zomg! cliffhanger :E

I changed the subscribe link to an RSS feed, depending on what browser your in will depend on how it reacts to clicking it

For those who don’t know what an RSS feed is, read this

I’ll have a new update for everything sorted tomorrow, everything that was meant to be done yesterday but wasn’t (“Quasar Elite” was shit, so shit I just went to bed rather than write about it) just thought I’d quickly fix the subscribe while it was in my mind

As for everyone currently on the subscribe list, I’ll be terminating subscriptions after this post. So you’ll all have to sign up to the feed. All e-mail’s will be wiped from the database within the next 5 minutes. Your details won’t be given out to internet pirates who might steal your identity, in line with the data protection act of meh meh meh and all that shit. Basically I’m pressing delete knowing that it goes away (Y)

Edit: Took less than a minute. I might finish the gaming section tomorrow too, add Dwarf Fortress into there me thinks

Edit #2: Updated VB, well, I moved the computer and lost it and resized the TV (Y)

Another one of my not a real post updates:

• My dreads have begun coming out. My scalp was proper bad so I deemed it better to take them out now before I did any lasting damage to them. Currently theres only the dreads at the back of my head still to come out then I’ll be back to normal and the hat will come out once again
• Lewis asked me where my RSS feed was last night, after struggling to find it, it then occured to me that RSS would be a whole lot better than the shit system I currently use with subscribing. Expect that to be changed within the next week
• Been to Manchester with Miss Jen to see Bill Bailey on tour as an anniversary present. I got her a Playdoh dog, felt like a right cheap bastard :E Had a great time and made me question why I’d never went to see anything like that before. Qube and Soph got tickets for the wrong day and ended getting seats right up at the front, wonder if they ever got a refund though
• That placeholder for Virtual Benny at the top is still pissing me off, I’ll update the picture so it takes into accound the changes in the living room. Then I might get around to doing the basic animations finally some day. I have 2 days off this week so I’ll set aside a day for it
• My mams house selling fell through, so it looks like she’ll still be there this christmas
• Kane and Lynch got released, great game but I have issues with the control system, specifically the flamboyant aiming using the right analog stick, seems very “swooshy” for lack of a better term. When you let go it kinda carries on a little bit which is annoying
• Mass Effect was also released, ain’t played it. Will probably borrow it when it gets traded in. Its got an alien lesbian sex scene in I hear (I was going to link but i had second thoughts lol) Don’t see many of them in games
• Fi lent me Spinal Tap. I’ll finally get to watch it later \o/
• Assassins Creed wasn’t as amazing as we were all lead to believe (Are many games these days?) a six hour experience with no multiplayer or replay value
• Call of Duty 4 is an exception to the above, amazing game, amazing multiplayer. Possibly my game of the year unless I could choose Dwarf Fortress. More games should do first person like this game

In bigger news, Guitar Hero 3 was released today, as such, we dressed up at work, although more than just me this time \o/ Heres everyone as follows:

• Group photo (Fiona, Me, Christine, Jamie, Richard)
• Fiona
• Me (Axel Steel in his Dimebar Darrell costume)
• Christine
• Richard (His own little rock creation)
• Jamie (Slash)

Another mainly gaming post, it has been a huge month in games. I’ve not been as well behaved as I wanted to be. Although I have resisted GH3 after finishing it at work Got paid today, £908. I was hoping for more but thats right, so that means I’m nearly there with getting out my money shitty from changing jobs. Gonna be a tight December and an even tighter January. But I’ll be there and out of it all soon enough ^_^ And no big game-age really after this. Then I can get saving for Leipzig

Simons just got here and hes got me another shadow picture. Hes given me a few actually, I’ll put them up later and link to them. Hes a constant source of them these days with his job

I’ll update this with a picture when we come back from Laser Quest or Quasar or whatever its called (Quasar Elite he says) and I’ll upload the shadow pictures

Can’t really be bothered with a big update here so I’ll just do a quick one:

• Uploaded pictures to the “Mobile Dump” gallery under November 2007
• Added a couple of pictures to the “Shadow” gallery with more to follow when I can be bothered uploading the pictures Simon took for me
• Re-done my MySpace profile after getting bored of the other one
• Nearly completed Call of Duty 4 (Had it since Tuesday) – The multiplayer is like an up to date Counterstrike crossed with Battlefield 2
• Made myself on the new Smackdown 2008, then decided I don’t really like it as much as previous ones despite being able to set tables on fire. Its became a kind of RPG/ Wrestling game now. Seems like a lot of hassle to just do a season now. Oh plus the computer keeps kicking my arse even on easy

I think that about covers everything, my attempt at playing the new Dwarf Fortress has ended with me spitting the dummy and giving up on digging underground and resorting to testing methods of above ground living. I’m currently mid construction of a Citadel like tower (By mid construction I’ve built it 4 levels high and dug 3 levels deep around it) to test its feasibility under normal operations. The actual tower would have to be a lot bigger than this, which is a bit off putting at the sheer amount of stones I’d need to construct this monolith, but the possibility of making a towering obsidian obelisk that can be seen from miles around is quite appealing just to make an attempt at one anyhow

Jen’s back up tomorrow, so I can finally wash my hair and sort my scalp out. Ordered more wax so I can properly look after them again. The itchings killing me atm like

I’ve gotten proper addicted to Heroes, I’m just about to watch episode 20. I can’t possibly type just how much I love this

That should do for now, I can’t be bothered with a picture today. But for the next post I’ll draw a crayon picture instead, hows that?

A new version of Dwarf Fortress was released ysterday, Canty heckled me into downloading it and setting it up. Unfortunatly old save games are not compatible with this new version so I can’t play my old world

Fortunatly though I copied all the old version into another folder so I can still play it but I’ll lose a lot of the new features such as a z axis (I can now actually bury coffins and make catacombs underneath my grand hall. It also opens some scope for creating traps in your entrance hall that drop creatures onto spikes \o/)

So I’m mid creating a new world now, in fact its finished, quite like the naming of this one too:

Zaludsil “The Future Plane”

Kinda funky and easier to remember than Llathodir whatever it was was

Anyhow I’m off to go start playing on this before I go, I am going to miss Bimkamuk (Horribly outdated picture) though. Put my heart and soul into that place these past couple of days. What am I going to do when I’m not worrying about poor Logem the Farmer who kept passing out for no reason at all? Or that dog called Reg that had a mangled lung for some reason Poor Reg

Edit: I don’t think I can stick with this new version. I’ve attempted near 6 fortresses, each one ending in a total failure because I can’t mine anywhere below ground because I just hit water, either that or water from above ground starts seeping in and floods my lower levels. This combined with one fortress where my dickhead miner dug a channel beneath himself, dropping himself into a slowly filling chamber. I tried getting him to dig a long tunnel away and a few more channels to drop the water down another level so it took longer to fill up and get him. My logic being this would buy him enough time to dig a few ramps up and hopefully out of the flooded chamber he’d got himself stranded in

I made it my mission to try save him by digging everywhere until I could find a safe route down that wouldn’t further flood his ever more flooded chamber. Unfortunatly, due to a communication error, he accidently made a ramp going down instead of up and got himself stuck in a flow of water that he couldn’t get himself out of and he drowned. He was called M”rul Zulbanaran, god bless his little dwarven soul

A rescue attempt (My attempt at redeeming myself for cocking up) also ended in another miner drowning through his own stupidity of burrowing into the bottom of a lake. The rush of water pushed both his body and the other guys far beyond the reach of my other unexperienced miners so it was pointless trying. Needless to say I’ve shut it down in a mood and gone to make stew and dumplings to make myself feel better. I think I might just go back to Bimkamuk and revel in my skills in just the one level

Where’ve I been? I’ll tell you. Engrossed in the world of Lathonnitom Kodor, Bimkamuk to be precise

Dwarf Fortress is possibly THE most detailed game I’ve ever come across. If its something with decent graphics you want then steer clear, this game is in ASCII, its made up entirely of characters that you can type. Theres a tileset (Dystopian Rhetoric’s) you can get for it that makes it a bit easier on the eyes which I highly recommend (Overlooking the obsurd resolution it has to run at – 1260 x 400)

The game firstly creates a world for you to play in, nobody would be able to play in my world (L. Kodor) unless I sent it to them. It then populates it with people and tribes and creates that worlds history, great figures who have done things, glorious civilizations and their down falls, everything. Then it lets you go into that world. Bearing in mind each fortress you leave behind, every adventurer that dies, will leave its mark on the world and will be remembered. You might be playing as an adventurer and stumble across one of your old fortresses, items still intact inside

Each dwarf is but a little smiley face jumping around the screen doing whatever it wants. But beyond that little smiley face is a plethora of stats relating to individual skills at certain tasks (Wrestling, cooking, fishing, carpentry, etc) and a collection of body parts (Head, left arm, upper body) as well as vital organs. These can all get damaged in a fight, and if a dwarf loses its leg, its not going to be able to walk very fast, thats if it survives the bleeding or indeed the fight itself. Then through another menu you can read their thoughts recently and see what they’re not happy about or if they’re in agony with said bleeding severed leg

On many occasions I’ve had a starving dwarf goe insane and kill people, in fact the first time so many people were starving to death that my carpenter that was making coffins to bury them in went crazy himself and went to stab the rest of his dwarven kind to death in their beds before turning his chisel on himself in the hallway outside. I’ve yet to stumble across this old fortress, gotta spend some time looking for it later on come to think of it

Dwarf Fortress comes with 3 modes of play:

• Dwarf Fortress – Start at the side of a mountain with 7 dwarves and carve out the fortress however you like. Catering for your dwarves and their needs, preparing for winter when you start getting immigrants to help you out. There isn’t really more to it than that until you start getting some nobles involved who give you better control over everyone
• Reclaim Fortress – Take a group of dwarves armed however you like to the entrance of one of your old fortresses to reclaim it, fending off the monsters and starting use of it once more
• Adventurer – Currently I haven’t played much of this, Canty told me it wasn’t much cop and more of a tech demo. Basically it just drops you in a town with a created character and leaves you to do what you want. You can search for people to give you quests, you can walk around wrestling cats and punching them in the face, you can grab a dog by the leg and in the meantime be holding some childs ear and pinching it. In fairness, I spend most of my time in this mode dead. I quickly get over run by people as I’m trying to break all their bones and choke them to death to get experience to level up

I mentioned wrestling, this is perhaps one of the most detailed parts of this. A quick search through the list of actions shows you all the body parts you can wrestle with. Even down to every toe and finger, ears and nose. You grab wrists and put them in a lock with the intention of breaking it, making them drop whatever weapon they’re holding. Breaking their legs or hips causes them to fall over. Inflicting enough pain will make them pass out. Punching them hard in the head will make them be sick

Its just incredible how much there is to this, I haven’t even scratched the surface of the game yet and its just engulfing me. All this and the game is free. Programmed by a couple of brothers in a bedroom somewhere. Like the good old days

In other real life news, I’ve got dreads these days. Courtesy of Jen’s hard work and putting up with my whinging and shouting at her pulling at my hair. I’m back at Gamestation (Quite sure I’ve already wrote about that but can’t be arsed going to check) I’ve got no money, Gamestation didn’t pay me my overtime and Ladbrokes only paid me £130 on top so I started the month at -£550 and got paid overall less than £400. Which isn’t even enough to cover the basic bills this month. So I’m right stuck. My boss at Gamestation said he’d lend me something if I needed it so I think I’ll have to put out the bat signal for him

Anyhow I’ve spent too long typing on this, I’m going to go wrestle a horse and watch it bleed ^_^ It’ll make me happy. You know I’ll even draw a picture for this

Oh yeah and I’ve added pictures to this months gallery