Category: Pointless Ramblings

Memed!

Posted on by Nimgimli

BullCopra decided I was scrap-worthy! Huzzah!

honest_scrap1

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

I’m pretty sure that Copra and I have very different definitions of the word brilliant, since I generally feel like I’m flailing around like a noob on these pages. But thanks, Copra!!

So here’re the memeRules:

  1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
  2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
  3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Rule 1, check.

Rule 2:

Actually before I get to Rule 2, let me preface this list. I know for some people getting meme’d is like being sent a chain letter. But I love the spirit of this meme, and I’m picking 7 bloggers that really have affected me in positive ways. I hope no one feels a sense of obligation from being on this list. Forward the meme or don’t; it doesn’t matter to me. What does matter is I get a chance to call attention to some very cool people.

  1. Stargrace at MMOQuests, because she’s always celebrating the fun that comes out of the games we play. I’ve gone on more vicarious adventures with her than with anyone else.
  2. Tipa at West Karana. She’s done a lot for the blog-o-sphere, but I’m including her this time for the work she did on the XFire WordPress Plug-In that I’m running over on the right.
  3. Angela at G33kG0dd3ss for having the hardest-to-type blog name of them all, and because she did the design for Dragonchasers. And she puts up with me every day. I have no idea how.
  4. Wiqd at iMMOvation, because he makes me think a lot about the games we play, and tends to spin it all in a pretty positive light. Reading him tends to be very relaxing and thought-provoking at the same time, which is (IMO) quite a feat.
  5. Tesh at Tish Tosh Tesh for constantly challenging me. We often don’t see eye-to-eye, but I always feel like I’ve improved myself a wee bit after we debate a topic.
  6. Ysharros at Stylish Corpse. This one is a bit of a ‘cheat’ because Copra already tagged her, but she invites us in time after time for long, rambling discussions that she starts and then guide the conversation as the day passes. She just has a knack for picking topics that folks can build a conversation around.
  7. DM Osbon from Construed, for his infectious enthusiasm from both games and (sometimes more importantly) other pop culture. It’s good to be reminded that there’s more to life than computer games: there’s comics and movies!

Rule #3

Finding 10 things about me that anyone would find remotely interesting will be a challenge.

  1. I’ve been involved in online communities since the 1980’s. My first gig was as an assistant sysop for Scorpia (older gamers may remember her from the pages of Computer Gaming World) on GEnie. It wasn’t a paid gig, but she did send us a Holiday Bonus. She signed her checks “Scorpia.”
  2. I was an Associate Editor of Strategy Plus Magazine for a few years. My beat was strategy and wargames.
  3. I once spent a very pleasant day at Derek Smart’s house in Miami, looking at Battlecruiser and thinking it was awesome. And it was, when Smart was at the controls. He was a charming host and it was a really enjoyable time. (For those who don’t get the reference, Smart is infamous for taking part in online flame wars about his game.)
  4. I took part in a focus group for the crafting aspects of LOTRO. If you hate how crafting works in that game, I have to take a very very very tiny bit of responsibility for it.
  5. My first MMO (although it wasn’t call that at the time) was Megawars III on CompuServe. I spent $300/month on access fees (they cut you off at $300) and another $150 or so/month on phone charges.
  6. Even though I’m a pasty-faced geek now, there was a time when I was a total beach bum. I grew up in The Hamptons and worked nights. Every day was spent lounging at the ocean, soaking up the sun and body surfing.
  7. My first Virtual Reality experience was Dactyl Nightmare. I happened to be in an arcade when they were setting it up, and the tech just let me hang out in it for about 25 minutes, noodling around while he got everything in order. After taking off the head-mounted-display, I proclaimed it Electronic LSD and predicted it would take the world by storm. It didn’t.
  8. I ghostwrote a chapter of a book called “Secrets of the Videogame Masters” by Clayton Walnum. My chapters was a walk-through of Bionic Commando for the NES. I was 28 at the time and had chicken pox as I was playing through the game. I think it was the only thing that kept me sane from that ITCHING!
  9. The first computer I used was actually a paper-teletype machine with an acoustic coupler.  You had to call up the PDP-10 at Stony Brook University, listen for the *screeech* that told you the PDP was talking, then shove the headset of the phone into a couple of rubber cups on the back of the teletype. Programs were store on paper tape with holes punched out. Getting your program ‘roll’ squished often meant re-keying.
  10. I dated a pretty serious activist in my youth. That led me to being at the big No Nukes Rally in Battery Park, Manhatten, in 1979, and I marched in Washington DC against registering for Selective Service  after the USSR invaded Afghanistan that same year. I was something of a hippy back then. I think maybe I still am.

Whew. I think my job here is done…

The Chronicles of Spellborn Initial Impressions

Posted on by Nimgimli

Some friends noticed I’m in the closed beta for The Chronicles of Spellborn and have been asking me what I think about it. I’ve confirmed that there’s no NDA so I can talk about it, but I’m a bit hesitant to do so since I’ve only taken one character to level 5 so far. But the work week rears its ugly head very soon and if I don’t write about it now I probably won’t get another chance to do so until next weekend.

So here are my initial, ‘gut level’ thoughts. I’ve probably gotten a lot of this wrong, so everything should be taken with a giant salt crystal. Further, I’m not going to defend this post; I feel kind of unsavory talking about a game I’ve only played for a few hours.

Anyway…

TCOS is different. If you’re sick of ‘classic’ MMO playstyles as found in EQ 1 & 2, DAOC, Warhammer, WOW & LOTRO, then you’ll be pleased to find some new ideas here. First of all, you have two levels. Your “Fame” level pretty much translates to level in most other MMOs. It mostly advances via Questing, with monster slaying only adding a little to it. Your PeP Level (Personal Experience P-P-P…??) level advances via combat. This level caps at 5 (!) but you lose a level every time you die. So the idea I guess is that your PeP well constantly be wavering up and down as you play. Each level of PeP gives you a new bonus/buff.

I like how this system gives us a death penalty with a real ‘sting’ but without the soul-crushing despair of losing a “classic” level or experience points.

Let’s look at graphics. The world is pretty astounding (imo). Here’re some thumbnails to full sized (1680×1050) wallpapers at photobucket:

TCOS Wallpaper 4 TCOS Wallpaper 3

TCOS Wallpaper 2 tcos,wallpapers

You might notice there’s no real sky. The lore of the game explains how the world was destroyed by humans and the Daevi (the two playable races in the game) as they threw off the yoke of slavery to the demons. Now what’s left of the world is broken up into shards floating in an infinite spell-sea of some kind, and shardships are used to sale between them. Here’s a shardship:

shardship

Now we get to the character models, and those are going to be really hit or miss for most players, I think. They’ve got a very unique style, I’ll give them that, but in many ways that style could be called “weird”. Here’s a selection of NPCs:

human_male1 human_male2 human_female1 daevi_female1

Let’s talk gear. When you create a character, you pick his/her clothing, armor and weapons. All of which is purely cosmetic. This was a huge shock to me, frankly. I love the ‘loot treadmill’ and getting a lucky drop of some cool new gear and at first, at least, it seemed like there was no such thing. But (and honestly I’m still hazy about the system) most of your gear has Sigil Slots, and you do get Sigils that drop as loot (I think…I’ve never got one) which you can place in your gear to make you more powerful. You can “upgrade” your gear, maybe just for looks, but maybe for more Sigil Slots? I’l still really fuzzy about this stuff.

Right behind gear comes combat, and here I am very, very conflicted. The character skills in combat are really interesting, while the player skills in combat are very annoying (to me). Let me elaborate.

As a character gains Fame Levels he can learn news skills, in typical MMO fashion. But instead of a series of hotbars, here we have a skill deck. Imagine the skill deck as a polygonal drum that rotates as you fight. Each “face” of the drum has 3-6 slots for skills (at character creation, each face has 3 but that number increases as you gain levels). When you use a skill, the drum rotates to the next face with a fresh selection of skills. At character creation the drum has only 2 faces, at level 5 that increases to 3, and I think by max level it’ll have 6 or 8 faces.

So the idea is to arrange the skill deck so that each row (which translates to a drum face in my analogy) has a skill that logically follows up a skill in the row prior to it. At least, I think that’s the smart way to play. Let me give an example. My character has a Shoot skill (fires an arrow) that I use to pull. I put that on Row 1 of my skill deck. My character also has a Shout that provides a short term buff. I put that on Row 2. So I open a fight by using Shoot. The aggro’d foe charges me, but by using Shoot my skill drum rotates to Row 2, where my Shout is. I use that as the creature charges, so my buff is ready for the fight ahead.

That’s just 1 column of my deck. My other columns are devoted to fast single target attacks, or slower multi-target attacks. This is all a pretty unique combat system that is (obviously) hard for me to describe, but it really gets you thinking about tactics. You can rearrange your skill deck anytime you want (well, except during a combat) at no cost so you can tweak them for a tough fight, or change it based on who you’re grouped with, etc.

To actually use a skill, though, feels a little combersome to me. You select a column using either the mouse wheel or the number keys, but that doesn’t fire the skill. In order to actually activate the spell, you have to hit the left mouse button, or hit the number key a second time, at which point the skill fires, the cooldown for it begins, and the “drum” rotates to the next row.

At the same time this is going on, you need to position yourself for the attacks. Spellborn uses a reticle system. You have to point your reticle at what you want to hit. And conversely, by moving you’ll make it harder for the enemy to hit you. Dodging isn’t a character skill, it’s a player skill. If you stand in one place and fight, combat is going to be very difficult for you.  Instead, the idea is to hit the enemy then slide left or right to stay out of its cone of fire, so to speak. You’ve probably done this in PvP in MMOs before this one, but now you have to do this against mobs as well. Fighting a bear? Keep hitting it in its butt, circle-strafing it so it can’t face you to hit back.

Depending on your tastes, you’ll either find this incredibly fun, or incredibly annoying. Me, I find it fun for about half an hour then I get sick of circle-straffing around like a maniac during every fight. In my ideal MMO, my “skills” come in the form of tactics…mental skills. The actual combat should be about my character’s skills matching up against his opponent’s. I don’t play genres like FPSers much because I’m not very good at them and they bother my wrist.

The shame of it is that I find I don’t even use that slick Skill Deck system because I’m so focused on circling the enemy while keeping it targeted. I just hold down the mouse button and level the deck on my ‘fast skills’ column and basically let it auto-attack for me. Watching the skilldeck to see what “column” I have selected, and what skill is in that row and column, and whether that skill is ready or cooling down, is just too much for me while I’m also watching my enemy in 3D space and constantly moving so it can’t hit back. I seem to do better spamming 1 skill and moving than using tactics and paying attention to the skill deck to put it to good use.

And this is why I probably won’t be playing Spellborn after the beta. I love the Skill Deck, but I’m just not dextrous enough to put it to good use while doing this strafe-dance. It’s fun for a while but it’s not something I’d play a lot, so probably wouldn’t be worth a subscription fee. But that’s just me and this is a very personal choice, and even if it isn’t for me, I have to really commend the developers for coming up with something unique; there’s nothing out there like The Chronicles of Spellborn (at least, that I’ve seen) and I really hope it finds a huge audience.

To recap this wall ‘o text: The lore is very compelling. The environments are unique and interesting; I spent a lot of time just running around the first town looking at things. The quests and NPC dialog are well written and interesting.  The gear/sigil system means everyone can look the way they want to look rather than wearing ugly gear because it has good stats. The skill deck system makes my inner strategist drool with hunger. Inventory slots are plentiful and buying and selling uses a very clean interface. The game runs really nicely. But for me, the frantic, twitchy combat just makes it a no-sale. 🙁

Re-Imagining Dragonchasers

Posted on by Nimgimli

Regular readers may have detected a change of tone around here lately. I hadn’t detected it until my last post, after which I scrolled back and saw a lot of ranting and a few brief news items.

At which point I thought… “Yuck.”

This might be a good time to explain where the name of my blog comes from. Feel free to giggle, but one of my favorite movies is George Romero’s Knightriders. It’s about a traveling troop of modern-day knights that roam the country re-enacting jousts, only on motorcycles rather than horseback. Their King is played by a very young Ed Harris, and he is an idealist. He really is trying to recreate Camelot, while some of the other members are just having fun doing stunts on their bikes. Anyway, not really the point. But in one scene, Harris is trying to explain what he’s doing and how much it matters to him and he yells “I’m chasing the dragon!!”

I always interpreted this as ‘chasing a romantic [in the classical sense of the word] dream’. Chasing adventure, wonder, heroics… So that’s where dragonchasers comes from. The tagline (which no longer displays) is “A thoroughly mundane fellow’s quest for adventure.” And of course I chase adventure through games. 🙂

Two notes: 1) Harris might actually say “I’m fighting the dragon.” but when I created the blog I hadn’t seen the movie in years. 2) I’ve since learned that “chasing the dragon” is a heroin user’s term!! No correlation to drug use is in any way implied!

Recently a friend of mine told me he’d formed a WoW guild called DragonChasers and he felt a bit weird about it since he knew that was my blog’s name. He’d decided on his own what the term meant, and his feelings (I don’t think he reads this blog) were right in line with mine, so I guess the term does evoke what I originally meant it to invoke.

Anyway…I’ve been struggling lately with getting anywhere close to this theme. I’m conflicted in a lot of ways. I’ve been writing a tech blog for IT World (and I think that’s going really well… my posts have made the front page of Google News and Slashdot and traffic is really good, I’m told) and enjoying it so much that I start to daydream about those days when I was writing for a living. And I’ve been sort of enviously watching other bloggers getting noticed by PR people from various companies. Y’know, the Warhammer Valentines are one example, and folks getting review copies of games and stuff are another.

And I lost my way at some point, and started quasi-writing Dragonchasers in a more controversial way. One thing I know well is that pissing people off gets a site page views. [My 9-5 job is working as a web developer in online publishing.] At the same time, I’ve been making half-hearted attempts at being more ‘newsy.’ But not really committing enough to that to make it matter.

This is getting wall-of-text-y, sorry. Add to all of this some personal stuff going on with my mom, who seems to be rapidly slipping away from us, and I’ve just been being very unpleasant in a lot of my posts, and for that I’d like to apologize.

It took the comments in reply to my sneering last post to make me take a look in the mirror and see where I’d wandered to. I’d really like to thank Tipa, Werit, Green Armadillo and particularly Scott — who took a good chunk of his time to give me some solid advice — for helping me see the blog through the eyes of readers. And of course, to thank Angela for always having my back.

So I think it’s time to step back from this blog for a little while, and rediscover the magic of chasing dragons before I start posting again. When I return, I hope to once again be sharing my love of ‘adventures through gaming’ with whomever happens to come by to read me.

In the meantime, I’m pretty active on twitter (pasmith) if you feel like chatting. There’s a pretty nice community of gamers there, having an ongoing and slow paced conversation about the games we all love. Please come and join us!

Read with a critical eye: XBL Lesbians (rant)

Posted on by Nimgimli

So you can’t have missed all the nonsense about this Consumerist article (I’m not going to dignify it by linking to it) that claims that “Teresa” said she was harassed on, and ultimately suspended from, XBox Live because she put in her profile that she was a lesbian.

It saddens me to no end how many people are upset about this.

Why? Am I a homophobe just like the entire Microsoft Corporation is (according to some comments I’ve read)?

No, quite the contrary. I’m rather disgustingly liberal, in fact.

But I do READ CRITICALLY. And I think about what I’m reading and I think about plausibility and I don’t believe something just because I see it posted on a website. I also understand the economics of websites and ad serving and page views.

Who is “Teresa?” No one knows. If anyone at the Consumerist knows, they aren’t talking or lending any credibility to their story. I don’t think they care. They got a juicy controversial story that has generated thousands and thousands of page views which has translated into “making their numbers” on ad revenue this week. Bully for them.

Teresa says “No one will help me get the word out about Microsoft’s anti-gay policy.” Well, don’t worry Teresa, the Consumerist will and all they need is your story to be juicy enough to get them page views…they don’t need anything as mundane as “facts” to convince them.

Mysterious Teresa. I’ll tell you who *doesn’t* know who “Teresa” is. Stephen Toulouse, Xbox LIVE Policy Manager. Y’know, the person who could fix the situation.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has an opinion about Microsoft’s anti-gay policy, too. XBox Live, Homophobia, and Online Gaming Policy

Sony, Microsoft, and many others have been trying to address this [using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory fashion, and in general the shitty behavior of the online gaming community towards gays – pete] by putting policies in place to prevent subscribers from using the online shield of anonymity to harass, verbally assault, and generally defame others. Are they the best policies? No. Are they working to improve them?

In the case of Stephen [Toulouse] and Microsoft – they have been nothing but open, welcoming, and willing to discuss ideas for positive and inclusive changes during these conversations. Microsoft has invited GLAAD out to its headquarters in Redmond, WA, for multi-day meetings with developers, executives, and policy enforcers in the upcoming weeks.

Taking that Consumerist article at face value is just plain and simply stupid. If you read it and immediately became outraged at how some (as far as we know, fabricated) person was mistreated, then it’s time you took a moment and reflected a bit about how readily you accept stories as facts.

Your community needs you to think critically, people. Don’t be a sheep, don’t be a doormat. Ask questions, get facts, then make an informed decision about whether or not what you’re reading is true.

If Teresa’s story is true, then you are right to be outraged. But if its true, Teresa needs to come forward and back up her story with some facts.

I’ll end by duplicating Toulouse’s ending paragraph here…let’s get the word out:

Theresa from the Consumerist article, if you’re reading this, I don’t have your Gamertag or any information about you at all, the article was extremely vague. I’d love to get your feedback and talk to you about how we can make the experience better. Please email me at [email protected].

Damned anti-gays at MS…

I’ve been memed!

Posted on by Nimgimli

I have to confess, I’ve never been meme-tagged before. That kind of thing generally doesn’t happen to us grumpy soloers. Usually people tag their tanks from the night before, or once in a while the hot elf chick (or dude, depending on gender preference) who threw ’em a buff the other day.

But Ysharros tagged ME! I feel like Charlie Brown opening his mailbox to find his first ever Valentine!

OK OK, kidding aside, it really is the first time the blog has been pinged on one of these viral social-networking fun meme things, and I thank Ysh for it! My only disappointment is that I couldn’t come up with a properly alliterative title for the post.

To recap, this is the Sixth Screenshot Meme. The idea is to go into your screenshots folder, then into the 6th subfolder and post the 6th screenshot. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should go you go into a 6th sub-subfolder. We’re saving that for the Devil’s Screenshot Meme.

Sadly for me, my Sixth Screenshot is from EQ2 and one I’ve posted not too long ago:
09_01_raffes_feastIt’s the Feasting Table inside my character’s house.

In order to dig up something more interesting, I sorted my screenshot folder in reverse chronological last-modified date, then did the same with the images inside. Here’s what I came up with that way:
mule
This is a “mule” from the live then canceled then live again MMO Saga of Ryzom. I really should revisit that strange world while it is still around. I haven’t played since the Ryzom Ring was added. The Ring is supposed to allow for player-created quests.

Like Ysharros, I don’t have a lot of really old screenies any more. At some point I do run out of space and just purge old stuff.

Anyway, now it’s my turn to tag more people. Woot!

Looking forward to what you all come up with!

Change is Life (An Open Message to my blogging friends)

Posted on by Nimgimli

It’s been a little over a week since I started my job blogging for ITWorld.

Today I noticed my XFire Profile:

“This Week: No Games Played” Huh. Now in all honesty this isn’t accurate because I’ve played 8 hours of Too Human on the XBox since I bought it last Saturday morning, but the bulk of that time was on Saturday and Sunday.

I’m finding it an interesting challenge to come up with 1-2 tech-related topics to write about every day. Some days, like when Facebook changes it Terms of Use, the topic is obvious. Other days I have to stretch a lot more.

I feel strongly that this experience is good for me as a writer. It’s enforced discipline to put butt in chair and *write* every day (well, except weekends…my contract only covers week days) and to expand my knowledge of technology, which is one of my ‘natural’ passions anyway.

But in order to feed the muse, so to speak, I’ve had to expand my cloud of Twitter Followees and have added a ton of tech-related RSS feeds to my news reader. My posts tend to be a mix of condensed and regurgitated tech news & research mixed with my opinion, so I need to be in constant scan mode to know what the big story is on any given day. Then I spend a good chunk of time doing the research (sometimes I have to do very little because its something I already am well versed in, other times I have to do a lot) and finally I write my posts.

All this scanning, researching and writing is taking a lot of time, and by the time I finish that, then catch up on all my “personal” (aka, gaming-related) RSS feeds, it was time for bed. Some nights I don’t even get caught up before midnight comes creeping around and then I was starting the next day with a backlog.

So last night I just had to give in and start deleting feeds that I’m not super interested in. Warhammer bloggers, for instance. I’m not playing, don’t plan to go back to playing, and had to make the tough choice to cut people I really enjoyed reading just because their topic was no longer relevant to my life. I feel really guilty about this, like I’m letting friends down, though I know they won’t know I’m not reading them anymore. But *I* know.

So what’s the point of this post? I guess I just felt like I needed to explain why I’m not reading and commenting on your blogs as much as I used to. (Actually, a lot of you might see that as a blessing, not having Pete S gumming up the works all the time!!) It just occured to me, this is a bit like when Ysharros talked about people leaving a guild with no explanation. I feel like I’m leaving a “guild” in a way, and I just wanted the chance to explain why. It isn’t that your blogs don’t still rock, because they do. It’s just a question of a finite number of hours in any given day. By cutting down the number of gaming blogs I read, I hope to free up time to actually do some gaming. I hope you’ll understand this decision.

Dragonchasers slows down even more…

Posted on by Nimgimli

I realize my posting has been getting pretty infrequent here at Dragonchasers. Sadly, it’s going to become even more so. As of today, I’m writing for ITworld.com, and I’m committed to a post a day for those good folks, which is going to leave even less time for personal blogging (and for that matter, less time for gaming).

For me personally, this is great news. My writing has been getting sloppier and sloppier over the past several years since I have no one to answer to. Now I have to start disciplining myself and sharpening up my skills again. And of course, the money never hurts!!

Hopefully people will still have room in their RSS feeds for those days when I can squeak out a DC post (or on weekends). Adding to the weird scheduling is my full-time job. I think I may have mentioned here that we had some layoffs in December, and at the same time all the survivors had their pay & hours cut by 10%. I opted to work 4×9 hour days, so Monday-Thursday I’m getting home pretty late. An extra hour doesn’t sound like much but it really has impacted my schedule quite a bit. So most of my gaming and consequently, personal blogging time is happening Friday-Sunday these days.

As always, thanks so much for reading Dragonchasers!

Koster, pinball & the weekend wrap-up

Posted on by Nimgimli

I spend an interesting hour+ this evening watching Raph Koster’s Keynote from the Living Game Worlds 2008 Symposium. Direct link to the video is here, but get comfortable because it does run 85 minutes or so (I’m so glad the PS3 has a robust enough web browser that I can watch stuff like this on it). He has a lot to stay about changes in the industry of virtual worlds and MMOs, and what was pretty interesting was that at the end, someone called him on his apparent pessimism, which was good because it gave him a chance to clarify that he didn’t really feel pessimistic about the future of virtual worlds.

I dunno, he sounded kind of — I wouldn’t even say pessimistic so much as dismissive — towards a lot of products that bring great joy to millions of people. But of course bloggers tend to be just as dismissive, so maybe that’s just part of the critical thinking and future speculation process. We almost have to knock the current products or else why think about changes. Maybe? Anyway, it was definitely an interesting talk and worth listening to. There are slides but you won’t miss a lot if you just listen.

As for me, this is the second weekend in a row where I spent more time reading and playing with guinea pigs than I did gaming. I get into these gaming slumps from time to time. I’m still struggling with feeding that urge to create rather than consume.

I did jump into Warhammer a couple of times, playing it as a pure PvE game. Got my Witchhunter to level 20. I picked Warhammer mostly because it’s still active for a few more weeks more than due to a burning desire to play it. Use it before I lose it and all that. Now that I’m using two pairings to level, it’s a much better PvE game (than when I tried to stick to one pairing) but it still isn’t $15/month good for me.

I also wandered around Middle Earth a bit, played some Valkyria Chronicles, and, laugh if you will, but I played that freebie Amazon casual game BuildALot for a long time. 🙂

Oh, and after reading an article about Bill Budge and Pinball Construction Set, someone linked in the comments to Future Pinball. This is a modern version of a Pinball Construction Set, totally free (though donations are accepted) and while I didn’t get around to trying to build anything yet, I did download some pretty amazing tables. Here’s a video of one of ’em in action (I picked this video because it best showed off the system, but this particular table is a bit seedy in theme.)

Theme Tweaking

Posted on by Nimgimli

If dragonchasers is displaying wonky, please do a shift-refresh and see if that fixes things. I asked Angela to tweak the theme a bit, removing the left sidebar so the text isn’t so narrow, and it seems like the old stylesheet is cached or something. Rather than fix it, I’m taking the lazy way out and asking readers to refresh. 🙂

Hopefully the new layout will give me a bit more freedom when it comes to laying out posts with images, as well as cutting down on all the scrolling the old version required. Next time, I’ll take the designer’s advice and get things right the first time!! 🙂