Tuesday 6 December 2011

Skyrim's final review

So, it's a good game.

From my point of view Oblivion was better - i'm an old school gamer and don't mind tons of stats (i actually feel that streamlining is harmful .. after all it's the stats that make the difference between a RPG and a action game), and there were more variables that would affect the outcome of each decision made by the player. The speech wheel, character stats, acrobatics, open lock spells, spell customisation, and many more. Too many more - there is too much stuff that got taken out and although Skyrim is stupendously playable and bug-free (well, a game of this kind will always have a few bugs but .. it's no Clear Sky), the stuff that was taken out pretty much balances out the good stuff in.

And of course, the whole "3d immersion engine" thingie is getting old - Oblivion, and Morrowind before it, was revolutionary. Ofc Morrowind look old today, but on the other hand Oblivion looks just as good as Skyrim does, so no points here.

"A Good Story is what always gets me"

Yes, and i got to say Skyrim's story is way less immature than what you'd expect from a "hollywood" production, but the devil is in the details .. i'm going to have to be a bit specific here, or this won't  make sense.
In a grim fantasy world such as TES, there is too much high fantasy - too many beautiful females, too many clean temples, too many neverending dungeons, too many spell, and in general too much safe play from the designers making Skyrim look like a different kind of commercial ad, but one nonetheless.

I guess i could say that if you took all the complaints from the Skyrim boards and put them together, you'd have a picture of the problem BUT THEN I GOT AN ARROW IN THE KNEE and that's .. it's not grim, it's not fantasy, it's just Bethesda. Same problem as with Fallout, it's childish. The Jarl might have a complicated political situation on his hands - but then he just blurts it out to you who just stumbled into town - making this "we're really doing some serious writing here" thing look a bit silly.

If the Jarl is facing a though situation, why the hell isn't anyone else in town sent - alone - to solve it?

Some things in the gameplay are a bit horrid, for instance, when talking to an NPC for a quest some random passerby will stop and blurt out some random audio while the other guy is talking, some of the most popular being "..i took an arrow to the knee", and of course the immortal "you know what's wrong with Skyrim?".
But Skyrim it's a great game. So let's say screw the gameplay bugs - it's awesome. but ...

"You Know What's Wrong With Skyrim?"

Yes, my friend. Yes, i do.

The problem is that Bethesda, as a whole, wrote a game that they just couldn't deliver; you'v got this immense script (6k pages??), greatly complex situation, so many variables, and they just couldn't code it in.

1) The script is silly.
sure the story is nice, but the script itself is silly. i like the whole "barely escapes thanks to a dragon attack", but if you are going to write such quest lines as "humble beginner becomes Archmage of Winterhold", then you'd better be prepared to code in the changes to the script that this requires.

as Archmage of Winterhold, Thane of (every city in Skyrim), head of the Thieve's Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, and of course legendary Dragonborn, defeater of Anduin and saviour of Skyrim, i get the same shtick as average joe in the street. And - if you are listening, Beth - this doesn't mean that i want to hear every NPC saying "i heard you defeated that dragon" every minute of gametime, but it means that you actually need to have a timeline moving forward to make me feel as if anything has changed at all - which brings me to point

2)the game scripting is childish
nothing ever happens...
thief runs amok in the market, people rush out and kill him - you can simply ignore that; it's just a visual trick, and it means absolutely nothing in the story. Nothing really happens in the story. Some guy asks you to deliver food to High Hrotgard, you take the food.. then forget about it for a few months. the guy doesn't care. His sense of time is "takes quest - completes quest". This is made worse by the ingame waiting, sleep modes, quicktravel, and just plain bad time management - sure these are lovely features, if they were implemented nicely.
Like the thief trick, too many things in the game look the part but are just a cloud of smoke; walk past a cave, get attacked by bandits. Walk in said cave, there's a bunch of quest NPCs there. "Why the hell are you guys holed up here with a bunch of mobs??" but no answer there, other than "meh, we're just unkillable npcs".

You see, i'd rather have 5 NPCs in the whole game world, but that i can interact with in several ways, than a thousand that i can't interact with in any way but the one that was coded in. Have the Jarls (the lot of them) in the castle in Solitude after Ulfrik Stormcloak  takes the throne, some of whom are all pissy about me having [saved the world] [liberated skyrim][being the legendary dragonborn][being a general badass who can wipe out an entire city, solo] and some of them insult me - and now, if i try to kill one (or more), well, they are immortal.
Some would say, "where is the freedom", others (the coders) would reply "if we let you kill them, you can fuck up your game";
We'd reply then "let us fuck up our game, it's OUR game", but then justly or not, the coders would reply "but then you'd complain about us letting you fuck up your game by doing unsanctioned interactions with environment/items/NPCs".

To which the correct reply is "then code some more interaction responses". Which is something you obviously can't do with a game as expansive as Skyrim.

So in the end the problem is not that Skyrim is a bad game, it's just that the designers should have foreseen that such a game is beyond their means to deliver, and it certainly is. In Oblivion, having a high athletics meant you could get into places the coders never meant you to go, and it was fun - the speedrun for Morrowind is seven minutes without glitches, but there's a nice 16 min speedrun with full instructions here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfNbPQJ5Fdc
Morrowind is still the game that every TES fan cites as best of the series, and while i liked Oblivion very much (Morrowind is too old to me, and i agree, it had to be played when it came out, not now), Skyrim is too devoid of interaction with the  - stupidly large - content to make it a good recommendation.. the elements left out weigh particularly in favour of Oblivion vs Skyrim, now that every single character is a dual-wielding, dual-spell casting, daedra summoning, heavy armour wearing master thief archer Dragonborn alchemist enchanter smith, bringing me to the last point of my review

3) the milieu is ridiculous
great visual settings, great visual effects, but sadly, ridiculously mispalced content - not just the guards, jarls, emperors and random NPCs blurting out their life's secrets to everyone in the street, but the general sillyness of making the PC a divine, world-saving superbeing, overpowered form the word go.

RPGs are a matter of choice, and choice always involve losing some other aspect of the choice - if you chose tuna salad, you can't also have steak, pasta and chicken. Had they designed Skyrim to be - albeit the same size - smaller in scope, say, where the end quest is to become Jarl of Whiterun, removed fasttravel except for coaches(what's the point of a huge map, then?), lowered the amount of NPCs (or at least differentiated between main NPCs and minor), and stuck with the earlier "chock-full-o-choices" character build system, Skyrim would have been much, much better - but as you can easily see from the gamefaqs boards, everyone's got the same storyline, everyone's got the same build, same spells, same armour, etc.. the fabled variation (that Oblivion had lots of) is a myth and as such Skyrim is nothing but a complicated, sometimes buggy Action game where Smithing, Enchanting and occasionally Alchemy are overpowered, and even when not using these, it's just plain childishly easy, except on higher difficulties where it's still easy but for some totally unbalanced things which are stupidly hard.

And maybe they could have spent the time instead implementing cool stuff. Like time. Stuff happening. Flight. NPC interaction. Politics. Buildings. Mounts. A million other things.

I used to be a {insert comparison here} like you, but then i took an arrow to the knee.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Easy-Peasy review of Skyrim (he didn't like it)

well, after several hours and levels in, i can say that it's a great graphics adventure. but that's it.

i still love how you can finish the quests in so many different ways, yet, gameplay wise, it's really just not good enough.

1)too easy
- at level 5 i found a jacket that regens my magic 75% faster.
- the dual casting for free is overpowered
- the basic flamethrowing spell is op
- with horse + companion you do 3x damage
- fast travel is ridiculous
- sprint with 299 pounds on (399 with Deep Pockets)
- you can pay to level up (i just bought 2 levels and have money for 2 more)
- quicksave/load makes for some easy lockpicking/stealing/speechcraft/you name it
- using potions instantly makes for some easy fight, even with bigger mobs. sure not every fight, but since potions weight 0.5 (you can carry 600 if you wanna), some key fights can be easily won at earlier levels.
- shouts use no mana. Also, everyone can use magic. AND armor. so you can be a 25% magic resisting, 50% magic absorbing, dual spellcasting firethrower mage with plate armor, two handed sword and stack of potions who can stun enemies for free every 15 sec. AT LEVEL 1. ad it gets worse.
- and let's not forget the racial abilities (once per day. which translates to once per fight) and the blessings.

2)it's buggy and/or stupid
- kill that giant at level 2 by getting him stuck in the game geometry
- kill that dragon, solo, at level 9 by hiding behind a rock where he can't hit you (but thinks he does) and fill him with iron arrows
- melee weapons, don't even think about it. touch the arrow keys and your stamina goes bye bye.
- press Alt to sneak, press Tab to access inventory. Alt+Tab?? who the **** thought of that one?

- press Tab to open inventory. use arrow keys to scroll to bow. click with mous on bow when highlited. press F. press Tab to close screen. press Q. use arrow keys to select bow. press 1. THAT IS HOW YOU SELECT YOUR WEAPONS ?!?!?!?

- why on earth you cant fast travel within city locations? it takes more time to go from the blacksmith to the alchemist than it does to go from Dragonsreach to Solitude.
- seriously? still using encounter scaling? what's the point of levels then?


thats about all i can think of now.

actually, it's about all. Skyrim doesn't have bugs in the classic sense of the word, it's just that the game mechanics are really weak. even QL/Q3 has physics light years ahead of Syrim. gameplay isn't too buggy, it's just poor. but if you played Oblivion you already know all of this.
Surely tho Syrim is not a proper RPG game.

(he didn't like it)

Sunday 23 October 2011

Waiting for Ivy Bridge

Waiting for Godot Ivy Bridge.

Technology has gotten so good that it's competing with itself;
The release date for Ivy Bridge CPUs nears, yet i still don't see any new features that lack from my C2D setup.
Of course, IB will have more power, lots more, and lower temperatures (so low in fact that many once-awesome aftermarket coolers are now totally redundant.. once you get your hands on a Coolermaster Hyper 212+, you are set for life), much better memory controllers (i'm actually hoping to see DDR4 with IB), more overcloclability... in fact, IB will be *exactly* like SB, but better in everything, if by little.

And of course the first thing that comes to mind is the Tic-Toc, where CPUs are designed in two steps, one of architectural change, and one of die shrink and refinement; knowing how things work, do you opt for the Tic, the new technology with new features, or do you wait for the Toc, which at the same price point delivers better performance and has less bugs'n kinks?

Now i would have gone Sandy bridge long ago were it not for that i was broke, and couldn't afford to even think about it - which leaves me to consider the Toc, as it's not a good idea to get one now since IB is "just around the corner" (IB has been "JATC" since jan, but whatever).. however here comes the big if:

Should i go Ivy bridge??

As people say on Hardforum, "i'm concerned that these chips will be made to not be any faster than Sandy Bridge" - of course, why whould Intel want to compete with itself, expecially now that AMD is nowhere to be seen and SB chips could be still sold successfully for another couple years.
Well, they won't be revolutionary, but they will certainly be better than SB. In fact you *will* get a lot more, mostly out of the new chipset; the problem here isn't whether Ivy Bridge will be lots better than Sandy Bridge - it will be at least a little better, and that's all that matters - but it's if Ivy Bridge will finally manage to make my C2D setup feel old. Will it?

You see, i'm working and gaming on a 5 year old machine, with a 280GTX bought on eBay for £50, and everything still works perfectly.

Many years ago,in the infancy of computers, things used to go horribly wrong - in fact, the was hardly ever a platform that didn't have several things going horribly wrong at once, and each technological step-up would fix only a few of these, often adding a couple more in for good measure..
But around the years of WinXP SP2, and the C2D, everything started to fall into place.. OSs were stable, hardware got its bugs sorted out, and essentially my machine can do everything that any modern one can.. in the same way. Maybe, just maybe, a very little slower but, hey, is that really worth two grand????

Here is an example (if i find it): FLASH/NAND based storage, or SSDs to us, hailed as revolutionary, "hard disk has always been a bottleneck", "you will be amazed at the speed" and all that shit.
Mind you, a decent SSD today is around £400.
Then, you get articles like this one Anandtech forums:
I got an SSD, why doesn't Windows boot much faster?
And Lol 'n behold, your £400 doesn't actually do anything that you can see.


Cue excruciating explanation of this new and amazing technology that offers very little real life improvement, unless you have ADD and really think its ok to spend £400 to wait two seconds instead of three to watch a film on your computer.


So, will Ivy Bridge truly outperform my Core2Duo ? 


Honestly, i don't know. I almost hope it does, because CPUs have become less and less of an interest for me since this build, as i hardly feel that i have a need for more computing power. Ask me, and i can easily tell you the Nvidia 560Ti is the best GPU on the market, and yet, why would i want to buy one?? I still play everything that comes out ..


And again.. i mostly just play QL ...

Thursday 14 July 2011

Today, helped someone across the globe get a PC built for the 12yo nephew; feels good to have done a good action. I wonder if now i can call myself "computer hardare guru".

next week work interview for a full-time audio technician job, i sure hope Karma Kat will smile upon me :)

Friday 10 June 2011

Videogames

I want to review briefly a couple of games that i have played lately and that - since i always whine on about how bad games are - were pretty nice and worthy of their shelf price.
All these games can be either purchased from your local retailer, or downloaded illegally from any of a number of websites, the choice is yours; in the end, game companies must be rewarded when they put out a good product, and there is nothing wrong with paying for something you like.. honesty is its own reward.

The First Templar
This is a easy going third-person combat game, rather arcadeish, where you run around in a closed environment killing scripted encounters; it's easy, the combat is rather simplistic, and that's about it. Not a great game by any extent, but it's got some nice writing, and even though you have seen it all before, it's all done rather tastefully.
The graphics are delicious, even if the coding behind them seems pretty horrid since this game will try to murder you graphics card, but i love it, great atmosphere. TFT also tries to do away with classic hollywoodian scripts and even if the sidekick is a bit out of place, the main character is very well written, in person and historically. The story flows well, and keeps you interested; this is one of a very few games where i wasn't skipping the cutscenes at the first chance. The "costumes" being locked in chests which are quite hard to find is sux, but costumes are just a bonus, and you can whizz through the game and not miss out on anything. Truly recommended, and hating the fact that most reviewers have ripped on this game and called it shit.
On a sidenote, i'm playing The Witcher 2 and i'm hating it.

The Black Mirror (part 3)
I have not played parts 1 or 2, but part 3 is truly engrossing. This is a point&click adventure reminiscent of the olden days, with very good graphics and a rather nice and realistic story. Why i like TBM3 is because of two things: first, the puzzles - which are the core of these games - are REALISTIC, not some weird "use hat to move stone" combinations, along with the fact that item locations make sense; this helps with the gameflow and makes you feel like you really are solving the mystery. Second, the writing is really, really good. I mean it, the game directing is truly superior and the script is good, and the whole game design is absolutely fantastic, at times you feel like everything you see onscreen is real. These people really know how to write a P&C game.

I am also playing some games which are absolutely horrid, and therefore feel that i have to warn you;

Brink
Which has had a massive, nationwide publicity campaign, is tripe; "Revolutionary" if you have lived under a rock for the last twenty years, and nothing more than a ripoff of Team Fortress 2(and every other online FPS ever). It's shit.

The Witcher 2
Fantastic graphics, really eye-watering splendor, but truly horrid gameplay. Two things.. three things i hate about this game. The Combat, which is not that far from TFT, in being arcadeish, truly random, but also way too fucking hard; The Interface, which is the worst fucking interface i have ever seen in a game since i was born, and lastly, The Interface, which is so fucking bad it makes me want to open my blog and write up a post on how fucking bad it is.
Also, The Witcher 2's writing is dark, mature, blah blah blah, but horribly hollywood - same old shit, but with swear words.

Dungeons & Dragons, Daggerdale
Fuck me this is really shit. Would have been a great title on launch date for your PS2, thirteen years ago.


I'v been out of the loop for a while, but meh.

Friday 27 May 2011

Working in music p.1

Here is a short list of things people will need when trying for a career in performance - this is my opinion, so take it at "whatever" value.
I'm writing this piece because i'm surprised at how many very skilled young guitarists are out on youtube who yet don't know that they need these other elements to succeed.

(1)the Product.
music is a product you sell, but the sellable* product is made up of many factors - like many other businesses . .
I consider Rock to be the main venue in Music Business, because even if a Product is branded otherwise, the business elements which contribute to its creation are rooted in the businesses which came out of the Rock industry;
So, a group will need to have these, for point 1(please note that not all are fundamental, and there are ways to get around the lack of one of these, but these are the targets that everyone should have)
Technique
Looks
Awesomeness
Songwriting
Lyrics
Production
Business Mentality
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
explanation: technique is the ability to play instruments and sing; after all, it's music you sell, so being able to perform it is important; plus, when you perform live, this becomes more important than ever. Looks are a major selling point, not everyone has them and they have been proven over time to be the (second?) biggest selling factor of all - this element should be run parallel with PR, obviously. Awesomeness is a stupid word to encompass showmanship, charisma, PR stunts, stage setup, lighting, costumes, and everything else that is visual yet stricktly about the musicians - videos count too. Songwriting is different from techinque, extremely precious yet rarely necessary - and can easily be subcontracted, if a good budget is in. Lyrics help selling only when they are keyed to product placement - market niche image; it hardly pays to sing about romance in a grindcore band, does it? Production ought to be self explanatory, yet the burden falls on the business leader, so it's here instead of part 2. Business mentality is when a group has a business leader, an effective business plan, a solid model, and business discipline - thus producing more sellable product for the budget. A business mentality is also where the business leader seeks out and obtains the most "shelf space" (gigs) as a priority over anything - sell even if you suck.

(2) Image
this one is short.. if you can understand it:
Market Niche product placement
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Selling" music is something which often escapes musicians altogether - you are creating a consumable product, and as all consumables, you need Location, Location, Location. The three "L" are what product you are selling, who you sell it to, and how you sell it to them - in catering, it would go like this : pasta, from a restaurant, in goodge street. trying to sell the right product to the wrong people will not cut it, nor selling it from a horrid venue; by extention, sale techniques, presentation, all make up LLL.
Music sells when it is well packaged, presented, and when it stimulates the appetite for its consumption, so chose your target audience, package it (and yourself - see point 1, many aspects of yourself make up the product, not just "the music") so it appeals to them, and make sure they can buy it.


(3) Business Enterprise Structure
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When selling music, you will need to head a large structure, composed of bus drivers, hair stylists, photographers, managers, agents, promoters, and so on. Your choice is simple (or is it?) : the ones which provide you with the biggest cash flow. End of story - do not compromise you cash flow for artistic integrity .. even if most musicians do the opposite.

(4)Time and Money Budget
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Working in music takes both, and trying without is doomed to failure - if you have no funds, don;t attempt a music business venture, for it will fail you.




That's it.

Not as complicated as it sounds, but subtle, here is a recipe for success that will never fail you (unless your band's name is Anvil);

Good luck, and To Futures Bright !!

*Blogspot's dictionary doesn't recognize this word :/

Sunday 15 May 2011

Esther Ku

Today i got the giggles (i'm mildly in love) for Ester Ku
she's smart, funny and - in my eyes - incredibly beautiful. Also helps that she's a cool 10 years younger than me .. yummy.

Still working with barbells, trying to get to 3x3x30@ 12.5Kg

Maybe if i shape up really a lot, i can land a chick like that :p

Saturday 7 May 2011

The Life of a Restaurant Manager

I'll try to make a long story short; Recently i'v been trying out for a position as "Team Leader", which is a fancy name for Assistant Manager, with a big company, Withbread to name names, and going through the job description with the Manager i had clouds of dark thoughts going through my head.. that can be summed up by the word "boring".
Yep, instead of thinking how hard the job is going to be, my head was already on the "oh this is going to be tedious".

If you have any experience in the restaurant business you will know that a manager's job is anything but relaxing - essentially, you are a waiter who also does a million other things, and generally speaking you are the onoly one who really gives a crap about the business, with everyone else interested in one of the following, instead : Tips, Not Working, and Getting Out.

Withbread instead have a structure in place where managers do the management, and staff does the work, which is .. nice, if you think it can work, but i have my doubts.. if only, for the fact that i believe in "lead by example", and after all, what a restaurant really needs is really good staff, if hey had that, management needs would be minimal.

So, Withbread's managers do exclusively the management work. And apparently, so do many other businesses, here and elsewhere.
In fact, i was watching once again an episode of Kitchen Nightmares USA, and Gordon walking in to be greeted by a formidable looking lady claiming "i am the manager"; my thoughts were "and so you take the blame for everything that's wrong in here". But apparently no, a manager doesn't actually manage the restaurant.

You see, a restaurant is - like many other businesses - a system : 1) money is used to buy food and to transform it into the sold product 2) the product is sold to the customers 3) the cycle repeats. Other subsystems include the cleaning of the premises (part of 2), the serving (also 2), the cooking (part of 1), keeping all the structure functional , i.e., bills paid, machines working, etc.. (part of both 1 and 2), customers booking and table orders (part of 1 & 2), and so on. In my short experience, the person who makes sure the system works is called a Manager; if the general consensus is that this isn't the Manager's job, ok then, i will admit i am wrong, but then i am curious as to who exactly does that.

Or perhaps people think that this role can be split amongst different people, but then it leads to problems that we see happening every time a new episode of Kitchen Nightmares airs.

To be fair, there are many problems a new food business can have, but when we look at Kitchen Nightmares, the problem is always the same - in Chef Gordon's own words, "the food is shit".


Now, customers are normal people - believe it or not - and they *will* put up with poor service; hey, there's even a famous restaurant back home where the waiters yell obscenities at the customers (properly called "The Insult"), and it's packed every day.
But if the food's bad, there is no way you will stay afloat - nope, you'r going under.

End of story, i have a really, really hard time understanding what keeps today's managers from successfully managing a food premise : you know what the system is, if the food is bad, where can you go to locate the problem ??
Right, the Chef.
And if the Chef is bad, what do you do ?

I have never had an instant of hesitation to fire an inefficient staff person - people would not put up with a mechanic, a doctor or a plumber not doing their job properly, but for some reason they are willing to put up with a chef that is incompetent and/or does not perform properly.

In the end, dear Gordon, it's not the Chef who deserves a bollocking, it's the Manager; their very job description is "take shit for everything that happens here", and if you are not able, or willing to do it, don't call yourself a restaurant manager. It's an insult to those of us who really do the work.




Cheers,
Bokken

Friday 22 April 2011

Why i think computers are awesome

see if you understand this one

The Sushi FAQ - The Definitive Guide to Sushi and Sashimi

The Sushi FAQ - The Definitive Guide to Sushi and Sashimi

just thought i'd try the "share this" button. i love sushi - and my dream is to be able to make it just like the chef at Hasekura used to make - Takeshi, here's to you kid, your sushi was the best i have ever tried.. and i tried a few.

Sunday 17 April 2011

WD hard drives are ok, after all.

Ok, two days ago something happened to my PC - a power-related problem, that ctually wound up frying one of the SATA ports on my motherboard, and it led to me discovering that i have made a mistake .. a grevious mistake, in my build, 3 years ago (!!!) that i just only discovered.

Yes, i somehow had a SATA power connector taking electricity from a fan cable - don't ask me how, i must have been really tired when i was setting up, because i missed that in PC building, a cable can take power as well as send it - ie, a connector isn't exclusively male or female, and after all these years i understand that this was the source of all my stability problems.

Well, just so that you should know, i can now excuse the drives - Western Digital is back at the top of the list - though, Seagate might just be as good, as they price everything lower.

I am such a n00b ..

Saturday 16 April 2011

Bokken at it again.

I need to get back to training.

It's been a few days since i realized i need to get back in shape, and by that i don't mean running in East Ham Central Park, but lifting weights and dieting. Today, for example, i have steamed broccoli florets (from Iceland, £1 a bag, two meals out of each bag) and plain boiled rice.

I guess the point of diet is mostly psychological, not trying to make your food tasty yet light, but to actually do without the taste aspect - otherwise, you are always craving for more.

So back to my crash diet, plain carbohydrates, zero fat, zero sugars, steamed vegetables, minute amounts of calories (except for rice), and mad static exercise. Coffee, taurine if you will (man that stuff is sooo harmful to health), creatine to power up during exercise, sleep on empty stomach, no breakfast, etc.. brutal.

One thing i learned during my last diet - besides the fact that i was right on everything i thought i knew - is that my body should consume, and spend, at least five-thousand calories a day to be on the healthy side, not feeling hungry and miserable but also being fit, but as you can immagine, that is truly impossible; you see, it's assumed in that statement that you get there by doing something fun, and since i'm not wrestling or swimming anymore, i have no way to get that much sport in my life. Also - i should mention - i have no money to even buy, 5K calories of good food.


I wish this blog was so much more .. than just whining. I'm listening to BBC news, now, open in iPlayer in another tab in Chrome, and they are talking about the purchase of the Typhoon (the "Eurofighter"), and of course i have something to say about that as well - as i have opinions, strong ones to boot, on just about everything i see, read about, and hear - but have no energy to write about all of it.. two things then i think i should do.

1) I'm not really enamored with blogging, but it's not bad - just an activity, nice but not really that productive.
I'm absolutely sure that better results would come if i stuck with one subject instead of making it a random whine blog, as people who chance upon it might keep coming back to it if they find stuff that they find useful;
However the reason i never did something like that, is because i have always found some better website than anything i could do, no matter what the subject.
For example, HERE is a brilliant website (all free, of course) that deals with - amongst other things - audio, and this guy is not only a qualified technician (or scientist, should i say, for it is science he deals with, even though we assume "scientist" means "researcher"), but he obviously has some real hands-on experience, amking him quite the authority on the subject. This i have seen in all subjects that i have any knowledge of, or that i enjoy and/or find myself good at, and should anyone need information on the subject, i would address them to that website or the other - one thing i would *not* do, is try to water down the web by setting up a not-quite-as-good website just to get attention, or "traffic". Example n.2 : my Advisor at Ingeus is a person very active in business, as in he "owns dating websites" and "sells ebooks" and "wrote a book about DJ'ing", and kudos to him, but.. his websites are crappy, and they are more of a ripoff than anything; eBooks are something you should give away, not sell, and finally he isn't really the authority on DJ'ing, so .. honesty, and being concerned with the wellbeing of my fellow men prevents me from trying to push my inferior products when better stuff/info is out there, expecially when the better stuff is free.
Sure, i know a thing or two about audio, but i'm far from the biggest guru on the web - and the same goes for all the people who post on YouTube their great efforts and pass themselves as kings of their trade when they are in fact buffoons who know jack shit. like THIS GUY - he thinks he's the shit, but i'v seen him do things downright abysmal - some even dangerous, and not only i don't think he is great, i feel he should be punished in some way for what he does.
If there is one thing i do well, it's .. well, that's hard to explain. But writing it down n a comprehensible form is even harder, and it's not something i could sell anyway. So, this blog will either get shut down or it will be reformatted to fulfill one of two purposes - make me look good in the face of possible employers, say, an audio blog, mostly filled with lies, or purpose two, to draw some traffic, strictly one subject, even if i don;t know shit about it - and if someone dies trying to follow my diet, fuck them.

2) Why not take a picture of my big fat belly and post it, then a new picture every day, and - since i know i can easily lose 60 pounds - make it into another wonder story.
Have just finished reading Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, and .. i lost my train of thought. Bollocks.
Last books i read - in the last two months - Ubik, Bad Science, Franny and Zoey (salinger), Great Gatsby .. again, The Virgin and The Gipsy (dh lawrence), a Science Fiction Omnibus, The Siege of Nanking (history of the boxer rebellion .. tedious to say the least), a really bad book by Iain M. Banks (yep, The Business was great, but this one ... meh), and am still trying to read the Ulysses - but i will probably give up, since i'm still on chapter two.
So, maybe i will just get back into training and make a big fuss of it, forget all my principles, try to score some femaley attention, and make money i don;t deserve. And might just be better for it. Who knows.

uncertain future, here is london, 2011, BokkenUK.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

not getting hired in London, again :/

Monday "night", around six~ish, i get a call from Lousie at A4e (a per-profit organization that works trying to get Jobseekers in employment), telling me verbatim "there is a wonderful catering opportunity that would suit you perfectly come along tomorrow morning and bring along - among other things - your ID and a proof of address", to which i replied i had no ID, as it's still being made in the chasm of Mount Doom (the italian consulate, bless their souls, 1-month wait for a paper i get done in a day back in italy), and i won't have it until early next month.

She said "bring along the rest of the paperwork, and be here tomorrow".

Now, i showed up as planned, and got put in a room with other ten people, we filled a form and wrote how really good we are at catering and how that particular company would immensely benefit from hiring us; i was done before the rest, so had my interview first. The whole process took maybe five minutes.

Immediately, i was told that A) a letter from the DWP with my address on it did not constitute proof of address (it does, according to the UK government, but not according to A4e - or this one guy at A4e, at least), and B)without my ID there was no way i could be put forward for the job.

To which i replied that the person who asked me to come there that day knew i did not have one.. omitting the "why the fuck did you make me come here then", with an understanding that the fault lies with A4e and not me, and they should be ashamed and i am pissed off - it's my time, and  my money to ride the Tube from East Ham to Brixton, after all.

But not only no, then the interviewer proceeded to interview me for a position he had already told me i could not be put forward for.
And when he came to the fateful question "why do you want to get back in catering", which is essentially what my CV is full of since 2005 (i hate catering, but it has become my job), i really did not know what to answer.

And so the next day, i get a negative feedback and the assignment to undergo "interview technique training". I wish that i could assign them "don't make people come if you are going to turn them away" training, it would only seem fair.

I do recognize that interviews can be my weak point - after all, they are everyone's weak point - and i can benefit from training, at least i have been trained to say that, but seriously, i can't fault my answer on that day:

"i can't find work in Audio, so i work in catering".

Hey, this IS what is happening; under the circumstance, i see "interview training" as "lie your way into a job", if they are going to teach me to say anything which is not what i actually want to say.





Last weekend i got a call from two, not one, business owners, and both wanted to see me the next day; the second was a man who had just opened a takeaway pizza shop, not the most glamourous of jobs you might think, but new, small businesses located in posh areas are the best sort of employment you can get, take my word on this one. Having me already an appointment in the morning i offered to call him ASAP after i was done, and so i did.
Next day, at 11am, i phoned him back and told him i was ready to come to the interview, anywhere and anytime, and he told me he was first busy with his accountant, then the family was going on a break, and he'd call me monday~tuesday.

Of course by tuesday morning he had already "hired someone else".

Monday 11 April 2011

SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!

I made a mistake in the earlier post and forgot to mention that, out of £1200 pounds my PC cost to build, i actually get to keep some other parts now that upgrading is due; twelve-hundred quid, and i keep my Viewsonic 22" monitor, two hard disks at 250 GB each, the power supply, and the case.

I *do not* get to keep my CPU, CPUfan, RAM, motherboard or VGA.
Well, i get to "keep them", but not "in my build"; so, i'll just eBay them or something. CPU is obviously going out (in place of a 2500k, or whatever is coming in Ivy Bridge if it's really amazing), and with the new socket (1156? 1136? 2111? who knows) the old mobo and even the CPUfan will not work anymore.
And 4gigs of Corsair 4/4/4/12 ram (runs at 4/9, or even 3/10 if underclocked) would have been fantastic a couple years back, but it's all DDR3 now.

Oh, i can't tell you vehemently enough how happy i am that DDR3 has run into the wall and that 1333Mhz is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to 1600Mhz.. hopefully, no more minute upgrade steps every other week.. for a while. Not that *I* would.. but you know;    fanboys.

Things that broke:
1)Samsung DVD writer :/ was a disappointment, hated the cheap DVDs i bought from Poundshop, didn't actually have Lightscribe even though it was sold as having it, and well, it broke.
Replaced at £18.
2)Artic Cooling Pro7, the CPU fan, the little plastic pegs broke on one of the legs, well, half a peg on one leg, and i *did* uninstall it and then install it back again about 8 times, so i guess it's mostly my fault. Great fan, worth every penny of £17, now replaced with a £15 fan from some never-made-fans-before-but-made-other-PC-stuff company, works just as well (but the removable metal brackets that hold the fan in place are really, really bad).
3)the perennially failing-no-not-really-failing HD from Western Digital, one of two i have, i should have taken the hint when i saw it came new with a horrible soldering mark while its twin brother didn't. WD are possibly still the best brand of HD - reliability being funny enough, one of their strong points.
It's a shame they went for this "low energy" 5400rpm shit on their best models, i really want the extra 1% speed i get from a full 7200rpm model(irony.. sorta).

4)one of the two sets of RAM was somewhat faulty, and got replaced for free (and rather speedily) by Corsair.
Now, rather than say "Corsair make the best RAM", i will say "Corsair always price their RAM so well that there isn't any reason to buy anything else, ever". They do always hit that sweet spot, with the proper voltage, timings, speed, and the package (say, 2x4Gb instead of 2x2 or 4x2, plus the sweet heat dissipators), and in general they have consistently, for the past 3 years, offered this "package" of getting everything EXCEPT THE REALLY FANCY BESTEST for maybe two quid more than the competition.

And plus, if you want "the bestest", well, they do that as well.

5)Asus was a really big disappointment. They robbed me of a legit return, with my 8800GTS failing well within the limits of their loudly trumpeted 3-year warranty, and the card making twice the trip to their repair centre (expenses on me, mostly), and twice coming back as broken as before. Third time in, i just threw it in the garbage.
This is of course after a real Odyssey in trying to get a RMA in the first place.

And of course, the Asus mobo i bought was partly faulty as well, with the hi-def sound making a horrid white noise whine, and therefore i simply chucked it in the bin, not wanting to go through the same shit again.

I should point out that as of today, two companies make the "best" motherboards, and these are Gigabyte, and unfortunately, Asus. Asus also unfortunately makes the best VGA, as they always price down some truly sweet models, but as now i know how horrid their support is, i can easily say "stay away .. if you can".

6)My 4350 is also "half dead", and i replaced it before it died completely, with a really weak 5450, essentially the same thing, different name. Just an impression, i thought the 4350 actually did better, but meh.
I guess, if i had been less careless with my receipts, i would still have most of these parts, or even better a new one to replace the faulty, without having to pay.

SO THERE'S A LESSON, SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!

Of course all this is dependant on getting properly hired (and not just a "timewaste", £5'hour job), and fortunately i have just been contacted by a business owner looking for a manager ;/ shame how he was supposed to call me today, and hasn't. I'll ring him 2morrow, anyway.

My next build - if everything goes properly - will be like thus:

a 2500k, but not before i go to [H]ardforums and really read up on how soon the new stuff from Intel is coming out, and really *what* are we looking at.
If nothing magic is coming out, then a 2500k it is, simply because it's absolutely identical to the 2600k (IN REALITY, EVEN THOUGH on paper they look different), costs less, and can perhaps work even a little better.

a Gigabyte mobo, priced at around £105~110.
but i might try a MSI since everyone on [H] says they are awesome and cheap - more than risking it, i just see this as an opportunity to handle some new hardware and get an informed perspective at this company.
in case you haven't noticed, i see http://hardforum.com/ as the holy bible, torah and quar'an all rolled into one (and covered with whipped cream).

a whole, £130+ pack of 4x4Gb of Corsair DDR3 1.5v 1333Mhz RAM (or even 1600Mhz if they cost the same, which sometimes they do; as long as they are both 1.5v, they give me more overhead to OC).
Yes, i know it's not sensible, as i will probably not need 16Gb of ram, but the catch is, i want to buy the RAM  *in one package*, and not risk buying a second set later and having it perform *better* than the first, it might sound like thats good, but you risk stability issues. Rather have four worse sticks, but tested to run in parallel.

A new VGA - did you really thing i was going to spend so much and not buy a new graphics card ??
Probably, something in the range of £110-130. Whatever that is, i don't care.
£40 is too little to get anything good, and the sweet spot (where the card runs everything, for around two years, by which time you just buy a new one) hovers between £60 (the 5670, if you can find it when the discounts are flying) and £100 (the 5750), with the market going up and down in a really irritating way.
Of course whether this is an ATI or a Nvidia is totally irrelevant.

A third HD, from NOT WD, not because now i think WD are bad, but because my motherboard's BIOS shows me two hard disks, one from WD, and another from WD, both same manufacturer's code (identical models), and it's fucking irritating having to restart several times, and unplug one then the other, to find out which one is C: . so, from ANOTHER BRAND. Probably a 1TB model, 7200rpm, nice big cache, but nothing expensive. I can get one from £43 new.

EDIT: did i say £43?? my bad. i meant £38. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-hitachi-deskstar-0f10383-7k2000c-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-89-ms-ncq-oem

I'd love a SSD, but then again, i don't see the point of a superfast HD if it's that expensive. Hey, i can wait five seconds more to load up a game, and i'd rather spend the extra money on more storage space, or better VGA, or what not. A normal HD does the same stuff as a SSD, just takes a little while longer. And data is practically *never* going to be a bottleneck in any real world application.
Plus, do not underestimate the advantage of getting five-ten times the storage space for the price :/ my case can easily hold 5 HD, and if you want to push it, that's 10TB for £300. A good SSD will have maybe 80Gb, so you would be constantly deleting the old game to make room for the new.

Well, thats it. My Viewsonic stays, no reason to change it, i'll upgrade to a 26" when and if they ever get made.  Which is *already*, since i just looked and Ilyiama makes a 27" for the same money i paid for my 22" three years ago, silly me. Of course.

Ok, so then, i'll upgrade to a new technology, like LED LCD, but then again, no, or at least not until i have read everything there is to read about them and understand exactly how that technology is performing at that time :/

unless you really want to be a twat, and then here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/23-samsung-md230x6-widescreen-eyefinity-six-screen-setup-! is a 6-monitor setup for two and a half grand, plus the cost of the videocards to run anything in that definition, which is - if my basic math training doesn't fail me - 5760x2160

Let me write that again

5760x2160

What sort of ludicrous triple-SLI do you have to run to get anything running at that definition??

Anyway..
As of today, the total (set to come down, even though we are at a low in the market) is £470. with the most expensive thing being the RAM, (all sixteen gigs of it), and that could be cut down by a meaty £80 if one wanted to just get the system running *almost to the top*, and while it doesnt include the price of the CPUfan, say another £20, it's bound to get cheaper as ram and other stuff comes down.

For someone (not me) who actually works with their PC, a £500 upgrade is a no brainer - for the price, you get a £1000+ PC that performs twice as well as a C2D base. Keep in mind that a P67 mobo will gladly and cheerfully whip your 2500k to 4~5Ghz.

Yep.

New architecture AND 4.5Ghz speed, thats a serious improvement on anything thats as old as mine, and mind you, my PC is still tons better than what you get in any Internet Cafe'.

So..
I really shouldn't try to end this post with anything like "a revelation" or "a wise advice".. if the stats from what i posted above don't convince you, i guess you don't love computers. But i can make again the point for watching what actually you get to keep from your old PC, and if nothing else, at least you get to keep the case - a good, solid case will last forever, and i find it comforting to know that the pieces i buy have somewhere to go once i take them home. My Ammo533 is not on the list of what needs to be upgraded, and probably will not be for another ten years; The HD i plan to buy is also going to stay in for at least another 5 years, as technology might make speedier HDs, but one terabyte of storage is still a fuckfull of data - oops, there is go again with bad words. Bad Me, bad, bad Me.

Wish me luck everyone. I am going to call mr. Epping (i name the people in my phone with where they live) and if things go as planned (HE said we were meeting mon-tue for a business proposal, after all - i didn't imagine it), i will soon be the proud manager of a pizza restaurant - mo' money, more possibilities.

Maybe some P***y, too.



Sunday 3 April 2011

funny stuff about reverb



note: 
wet/dry.
when you send a sound to a reverb machine, one "knob" lets you adjust the percentage of original signal versus "with reverb" signal, or simply "How much reverb" you want added to the end signal, the "finished product" of the reverb machine. in most cases, these are called DRY (no reverb at all)and WET(only the reverb sound). whatever machine you own, there has to be a control that does this or something very close.
also note that "reverb" refers only about the sound that comes back to the source from bouncing off the walls - not the original signal. most applications call for a mix of the two.

difficult-to understand differences between artificial reverb and real reverb.

first of all, obviously real reverb (RR) originates from sound bouncing off surfaces, and in a plain square room these might nto be exactly as parallel as you would imagine; you ought to know that stuff that is *exactly parallel* tends to do weird stuff in the amazing world of audio physics (phase cancellation, anyone ?), while minor deviations affect these maths drastically.

However this is a minor point, granted, as in most modern habitat situations walls do indeed tend to be fairly parallel, and the reverb that reverb machines simulate is based  on parallel walls; mind you, i am not talking about walls that cause standing waves, but rather a room constructed with the wall shape specular on both sides, so, if the left wall is twenty degrees bent to the left, the right wall is bent twenty degrees to the right. Most homes, offices and other non- audio related buildings are rectangular in shape, after all. It's entirely possible to have digital reverb units emulating a cavern, or a church, with large spaces and indistinctive shape; similarly, it is possible to have simulations of trully horrid spaces, such as pipes, tunnels and .. well, even most basic "club" settings are horrid, to my ears.

Artificial Reverb (AR) machines are quite stupid: whatever the room characteristics, the "walls" involved are matematically flat - the formulas around the parameters  do what they are asked to do - modify the sound as if it bounced back from that surface.

I'm not saying that digital reverb units are bad, I'm saying that there are other things that natural ambients do to sound, that a AR unit just do not do; Absorption, for one. And refraction.

AR units create spaces. They go as far as deciding how reflective the "walls" are, but the other two elements are simply not there; they *could* be, in the future, if someone begins working them in to the machines, but as of today ( as far as i know, that is) if you want realistic reverbs from a machine, you have to cheat.

Absorption is a portion of the spectrum disappearing inside a substance - the spectrum of RR is never going to be equal to that of the originating sound; also, different densities and hardness of materials reflect different portions of the spectrum differently, with those few millimetres of plaster on your cellar wall reflecting differently (and at a different time) than the underlying brick. Wave amplitude per frequency is also a factor, granting different wavelenghts different penetration and thus, different reverb times. Low rumbling sounds do not bounce back the instant they hit a surface, they bounce when they encounter sufficient resistance. Shrill reverb sound is typical of digital reverb units, making your bass sound like it's a high hat in a glass room, but sped down. Also, harder materials such as steel beams, concrete and the likes set in motion when stimulated, at different speeds (we're talking both molecular vibration and   actual physical vibration), and stuff that vibates reflects energy differently than stuff that doesn't.

Refraction is essentially what happens when your surface isn't flat down to molecular level, that is, always. Anechoic chambers are, afer all, walls covered with a bunch of spikes. Big spikes granted, but microscopic spikes (such as bad plaster) can cause their own refraction, expecially in ultrahigh frequencies; which do exist, and do modulate other frequencies, wheter we hear it or not. Air pockets, cavities, and other proprieties of the reflecting materials collaborate to create the big differencebetween RR and AR.
So how do we get a good AR sound in a small studio ?

Well, "real" reverb machines, such as plate reverb, or tunnel, do get "real reverb", even though it does not sound like a hall, but they do have some physical components which have their own mechanical acoustic proprieties; if you can use one of those, you are almost there. But if you are broke/have a DSP, then you need to cheat.

First, you should always process your reverb separately. Send the feed to the machine, then have it bounce back a 100% wet mix on a separate channel. Do not record the reverb on the main track (you know this), and also do not record your master with the reverb unedited.
You will need to make some changes to your rever sound to account for real world coloration.

Now, i can suggest some way to make your wet AR sound a little more real, but in the end, it's up to you what sort of coloration you want to add; i doubt that even with a lot of effort and money you will ever be able to recreate the acoustics of a granite castle, or marble church.  

Equalizier on the wet :
if you have a good listening room, less reverb and more low frequencies makes for a better sound, as long as you are prepared to painfully tweak your EQ to get a great response over the whole song; natural reflections change their equalizing with their natural resonance, and although it *is* possible in a MIDI application to select every individual pitch and give it its own EQ, i realize this is impossibly complicated for anyone but the insane.. simply set multiple EQs each to a different frequency, and have each lower one boost more the signal - a lot more, if you take in consideration the F/M curves; make sure that the boosted frequencies do not overlap. If you want to make this perfect, also have multiple wets to feed to each different EQ; i know this sounds like a million tracks, but after all we have ProTools, right ?

Cutting high frequencies from the reverb is also a nice trick; you could always add a resonant shrillness by boosting a frequency in the wet and dampening it in the dry, such as a room with windows, or vice versa a natural environment (moss, trees) would absorb in the wet and boost in the dry. You can chose multiple frequencies to boost and cut, and though this might seem random on paper, you are simulating a very complex event in nature - as i have said before, great natural reverbs are a matter of drastic coloration. It's entirely possible to drastically cut high frequencies from a reverb wet while keeping them untouched in the dry - you might think that it's going to sound muffled and boomy, but it's what real reverb does. When we are en situ, we have a almost "magical" talent for picking up reverb from our surroundings, something that disappears when listening to "2D" sound. Of course, altering reverb thus means having less of it on the track; if the end product is not what you want, simply have less EQ boost/cut, and more reverb overall.

You can also create unusual ambients by filtering a copy of the dry and feeding the result to your reverb unit, which again you record separate. For example, track 1 dry, track 2 dry with filter cutting all but 200-300Hz low mids and hi-pass everything above 3k, feed track 2 into the reverb and get a 100% wet track 3; record tracks 1 and 3. This will sound like a empty ambient, that only refelects those particulair frequencies. For example, a basketball court next to a  glass-walled building.

You could also make that glass building sound further away from the court pavement ..
Find the number of reflective objects you want; then, EQ out all the frequencies you do not want bounced by that object, and feed each EQ to a delay unit. Send both to the reverb unit, and you have your ambient with different distances. And for absorbition ..

Multiple copies of the same reverb, with dramatic EQ cuts, and delays to slow the return of the lower frequencies (they bounce off solid substances after penetrating them, thus their impact point is further and therefore their travel path longer). The lower the frequency, the higher the delay. The effect can be exaggerated to create a vivid impression of massive reflecting structures, and all your friends will think you are awesome when they hear that great RR sound. Again, having at least five wets with different delays is ideal; should you experience something horrid like cancellation, simply skew the delay parameters of one a bit until it disappears. Start with 2ms, and going up - depending on what settings your delay allows you - try to avoid multiple increments.. the Fibonacci series works perfect. That's (1/1)2/3/5/8/15/23/48 etc.. 

Delay can center a sound anywhere in a room - split the signal, feed it to the reverb twice, give each reverb a different delay time - the higher the delay, the lower the wet mix. then, assign each to Left Pan or Right Pan.

There are no "good" ways to simulate the other acoustical proprieties of reverb-creating reflecting materials, such as air pockets, but in the end, the approach is always the same - send to the AR a copy of the track you want to have reverb, and put your processors on it, then mix the result, 100% wet, with the original dry. Exciters, choruses, distortors and flangers (sheet metal room??), whatever effects you can think of, just make sure you do not abuse them - if you find the result is too dramatic, diminish it and couple it with yet another copy of the reverb track, but without the effect; unfortunately, reverb is just like a compressor - it works best when you can't hear it working. High-volume listening helps immensly in getting a really pure sound.

You might be wondering why on earth someone would want to go through all this effort to get a reverb sound, when there are excellent machines from Lexicon that do it for you .. well here is my answer:

Reverb bores me to death. I hate to listen to a song with reverb, after a few listenings i get really tired, the artificialness really begins to stand out. I have always hated that, and too much reverb (which for me is any reverb at all) means i can't listen to that song, ever again.

Older AR units tend to have better sounding reverb, mostly because they were mechanical in nature, and their plates, or tunnels, had their own micro-audio proprieties, and i can tolerate them more. But artificial reverb units, even a 'Lex, is something i positively do not want in my mix.

Having fought over the years on this and now having accepted that people simply will not live without reverb, if you are like me, try these tricks and you might get an all together better result; failing that, at least you put some effort in, and that's it own satisfaction.



Tuesday 22 March 2011

the lowdown on ..
ANGBAND
Angband is a MiddleEarth-inspired, combat-based RPG with (depending on what version you are playing)  graphics between very poor and nonexistent.
It is also very fun.

Angband is a small (10Meg) freeware game with a random map generator - you create your character, then head down in the dungeons beneath the city, where you find hundreds of different monsters and artifacts.
On level 99 lives Sauron, kill him, and you get to go down to level 100 to fight - perhaps prevail - Morgoth, the Ancient Enemy; kill Morgoth and you have won.

Dungeon creation is random each time you enter a level anew - irritating thought to old school dungeoneers like me who like to clean out everything, but as part of the game mechanics it works brilliantly. Limitless dungeons to explore - and although they might be very ripetitive in shape or colour, the stuff you find within them isn't.

Named mobs (from Tolkien lore - ringwraits, easterlings, uruk hai, great dragons..), artifacts, ego items, scrolls, potions, gems, wands, every item ever imagined in a classic RPG is here. Add to this the extereme complexity of the game system, that lets you do almost every immaginable action - spike doors, inscribe runes, throw items/weapons/nasty stuff, magic in every form or shape, sleeping monsters, sneaking, running madly from big monsters, and eating food - without which you die a YASD.

The Good:
Angband is fun, free, and will keep you busy for approximately one million hours. get it HERE.
The Bad:
You have to be no less than a D&D fanatic to love it; Angband is hard and unforgiving - the really bad graphics makes you forget that every square you move is a action turn, and you tend to die often.
The Ugly:
YASD stands for Yet Another Stupid Death.


Unless you plan to really spend months on end playing it, you will make some mistakes, and generally wind up being punished for them. Mind you, there is always a reason why you died, and often that reason laughs in your face. Which is made worse by the fact that since this was designed to be a realistic game, you only get one life.. no save game reload. Once dead, you are dead.


If the one-shot game system ins't bad enough, the interface really needs a overhaul, with important ("you hear a door bust open!") messages getting lost in the keypresses, and you really need to survive this initial culture shock with Angband's ugliness and realism to get to like it.
A
nd finally, Angband wasn't made to be finished in the first place; It was a software that ran on a server at a university, with hundreds of people expected to be logged on, trying to kill Morgoth, all of them failing miserably one way or another. The fun would be in surviving a little longer, going a little deeper in the dungeons, and most of all, getting killed in the most unfair way.


In my three years in Angband, with cheats on, i have faced Morgoth but twice, and never killed him. I did though manage to kill Sauron, and Morgoth himself was brought down to half his hit points, and  i hear that - but it's just a rumor - Morgoth himself can be killed. Word around has it that Rangers work best ..



How to beat Angband


the old adage goes, Buy Lantern , Kill Morgoth.
And certainly a lantern is the most useful piece of equipment until you find an Elfstone or Glaradiel's Phial, for it makes far more light than a torch and in Angband, being able to see what is ahead is more important than a good sword. Which is also, very important. But the point is, knowing what that stuff in your inventory does is very important. Ignorance is death.


Although Angband characters tend to die very easily, all is not lost - you, as a player,(in a convenient .txt file that you can check while playing, just [r]ecall a monster) retain memories of your misadventures, and slowly get to know all the mobs in the game - expecially those whom you have killed or have been killed by, thus preparing you for what is ahead next. Many, many mobs are unfair and/or overpowered, and getting to know which ones are is the best way to stay alive. 
Even though it might seem easy to go deeper at first, you really need to do the first levels ten to twenty at least twice, as it is necessary to find a great deal of equipment before you can get to the better mobs/artefacts. Scrolls/Staves of Teleportation are essential to getting out of troublesome spots, but they both tend to be easily destroyed by fire breathing dragons and acid splashes. There are too many variables to list them here, but essentially until you know exactly what is going on, read the messages carefully and ponder on their significance(ctrl+P to see back messages). Too many times i have died stupidly having the very item that would save me in my own backpack.


Anyhow, should you survive the first impact with Angband's horrid UI, go to graphics/David Gervais Tiles and try those, they are quite nice. And if you should survive having your first few YASDs  without throwing out the folder with the game(no install required), and get deeper into the mysteries of the game, here is a few tips.


0)Tip number zero: the basics.. after learning the key commands, press shift-c and then [h], there is a list of your resistences, if you don't have one, mobs that use that attack type will mangle you in a wink.


1)Molds are the stupides, most irritating mobs in the game. They are worth almost zero XP and have horrid powers of stat drain/equipment damage/XP drain, so stay away. Also, they don't move. Another good reson to read the messages and see what is actually happening in the game.


2)Hounds are worth little XP, and extremely dangerous. Should you find a dungeon level packed with these mobs, just get out and back in again, we won't blame you for it.


3)Ignore the level feelings. The way they work is completely screwed up. You will find plenty of artefacts anyway if you manage to survive past a certain point.


4)If you are serious about beating this game, just take it easy, go slowly, and remember that the number one reason you die is because you have Recalled back into the dungeon at a level too deep for your character. When you are about to use a Recall scroll, go up about 2-5 levels through the stairs, and then select "reset recall depth?->yes".


5)To beat Angband you must kill Morgoth. In order to do so you must first kill Sauron, and him and Morgoth both have a really annoying power that you must counter in order to win: they can summon every named mob in the game. Therefore, even if you do manage to get to level 99 (it's not that hard after all), you have to spend a great deal of time just running around levels 50+ to make sure you have killed every single one of Morgoth's allies. Expecially the biggest ones, like the Queen of dragons or the Ringwraits (all nine of them). Killing Morgoth himself is just a hack&slash thing, though people have had the most success with Rangers who use Holy bolts and Runes to block him. Personally, i haven't got a good thing to say about magic, i never really had a lot of success with it, i like warriors for their simplicity.


6)Use the cheats. There is no easier way to actually learn what is going on that actually sticking your neck in it until you get your head chopped off by a mob who is ten levels out of depth. Of course, you can't win like that, and instead of WINNER you get the title of CHEATER if you do kill Morgoth, but it's the best way to go. And a bit of wisdom .. when you start the game go first to the weaponsmith. if you don't see [25000] as the maximum he pays... start again. Money isn't really important in Angband, but it can make your life easier around level 30+.


7)and last. or you could make a copy of your save game file... 





HOW I KILLED MORGOTH

well, actually morgoth turns out isn't so hard to beat, after all. here is my step-by-step, completely fool-proof method:
step one, stash at home all the potions of healing, *healing*, life that you can. killing morgy will take at least a dozen potions. actually, stashing potions will probably not be that hard at all.


stash at home as many scrolls of mass banishment as you can. simple banishment scrolls might work as well, if you are in a tight spot.


make sure you have enough speed for the beginning of the fight. a staff of haste or potion, plus a nice ring of speed (i have one that's +16) will do nicely.. looking for around +35 speed all in all.
go trough your equipment and have a setup where you have every resistance covered. obviously, chaos, nether, nexus and disenchantment are the most important.
make sure you have a weapon that has Slay Evil as a brand. ideally, a Mace of Distruption or Blade of  of Chaos of *Slay Evil* would be the best weapon, but any artefact weapon that has "slays evil creatures" will do.
plenty of potions of enlightment.


something that has teleport, like scrolls of teleportation, or staves. but scrolls are better.
that's it, you are ready. go down  to level 100, after you have killed just about every named mob in the game (atm 93 named listed, all killed), and ASAP drink a potion of enlightment. look around the dungeon, and see if there is a vault (the big rooms made of white marble, ie, made of that indestructable stone that makes up the edges of the map. if there is no vault, go back to town and try again.


if there is a vault (smaller is better), go in, and if morgoth hasn't spotted you yet, clear it/banish. if you can't, start again from town(vaults are plentyful at these levels).
when you have your small vault cleared, put your speed equipment on, and sloooowly go around the dungeon looking for Morgoth. When he spots you and proceeds to tunnel through granite to get to you, run to the vault. (once in, get your "fighting" equipment on)
lead Morgoth into the vault. essentially, what you want is a situation like so :


XXXXXXX
XXuM
XXXXXXX


where "u" is You, and M is obviously, Morgoth. X's are the white vault walls, that Morgy cannot destroy. 
This leaves you with a simple (hrmm..) one-on-one melee with Morgoth. If, or rather, when, Morgoth summons his many friends, just read a scroll of mass banishment. i had 9 at the beginning of the fight, used 6 to beat him. besides this, it's just attack morgoth .. press space bar several times...else you might attack him one time too many, and go too low on HP. if your HP are less than say, 600, then you need to drink a potion. my Dunedain warrior had 1144 HP, Anduril as main sword, 30+ potions of *healing*, AC 237 and all resists covered, plus a lucky Nenya and Vilya combo.. but these are not necessary, as a nice ring of damage will do.
o
h btw, you *do* tend to miss Morgoth quite a lot, so rings of slaying will do just as nicely, as a simple potion of heroism also. when meleeing him, simply never push your luck. if your HP are low, drink a potion. do not try "one more attack" as he can manastorm for 600dmg or so.   on a good round, i would use two moves to attack and the third to heal. didnt take me more than 15 potion of *healing* to kill him, so around 30-40 turns.. 


thinking about it, that must have been a solid two minutes of gameplay, not longer. but they sure were a tight two minutes. 

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Better Bring A Bucket

Stuff's better, still no 'net but more moneys coming in. Coming soon:
The Ulysses - not such a good book
Blood Bowl, UnLegendary Edition
Angband! - it's the 90's all over again
Pipe Smoking - great or awesome ?
and of course, lots of Python

plus the usual spewings of satire and hate.

Still job-hunting :/

Sunday 2 January 2011

Halleluya

Finally, Windows 7 has a proper application audio mixer - allowing me to turn down the output of individual applications (more useful than you'd think); kudos to Microsoft for implementing this - long overdue - change.

Audio on Microsoft computers is still many years behind what i expect from a home machine.. but never mind that. Windows 7 is a really great OS, just as good as XP was many, many years ago. The main strength of W7 lies in the fact that as of now, every piece of XP software i had to run runs fine - even if my system is 64bit.

Well, Duh you might say, but the fact that i can function just as well as i did on my ultra-tweaked XP, and i can do so by just popping in the W7 install disk (i didnt need to install *any* driver this time around) is  agreat advantage. Also, i'm not just having the same experience, as W7 fixes some long-standing kernel bugs that XP had, making this "2010 XP" version of windows a no-brainer choice. The loss of performance for using a more modern OS (more stuff running on it) is .. negligible. seriously.  When i installed W7 i just *knew* it was going to suck, but it didn't ! What a surprise..

So, W7 is good, but is it great (yeah, i know i said it was great, but the question stands)?

Well, only time will tell. I can already see a couple things about it i don't like, but all together i say it's promising.
Sure beats working with OSX.