Vegetarians

"That chilli-con-carne smells nice."
"You can have the chilli or the beef lasagna."
"...does the chilli have meat in it?"
"No, it's the vegetarian dish."
"Ugh, I'm not having any of that. Give me the lasagna."

This exchange took place at lunch time the other day. It's that sort of "avoid vegetarian food if you're not a vegetarian" thinking that really grinds my gears.

Why is it that many non-vegetarians (let's call them omnivarians for simplicity) refuse to eat vegetarian meals? Vegetarians are the ones with a limited choice, not omnivarians! If you're an omnivarian, it means that you still have a choice. You can eat meat or vegetarian meals. You don't have to be stuck with just meat.

Honestly, you don't suddenly turn into a vegetarian if you mistake a quorn burger for a beefburger. Vegetarian food is safe to eat. It doesn't even taste bad.

While I may have entertained vegetarianism at some point during my teenage years, I am now back to omnivarianism. But if a Linda McCartney pie is cheaper than a chicken-and-mushroom pie, I know which one I'm going to buy. Spoilers: not the expensive one.

I also don't understand this idea of meat being more "fun". Who thought of that? What is more fun about it?

In the long run, we may all end up being vegetarians anyway. The Earth's population is increasing rapidly; without a way to clone or vat-grow meat, we will run out of space to grow livestock. Animals take up a lot more room, and you have to grow food for them as well. In the end, it will be far more efficient and economical to grow fields of crops rather than keep animals.

Hard to Play

I finally got paid for the DIY website. Hurrah. So I've got myself the Penumbra Collector's Pack which includes the first game, Overture, the sequel, Black Plague, and its expansion pack, Requiem.

I'm also thinking about getting some wooden wasters, but that can wait until the end of the month. Training with a regular sword is one thing, but fighting phantoms doesn't prepare you for a real opponent.

Penumbra was difficult to pick up and start playing. Why? Because the demo already gave me the creeps and I know that there is far worse waiting for me with the full version. I've already been scared witless by that damned hellhound or whatever it is. The game's mechanics make for a very spooky atmosphere. Doors don't just open and close; you open them by grabbing them with the mouse and manipulating them like you would in real life. This means that I often find myself opening doors inch by inch because I'm petrified of what might be behind them.

I've done some more drawings for the webcomic-in-limbo. I've always thought that if I was ever going to write/illustrate a webcomic, that I'd make one or three strips in advance so that I could take it easy some weeks or just have something up my sleeve in case I got delayed on the latest batch of drawings.

Part of my hesitation in drawing the comic is that colouring them in requires a long time sat in front of my computer. I already do that all day at work, and I already play games, browse the 'net, and write up any RPG stuff on my PC when I get home... that's a lot of time in front of a monitor already.

So, to get away from the screen, I went for another walk on Saturday. This time near Netherfield. The woods there weren't as large as I had thought they might be, but maps suggest much larger woodland nearby, so next weekend maybe I'll try one of the neighbouring forests. I did see a buck, however; antlers and all. It stood proud and alert for a moment before bounding into the undergrowth.

I'm sure it's all the grimdark drawing I've been doing, but my mind keeps wandering back to Dark Heresy again. I don't have any players, however, and if I'm drawing this webcomic then I doubt I'll have much in the way of free time to prepare and GM any role playing games any time soon.

The Goddamn Batman

Batman: Arkham Asylum. Pretty cool.

I got it on the weekend thanks to STEAM. It would have been five pounds cheaper to get it on Amazon UK or Play.com, but to avoid as much of EA's DRM as possible and to avoid collecting any more computer game DVD cases, I thought I'd go for an electronic copy that will last for much longer than a CD with a limited number of installs.

There is something very satisfying about silently laying the smackdown on half a dozen armed thugs without any of them knowing... then letting the last gangster find all his buddies strung up from gargoyles or lying unconscious in twitching heaps.

Which is where the psychology factor comes into play. Using the "Detective Mode", you can (among other things) measure the heart rate and psychological condition of anyone in the area. A guard walking around without being threatened will be "Calm". A thug who finds one of his comrades dangling upside-down from the rafters will become more cautious and careful until, once he has seen enough fear-evoking scenes, he becomes "Terrified" and will start jumping at every little noise or shadow. If he actually sees Batman while in this state, he is more likely to cower and flee than to fight.

The combat is good too. You can take out almost any number of regular thugs without much of a problem if you keep your head. The challenge appears a) when you are trying to get a massive combo multiplier, or b) when you're facing enemies armed with weapons (stun batons, knives, guns, etc.) Sometimes your fights are really mixed up. You'll face some regular thugs, some armed henchmen, and then some extra-powerful enemy like Bane. Then there'll be a gun locker on the wall that you'll want to keep your enemies away from so that they don't equip themselves with firearms.

So even though the combat and the henchmen elimination both seem simple to begin with, the difficulty ramps up as the game goes on; by the end of it all, you really have to think on your feet to survive some of the challenges the game throws at you.

There is a healthy supply of secrets and collectibles too. They're not just there for boasting rights either. After all that, you've still got the Challenge Modes to work your way through before you've completed the game entirely.

There wasn't anything I didn't really like. My "spacebar thumb" got a little sore after a while; and I would have preferred a normal camera during the final boss battle instead of the static one you have to work with. All in all, though, the game was very enjoyable. It is well-paced, gives you plenty of time to explore, and provides a variety of ever-more-challenging encounters and puzzles.

It's more than worth giving a go. I'd almost go as far as saying it's very much like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time... but that sort of comparison is reserved only for very special games I think.

Light and Dark

I read the Watchmen graphic novel when I was a teenager. Either just before, or during, my time at college. I don't think I appreciated the story and the underlying messages as much as I could/should have done, but I thought it was pretty ground-breaking anyway. It's a big book; twelve in-depth comics rolled into one thick publication. So I think I may have only read it once or twice before it had to go back to the library.

I didn't see the film at the cinema because I expected another Spiderman, The Hulk, or Daredevil disappointment. I didn't even watch the trailer, it just blew by me and I hardly noticed.

But I have since seen Watchmen on DVD. It's difficult to put my opinion into words. Fans were initially worried that the film would stray too far from the source material; but since Watchmen's release, some critics have slated it for being too close to the graphic novel. It's almost like Marmite in that people either love it to bits or hate it with a zeal.

It's a very good film. The Watchmen comic was a very good graphic novel. Does that make the film a very good Watchmen film? It's really hard to say. If I had never read the graphic novel, I might have thought that the DVD was a waste of money. Since I don't think that way, I guess I must have liked it.

It is always going to be difficult to translate something like Watchmen from one medium to another. I would definitely recommend the Watchmen film to my friends, but I might recommend that they read the comic book first.

I suppose I'm being unclear and my message will doubtlessly come across as ambiguous. So, let's forego depth and detail; let's just arbitrarily assign it a universal value of 9/10.

Why not 10/10? It was a little too much of a punter puller for me. Graphic novels like Watchmen are not all sex and violence put out there to get as many copies sold as possible. The publisher will want to sell a lot of copies, but they're directed at a specific audience. Films are generally aimed at a larger audience that prefers immediate gratification, rather than something deep that makes them think about uncomfortable concepts.

I didn't think that I'd go on about Watchmen for that long, I guess Batman: Arkham Asylum will have to wait until the next post. In case you're wondering already: it's pretty damned cool.

On Saturday I went for a walk in a wood I've visited before. As usual, I was seeking solitude, quiet, and fresh air. It was all there, as usual. There is still traffic on the edge of hearing, but it's far enough away that, for the most part, you can ignore it.

There are a lot of very tall trees in this wood, and the wind was very calm. Everything was ever-so still. I took a few minutes to just stop and take in the tranquillity. After a short while, I just sat down in the middle of a forking path to relax properly. Of course, just when I was really getting into it, I heard a voice behind me - back up the path. A woman walking two (very large) dogs.

I wouldn't have minded so much, but she couldn't keep the dogs under control and when they go within ten feet of me they started barking and straining on the leads. Then I saw the confused, perhaps even fearful, look on her face. What? You've never seen a guy just kneeling in the middle of a wood, trying to enjoy the peace and quiet? Obviously not.

It was that uncomfortable look of someone presented with something they are uncomfortable thinking about. It said: Why would someone sit in the middle of the path? That's not what people normally do. This person is unpredictable. What will he do next? So I said good morning and made myself scarce; taking a path through the trees rather than on the beaten trail.

Whether my assumption of the dog-walker's mindset was accurate or not, I dislike that narrow-minded ignorance and I ended up dwelling on it for quite a while as I looked for a way through the undergrowth.

I encountered the dog-walker again that morning, not long after, as I rejoined the path. That must have been a bit strange. Then more people picking blackberries (although they were much friendlier). And finally, after half-heartedly chasing a foal to see where it was going, I met an awkward individual, decked out in a helmet and reflective jacket, riding a horse. I thought Screw this, the peace and quiet left these woods an hour ago, and made my way back to where I'd parked my bike.

I spent some time drawing over the weekend, but not enough to finish the strip I was working on. It's quite a big one and I don't want to start colouring it before I've finished all the pencils.

Dark Recesses

I still haven't been paid for that website. Maybe the cheque is waiting for me back home.

At work the Senior Leadership Team are making noises about transferring all the authority over the school website to me. Currently the guy who build the website still holds the FTP passwords and all that, so major changes have to go through him. I can make minor alterations and additions to the website thanks to some content generator pages he made; they were originally implemented so that any member of staff could edit their department's page. Of course, staff just come to me to get things changed.

If I do get all the administrative rights to the website, I might end up redesigning it. I've never worked with .ASP webpages before, and that's what my maybe-predecessor has used. I'd redesign the site itself, take away the content generator (since no one except me uses it), and probably have a mental breakdown, but be left with something I'd be more confident with.

The considerations I have to apply, though, are a) that's a hell of a lot of work, and they're probably not going to pay me; especially since the whole matter of transferring authority arose because they don't want to pay a bill for changing the colour scheme. And b) my successor (when I get out of this dead-end job) will have to know what he's doing (i.e. be fluent, or at least passable, in HTML and CSS... maybe even JavaScript if I keep learning it).

Right now I don't even want to think about building a website of that size.

Ever played Penumbra: Overture? The demo was pretty damned tense. As a first-person thriller-horror-adventure-puzzle game it worked for me. I really don't understand anyone who thinks it can't be an adventure game if it's not a side-scroller (You can't get ye flask!). The same goes for the stuborn mules who refuse to see Morrowind or Deus Ex as an RPG because it's not isometric.

It's scary and, for the demo's short duration at least, fairly slow-paced. I watched the trailer and would like to see more. Just the trailer for the sequel, Penumbra: Black Plague, gave me shivers.

Then I tried the demo for Twin Sector. Urgh. I didn't even finish it. Perhaps the full game would be different, but it feels much more like an amateur mod than a professionally polished game. One very annoying element was the game's movement speed. Moving around the game world is slow, as if struggling against a current; it makes you feel as though you've constantly got the walk button held down or something.

The level design was abysmal. Some corridors don't even go anywhere! You walk down one branching path from a t-junction only to find yourself staring at an undecorated wall. Even worse was the inability to tell scale from a distance. Things are either too big or too small; nothing feels as though it is the right size.

Sometimes the scale changes when you aren't looking. A perfect example of this is when you're dropping down an elevator shaft in the demo. On the upper floor, the wall's texture ends and tiles at about seven feet, on the lower floor it tiles at four feet which means there is no way for you to judge distance until you land on your face at the bottom of the shaft.

For a game with a lot of gameplay involving jumping and falling, that's a major flaw. You can't even see your avatar's feet or body (except her ever-present hands, which gives me the impression she walks around like an undead monster in an old b-movie). I don't remember seeing my own shadow either. So a sense of scale was thrown out of the window.

The script seemed poorly written too. The voice actors I heard were pretty flat, and what little I saw of the main character didn't draw me into the story at all. She reminded me of April Ryan from Dreamfall.

Since I've downloaded demos for Batman: Arkham Asylum, Penumbra: Overture, and Twin Sector, I guess two out of three being pretty impressive isn't bad. Gives me something to think about if I want to get another electronic distraction to keep my entertained.

Webcomic Woes

For a while I've been tossing around the idea of starting a webcomic. Honestly, it's been something I'd like to achieve since I got a stable broadband connection. But it takes a lot of time and dedication to keep one going.

Plots and characters would help too. I've done a lot of drawings, and some of the more recent ones are pretty good. Not the world's best, and nothing on some of the stuff you can find on DeviantArt or other sites. The problem at the moment is just motivating myself to do it. And then keep doing it.

Maybe I just need to get into the flow of it. I'm really not sure. So last night I tried anyway. I had a fairly simple idea for a three-frame strip. Two of the frames' art were identical, only the text changed, so really I only had to draw two frames. After getting home, it took me all evening to do. It came out all right, although I think I could have done a better job with the colouring of the last frame.

The only problems with it are my problems.

• It takes up a great deal of time
• I find leaving a project half finished and picking it up later is often very difficult
• I might drop it if something more exciting rears its head
• What's with the flowers?
  

Currently the webcomic is supposed to be Warhammer 40k themed. That introduces it's own problems such as drawing vehicles and large buildings which aren't really my forte; and it requires a certain degree of accuracy because the setting is so well established. But I wonder if it will end up like my roleplaying campaigns: dead once I find something more interesting. Dungeons and Dragons didn't end well once I started getting excited about Dark Heresy (although you could blame that on the system); Dark Heresy dwindled once I discovered GURPS (although there were other contributing factors to consider - perhaps the same ones that have meant that I am not currently running any campaigns).

I don't expect to be able to throw out strips in a matter of minutes, but as an artistic friend once said: "suddenly spare time is rare, and drawing for half a day is... well, you have to get a lot out of it for it to be worthwhile." Sage wisdom right there people.

If, if, I manage to pull a webcomic out of my backside, then I will probably post it using a new blog. I'll put the address here when it's made, if it's made, but don't nobody hold their breath, you hear!?

Through the Night

I'm still enjoying Left 4 Dead. It's great stuff.

At first I thought it might have fallen prey to becoming too popular for its own good. Fortunately this is not the case; L4D's popularity is justified. I still haven't played Versus mode yet, but it's on my to-do list.

In fact, you can see my statistics right here thanks to STEAM's wonderful tracking systems. As of this moment, I've killed three-thousand-six-hundred-and-forty-nine zombies with Molotov Cocktails. If you ask me, it's pretty cool that Valve has supplied this sort of service. Not only is it interesting, but it allows you to be an elitist wanker when it comes to picking and choosing your team mates. Player1 has the Cr0wned achievement but Player2 doesn't? I know who I want covering me when the going gets tough.

Matt and I played the game through the night last weekend. It was half-intentional since I had messed up my sleeping pattern and had to power through to the next morning before hitting the pillow. We played one map on Expert difficulty for nine friggen hours on and off. The next time we played, we had to buddies to back us up instead of next-to-useless bots, and we completed the level on our first try.

I also really enjoyed the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo. The good mix of combat, stealth, adventure, exploration, and platforming has me thinking of the Sands of Time trilogy Prince of Persia games. I think they've gone for the "classic hero" Neutral Good sort of Batman rather than the gritty sort of Batman I preferred from the comic books. I didn't expect our caped crusader to be so ridiculously thugged out. Most of the villains are pretty hench too though, so I imagine it's a concept to match (or compete with!) the exaggerated styles that comic books present. That probably comes with other luggage.

I'm thinking about the future again. More news as it develops.

Wild, Wild Web

I've completed Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. It was an enjoyable game, although I played every available level as Ray to enjoy revolvers akimbo since using a bow and arrow, or knives, against rifle and shotgun wielding hombres didn't sound like a good idea to me. I should think I'll play it again as Thomas and try to find more secrets 'n' stuff.

It's certainly an enjoyable game, although there were a fair few niggling little details that annoyed me. First of all, the writer should have been shot and told to try again. The pivotal, climactic scene in which the brotherhood trio breaks apart was done so poorly I'm inclined to think that they rushed the entire scene because it was so near the end.

Secondly, the pacing was a little annoying. I like to take my time through most games; to explore the levels and find my own way around obstacles. I realise that cooperating with your brother (why is there no co-op mode?) is a central feature of the game, but when you're looking for secrets or trying to get a better view of the level ahead, the last thing you want is another character shouting whad're you waidin foar? and encouraging you to hurry up all the time.

Another thing about the cinematics: we're not playing with the technology of Tomb Raider 2 any more! Characters don't need to bob their heads, crane their necks, or randomly sway left and right to convey the idea that they're talking. You just need eye contact, a tiny bit of body movement, and some lip synch. But in Call of Juarez, character suddenly get very fidgety while speaking to one another.

I think there should also have been less screen-shake and blurring. If anything even remotely near you explodes, or if a bullet passes within half a meter of your character, your screen ends up rotated forty-five degrees one way, then they other, and you're unexpectedly looking at everything through beer goggles.

Was it worth playing? Yes. The annoyances above were distractions from an otherwise compelling game. Every time I told myself I'd save the game and do something else, I found myself playing for another half an hour. I've hardly tried the multiplayer side of the game, but from the outset it looks like one big snipe-fest since there's nothing stopping you from just picking up a hunting rifle and taking pot shots across the map at revolver-wielding opponents.

The graphics are top-notch. While the development team might have fallen a bit too much in love with depth of field blur, the models, props, and textures in the environment are startlingly good. I mean Crysis good. Not only that, but the game runs incredibly smoothly on my PC even with all of the graphical options turned up to eleven.

While I detest the blinging "top quality" guns, the weapons were balanced and varied enough that I didn't favour one sort of gun throughout the entire game. I could have done with a faster-firing but weaker version of the rifle, but oh well. The pistols were certainly the best thing on the menu, and the fact that there were at least six variations of sidearm made me choose a Sundance Kid approach to most situations.

The slow motion "concentration mode" from the original game has been preserved, albeit with a different trigger. You still get the slow-motion zoom of the bow, but revolver-based quick shooting now comes in three different flavours: you get the original twin-aiming system whenever you and your brother both decided to kick in a door simultaneously; as Ray you can line up a dozen targets for death within the space of a few seconds before unloading a hail of bullets on all of them; and as Thomas you are able to quickly fan the hammer of your gun and take out your assailants in record time.

The duel mode has also been much improved. Instead of a hit-or-miss game of dodgeball, you must now circle your opponent to keep him in view, constantly keeping an eye on your holsters to make sure your hands don't stray too far from your guns. When the bell rings, you use your mouse (or analogue stick I guess) to guide your fingers to your sixgun and blow your target away.

There were some annoying parts of the game, certainly; and they haven't really improved the horse riding to the levels of, say Gun, Shadow of the Colossus, or even Assassins Creed. But if you enjoy the wild west as a setting then I doubt you'd go far wrong with Bound in Blood. If you enjoyed the original Call of Juarez then it's a no-brainer. There is also no evil DRM included with the game, and you can play single player missions without the disc in your DVD drive. You only need your activation code to play online.

Brains & JavaScript

We had a go at the Survival mode of Left 4 Dead last night. Matt told me there would be more zombies than we had bullets. He wasn't far off. After several tries, we attained the bronze medal for surviving four minutes of wave after wave after wave of the infected. The silver medal is awarded for seven minutes' survival which was a torturous sixty seconds away from our end result. I have no idea how long you have to survive to attain a gold medal; probably ten minutes.

We're getting better as a team; we cover one another more effectively and, for the most part, come to one-another's aid more often. However, we're also getting a little cocky. When there's no zerg rush or special infected lurking around, we tend to just meander about with lots of space between us, putting pistol rounds in regular infected that haven't noticed us yet.

Another problem comes from when someone has to leave the game and we get landed with an AI Louis or Zoey who insists on startling every witch, shooting every car, and stealing every first aid kit they find. Yelling at an NPC just isn't the same as being able to verbally complain to someone who understands you.

Most irritating of all though, it's the people you don't know but decide to play with anyway. Some insist you've played through each chapter on extreme or they'll leave you high and dry. Others just run ahead, shooting lone infected with their shotgun and not paying attention to their team mates or the smoker that has grappled someone. And finally, there is the guy who somehow gets bored and decides to shoot his team mates.

Most players are okay though. There will always be one who is too cocky or cowardly for his own good. The "Friends Only" lobby option is a godsend (as long as you have enough friends online).

As for this website I am working on, I may have to implement some JavaScript in order to get the image gallery working. That means learning a new scripting language. Well, I say learning but I'm not going to learn the whole thing. JavaScript is more complicated than the other website languages I'm used to; it looks and behaves a lot more like C++ rather than HTML or CSS.

I'm still not anywhere near as interested in learning new programming languages as I was in my first year of college. Back then I would have leapt at a challenge like getting to grips with JavaScript. I was very excited to learn C++ in college, but somewhere along the line I lost that fire and haven't gone back to programming since; I doubt I could even write a "Hello World" application in C++ any more. We'll see if I manage to retain anything I learn about JavaScript after this website is done.

Spiderman

I've got a commission of sorts to create, or rather redesign, a website for someone. He paid what I would consider a lot of money for a very basic website and now wants something that looks a little snazzier.

If there's something I'm learning very quickly from this, it's that it doesn't matter what you, the web designer thinks: what matters is what the client wants. Even if they want a website design that you would never have as your own. I suppose everyone's tastes are different. Still, sometimes you can't help but think you want it to look like that!? aloud.

So apart from making websites, I've been up to this and that. Not too much. It was Nick's birthday the other day; we went bowling and ate delicious cake.

It seems that Nazi Zombies (as if zombies had any concept of political allegiance) is becoming a regular theme at Nick's place. This is due, in no small part, to Adam bringing the addiction over from Brighton. It's a very fun game, far better than the rest of Call of Duty, but very difficult to play on such a dark television. Give me a smaller, higher contrast and resolution monitor over a television any day.

As for my own gaming, which recently had dwindled; I played the demo of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. The original Juarez was pretty cool; I like the wild west as a setting and was disappointed that Red Dead Revolver never had a PC release. Anyway, the demo feels even more console-friendly than the original Juarez but it wasn't so bad that I felt like a chump for trying it on the PC. It was so enjoyable that I may end up getting the full game.

I'm also blasting my way through rotten hordes in Left 4 Dead. This will, of course, raise questions among certain people over which zombie shooting game I prefer: Left 4 Dead or Nazi Zombies.

At the moment I've got to say Left 4 Dead. The fact that we cannot play Nazi Zombies with more than two players without buying a third XBox360, controller, copy of the game, and the extra levels, is simply ridiculous. Two players can shoot zombies on one 360, or with two 360s you can have one player per XBox. You cannot have two players per XBox360 and have four players total. Oh no. EA, or Microsoft, or whoever would much prefer you to buy into the monthly paythroughthenose XBox Live! instead of sitting at home with two system linked consoles.

Left 4 Dead, however, allows me to play with up to eight of my friends online for free. At the moment it's an easy decision. If I had Nazi Zombies on the PC I might be more torn; but I'm not going to buy Call of Duty: World at War just for a mini game.