What's been going on.

As a part of my effort to update this blog more often, I bring you the following.

What I've Been Playing:
Well, school has started up again. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've decided to go back to school for my bachelor's degree. Add that to a full-time job, a toddler, and a list of chores and repairs that come with owning my own home, and it's a wonder I have time to play at all.
But this isn't a blog about why I'm not playing, it's about what I am playing. Lately I've been playing mainly Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Sims 3, and Minecraft.
First: Star Wars. Sometime recently I was clued into the problem with shadows in The Old Republic. In case you haven't heard, there is a huge performance hit if you have shadows on. I've heard that having shadows set to high does not have the same issue, but I can't confirm that. If you are experiencing lots of performance issues in Star Wars, make sure your shadows are set to "off". This was such an improvement that I can actually play the game on my laptop, though still only at the lowest settings.
So, I've been playing more Star Wars. My main when I played World of Warcraft was a Paladin tank. I really kinda liked tanking in WoW, though I was better at healing. So, for my first character in Star Wars I decided on a Jedi Knight, figuring I'd probably roll a Consular next. So far the storyline for the Jedi Knight hasn't been anything spectacular, it's nice but just about what I'd expect. I'm sticking to the Light Side, though, and I'm guessing that the story can be a lot different if you chose to focus on the Dark Side. I may chose to visit the Dark Side when I roll that Consular, but I just find it hard to justify a Dark Side healer.
As far as crew skills go, I chose to go with Cybertech, Scavenging, and Slicing. Cybertech allows me to create modifications that can be applied to most equipment that will accept modifications, which makes it kind of all-around useful. Later on I think it will also allow me to create earpieces and maybe some other gear. Cybertech suggests two compatible skills: Scavenging and Underworld Trading. The great thing about Scavenging is that a lot of times I get to loot droids for their spare parts. I decided to go with Slicing over Underworld Trading because it allows me to get cash which can be used to buy anything including the uncommon materials I need for my Cybertech.

Next: The Sims 3. While my previous rant about how Story progression needs to be fixed still stands, the addition of the ability to create a Young Again potion and the ability to give gifts to other sims does mitigate this to some degree. Given these factors, I finally decided to turn aging and story progression on in my game and start watching all of our friends grow old and move away. After all, I can always just add new copies from the tray later, right? We'll see what happens there. So my family is now aging and having kids, but none of that is going very fast. One funny thing, though was that when the first child was born I set the Sim lifespan to Epic, then I noticed that it had been several days and my baby still hadn't turned into a toddler. It turns out that on Epic setting, the baby stage lasts for 32 days. So I changed it back to Long, which reset my existing toddler's age to 1 day while Mom was pregnant with Baby 2, the end result being that Baby 1 is only 3 days older than Baby 2, such is life.

On to Minecraft. As I said in my last post, in Minecraft you have to make your own fun. The good thing about that is that I've been making a lot of it. I decided when I started that I wanted to do everything legitimately. The world is infinite, so if I run out of diamonds, I'll just have to go find some rather than hacking my save file or getting a mod that will generate whatever I want. I've also been looking at a lot of the machines that people have been building and I've started making some of my own. My current project is a monster spawner and killer that is taking a long time because I have to light up all of the places a monster could spawn to ensure they spawn in my machine. I'm hoping that my design will actually be able to trap slimes, but we'll have to see about that.

That's pretty much what's been going on the past week. I'm hoping to play some more Savage Worlds soon, so I can tell you all how that's going. If anybody wants to say Hi on Star Wars, I'm on the Hedarr Soongh server and my main is Haledar.

Good Gaming.

Happy New Year!

To all my readers, “Happy New Year.” This past year has been wild. Many new things have been going on in my life and the lives of my friends, but one thing has remained constant: gaming is still my number one pastime.

What I’ve Been Playing:
Since my last post I did manage to beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I liked it a lot, though the boss fights were frustrating. I thought the story was great and I was really interested to uncover some of the secrets of Jensen’s past. Unfortunately, those secrets are never really revealed beyond a bunch of hints. I was also disappointed with the endings. There are 4 different endings, and if you save after the last boss before you chose your ending, you can see them all in one play-through. I was hoping for some nice cinematics and some plot resolution; what I got was a collection of still images, some stock photos and some generated for the game, accompanied by a voice-over explaining what happened after the end of the game. Yawn. Nevertheless I still enjoyed the game and I jumped right back into it to try to get the platinum trophy before Kevin moved away. I didn’t make it, but I did get a few other trophies I’d missed.

A few months ago I mentioned that my group was planning on starting up a Savage Worlds supervillian game. We managed to get that started, but we’ve only had a few sessions so far. Look for more information on how that game is going in the near future.

I also said that we had found a couple who was trying to start a Rifts game. Unfortunately grad school and pregnancy got in the way, but hopefully we’ll be able to get together with them in the future.

Not surprisingly, I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since it came out. As I mentioned previously, my laptop isn’t exactly up to running Star Wars. It makes a good effort, but it just can’t handle it. Fortunately my wife’s laptop is a bit newer and manages the game a bit better. The side effect of this is that I have to borrow her computer to play Star Wars, which means that I haven’t been playing as much as I might have under other circumstances. Technical issues aside, I’m loving this game every bit as much as I did during my beta weekend. I managed to get my smuggler out of the bug I ran into in the beta and got to play around some with that class. Normally I’m okay with “glass cannon” classes, but the addition of the cover mechanic really detracts from it for me, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time as a smuggler for a while.

I also picked up Minecraft which is great if you can make your own fun, but doesn’t really have anything in the way of quests. And I’ve been playing a lot of The Sims 3 since I got the Ambitions and Generations expansions over the holidays. One thing I can definitely say is a technical achievement in The Sims 3 over The Sims 2 is that you can actually install the expansions out of order and they still work properly.

What I Have Planned:
The biggest thing I have planned right now is building a new computer that will be able to run Star Wars and Diablo III. It will be a while before I can actually do that, but I’m still planning on it.

The Playstation Vita is coming out on February 22nd. I’m still looking forward to it, but based on things I’ve heard from the Japanese release, I may wait for a few software patches, and maybe a hardware revision, before I buy it.

A while ago I had an idea for a con game using the Desolation system. I may still try to get that all planned out for Who’s Yer Con in March, but I’m guessing it’s going to get pushed off until later.

What I’m Looking Forward To:
Diablo III is still slated for a first quarter 2012 release, I’m looking forward to that. I’ve already pre-ordered the collector’s edition even though there is a distinct possibility that I won’t be able to play it until I get my new computer.

We have a local tabletop gaming convention here in Indianapolis called Who’s Yer Con (link above) that’s coming up in March. Maria and I are planning on going and are thinking of joining the Pathfinder Society and going to a couple of their games.

That’s pretty much what’s been going on. Lots of exciting stuff has happened and is on the way, so stay tuned.

Until next time,
Good Gaming!

How EA can fix Story Progression in The Sims 3

My last post was about Gen Con, and that was two weeks ago. The last couple of weeks have been pretty barren as far as gaming goes. I cancelled my World of Warcraft account again. I got a free month of Rift at Gen Con so I’ll probably check that out before too long. Then Star Wars: The Old Republic will be coming out some time this year and I’ll check that out too.

Mike and Kevin hadn’t seen Portal 2, so I played through that for them to watch. I love that game. The concept is smooth, the puzzles are well designed, and the writing is amazing. I love everything that comes out of Cave Johnson’s mouth. The replay value is a little sketchy. There were some rooms that took me forever to figure out the first time I did them, but once I’d figured out the solution it was really easy to remember the next time I played.

On the tabletop games front, I’m getting into a play-by-post Pathfinder game that is going to be following the Carrion Crowne adventure path. I’ve never done play-by-post before, but I’m excited to see how it goes. I’ll be playing a Halfling Paladin. I’m going to do my best to play a lawful-good paladin without being the giant d-bag that the class is known for. I’ll let you know how that goes.

On Monday I went to my friend Nicky’s place for her weekly game night. I played a game called 7 Wonders that I had heard good things about but hadn’t had the opportunity to play. I really liked this game. The sequence of play was very simple and after a few rounds we had it figured out, but the strategy is really involved. There are about six different ways to gain victory points and several of those involve the cards that the players on your left and right have played. I didn’t win either game that I played, but I had a great time anyway. Another group there was playing a game called Telestrations that also sounded like a lot of fun, but I couldn’t work in a game.

This brings me to the meat of the post. I’ve beenn playing The Sims 3 on my PC for a while. I’m trying an experiment this time. I’m making a family specifically so that they can make Ambrosia. Then I’m going to make them friends with all of the characters in the game that I’ve created to represent my friends. I plan on keeping my immediate circle of friends young, but allowing their children to grow naturally. I don’t know how well it will work, probably not at all, but that’s why it’s an experiment.

One thing that I’m somewhat disappointed about with The Sims 3 is the way they decided to handle Story Progression and Ageing. When the game launched you could turn Story Progression and Ageing on and off (seperately) for the entire town. Then they released a patch where they said that if you had directly played a household then Story Progression (and I think ageing as well) would be off while you were playing other households. Well, that didn’t work out apparently.

What I did in my experiment was I created my family and our circle of friends and placed them all in the game. I built each family’s house and played them long enough for everyone to get a job. Then I created my Ambrosia family and pretty much ignored the rest while I was working on their skills, confident that my sims would remain exactly as they were aside from relationship scores. Then I send one of the Ambrosia family to the house of my wife’s and my characters to make friends, only to discover that we had both aged to Elder and had children. I was unhappy with this and immediately turned story progression and ageing off for the entire town intending to delete the existing characters and replace them at a later date. I hope that works out the way I intend.

What I would really like to see, and EA can take this one for free, is for Ageing and Story progression to be able to be affected on a per-household basis. Just give me a little toggle when I’m on the Edit Town screen to flip those settings for each household as I see fit. I can’t imagine that it would really be that monumental a programming challenge. And if it’s not something that can conceivably be worked into a patch, at least work it into The Sims 4.

That's all I've got for now.
Good Gaming!