Broken Paper Shredder

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:49:43 GMT

Sooooooo an opportunity just opened up. Staying with my friend Andrew and paying rent there is probably the best opening ever so far. I dunno how much it's gonna cost yet but I guess I'll find out. At the very least, this is more time to work with. Hopefully. So I just need to relay this information.

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:16:41 GMT

My mind is annoying! It picked this song out to play on loop in my head. Soooooo I went and looked for it online to fill in all the many gaps.
http://www.last.fm/music/Santana/_/No+One+to+Depend+On

Anywaaaaaay.. I feel comfortable again knowing that I'll at least have some place to go even though it's looking like O-hi-o. Mmhmmm.

There is one possibility, but both he and I feel it's not going to work, so I'm not banking much hope in it.

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:29:58 GMT

I feel really disheartened right now. I'm not going to be able to afford staying in California, so I'm trying to make plans to leave for Ohio soon.

Timelimit is "out before 12th"

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:12:40 GMT

I estimate I have a little less than 20 days remaining before I must reconsider my original plans.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:48:47 GMT

I'm pretty sure that red fox Ashy might have at least a passing interest in this: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?FEATURE=1992&BHCP=1&GAME=334&bhjs=0

Hello Kitty!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:55:17 GMT

I like this song called Warrior Soul by Kiuas.

I dunno why! You can listen to it on this video thing here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9ELjN39MzE

The character is in a fighting game you may recognize. As far as tournament play goes, the Ganondorf character is considered Low Tier. This means that he is not only extremely difficult to play with, but in-practice other characters have an easier time defeating him in one on one combat. Despite that, he's probably one of my most favorite-est characters to choose from aside from Samus, whom is much higher up the list than Slowman-ondorf.

He's very slow, the evil guy, but he's got one of the most damaging movesets! And by slow, I mean after or during he attacks, he is left vulnerable before the attack's damage zone appears, making it easy for many characters to 'stuff' his moves, and after the attack launches, even if it hits, it is possible to hit him when the move's animation is on 'cooldown', a period of time where the player cannot make their character perform any actions until the animation ends.. There is usually a penalty for spamming moves with longer cooldowns than would appear with a hit and since many of his moves are slow, it's easy to miss, and he becomes easy to punish during his cooldown.. But he has evil manly appeal and he comes from the desert and hits like a tank crash!

So like the "Q" character from Street Fighter Third Strike, he is extremely difficult to play, is considered a poor character against many others but hits with fierce strength.. It's better to call him an 'advanced character'. c.c;

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:55:02 GMT

So I'm kind of just floating in limbo right now, trying to find my dad so I can move in with him. The number I found written by the telephone lead to no answers, so as an alternative I'm getting a friend local to this here place to look for apartments with me though he still needs to come here.

I'm not sure how long I'll be tolerated as a tenant, but I suppose I'll find out and am at the same time looking at getting a job and carpooling with one of those friends. So it seems to look not as bleak as I'd assumed at first and my mother knows about my situation and is willing to help since I've tried not to ask for any help ever and this looks like the first time I'm gonna need any.

One of the two friends has financial concerns over rooming up with us. I'm pretty sure that if all three of us roomed up together, it would be well below the maximum he'd pay rent for, so it should just be a matter of convincing him to go forward with us.

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 02:48:00 GMT

So. I'm moving out. To... Somewhere. I'm not sure yet. Either I'm going to go back home to my mother in Ohio, or I'm going to have to find somewhere in California to stay and it doesn't seem like that is much of a possibility.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:44:47 GMT

The cutest thing I've seen today!
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=kKHtEt_x6FI&feature=related

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:36:14 GMT

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/5383.html

Prototype. Xax would like this perhaps maybe.

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:51:17 GMT

The new Street Fighter 4 character "Crimson Viper" looks like something some of my friends might like. Sorta. Since she looks like a human version of several of our silly characters. c.c;

Some dominant looking woman wearing a suit with strange, almost Sigil-like hair.

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:13:33 GMT

How to be better than almost anyone, combat wise, in Quake Wars using anticipation instead of reaction: If you have radar support, you can actually use it by often glancing at the minimap in the upper right hand corner. Everyone but Infiltrator/CovOps whom are in-disguise will be indicated by a red triangle. Enemy assets will be revealed under the blanket as well. No exceptions. So, with radar support, it should be almost impossible to be taken by surprise. Ever. Most people don't look at it because it only consumes 1/6 or less of the screen.

I drew a lot. Then I didn't. Then I did and didn't and then I read lots of stuff. It is a calm season. I need to find a new job. This one is killing me.

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:19:19 GMT

Wow. Fired for writing a negative review. WoWoWOWOWoWowowowowow.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/50134

PS: Hi, Livejournal. How are you? I am going stir crazy working at my job. I'm gonna need to run around the city in circles to mitigate the pain of stale routine.

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:01:46 GMT

CRYSIS demo

I wasn't particularly impressed by it. The effects were nice. I ran it fairly smoothly (dipped into mid 20s for framerates) with 4x AA , 1024x768 AllHighSettings. The abilities were ok. The most interesting was Strength since you could bash the hell out of.. anything. Cloaking is far too powerful.

I was playing on "Delta" difficulty by the way, so even though I was doing things like cloaking, strength jumping and air-shotting people, there wasn't a great deal of trouble. I did die a few times, but it was only when I was being absolutely foolish and trying to melee kill everyone without toggling out of strength (speedrun, strength, whack).

I did do some silly things like. Drive a pickup truck and honk the horn, swap into the passenger seat and cloak. They never took the truck or even bothered to investigate the truck itself, so I dunno. The AI, to me, seems identical to Farcry's AI in practice. Especially considering you didn't have to run away in order to change your angle of attack, like in Farcry. Just cloak.

The game is interesting, but not particularly impressive. Maybe that'll change in the full version, but I don't expect this game to be very much different from Farcry other than.. a lot more gadgets and a Halo-inspired health system.. So it's all good, it's just.. Not great? Maybe I just need to play more and see what kind of crazy crap I can do on Delta difficulty. Like smash over a jeep in strength, cloak, grab a soldier, strength-throw him at other soldiers, armor and kill anyone else with dual pistols.

Dunno. Graphically, it's probably the most realistic game on the market, but so what?

TF2's impact on shooters will probably be larger than Crysis' potential anyway, and it capitalizes on being accessible with very low graphics requirements.

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:18:09 GMT

All is as well as it could be.

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:20:37 GMT

Obligatory Bioshock Review Ahoy.

This may or may not contain spoilers. I guess I'll make this really easy for myself and do it Gametrailers style, breaking it down into different categories and think about what those categories wholly entail.

There may be spoilers. Just don't read it if that bugs you.

Graphics
Gameplay
Story
Overall(Summary)

It's important to mention that a physical copy of the PC release does have SecureRom DRM on it. You are only allowed to install the game TWICE before the servers will lock you. You have two keys to expend. The only way to reload a key is by uninstalling the game.

EDIT: Increased to Five Installations.

I'm not sure where cracks are, but I'm confident you can find plenty of them to employ.

Graphics:

Okay. First off. Windows Vista is still a question for me because as an OS, its higher system overhead has been proven to interfere with system performance for gamers when stacked up against Windows XP. The only reason to get it is for DirectX10, which so far, has only been a last-minute tack-on feature for most popular games and as a result, ends up being unoptimized. Most systems suffer a performance hit that makes the game unplayable when running in DX10, unfortunately.

So, this is a review in DX9 graphics. On the PC version, you can force anti-aliasing! This makes the graphics feel more smooth and less grainy, less jagged around the edges. You may also use true widescreen settings if you do a simple google search for a widescreen fix or hack for the PC version as well.

Xbox360 vs PC
DX10 graphics are superior, supporting soft particles that make the water effects look more impressive, more realistic lighting, and dynamic water effects (apparently respond to outside sources), but when you look at DX9 vs 10, the primary difference is merely that DX10 textures look sharper. When in motion, you are unlikely to feel too superior to DX9 graphics, It's only in 1:1 comparisons that you'll notice and for the most part, this is true for PCDX9 and X360. The graphics between the three 'platforms' won't ruin your experience.

Unfortunately, the general dark tone of the place made it hard to really examine the shader water if there wasn't another light source in the game nearby it to give it more depth. Textures refracted through the water accurately enough. There were areas where water would actually fill up an area and the sense of motion in those areas was pleasantly distracting to watch.

But, the bottom line of it is that it's still just shader water, but many sets and types of it. If you've seen shader water before, you've seen shader water period. Now, if we had a lot more ability to interact with water, like use the Telekinesis Plasmid (allowing you to pick up many dynamic objects in the game ranging from harmless hardback books to improvised grenades you can throw back at enemies), then that would truly be impressive, but they're stationary props. However, you can use it to your advantage if enemies stand in deep water.

The graphics, overall are very beautiful though and you do get the sense that you're in a city albeit its grid layout, for a city, is haphazard.

I suppose I'll include sound in this. I thought the sound rendering was inaccurate. Why wasn't X-Fi supported? It seemed it would've made the game feel more realistic, and that means more cramped. The volume shouldn't be adjusted alone when the Splicer rambling incoherently has several layers of steel and concrete between them. Dampening effects, if ever present in the title, were too subtle to be heard. So, the engine failed there, but the quality *of* the sound effects was high. Each effect was characteristic enough for you to realize what was happening merely by listening to it. The voice acting was stellar as well.

It definitely shows what can be shown with the Unreal engine and despite what people say about its high requirements, how efficiently it can be shown as well.

Gameplay

A shooter is a shooter is a shooter, unfortunately. It's a basic game genre, but I believe that this game did for FPSs what Half-Life and others had done for them way back when. Half-Life 1 provided you with weapons. A lot more weapons than the standard lot, giving you far more than 9 by allowing you to cycle through categories of weapons by repeatedly pressing the corresponding number a quick-switch key to switch back to the last used weapon and the expected multi-function 'alternate fire' button, which is used on console titles as well. While you used the same ammunition, weapon characteristics changed. A weapon could be charged up, zoom could be activated or you would shoot faster at the cost of accuracy. Sometimes the weapon would have an attachment and you could fire that.

So the arsenal at your fingertips practically exploded.

Bioshock expands on this and allows you to control the environment as well. It's not a particularly new theme. You're allowed to place traps to control your area in many many titles, but they're generally not given the same importance as in this game. You can cause enemies to fight for you, you can set many kinds of traps from tripwires to landmines to cyclone springboards. Plus, you can temporarily hypnotize enemies to fight for you. You can even set up a copy of yourself to distract the enemy.

The game gives you an incredible sense of freedom.. With the plasmids.

You're given the basic equipment of any FPS nowadays, a melee attack (wrench), pistol, shotgun, sub-machine gun. These weapons are boring, but familiar and seemingly a requirement. More interesting weapons like the chemical thrower (using electric gelAmmo for a lightning-gun, naplamAmmo as flame thrower, and liquid nitrogenAmmo as a freeze-gun, make it more interesting) and the crossbow (allowing you to set tripwires), the grenade launcher, giving you a GL, mine-layer, and rocket launcher, are dubbed more interesting because they allow you to do more than just shoot the enemy by line of sight, allowing you to set up secure areas.

The game encourages this by making your basic fare of weapons feel ineffective without the use of other abilities. While possible, the game would be frustrating for someone who'd want to play without the use of any of the active plasmids(those requiring EVE, the game's 'mana' to fire).

Map Design still felt fairly archaic in places and I can only imagine that it was to keep the game more mainstream. While it is a city under the sea, luxurious areas like the garden should've been more wide open. I think it was the high movement speed that added to the sense of claustrophobia. Also, the movement speed caused me to miss a lot of details. System Shock 2 had many areas that felt far more open. Why wouldn't a paradise resort give people undersea what they craved on land as well?

Perhaps they merely wanted it to be simplified, allowing for the use of the guidance arrow option and so that you could progress much more quickly. It was a shame that you didn't get to see outside the city very often, or have areas so damaged that combat might make them permanently locked off by causing a flood.

Back to gameplay now. The largest flaw of all in the game was the Vita Chamber. In System Shock2, they had resurrection chambers. On Easy, they would cost nothing to use, on Normal, they would cost some game currency to use, on Hard and Impossible, they'd cost a Fortune to use, bankrupting you should you die.

A sense of mortality adds to the challenge. Even on Hard, the Vita Chamber revived you only at the cost of 50% HP and EVE. You could, if you chose to, brute force the game, not expending any resources. You had light Godmode. I was expecting some kind of heavy handed penalty for using the Vita Chamber, even the loss of experience points (ADAM) which were hard to come by. But no, there is only the soft penalty of partial HP/Eve regen. Terrible choice.

However, that didn't stop me from eating up First Aid Kits and Eve hypos to keep alive and ready. I didn't want to be inconvenienced by the re-realization that I was playing a game with god-mode on and being suddenly thrown out of combat. I'm only pleased to know that it wasn't like the game Prey, that had a similar element in it accompanied by a minigame that determined what condition you respawned in, where death was an actual REQUIREMENT TO PROGRESS later in the game.

The hacking minigame was interesting. I thought it was too easy though. That doesn't mean I haven't failed several times in a row when the difficulty did start increasing as the game progressed, but it never really had a heavy penalty to make me WANT to go all the way back to a Gene bank and engineer my genetic structure so that I was good at THIS kind of hacking or THAT kind of security evasion. I was also sort of disappointed that there wasn't a Repair ability or your own Upgrade ability. It didn't break the experience for me. It was just less to do with the seemingly overlooked Engineering Passive Plasmids.

You're given other types that make you resistant to damage of all types, to certain elements, make you faster, stronger, sneakier and these are solid in my opinion. Some make items more effective (heal more) or give them effects they'd lacked (removal of penalties, etc, heal EVE in addition to HP).

All in all though, the number of ways you're given to kill your enemies and manipulate them too provides even the most jaded FPS player (me) with entertainment. I hope that 2K games releases a SDK so that PC gamers can enjoy new plasmids, weapons, and enemies that modders are itching to create.

STORY

Well, I'm not really a writer. I couldn't spot many plot holes. The history of Rapture is fed to you through audio logs you find throughout the game and play back. The voice acting, as I said earlier, is great. Of course there are flaws with some of them. Sometimes an accent is laid on too thickly, but it never repeatedly comes back to haunt you like it would in many Japanese to English games would. My only complaint would be that the Splicers, the game's enemies, who are themselves Rapture's citizens, weren't given enough to say and that is a minor gripe.

There is much in Rapture to hint at what had happened, from the numerous audio diaries to remnants of propaganda posters, banners, and messages scrawled in blood or scratched onto public faces. Some of them irrelevant to the larger picture, but still lent much to lead you to believe that something went horribly wrong there.

The horror element is far removed from the game, I'm afraid. Maybe I've become desensitized to it, but there was never a sense of fear from this game. There were occasional shocks, but to me, this is a shooter game, not a horror game. Even on hard, I was up to my ears in specialized ammunition that gave me every advantage possible, the ability to turn the security system on its master added to my sense of safety. It would be interesting if the other Splicers could counter-hack.

The sense of longevity, especially in the soft Godmode from Vitachambesr, ruined a sense of tension. So, even on Hard, I always. ALWAYS. Had the resources to defend myself from my enemies. The key element in horror games, is to make the option to fight your enemies the last resort by either limiting your resources, providing better options to proceed, or to make your foes so strong that fighting them would expend most of your firepower.

So, the story itself is horrific. The game and sense you're given is not.

Overall

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I was a bit disappointed that the final boss was.. well.. far easier than I expected. I guess I just picked the right plasmids for the job. By the way, almost every plasmid you could possibly choose is the right one for the job with a few exceptions that rely on other elements to be present for there to be any use for them, like the security bullseye, requiring that a turret, security bot, or camera have line of sight on the person you used it on for there to be any use. Otherwise, it's just taking up a slot.

Well, I said I enjoyed it. I mentioned all of what I thought was flawed with the game:
Vita Chamber's Soft Penalty
The General Ease of Gameplay; Even on Hard
It's just shader water, people. It's pretty, but it's just shader water. It looks great. But it's just shader water.
The distinct lack of fear
Generally cramped map design
Not enough plasmids ;)
Multiple Endings. What? A game blathering on about ethics and morality has only One Ending? Edit:(Apparently there are three endings)

Worth a shot to play for sure. I bought it up. My initial fears were put to rest for the most part. I still think that this game is merely the testing ground for System Shock 3. I just hope that they make SS3 actually scary while allowing you use of plasmid-like abilities. Cause while Bioshock was fun, it's *not a horror game*.

I suppose if you do want to make it more horror like, spend less ADAM on HP/EVE upgrades. I finished the game with 100+ Adam left unspent, having only upgraded HP twice (near the game's end), grabbing every EVE upgrade I could(start to finish) and when Harvesting/Healing Little Sisters.

Did it live up to the hype of being a legendary game? For me: Nope. But it was still fun. So it came close. I think it was mostly it being a horror game that wasn't a horror game breaking it for me.

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:58:17 GMT

So I was bored. It served almost no purpose, but I felt much happier after doing so. As I walked home from work, I saw curiously bright stars in the sky. So I attempted to identify them. Star charts are deceptively difficult to read. It's like trying to imagine an unraveled globe, flattened, and trying to mentally put it back in its spherical state.
It's hard to stretch and skew out what the map displays into what you are actually seeing. Plus, you would have to hold the map over your head, meaning that if you memorize it, you have to do so in a mirrored fashion.

If I did have a printer and printed it, I'd need to put red film over a flashlight so it wouldn't disturb my night vision as badly.

I think the bright star in the South East was Sirius and the one directly east, the next brightest star, was Procyon. More overhead, but still Eastward were Mars and Aldebaran. The only constellation I recognize is Orion and that helped me find Sirius since Orion's belt was pointing almost directly toward Sirius on the map.

So that was completely pointless, but I am filled with a peaceful feeling.

Edit: And of course, being a complete geek, I thought of a huge reddish/orange jackal woman floating in space, conversing with a suit of armor.

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:22:00 GMT

I need Sigil's spirit. C'mon c'mon. I needta feel your ethereal arms near mine. Drawing together or being together. Sappy sappy. I am so hopeless.

I want to read about fox lore and pervert it to amuse you and Ashy.. I dunno what else to say. My words are pretty clunky.

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:53:03 GMT

Memes. More on this later.

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:39:45 GMT

Not many people really care anymore.. And I don't particularly want to talk to anyone as a group or one on one about it either. Our discussions wouldn't change much because we're more interested in cartoons and good food anyway. Right?

Right.

Anyway, it's a documentary called Zeigeist, mostly trying to give you a new view on American society today. Please don't contact me unless you wish to show me other interesting things related to this, like things that discredit it or support it, or things entirely unrelated to this and only through gmail.
my gmail name is

seannao

so add @gmail and a .com.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331

About what I said, I basically don't want any drama because it will solve *nothing*.

Ever know why Furaffinity.net's so shitty?

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:49:49 GMT

Hey non-furry and not-so-furry people.

Look at this!
----------------------------------------
So I hear rumors that FA's gonna be sold.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/HellFurry/preyfarjournal.jpg

I would assume that this is the "rather nasty message at Dragoneer's expense" referred to in the article:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/HellFurry/IFAILITITISRUNNINGAWEBSITE.gif

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LINK.

"Fur Affinity is offline temporarily"
Upon coming home tonight, Alkora approached me in IM and said he was having monetary issues due to college and, apparently, an unfortunate case of black mold. Her then proceeded to inform me he was considering selling Fur Affinity to the highest bidder and was looking for $10,000, but would "make me a deal" for about $7-8,000.

Naturally, I took great offense to that. It almost felt like extortion. "Here, you pay me a $8,000, or I'll sell it to the highest bidder and you and everybody else will lose!" A rather damned if you do, damned if you don't moment. Considering I moved to Kyrgyzstan to help support the site and ensure they're be money, this is a slap in the face. I gave up personal freedom, friendship, cats and just about everything goes overseas to help FA, and this is how I get repayed? How the community gets treated?

I have dumped thousands of my own dollars into Fur Affinity, and all that Alkora has paid for... is the domain registration fee. That's it. Yes, we've all sunk hard earned time and money into the site, but he decided he wanted to sell the site for profit. Profit off of the massive money I, and countless contributers put into the site. Over $15,000 worth of donations since June 2006, and that's nothing to laugh at.

Naturally, I didn't take well to that, and got rather pissed off.

Alkora decided to re-direct his DNS for the site and post a rather nasty message at my expense. Well, that's right. The blame all lies in me, because I refuse to pay thousands of dollars for what I have been primarily supporting financially by myself since December 2005. Alkora has barely spent a single penny on things, and I have the bills to prove it. I have the invoices for the servers and hosting fees in my name. He created it, and for that I am thankful, but I am not going to bend over and pay to keep the community's site alive.

FA is not dead, and will return.

We're working on restoring services right now. Rest assured, your data is safe. I own the servers and they're currently in a secure position, and there's no worry of loss. As co-owner, I have kept the site secure, and as co-owner for FA, I am not going to see the site go under for one person's greed.

The site is a community site, not a business. I intend to keep it that way. I will not see Fur Affinity go under because somebody wants to auction it off to the highest bidder.

End

Well, the reason is that the guy who founded it is a jerk-off.

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:31:03 GMT

It occurred to me that Xax is the most post-modern person I know, as far as what I think my definition of it is...

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:14:08 GMT

Okey so like. I'm still within EVGA's 90 day 'upgrade' thing for their video card.

But I was wondering if an AMD64 3500+ Venice 2.21 GHz CPU is bottlenecking the 8800 GTS 320mb. Because I was told that by a local friend. And I don't believe it to be true! But I can't find evidence online supporting either case. Soo.. I ask you.. the internets people..

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:39:02 GMT

http://www.unicornjelly.com Is really really good

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:44:40 GMT

"If I cared enough, I'd already be doing it. In fact, if I cared enough, it would be something I'd already done, if I'd cared enough. It would be an event in my life that I look back on in embarrassment and shame because of what I could have been capable of now. If only I stopped musing about my potential and did something."