Chaos + logic = net

Let me start this off by saying that I love Moonbase Commander. It was a niche game; hardly known to the general populace, but loved by those who played it.

It was never meant for online play by the original designer; it was mainly a LAN game with Gamespy bolted onto it by the publisher like an ugly pimple. Despite the relatively small gathering this game had, fans worked tirelessly to create various game tools to make it even better. Gamespy was deposited in the toilet like the ugly turd it is in favor of a much easier to use direct IP system. After that, a couple people created something that still puts me in awe- a really well done random map maker that used a string of characters to not only recreate the needed random map on other player's computers but the host's IP as well. My hat goes off to those who enabled me and my friends to enjoy so many hours flinging various objects at each other on the moon. Sadly, Microsoft's newer OS versions haven't agreed with the game, and it's been in a pretty steady decline.

To enable my friends and I to play it once again, I have crafted a virtual pc image using Sun's VirtualBox product. There are quite a few virtual PC products on the market (including Microsoft's confusingly named Virtual PC, the worst of the bunch in my testing) but the one I found that works best for gaming is Sun's. This is mainly due to a single reason- it was the only product I tested that could stretch a game with a low resolution (think Starcraft's 640x480) to my monitor. Granted, it's just adjusting the resolution on my PC, but that's still better than the other products that just put a huge nasty black border around the game and call it good.

However, how to do this wasn't very intuitive; it can't be done at all from the GUI. For those also looking for how to do this (I saw a lot of people trying to figure it out in various forums) simply use the VBoxSDL.exe program in your host's installation directory. This is a command-line utility that can start virutal machines with various options, namely being the -fullscreen option. Hopefully this post helps somebody trying to figure this out.

With the purchase of a new(er) house also comes the added responsibility of mowing more lawn. My last house had a tiny plot and I used a small push mower to keep it decent looking. Not so with this one, as it is relatively huge and would probably take me an entire weekend of using a push mower. Thankfully, my parents also have a large yard and have one of those snazzy zero-turn mowers, which they let me borrow.

For those that don't know what they are, zero-turns forgo the common steering wheel for two levers which control each side. Basically, it steers more like a tank (or a Virtual On mech, thanks Sega!) than a car. It took me a few minutes to get used to it, but before long I was zipping everywhere with it. I think my large amount of videogame experience helped there.

One thing I noticed is that the learning curve with these things is more of a learning wall. You either look like a damn professional lawn care specialist or a total tool when you're on these things. There is no in-between.

Also, while I was moving into the house, my new neighbors were having what looked to be a high-school graduation party for one of their kids. Not only did they have one of those giant inflatable things you climb into and bounce around, but they were also doing beer bongs on the front lawn. Best party ever? Perhaps.

Haven't had much time to work on PISS recently, as I've been on two vacations and bought a new house in the last month. Needless to say, my life has been kind of insane, and will probably stay that way until I get everything moved into the new house and settle in. Assuming that ever happens.

I have my doubts.

The vacations were nice. The first was to the Mammoth Caves down in Kentucky. I had never even heard of the place until a few months ago when we decided to plan a trip there with some highschool friends. The caves themselves were very neat, but I think the best parts were seeing the ancient cave man (literally) drawings and petrified poop. I took a fair bit of pictures, but low-light environments (i.e., caves) and compact point-and-shoot cameras don't mix well at all. I like my tiny little camera- it has served me well in a lot of situations and is small enough to easily justify taking on backpacking trips, but christ, I don't think I've ever longed for a nice D90 as much as I did there.

The second trip was a backpacking trip back to Isle Royal. I love that place- it's about as close to wilderness as you can get around here and very beautiful. My camera actually took some decent pictures (at least I think so, I'm only a fledgling camera buff) so I'll be uploading some of the better photographs to flickr or something similar soonish. I received way too many bug bites and hiked over 50 miles while carrying over 40lbs of gear on my back. Yes, this is what I call fun.

As far as the house goes, it's way too fucking huge for two people. I'm not looking forward to cleaning it or keeping it heated in the winter. I would post photographs of it, but frankly I'm embarrassed by how goddamned huge it is. I'll be heading over to wire the whole thing in cat6 tonight. I expect that will be a learning experience for me, since I have never ran wire through finished walls before.

The Dawn of War 2 multiplayer beta started a week ago, and I've been playing the hell out of it. I like what they did with the gameplay; it's just "action" now. No pesky peons / ore collectors you have to worry about wandering into the enemy base. No trying to fit eight extra-large Imperial Guard buildings into your small base so you can make a damn tank. Just non-stop hectic fighting- what a war should be. For those of you who have yet to play DoW2 and are planning on downloading it tomorrow when it goes public, take a piece of advice from me: forget anything you learned about DoW1. Any experience playing Company of Heroes would serve you better.

The game encourages retreating and severely discourages sending your units in to die. You just plain don't make enough resources in the game to support replacing your entire army constantly. The game also really encourages helping your teammates. In the past, the most help you could give your teammates were sending resources and sending units for a joint attack / defense. While you can't send resources (although you do share them), you can reinforce your teammate's points, load units in transports, and more importantly, use abilities on your allies' units.

Games for Windows Live is what the game uses for its online service and this marks the first time I've ever used it. I used to laugh at the very idea of charging for multiplayer support in computer games. (No, scratch that, I still laugh at the idea.) Thankfully Microsoft has come to their senses and realized nobody is going to pay for the "convenience" of playing computer games online... maybe they didn't realize that we had been doing it for free since 1990. Anyway, I think they totally fucked themselves, as they could have stole Steam's (ahem) steam and delivered a decent matchmaking / community service before Valve could. Don't get me wrong, the GFWL service seems fairly decent. The matchmaking is good, and I really like the idea of making a party on-the-fly and joining up as a group after a game if you liked your teammates. I've met some good players that way. I also like the idea of sharing friends across platforms, since I play games with the same people regardless of platform.

However, I'm totally flabbergasted when it comes to their policy of only allowing you be online on one device at a time. The first night I was playing DoW2, Allison was watching something on the Netflix streaming service via the xbox 360. When I first started multiplayer, it signed me into my GFWL account, which is of course linked to my XBL account. This, for some reason, signed me out of XBL. I was at first afraid that it would ruin the already playing movie for my girlfriend, but to Netflix's credit it kept playing. Thinking all was alright, I started my multiplayer game and started kicking ass. Fast forward about 10 minutes later, Allison's movie ends and Netflix freaks the fuck out because it's no longer signed into a XBL Gold account. It re-acquires the connection, re-signing itself back in, thus kicking me off GFWL on the computer. You can imagine my frustration when, right in the climax of the game, I'm suddenly returned to the title screen with a messagebox saying "You have been signed out of Games For Windows Live." I was pissed. My poor teammates who suddenly found themselves without a 3rd and maybe lost because of it were probably pissed as well. That is totally ridiculous. In most games, if you lose connection to the server, you just lose the recording of any stats about the outcome of the game- no big deal in most circumstances.

I know it's fairly common practice to only allow a username/password to sign into a service once and kick any previous connections off. It makes sense for a lot of services, but not for a service trying to set itself up as an end-all community service / media center for your friends and family. They should be encouraging people to use their service on as many supporting devices that they can get their hands on. They're fighting a losing battle right now, and they're not going to make headway by doing anything but. I understand that Penny Arcade recently had a rant about this very same topic, and they contacted Microsoft about it (how nice to have those kind of connections!). It sounds like nothing came of it, and I'm not that surprised. Maybe their misguided masters want us to buy a Gold XBL account for everybody in the house; it's the kind of thinking that can only come from a corporation stupid enough to think they could charge money for the service on the computer in the first place.

I sincerely hope that Relic changes their mind and uses Steam for everything and not just content distribution in the near future. In the meantime, I've had to make a brand new GFWL account just so I can play with people and not get kicked off if somebody turns on the Xbox. Too bad I can't link them somehow so I can share friends.

My normal Tuesday night is usually spent shotgunning thousands of zombies in Left 4 Dead. However, yesterday was special as I had tickets to go see Streetlight Manifesto and Reel Big Fish, both of which were totally awesome, rad, tubluar, and lacking zombies. It was also awesome seeing my old friend Kristen again, who I have not seen in years. She lived really close to the venue that the concert was at so we just parked next to her apartment and all walked down there together. Sadly, Michigan decided to assault us with sub-zero temperatures that night, so it was a very cold, coatless walk.

The bathroom in this place was hilarious. Dirty in the way that only small venue that hosts numerous rock, punk, and ska bands can be, the rug squished when you walked on it. It also had a dude sitting in the corner selling various products like candy bars, condoms, baby wipes, and all kinds of other shit. It was like a slightly smellier version of 7-11, right in the venue bathroom. I bet that guy loves his job.

Anyway, it was a great time had by all, and I need to find me some Streetlight Manifesto CDs to listen to, as I sadly have none and that is a damn shame.

Well, nearly another year has passed us by. Hopefully everyone had a good Winter Solstice Day or whatever you celebrate.

Aside from doing the exchanging of gifts with my family, I also flew to Colorado and spent some time with Jrr. We spent the vast majority of our time playing video games and board games while our poor girlfriends whittled away the days by watching what sounded like nearly every Sex and the City episode ever made. (As an aside, I never really liked that show. The characters portray just about every trait I hate in various people, which makes it really hard to watch.) In other words, it was glorious.

Our mutual friend Turing brought over a bunch of board games for everyone to try out. Since there were so many new ones for me there, I figured I would give a quick review for the hell of it.

Arkham Horror: Not new to me or probably any of you, but an excellent, if hard, board game. I think it was one of the first board games to encourage cooperation instead of just trying to kill each other. If you have not played it, do it. You scramble around fighting various sanity-stealing horrors while trying to prevent the Lovecraftian elder god from waking and eating you. Usually ends badly, but is still fun.

Red November: A bunch of gnomes on board a sinking submarine trying to keep it from exploding or imploding or anything else disastrous until the rescue party can arrive. Plays like a simpler version of Arkham Horror, although I think something was lost in the translation. Was not as fun to me, although I won't guarantee we were playing the game right.

Mwahaha!: A board game about being an evil villain. It parodies the hell out of James Bond / Austin Powers type stories. It's mainly about you amassing materials to get your doomsday weapon powerful enough to threaten the world. Along the way you can threaten cities, states, or countries to collect ransom monies. Lots of (sometimes crude) humor and puns and I loved it.

Infernal Contraption: A fun little card / board game about some gremlin-type things making a crazy machine to destroy their enemies. You have a big pile of various parts that acts as both your "deck" and your health. You build your machine by drawing cards from this parts pile and placing them in your contraption where they fit. After you add parts to your machine each turn, you run it in a computer-program type way going from left to right. Since your parts pile is also your health, pretty much all cards involve swapping or stealing cards. Things can get out of hand pretty quick once machines get huge. Can be pretty fun.

I think we played more, but those were the ones that stand out in memory the most. For now, I'm just going to relax and enjoy my time off from work. I might even get some work done on the game if I can find a large enough crowbar to pry my girlfriend away from Dwarf Fortress. Why it requires my computer when she has a computer in the next room is beyond me.