Blogs - Dragonsdoom

I've caught the twitters! I can be found here:
Twitter.com

I've put up a couple more shots of my work on the gallery, with plenty more to come once I find the spare time to put up here. As might be gleaned from one of the new images, I've been doing a bunch more programming too.

My dreams of grandeur are starting to become an achievable reality. I'm working with a local team we've started up, and our first game is coming along nicely through the pre-production phase. We sort of want jobs in our new career, so we are trying to make a bit of cash from our project. I'm hoping in the future we will be able to do non-profit projects on the side to contribute some work back to the mod community.

Here's hoping and praying for indie developer success!

P.S. I'm really tired of my current line of work, could you tell?

Hey, it looks like I have a deviantArt now for my non-asset work. If you are into that sort of thing why not check me out over there and leave some feedback?

Here's the link:
Dragonsdoom.deviantart.com

Oh, and I've learned a bit of C# over the spring semester and I am planning on making some games with it over the summer. Stay tuned for more info on that.

I went to the Triangle Game Conference a while back and got to attend a presentation by John Zuur Platten. Remember how I was getting ticked off at the whole games as art shenanigans last blog post? Well, Platten presented a excellent speech that really vibed with me on that subject. The gist? Games are works of craftsmanship, not art. Good craftsmanship can be art, but is intended to serve another purpose first. Quality craftsmanship is objective and can be quantified, good art is subjective and cannot be quantified.
That, I think, is what the best works of art are developed from, and that is the argument I have always defended in the whole games as art debate.

The Escapist has a writeup here if you are interested in reading more about Mr. Platten's presentation: Escapistmagazine.com

Gah, this topic is irritating me. I need to find the time to write a paper on this.

Long story short: I don't think games are art.

Of course, this is a super controversial idea due to the vague meaning of the word art and the people trying to find new ways to apply it. Urinals, or the act of presenting a urinal at an art showing, should have nothing to do with the Mona Lisa, for instance.

But if games are not art, what are they? I have an idea of what I consider games to be, and I plan to expound on it.

-The Provoked Dragonsdoom

'Gather round, and listen to the tale I set before ye, a tale of the dark times and dark years before heroes came unto the light and drove out tha vile darkness.'

Once upon a time, there was a genre of computer game known as the FPS, and in those days it was well respected. One of the glorious leading games was known as Quake, and it was the crowning wish of many games to strive for the popularity that Quake had, with the fun gameplay it offered.

But then, the realm of FPS fell into darkness..

Several leading games working in cooperation decided that Quake had more than it's fair share of popularity, and worked to dethrone it. In evilly smoking game forges and editors late in the dark of night, they labored and created a new title: Counter-Strike, The herald of darkness!

Supported later by it's brothers in darkness, Counter-Strike seized the popularity of Quake, and plunged the gamers of the FPS world down in the horrifying abyss of Bullet Hoses. Games in the Counter-Strike style became widely popular as the game spread it's tendrils of mind control into the minds and hearts of gamers everywhere, spreading the dreadful message of different sounding weapons that flashed and sprayed bullets like water.
Even Quake was subjected to the mind control, spawning Call Of Duty in it's insanity, only to be backstabbed by it's own progeny, as Call Of Duty itself became a Bullet Hose game.

Even as the darkness spread, there came those who would oppose it, at any cost:
Small cadres of gamers spread and created a underground resistance, all the while taking mass casualties from the legions of mind controlled fans who knew not what they did and said. Bands of such controlled fans often took it upon themselves to crush all opposition, training themselves to be inquisitors and heralds for the cause of the controlling games in battles to the death in massive arenas known as Gaming Forums.

Some in the path of the mind controlling games, fearing to be crushed in the combat fled to the far east; where strange gamers in odd HUD interfaces played complex and awe inspiring matches of those games known as RTS and TBS.
Others spread out into the wild ice fields of the north, where in frozen caves they sat at the feet of the Great Old Ones and learned the ancient and powerful art of the 2D Platformer.

And then in later years Heroes emerged from training and hiding. Schooled in the powerful ways of their ancestors, creating such games as Half-Life 2 and Worms Armageddon, they strode into the halls of their fathers, and lit the forges anew, using such powerful tools as Fire, Air, Explosions and many others to smith and enchant one of the most powerful weapons of the generation.

And Lo; there came to us one of the saviors of our kind, the dawning light of

Team Fortress 2!

Featuring such odd weapons as the short range flamethrower and stickybomb launcher, Team Fortress 2 broke the evil spell of Bullet Hoses and reclaimed the Throne of Quake as a glorious bastion of gaming, to rule over the lands of FPS in diversity and ingenuity.

Even today, as we have the light of Team Fortress 2 and it's Unreal guardians to protect us, some of us fall back or are even still prisoners of the last age of darkness, reveling in their crude Bullet Hose fantasies, and planning a return to power.
So take heed my kindred, that you do not fall as the chaff from the grain to the darkness of such corrupt games, and keep your eyes ever open to the potential diversity and ingenuity of our modern brothers, for we do not want a return to the M4 and AK wars, we want a new age of weaponized variety!

Not updated here in a bit, need to get back in the habit of doing this.

I got sick recently and it is really hard to get rid of, but I think I am nearly over it. Some kind of nasty cold-like virus.

My monitor broke, luckily it is still under the three year warranty, so I sent it off to CA from the east coast here with it's RMA, thankfully we have some backup monitors. Sadly the only decent one right now is this hulking CRT that is really really dark and only goes darker. You know how source games have the little barely visible, decently visible etc box for adjusting the brightness? Yeah, on the brightest setting the whole box is so dark I can't see anything in it at all. I tried to play TF2 the other day and all I could see was a giant red point capture sign and my stickybombs, which I could only see because they were flashing. It really makes it hard to learn about texture work when the texture you are working on appears as a smear of blackish paste. I can't make out my avatar on the Moddb here as I type this.

As I was sick, I was feeling quite miserable and decided to get Far Cry 2 as it was on sale on Steam to help me over the constant hacking cough and so on.
My verdict on the game is as follows: It continues to be satisfactory, and was certainly worth 15 bucks, however there is a amazing amount of wasted potential here. The work that was done on the game was good quality, the engine looks excellent , the maps pristine, the guns feel great and all that, but it could be so much more. For instance:

* Everyone you meet in the field is hostile. Always.

Fix: Incorporate non-hostile factions and some identifying markers, such as UFLL non-hostile troops in UFLL hats and jackets or some such at some checkpoints and guard posts when doing UFLL missions, Farmer and Fisherman styled civilians at certain locations, traveling transports, convoys and similar things.

* All the patrols are always hostile, pursue you a predictable distance, patrol within a certain distance of guard posts, are armed with leveled sets of weapons with the player, (All the same or closely so) consist of two dudes and a mounted gun or one dude without one and always stick to the road like hot tar in the sun.

Fix: Vary the patrols more; two jeeps or two guys in a non mounted weapon patrol would do wonders to increase the variables. It would be great seeing a few people armed with quite a bit better or worse weapons in the field instead of leveled weapons with me. It would be even better if the patrols tried to 'radio ahead' and cut me off if they know I am coming once in a while. Patrols camped out in various locations not on the main road would also be awesome, something like a police speed trap.
Patrols ranging over larger areas in general would also make it a good deal better, early on in the game when going to Pala I always get a bit bored because I know no one ever tries to patrol any of the stretches of road just outside of town, if patrols ranged more there would be less dead zones like that with more action and high speed chases as you try to race into the cease-fire zone without getting gunned down.

* There are only two types of player controlled boat, and so far I have only seen one in the singleplayer. Also always hostile.

Fix: Can't we get some kind of speed boat or something? One boat is really making it boring to take the waterways.

* All guard posts consist of three or four dudes with leveling weapons with the player, have at least one vehicle, concrete solid sandbags, very rarely a sniper post, one of three types of supply cache, and a nearby patrol. Also; Hostile.

Fix: Give us some variety! If I went to see a movie that half consisted of this guy going into convenience stores, I would at least want the stores to be different! The guard posts are so predictable and bland that it would be less boring if my car randomly flipped and I got attacked by a few dudes randomly spawned every quarter mile. Give them more variety in guns, give them more or less dangerous guns, make the sandbags less like concrete, make the numbers of troops vary more, make ammo less like candy around these places, make the vehicles not always be jeeps, anything! These places are less interesting than watching paint dry!

Don't be afraid to not have physical postings either, a guard post could just as easily be a single lookout tower on a ridge or a single docking station for a boat.

* All troops can see through walls and certain kinds of grass, and can instantly relay messages between each other about the location of the player without talking like the ultra-elite ex-military crack commandos they are. Hostile.

Fix: This is one of the worst parts of the game. if you are going to make the AI work together in every single situation, even if they by rights might be panicking, at least make them call out their orders so the player has a clue what is going on. One guard getting shot with a silenced PPK should not rouse the entire village to abandon their posts and rush over to one corner of camp.

* The stealth system is absolutely abysmal, even with the stealth suit that was my first gun shop purchase of the game. It probably is hostile as well, considering what a incredibly backstabbing way it seems to work.

Fix: This goes hand in hand with the previous point; make the AI LESS competent in a tactical way.
I would not hate this aspect quite so much if the game had not tried to encourage me to try stealth. The stealth is terrible. Give me some kind of cover warning thing so I can see how concealed I am, make the AI react more realistically to a death of one soldier, maybe make them give up after a period instead of circling endlessly and eventually spotting me through dumb luck. Make them do tactical sweeps through the line of fire to find me, anything.

* Grenades apparently have laser trails back to the thrower that tell the soldiers on the other side of the adjacent buildings that someone threw one and he is over there, away from the blast.

Fix: Again, part of the terrible stealth system. I can live with them spotting it in a trajectory, but when they calculate the perfect angle and rush out and shotgun me in the face with dead accuracy? Not fun.

* The camo suit is invisible to the player, which I think is a terrible loss for immersion, considering the lengths that the developers went to try and incorporate animations and such for everything.

Fix: Add a visual representation of the suit, or at least some kind of stealth meter or game mechanic that makes it noticeable.

* The game is logistically impossible, there are no civilians anywhere doing anything except at underground locations. Non-hostile factions would immerse us so much more than one or two more cheap animations.

Fix: To fix the logistic problem as well as adding non-hostile factions, many things could be done. Convoys, cars driving around, fishermen, farmers, work gangs, villagers and turncoats would do great things for the depth of this game. If just one of these things were to be added to this game, I would be greatly pleased.

* So much of the game is predicable it really kills a lot of the gameplay, when you know exactly how the soldiers are going to react it really ruins a lot of the fun.

Fix: Make the soldiers not necessarily smarter, but make their tactics more varied. If the patrols, guard posts, general soldier responses and similar things all were improved and varied, with a bit more time put in them, this game would be at least 25-50% better.

As a final point, I would like to make note that everything I wrote here could and would have been modded into the game had the developers included some way for the players to modify the base of the original game. Instead we get this heavily limited and piss-dumb multiplayer level editor that fails to innovate, being so watered down to the point that the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 PlayStation 1 level editor almost looks like a viable alternative. The fact that the level editor is that simple to use is nice, but the limitations are not. If we were given the ability to make modifications to the single player, I would personally gather together a mod team and create a mod that actually would do the game justice. I am very disappointed that I even had to write this considering what this game might have been.

In the end, it was a good game, but I can't see paying more than 20 bucks for it, considering everything that was left out.

-Dragonsdoom

This is a draft of a upcoming article Dragon is currently working on.

I have played a great number of games, and a good quantity of them have been nice quality, and a fair number of them have been terrible. Today I am going to talk about one major element of what can really help or hinder a strong game experience.

The Graphical User Interface(GUI) is the system you use to navigate to the correct parts of your game. There are many ways to design a GUI, and many of them better or worse for the end user. Some are extremely complex, some are far too simple, some are extremely bland, while others are very distracting. The quality of the GUI can really change a game experience.

First, let us take a look at a example of a good GUI:

Crysis
I would consider this to be a fairly good GUI. Easy to navigate 'quicktabs' on the left, the bulk of the information to the right, a little bit of it's own twist on opening windows by animating the motions, clearly labeled buttons tell you exactly what is there and where the end user needs to go to jump in the multiplayer after setting his Anti-Aliasing(AA) level. Also of note; the background graphics don't bleed through the important stuff, drawing attention away from important configurations.

Second, a example of a AI that has become too complex.

Neverwinter Nights 2
I don't claim to be a expert at this, but from the viewpoint of a end user, this is really a complicated layout. Upon opening the game options, you are immediately presented with the exploration camera mode options, even if you are searching for your AA level.
Looking at this, I can see why some people can be easily turned off from Role Playing Game(RPG) interfaces: if I was a Counter-strike newbie, and I started trying to configure my options for this, I don't even know how half of these options make sense or have anything to do with the game. I would just want to tweak my shadows down and my AA up.
A great deal of these options could easily be consolidated into a 'Advanced options' Tab, and the presentation could be much more streamlined and better arranged. If you had correctly managed subtabs, you probably could set this up with a main options panel subdivided into graphics, audio, interface and keymapping, segregating the system into a much more manageable size.

Here is a example of a GUI that is too simplified.

Robin Hood: The legend of Sherwood
I am not entirely certain when the big trend towards AA and Antirscopic Filtering came in to the video game design world, but I think it was around or before 2001.
This game was released in 2002, and although at the time we did have three primary styles of screen resolution, I think we would have had more potential options than those there. The big thing you want to learn from this is to give the end users power to adjust their own options. If you are worried about people breaking things in the options panel, set aside a 'advanced options' section for the people who are constantly tweaking their options. Who knows, in a few years someone may have a computer that processes shadows or lighting in such a way that he can only crank up those settings to maximum, and can't rely on your low-medium-high scale of computer designation.
I noticed this particularly with Far Cry, my current computer at the time of this typing has a very strong graphics card, which can quite effectively render more modern games such as Team Fortress 2 and Fallout 3 with ease, but the system still chugs a bit with Far Cry because at the time, when Far Cry was at the cutting edge of the technology, we were using the system processors to compute the graphics instead of the fancy separate 'Graphics Cards' that were still new to the field, and I have a single core processor. So the moral of that story is like I said above, give the end users power to adjust their own options.

Here is a example of a small issue I wanted to bring up:

Age of Chivalry
In this menu screen, part of the flavor of the game is added to the GUI, in the form of phrasing the menu tabs according to the style of the game period.
I personally would try to avoid doing this. It may help add to the suspension of reality, but I just find it makes things bloody difficult to find. I host servers on occasion, and when this game came out there were a few settings that sometimes messed up on certain people's systems. So I would tell them; "Go into your options panel and set this setting this way." and they would have no idea what panel in the menu I was talking about, because it was called 'Blacksmith's workshop.' Now, I am not saying you can't or should not incorporate suspension of reality helpers into your GUI, but you might consider making sure everyone can understand what it means. In the game Lords of the Realms two, you had a option to leave battles that you had started by clicking on the 'leave battle' button, and the narrator would ask you "retreat, my lord?" as the standard 'Are you sure?' dialog box came up. And that is or would be all well and good. A vocal suspension of reality, combined with a nicely designed dialog box, but with plain and modern text really made that nicely well done.
Basically you do this for the same reason the Germans in war movies about WW2 speak English in German accents, or have English subtitles.

Here is a set of examples of bad GUI ideas.

The main screen of Burnout Paradise
The first thing that happens when you load up Burnout Paradise is at least Four mouse clicks before actually getting to the Main Menu, because it will tell you every time about how the loading icon means it is saving to the hard drive, which you have to notify it that you understand by hitting enter or clicking the button. After that happens, you will either need to log in to their site with a EA account, or it will automatically bring up a in game web page that requires closing, and hitting yes in a 'Are you sure?' dialog box. Once you get past all that, it will show a splash page with no actual options on it, until you verify you are there waiting for it by hitting a button, at which point it will go into the third or fourth loading screen, (because you totally need to sit here watching the loading screen instead of getting a soda from the kitchen or going to the bathroom, which most people do in the loading screens of games instead of at the main menu when it is waiting for your input.) and finally lets you in the real main menu(Picture above). The only problem you will have is if you want to change any options at all, they are not available here.
To get to the options, you will have to go through the starting cutscenes, select your car(with a painfully long wait while it renders individual different cars one at a time), select your paintjob(with another nearly as painful long wait while it renders your car's paint schemes one at a time), and finally be deposited in the game. Still with no options in sight, you are dumped right into the game. After experimentally hitting the esc key, you will be presented with game stats:

The esc key stats page of Burnout Paradise
If you are sharp eyed and lucky, on the first time you view this page you might notice the F1 and F2 symbols hidden in the top left of the 2d artwork. Consider yourself lucky.
These lead to progressively more menus, and each menu apparently has to be shunted from the bottom reaches of your hard drive, because shifting between them creates a very significant pause that lasts at least a second.
Finally if you manage to do that several times, you will come across the lost temple of golden savegames, alabaster audio options and river of chocolate:

The hidden valley of the rare and elusive option buttons. (Oompa-Loompas not captured in image.) Burnout Paradise
This is not the way you want your GUI portrayed.

Another side note:
There is no reason to make your GUI screens ugly, get the 2d art guys on your team to work with you to create a good visual both in and out of the game. You don't want to end up like this:

Sim Tower

Neverwinter Nights 2
Make sure you also keep the context easily visible as well, at first sight this may look like NWN2's main menu, but in actuality, it is the multiplayer portion of the game. The buttons for New and Load game here are actually two different server hosting routes. This could be easily solved by discreetly putting the word "multiplayer" somewhere right under the main splash graphic, completely solving the context question.

Eventually you will need to place the 'ingame' portion of your GUI, and this can often make or break your game, Especially in RPGS, MMOs, and other complex games where a large amount of information is required. One of the most important things you want to be careful with is the size of your Heads Up Display(HUD) elements, as it can make your game feel much more cramped if you use elements that are too big, and very difficult to read if they are too small.

Neverwinter Nights 2
In this game I have a number of very large HUD elements I need to work with, and as such I sometimes feel quite cramped in what little screen I have left for my graphics to display. It really gets worse as I get more party members onscreen that I need to manage, it sometimes feels very tight.

One of the most important major factors in MMOs, especially MMORPGs is how customizable the hud is. Often high level player characters have several bars filled with powers, and if there is a magic system involved it gets even more complex.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach
In this shot we have a very high level character,(16th by D&D standards, 80th by most MMORPG reckoning.) who also is a magic user, with many powers of spells. She has five entire quickbars devoted to various powers she has accumulated, not to mention the various other HUD elements common to most games of this styling. Thankfully, instead of one bar she has to cycle through, or five bars right in the middle there stacked, the developers have decided to allow the players to rotate the quickbars and drag them around. This allows her to customize her own setup. You really want to allow this, especially in the case of MMOs, as I had said before.

I hope to get this article out and around the developing communities of modders, and perhaps out to full scale developers, as I think everyone has something to learn from this article.(I certainly did.) Thanks for letting me explain a consumer's point of view, and I hope that someone comes away from this with a better understanding of consumer concerns on this matter, and perhaps puts it to good use. Any comments or criticism on various points made would be most welcome.

Thanks,
-Frank 'Dragonsdoom' V
Dragonsdoom @ gmail dot com

Well today it snowed again, that makes it twice in the same winter (We usually hardly ever get snow here) and I got some work done and pictures uploaded to my media thing up there.
Right now I am taking a class on basic electrical work and it has proven to be quite interesting, more so than I had originally expected. I had hoped to take the class to get a job to support my gaming habit and provide some funds for potential design software purchasing, but it has been properly interesting as well so that is enjoyable.
Work continues on secret project number four, I think I am about a quarter of the way done with the basic layout right now, suffering from some fairly hefty lack of inspiration waves but I will get over it.
If I do say so my self, and I do, the latest pictures look quite nice apart from being rather barren.
I was recently accepted into the Quake: Live beta, and about all I think I can say about it right now without breaking NDA is that it has been fun. The only really non-fun thing I can talk about right now is that a bunch of the original players have come over to the new game, and at times you get your behind handed to you on a silver platter, with garnish and carefully chosen wine sampler. I think that situation is being worked on though and all will be better.
I understand that TF2 is getting the scout update soon, and I suppose the scouts had it coming to them, even if they are irritating arrogant jerks with laser beam eyesight(Just kidding, I can't really complain, I have been playing Quake.). I look forward to seeing the new unlockables, judging by what Valve is saying we might see scouts working with or against engineers in new ways.
I have started doing some 2d sketching again(on paper!) and I am liking the way it is turning out so far, I want to move on to some more complicated envrons soon.

On the D&D front, I learned four or so different ways to destroy mass sections of planets this morning, thanks to the awesome mathmatics and optimizers over at GITP forums. I also am about to make my game very interesting over the next couple of sessions, thanks to a idea my DM gave me without knowing it.
I think it will take a bit to top what I threw at them last time though, which was a creepy combination of ooze and grotesque plant:

"A huge writhing mass of bony tenticles twitches above the center of a underground druidic pool.
Slime drips from the edges of the crude altar,
and you realise that the pool has been completely replaced by a thick gelatinous ooze,
which churns as the mass at the center writhes.

As you draw nearer to the unholy abomination,
you notice spindley roots extend into the core of the ooze from the bony mass,
and thick tendrils of ooze entwine upward into the wooden flesh.
This is a truely horrifying combination of putrid gelatin and slime enveloped wood,
bound together in rotted symbiosis."

The ooze/tree kicked butt, and the party kicked tree/ooze and all was fun.
They have since made it back safely to town.

More on Fallout 3 and Quake to come...
-Dragonsdoom

(Currently listening to: Arcade Classics by Allister Brimble, which is available Here or on Slay Radio)

Well today my school was closed due to the only snow we have had so far this winter(Which just happened to fall on the one day it was my turn to take all the trash out to the road, take out the cat litter and do two loads of dishes before midafternoon). I used to live in Mass, the closing hardly seems worth the trouble considering we have less than a foot of snow.

I got done the other day playing some Fallout 3 and I think my dad(Who is a avid gamer) was right about this game being too dark for him. The gameplay is nice, and I really enjoy some of the core mechanics(Except for the blindfold-both-hands-behind-the-back-dictating-through-a-translator easy lockpicking minigame. Seriously? The locks in oblivion were too easy, why should the locks in Fallout be easier than those?) but the story is just plain depressing.
I was on one quest(Slight spoilers here) where I had to save this kid from some monsters after they killed his dad, and I eventually did it but he had to wait for me to find a place for him to live. So in order: Dad and son hang out in the wasteland devastation, dad dies, PC saves kid, kid waits for PC to finish subquest by hiding in a metal barrel for a couple hours, PC finishes subquest, kid is free to wait for PC while PC finds him a home, and does so by moving back into his house and sitting in a chair in his bedroom for hours at a time.
And even over in places like megaton it is depressing, no one has any work to do like try to start a garden or something, all they do is busywork like sweeping and staying on the lookout for raiders.
Even when they are not doing work they are depressing; either drinking, eating or sleeping. There is no entertainment in this wasteland. No books(All destroyed), no games(all the chess pieces evaporated in the nuclear holocaust), no movies, nothing except alcohol and baseball. The game would not be anywhere near as depressing if there were actually people trying to scavenge or create methods of entertainment. I did not see a hopscotch or wallball line anywhere.

In a way I think this is a strong achievement on Bethesda's part, they have managed to inspire a strong emotion to me, and probably many other players. It is just not one I particularly enjoy feeling.
You would think a game is designed to be fun and entertaining, and in a way people trying to derive new entertainment from the wasteland would be a self parody, and make the game a certainly less serious work, but Fallout 3's serious side is a very intriguing and well done effect in a game.
I have to say I don't enjoy playing it for more than moderate periods of time now and again, but it should send a certainly powerful message to developers that this effect succeeded.

Well I am better now from the cold I had, which I am really glad to see go. I started work on a concept for a game that I hope to refine and start development on in the next two years. Can't really say a whole lot about it yet, but it is promising.

I also did a bit of experimentation with texture work and normalmaps again, I think I pulled off a nice groundcover texture, you can see it in the gallery here. The GIMP has some really powerful stuff now to make it easier to produce nice textures, and some of the stuff in the latest update (2.6) is really interesting.

My power went out several times this afternoon while I was trying to get my next D&D encounter set up properly, I ended up having to do half of it over again.
Speaking of which, I need to go run that now.
More to come later.

-Dragonsdoom
P.S. I got Fallout 3 in the mail yesterday, impressions yet to come.

(Listening to: Justice - Phantom Pt.II)

Well I seem to have gotten sick again, slowing down progress on everything. At least while I am recovering I will have Fallout 3 to enjoy once it arrives.(Ordered it on Ebay with Christmas gift cards. Why can't people just send money?) I am already downloading mods for it, I think I am up to twenty so far, and I plan on more. Most of the mods I enjoy are added content mods, not replacement content mods, and therefore give me even more fun experiences without missing any of the original content. I am looking forward to working in the G.E.C.K. and I think I made the right decision for myself in choosing Fallout 3 over Far Cry 2, although I will probably end up getting it as well later.

We had our first D&D session in the new campaign, and I think it will go nicely. It started off with a bang; the six first party members plus another six or so caravan guards versus twenty scrubs and a soldier.
Ended up knocking out my sister's PC, as well as sending my PC running for his life into the forest with one hit point.(Thank you total defense combat mechanics!)
I found it a bit odd that I ended up doing nothing but throwing ranged weapons the whole combat, when I had designed the PC to be a melee fighter. Still, I had fun.

-Dragonsdoom.
(Listening to: The throbbing in his head - HeadCold)