RPG Articles

So, there’s this 72 Honda CB350 Aaron picked up while still living in Phoenix. It’s in good shape and all, but having set for so long now, there’s gonna be issues on top of whatever it had in the first place. Parts seem to be a real challenge to find. Part of this is that I no longer live in Bartertown, but a lot of it is because it’s really old.

Now, here’s what I wanted to share, I found this forum called Honda Twins, which includes a classifieds section. So I decided to search for CB350 parts on it. Turns out phpBB must do some sort of word counting and told me, get this, that CB350 was too common a word to search by.

Way to go ass monkeys.

It’s boring AND pointless, even beyond the norms of most MMO games. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison, since this isn’t a game in any way.

Imagine, if you will, that Yahoo’s dubious groups were vomited into a 3d… presentation I guess since it isn’t a game and realm sounds way too grandiose.

Why the hell must everything be patented? Seriously look at this crap from Apple. Does that warrant a patent? No. The whole “stick a clock radio in it” approach to patents has always been ridiculous, and while this isn’t quite that bad, it’s still just gluing technology A to technology B.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’d hate to see something like Openmoko, or any other project private or corporate, be stymied when it comes to using solar cells just because another company got a bug up its collective butt to patent a general concept.

$75? Are you fucking stupid? Your original, totally unthought out plan of $100 didn’t work, at all, resulting in a price doubling and zero distribution. Now you’re adding a touchscreen and think you can sell it for $75. Maybe with a lot of grant money, and I mean a lot. Frankly, you aren’t worth it.

The Sugar UI is a joke. Rather than reinvent the wheel using bricks, why not use one of the MANY lightweight UIs already available for linux? But no, you go to gobble MicroSoft’s limp member.

It’s a good cause and all, but it just isn’t something you can realistically do right now, at least that’s the impression I get. Want to really get schoolkids across the world on computers? Maybe think about building computer labs, and getting teachers. Desktops are dirt cheap, and if you run them as thin clients they can be even cheaper. Not $75, for sure, but it also won’t be some backwater interface trading in usability for some bullshit indy cred.

Aaron suggested I try Second Life, for some reason that I can’t clearly recall. Since I’ve done nothing but rag on it, I figured, ok, fine, let’s be fair here and actually try it.

Now I’m sitting here, looking at the avatar selection menu, and all I can suspect is that Aaron wants to observe my brain herniating. I should point out to him that when I die, I will undoubtedly be sitting on his furniture when I lose control of my bladder and bowels.

Seriously though, these avatars? Wow.

At least, that’s what AMD thinks. Fucking tools.

This is supposed to lead to a renewal of PC gaming huh? A sticker? A tag that translates into “hey, I’m amongst the most expensive computers on the market!”? The only thing that’ll revive the general PC games market are good games. Not just pretty games, but good ones that run on low to moderate hardware. Really, companies should also cut stores out of the chain too, and switch to an all online distribution system.

Don’t start bitching about “what if I don’t have the internet?!” because these are games, you see, not production server solutions that might have a need to be sequestered. If you’re too poor to get the internet, maybe you should skip that game too, and if you don’t want the internet, chances are good that you aren’t in the gaming demographic. Know what I mean?

Why all online though? Primarily to skip the cost of pumping out and distributing physical media. Hey, it’s even eco-friendlier! There’s also user convenience, cross marketing of other products, and so on to consider. A client/account based setup would work well, ala Steam, and could make use of bit torrent transparently within the client, offloading bandwidth. Steam may even do that, but honestly I don’t know. Point is, it’s a win all the way around as far as I can see.

Some games for linux would also be good. It’s not like the tools aren’t there.

So, I’ve been playing with JME (Java Monkey Engine) and Irrlicht. Both are game engines, both are open source, both are pretty awesome. I’m pretty well sold on using just Irrlicht though. Partially because java frustrates me, but mostly because the documentation for Irrlicht is, so far, quite a good deal better.

JME is great, and if you want to make games in java, then it really is a fantastic choice. Be good with java first though. I’m only marginal with C/C++, however, and Irrlicht has still been very accessible to me.

We’ll see though. There’s several other options I want to explore.

I never thought I’d look at C/C++ and go “Why, there’s a perfectly sensible way to organize programming concepts and execute class handling.” but here we are.

Way to go java. You suck so hard I’ve gone back to C.

Ok, now, to be fair, there’s some nice stuff about java. But it’s far too…. assmangled?…. to put up with. Everything that could be a pain in the ass in it is, and a few things you never thought could be a pain in the ass are made into pains just to surprise you.

Now then. Eclipse? You listening? Why the fuck are all your nifty auto-complete features for java seem to be completely absent for C? Seriously dude, not cool.

So, I’ve started reading this, in between reading all of the Bond books. It’s from the early 50’s, which is important to keep in mind when reading it.

I’m only a short ways in, through the first tale and into the second. The thesis this is written under is similar to a lot of stories I’ve read from that period, with the addition of sentient dogs. Really they aren’t even an addition, since I don’t get the impression you interact with them in the slightest. So, the basic thought pattern, thus far, is that technology, specifically personal aircraft and cheap, clean (hah!), nuclear power have made cities obsolete. Everyone moves to the country, with incentives from the government, in order to make nuclear war “impractical”. You have to let these statements slide, because duh, the 50’s. This sort of naivety is rampant in sci-fi of the time. No, I don’t know why anyone thought a dominant species with increasing birth rates and longevity would be able to spread out with 10 to 100 acres to a family.

Still, it got me thinking. I’ve come up with nothing new, but it did remind me of other things I’ve read, which seem to hold true enough to be what gave me pause at Simak’s assertions about people, as a whole, wanting to live in a country scene. To make a gross generalization of my own, there’s effectively two types of people, those that chafe psychologically at close contact with others, and those that thrive in it. It’s held true throughout our development where a segment of a population decides “fuck it, I’m outta here”, and they wander to some obscure part of the world, generating a new frontier. After them come people that aren’t really sure about this frontier stuff, but see a profit to be made from trading with the crazy people. From there you have a steady influx of support structures and people that are more and more the city type, until bam, you have a city, or at least a concentrated group of humans. By this point the wandering folks are old, and settle into a rural community to farm, mine, ranch, or whatever with their families. Eventually it gets to be too much for some of the people there, and off they go again, to make new frontiers.

There’s always some justification, like gold, beaver pelts, or whatever, but I really think it’s just a genetic impulse, driving them from groups of people and into new territories. It’s a good life strategy, because it helps maximize our diversity and strengths. You have a few people that go out, get strange diseases, killed by strange animals, or die off from other inhospitable conditions, and then the survivors eventually breed back into the main line. Misfits always drive evolution. Errors that turn up uniquely useful.

Ok, so this isn’t really a review of the book, but rather some meandering thoughts I had. So far there’s little to distinguish this from other books of the time, except for a really idealized version of dogs. Apparently the author never saw packs of dogs running around, forgetting the civillity we train them into. I like dogs, a lot, but the idea that they wouldn’t fight or make wars, given the capability, is pretty thin. Nibbler once ran around stabbing the walls with a knife she stole from an open dishwasher, and really it was just a matter of time before that went bad, know what I mean?

PS- I’m not a fan of the latest layout of WordPress’ article writer panel.