Questing

Happy Thursday!  I've got a headache and I'm real sleepy and tomorrow is Friday so this will be short.

Carolyn got Borderlands 2, right?  It's just like the first one only it's huge and you don't know where anything is and there's slot machines and the cars are better and the multiplayer is better and the baby spiderants run away from you which is adorable.  I'm playing as Maya and Carolyn is Axton, and our action skills are highly complementary.  I finally got to add some fire damage to mine today, which is basically all I ever wanted.

Borderlands is cool because it's a little bit of everything that's great.  It's a first person shooter that's also an RPG with stats and levels and skill trees and loot and upgrades and quest objectives and exploring.  Also something that's really standing out with this sequel is that it's chock full of nerdy allusions.  Last time we had to track down some aviators and burn their volleyball net.  Today we had to deliver some pizza to the sewers and fight some mutant ninjas.  One of Maya's outfits is called "Rose Tailor."

The thing with the quest system, though, is that you have certain characters who need you to do certain things for them in order to progress the story, get from town to town, and unlock pieces of the world.  Then there are people who just want you do go burn down volleyball nets.  Sometimes you have to finish a story quest in order to unlock a character who then will give you more story quests AND more side quests.  The benefit of doing sidequests is the additional experience and money and loot and the good time it will be.

The thing is, when you get right down to it, this is the mechanism that I'm trying to capture in my own RPG hybrid game.  Like, every part of it.  The first person you meet makes not only the a Skyrim reference, but a classic Zelda one as well.  But more importantly, you as a player actually have no interaction with the in-game characters outside of the scripted quest dialogue.  There's no Dungeon Master role playing along with you.  Your input in the story basically boils down to do you want to do this mission now or later? and you are given the outcome based on your successful completion of it. 

I think this is sounding like a bad thing, but all I mean is that's how it has to be, when your quests and NPCs and general world information is necessarily constrained to text on cards delivered in a certain order.  I'm just saying I think Borderlands is my precedent for implementing this system.

That being said, maybe I should add some sort of bounty board system, where you can go and pick up side quests without having to wait for them to come to you (through random draws of an exploration deck, which is the mechanic in place at the moment). 

Where was I?  Oh yes, I was going to sleep.

-Steph

Now What?

Happy Thursday!  I'm not kidding you this time, after this I'm going to sleep.  It's been one of those weeks where you've been waiting for Friday afternoon since Monday morning and it just ain't comin soon enough.

I was antsy a) because of not going to sleep early enough like always and b) because of being ready to take my N+ test and not being able to take it for another couple of days. 

I don't know if this is an experience you can relate to, but can you imagine a block of eight hours ahead of you where your one goal is to prepare for a thing?  And then you test yourself and go through all the study materials and you think, hey, this ain't no big thang.  And then you have another two eight hours ahead of you where you're still expected to keep on keeping on?  It's deadening.

It was a technical issue that kept me from my goal, so there was nothing to do but sit down and stare at the internet and read whole articles about WAN technologies and routing protocols and CIDR/VLSM and so on and so forth all the while knowing that reading each word wasn't exactly a waste of time, but there sure as heck were other topics out there just waiting to be seen for the first time.

I got yelled at again for not taking at least a half hour on the test.  I swear I tried.  You just can't slow down perfection.

Haha, which isn't to say that I know every networking concept like a champ, I just was super ready for that test.  I'll have the time to iron out the fine details on the job.  But I've spent a month of eight hour days just packing in this info, and I don't know what I would do if I had to spend another day looking at this same old stuff.

 Pretty sure I'll go for the Security+ next, since that seems what people do, and because I took a practice test for it and scored around a 70%.  I could swing a 30%, just give me a couple of weeks.

I think anybody could learn anything if they just sat down all day and studied.  Sure I read a few books on the subject before I started "studying" but after flipping through some relevant chapters just about all of my study material came from the internet.  Practice tests helped me nail down areas that I was less familiar with, and then I went and systematically looked them up.  Some more practice tests and then I looked up about 80% of that again, and again, until I didn't have to look up any more things in particular.  Can you imagine if I could put this effort into like, another language?  I think I could learn anything.

So Security+ and hands-on "interning" on campus, let some of this stuff sink in.  Time to move on from book larnin and get some practical experience.  I will own this.

Also Happy Birthday Dad!  Let's do a puzzle!

Next week: look forward to my not shutting up about Borderlands 2~

-Steph!

Thursday again?!

Happy Thursday!  Today I came home and the first thing I did was go to sleep for an hour.  It was the best, but also terrible because now I'm not going to get any good sleep tonight.  Naps, man.  Double edged pillow.

But I really do feel like I was only writing last week's blog like yesterday.  What happened this week?  There was a new Doctor Who, I made curry, I'm watching some training videos all day at school, and I'm still writing my game.  I went to Carolyn's and installed a new graphics card.  Played LoL.  Yep.  Preeetty epic.

I watched a really slow car chase on the news, and the guy finally parked in an alley and ran away!  Good job, bro. 

Over the past few days we've had really hot moments, rain, and heavy fog.  Not in that order.  It's supposed to be in the 80s the rest of the week, too, so that's September for ya.  I put the weather gadgets on my desktop at school, and Tokyo's been having really hot thunderstorms, while Moscow has been clear and nice and warmer than rainy Cardiff.

We're going to the LA County fair this weekend, because the Tardis is there.  (last year the cake was a lie, remember?)  It'll probably be scorching.  Or snowing.

What all have you been up to?

-Steph

Thursy

Happy Thursday!  It's a sleepy sort of day, isn't it?  Or is it just me.  Then again, most days are sleepy to me.  I'm going to bed in 20 minutes, I promise!

My game's still coming along, although progress has slowed right on down.  Lazy me.  But also the new season of Doctor Who premiered over the weekend and sort of shuttered out any other hobby or interest.  It was a pretty disappointing episode, as far as season starters go.  I mean, I laughed, I cried, and then I got mad about all the plot inconsistencies and senseless character developments. 

I mean.  If a marriage-ending issue could be sorted out with one brief conversation, I think that conversation would have been had already.  And don't get me started on the dalek. 

Doctor Who, everyone!  You should watch it!!

Today in class while I was reinstalling Windows, I listened to a BBC radio production of Slaughterhouse Five.  It was good!  That's a book I need to read again, as well.  I don't know how much I was into time travel or this sort of thing before/as I read it (must have been summer reading before ... 11th grade.  I wrote a paper on it for Cotsis.), but listening to it I was all "yeah! yeah! that's how time is!"  And it wasn't even like I needed convincing or had to figure out what he was talking about.  I genuinely believe that every moment of time ever just IS, like pages in a book.  In our lives, we may be in chapter four, chapter eight, whatever, but someone who has the finished book can look back at any chapter and know precisely what has happened and what is to come. 

Because, if you look at history, if you look at yesterday, even, you know it rained and then it got muggy.  But you don't know if tomorrow it's going to rain or be muggy or be hot or snow.  But the day after, you will know, because you lived through it.  So right now, our "future" is just a future you's past.  There's only one way that things happen(ed).

I think that this viewpoint gets people in a huff when they start about free will or whatever.  Well yes.  Think about any book you've read.  Characters are making choices right and left, because they don't know what's going to happen to them in the next chapter.  But it doesn't mean that you can't go back to page 626 and read about them making the same decision at the same time for the same reasons.  That page will always be the same.  But since we experience time in the manner that we do, we tend to think about it linearly as well. 

Okay, man, I didn't mean to get this all sci-fi meta on you.  It's too late at night for that.  Next time let's discuss deja vue.  In the meantime, watch 12 Monkeys.  Okay break.

-Steph