional setting. The fact that it was a Zelda game was almost non-existant aside from the main characters involved. It had new races introduced, and others extinct. We saw a Zora and Kokiri only once in the spirits for two of the temples. Then again, this was supposedly a century later than some other Zelda occurance. Again, I am not saying the game sucked at all, I was just really confused as to where this fit in any sort of timeline, heh. It can generally be assumed that, at first, every Zelda game "happened" after the previous. With The Wind Waker, however, it seemed they just jumped way ahead, and with this new game, they are going back to traditional Zelda. Given the setting we saw in the trailer, there is no way this can follow up The Wind Waker. So I am just incredibly curious as to who besides Link is going to be in this game. One thing, and probably above all, that I am definitely hoping for this game, is that Link will have some new techniques, etc. We have already seen being able to fight while on a horse, and that makes me incredibly happy right there. It leads me to hope that they have improved combat techniques when he is on foot, however. One thing I liked about The Wind Waker, which I think should be put into every following game, is being able to pick up weapons your enemies drop. I would be absolutely ecstatic if this eventually was fully integrated with Link's character: Have him not always battle with a sword. They have the bow and arrow, boomerang, and such already, but what about a mace, an axe, a claw, etc. I liked the hammer, which has been with Zelda for a while actually, but I think they should make more uses for it side from pushing down rusty switches and defeating the boss of that dungeon. I think Link should be able to have a greater selection of weapons at his disposal, and a fair amount of opportunity to use them. I think this of course would also lead to a longer game, and an expanded variety of monsters. Both of which I have absolutely no problem with. I think it would add greater depth to the character of Link, showing that he is more than just a talented swordsman, but leave plenty of room for advanced gameplay as well. A person would have to get used to fighting with each weapon, especially something like the hammer with requires two hands, ergo no shield. I do not expect this game to have all that of course, it is just some I really would not mind seeing, heh. I just think it would be great if this action-adventure game added some more RPG-esque factors to it. Dinner time!

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Saturday, July 3, 2004

Mono. Ugh, I have been on an insane low lately. I am not really depressed or anything, just incredibly bored. Nothing is able to catch my attention. I went out and rented some movies. Came home. Watched them both. Now I have nothing to do again. I have no urge to watch them again currently. Though I imagine I shall once I go to my room to "sleep." By "sleep" I mean "stay awake until my step-father and mom go to work." I have not slept more than two hours since around 2:30 p.m., July 1. I took a small nap out of sheer boredom yesterday from about 1:30 to 3:00-ish, but that seemed to be no better than just being bored. Everything is just so not exciting lately. I can hardly listen to one album for more than one or two songs before I get tired of it and try to find a better one to listen to ... but nothing seems to work. My eyes feel a little dry, but rather cold at the same time. It is weird. I wish I had more movies to watch or something. There is so little to do in the late nights/early mornings ... or at any time really. Just when I went out to rent the movies I felt so relieved because I was finally doing something other than sitting all cooped up in this house, even if it was only for a short while. I do not think people realize if/when I hang out with someone, how much fun I am actually having. We could just go walking around aimlessly for 7 hours straight, and that could be the best time of my life. I am not a very extroverted at all, so people can hardly tell if I am having a blast or not. Me feeling ecstatic could simply force me to crack a smile, heh. I have almost always said I do not like being around people, and that is true. However, I do not like to be alone, either. So a person is nice. Simply the fact that someone is there could keep me entertained for quite some time, even if we are not doing anything. They might think it was a waste, but holy crap I could have just had one of the best times in my life. I do not know if this is just the sleep deprivation talking or not, but whenever I think about things like this I always come back to such points ... I am hungry. I am going to go eat something. Maybe ... Mmm ... ice cream. I was shocked to find the flap that reads "fold this end in first" was actually folded in second. Damn punks and their music ... It just occurred to me that tomorrow ... or today moreso, is Saturday. Ergo, my mom and step-father do not go to work. This leaves me with the dilemma of deciding when is a sensible time to "wake up." Staying up all night really does a job on one's internal clock. time moves a lot slower the following day. I was continuously three hours ahead of what it really was. If I thought it was noon, it was only really 9 a.m. I have pretty much stopped keeping track of what day it is. The only time I really pay attention is when something is supposed to be going on. I am okay on knowing what day of the week it is. I am usually only a day or two off if I am wrong. I think sleep deprivation is almost a form of time travel. A person is used to falling asleep in one day, and waking up in the next. So if a person stays up all night and into the next day, the first thought of what day it is will be what day it was. However, there is still a hint that you are actually in another day. Then lets say you fall asleep and wake up in that same day. When you wake up, your mind is a bit refreshed and is aware that you fell asleep on the day you were in. Though it can slip the mind that you woke up in the same day, so you are now a day ahead of yourself ... I am having a hard time putting that into words, but I think you can kind of get the idea of what I am trying to say. Anyway ... enough of my nonsensical theories ...

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Thursday, July 1, 2004

Webmaster's block? Bah. I have had the urge to create a website of some kind lately; for the past few months really. However, I cannot really come up with a good idea for one: content, theme, etc. I have two that I am rather pleased with how they look (though they have the same layout, just a different look ... I did that on purpose as I made them inter-related). However, Eye Static was more of a concept site, and after switching from Internet Explorer to Mozilla, I discovered many holes in its coding I hardly have the urge to fix. Ham Frozen Solid is my online diary/journal. It would be updated more regularly if the host was not so crappy. Usually it is fine, but there was some sort of bug that they supposedly fixed, however it is still affecting my account. It is not even done, really, so I cannot continue until the bug is fixed. But still, not much can be done with just an online diary thing. Of course, Tony's Wrapped in Plastic could kind of argue that ... but then again, Tony is just damn cool and can do things like that. >.> I simply cannot come up with something I can make a website about and dedicate myself to it. I simply do not have any vast interest in much of anything. Another difficulty would be keeping it more or less original so people who see it would at least feel it is different, even if it is about something that is unoriginal. I am one of the most uninteresting people ... ever. -__-;

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Monday, June 14, 2004

I feel better.

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Sunday, June 13, 2004

My current state of mind. But at least that illustration is humorous.

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Sweltering. I just thought I would add that I am also sleeping at my dad's tonight, and it is so warm in this room. It is 4:19 a.m. right now, and I am not sure when I am going to get to sleep, heh. I am sure this heat is not going to help. I think I am going to listen to David Bowie. I left my new Modest Mouse CD in my mom's car. =/ *wipes moist forehead*

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Saturday, June 12, 2004

Droopy. I feel so tired. Most people would probably wonder why if I told them I get out of bed around 12:00-1:00 p.m. every day. However, keep in mind I do not go to sleep until around 4:00-6:00 a.m. I probably have a lot of "sleep debt" racked up, heh, especially from the school year. I can hardly make myself type. My hands are just kind of limp on the keyboard. ... That is all I really feel like saying, heh.

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Friday, June 11, 2004

So what is up? Well, I really have nothing to say, but I cannot think of anything else I feel like doing. I am not in the greatest of moods right now, but I shall try to refrain from ranting. It should not be a difficult task, but eh. I picked up Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness the other day to finish off collecting the Evil Dead series. I was a little disappointed in Evil Dead II. Despite the better budget, I think the story did not have as much of an impact as Evil Dead. Ash's character was a lot better, finally getting to see the chainsaw action, however, I did not like just random characters being involved. Evil Dead contained Ash and his friends visiting the cabin in the woods, whereas Evil Dead II features Ash with a random hick couple and another woman and her boyfriend. Given the other woman has a little more point to the story, being the daughter of the archeologist who discovered the Necronomica (I think that is how it is spelled, heh) who had random missing pages to that book, but she was still just random. Being that Evil Dead II was more or less just a remake of Evil Dead, they could have simply just made it a different group of friends or something. The whole having to turn on each other ordeal really adds to the impact of the story. That was one big thing that really ruined it for me, heh. Army of Darkness was far from the previous two in the horror aspect, but it was very funny and worth watching. Though Ash's chauvinistic attitude gets a little irritating. That was not his attitude in the previous two, heh. Anyway, that was a decent tangent to distract myself on. Farewell.

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