2013 New Year’s Resolutions

2013:

Once again I am at the keyboard laying down the goals and aspirations I have for the next year. Every year I say the same thing that I cannot believe the old one is done and the new one is starting. In less than 1 day I will have to sign and think of writing 2013 for the year.  2012 was an eventful time, but not always so grand.  This year I am quantifying and organizing my goals in the following categories: Health, Spirituality, Knowledge, Work, Education, Home Repairs, Trips, Game Designs, Game Playing, Movies & Entertainment , Computer Life, Car & Lifestyles.  Each entry will have 5 goals from lofty to banal.

 

Health:

1.  Solve why I get these headache and reduce them to 1 per month

2.  Exercise more — walks at break, lunch, and once a week do some sort of 30 minute workout

3.  Eat better with less red meat, less salt, and more fresh foods

4.  Take a vitamin or some form of supplement to help with digestion

5.  Main issues for 2013 is to resolve my feeling of pressure in the chest area — beating heart feeling?!?

 

Spirituality:

1.  Continue explore that which cannot be solved.

2.  Try and understand the deeper implications of time and space

3.  Just be happy for the moment and not worry about the past or future

4.  Spread happiness to others — a simple smile can bring someone a moment of happiness

5.  Read more on spirituality

 

Knowledge:

1.  Continue to go to school

2.  Take at least 2 more classes this year, but try for 3

3.  Learn more about computers, servers — especially the Mac that I will get at the office

4.  Try and read more on history, through magazines, books, and videos

5.  Open my mind to other possibilities — reject the standard responses and be more open to new ideas

 

Work:

1.  Continue to learn and get involved

2.  Enjoy the four weeks of vacation — taking them in 2 day bursts (making for many 4 day weekends)

3.  Become a Celia employee

4.  Continue to be the best IT professional — friendly and knowledgeable.

5.  Continue to dream about other jobs and other places. . . .

 

Education:

1.  Graduate

2.  Continue to take courses and learn

3.  Stay in contact with friends and professors at school  — network

4.  Try and go to the university library 5 times this year

5.  Dream of going on for a Masters degree.

 

Home Repairs:

1.  Carpet for the house

2.  Painting the walls

3.  Painting the door and wall of the garage

4.  Spruce up the yard

5.  Put the house up for sale

 

 

Trips:

1.  Ann Arbor

2.  Traverse City

3.  Upper Peninsula

4.  Going south

5.  Going to Europe

 

Game Designs:

1.  Start and work on RuleMaster the ultimate fantasy RPG

2.  Contact Jeff Dee and work on a V&V module

3.  Design a card or board game

4.  Create a new mod or find a game that you can mod and make a creation

5.  Work on Phantasm Adventures

 

Game Playing:

1.  Try new games — get a new game once a month

2.  Play other than computer games

3.  Game Night (with friends) needs to be more varied

4.  Return to a more active gaming — playing with friends on D&D or some RPG

5.  Card games or board games

 

Movies & Entertainment:

1.   Five movies at the theatre?  Possible?  Not sure. . . .

2.   Five novels

3.  Three magazine subscriptions

4.  Break the mold of years past and get out more or have new friends in

5.  Find a new hobby, outside of gaming!

 

Computer Life:

1.  At work get my Mac and learn how to use it

2.  At home get a tablet of some form

3.  Much less Facebook and more of Google+ or other social media

4.  De-emphasize sitting in front of the computer but doing other things

5.  Get down to one computer in the den

 

Cars & Lifestyles:

1.  Continue to drive and save with the General C

2.  Sell the Mercury

3.  Search for ways of saving money

4.  Sell the house

5.  Be Happy More!

 

 

 

Weekly Gaming Diary

Each year, from October to October I record what my impressions are in my weekly gaming group. Gone are the days of the 8 guys packed into my house playing D&D, but I still manage to have a couple of friends over almost every week. We almost always play computer games, as the diary reads below. Every now and then we have a ready great night — something very special. We have had some good nights with some fantastic adventures. Where appropriate I have highlighted interesting events.

10-03-12 Over the weekend I amended the game a bit changing Slavery and harbors. The big change I made was giving a new Unique Unit to every civilization. We started a new game at a slight accelerated pace with me playing the Greeks, Joe playing Kongo, and Wade playing the Iroquois. Wade played exemplary and won a great amount of credibility. I floundered like always. Joe seemed content on being off by himself. Good game overall.

09-26-12 Another fantastic night playing Civ IV. We all had so much fun. If this can continue for another couple of weeks, it will be great.

09-18-12 Had one of the best nights playing CIVILIZATION IV in memory. We all did well and we all had fun exchanging tactics and barbs. Good battles and great fighting. We are looking forward next week to continue this fun game.

09-12-12 Played the same game and am slowing pulling myself up, though in last place we are having fun.

09-05-12 Joe, Wade, and I played a fantastic but frustrating match of History Rewritten, a Civilization IV mod. I ended up in a swath of jungle and had a tough time throughout the night. We will play next week which for me will be better. Fun but aggravating at times.

08-29-12 Trying out my new Civ4 mod, Age of Discovery2. No doubt it will be an utter failure.

08-14-12 Playing Civilization 4 with the Multivwerse mod. Joe, Wade, and I all did quite well but we were playing on easy level. Next week we will be on our standard of Noble and Marathon.

08-08-12 Still playing World of Warcraft with Joe – running dungeons with our top level guys. Wade expressed interest in coming over again and so we may alter our playing a bit? May eventually settle on Civ4 again?

07-24-12 Continued playing WoW this week. Wade did not get over because he is still feeling poorly but also because he doesn’t play World of Warcraft. Joe and I found several interesting secrets last night – coming and going out of dungeons and velium sheets (so I can use my enchanter on my other toons.

07-17-12 Played WoW.

07-10-12 Great fun again playing World of Warcraft.

07-03-12 Great fun playing City of Heroes. May play WoW next week.

06-26-12 (last game of June) Played City of Heroes, but it was a difficult night with many deaths!!!

06-18-12 Sara’s birthday so we are pushing it to Wednesday, if it happens.

06-11-12 No game this week because I am up at the cottage. Next week we hope to try Civ4 again!

06-04-12 Started out playing Civ IV but it kept going OOS. So we moved back to CoH and I played Cloudstuff for great fun.

05-29-12 Great fun once again – I played two healers. Dr. Cloudstuff and Atomic Soul

05-22-12 Everyone has fun. We played heroes last night. I made a new guy called Atomic Soul.

05-15-12 Fun times.

05-08-12 Both guys came over and we played City of Heroes with “good” aligned characters.

05-01-12 Confronted WADE on being overweight.

04-24-12 City of heroes.

04-16-12 More City of Heroes fun. We all went up a couple of levels. Wade is still silly!

04-09-12 Another week with Joe, Wade, and I playing City of Heroes. Joe and I had a great time – made fun of Wade. He is such a tard.

04-02-12 First time that Joe, Wade, and I got together in so many months. This time to play City of Heroes. We had a good time, if not some awkward moments when Wade tried to show how much he knows about the game. Overall, we had a great night with some interesting battles. Looking forward to next week.

03-20-12 Tried to play Civilization IV but the game kept crashing. So now we are playing City of Heroes again. Probably something we will try and play since it seems Joe is more interactive with that. I got a new power supply.

03-13-12 Still playing Civilization IV – my mod called Conquest – Still crashing on my other machine. Need to get a power supply for it.

03-05-12 Played Civilization IV: Conquest. Had a good time but crashed a few times.

02-28-12 Played CoH but not really enjoying it as much as I thought I would. I think Joe is much more hooked on it then he says – he is making a dozen toons. He is a cheap son of a bitch though, so he wont spend any money on it – nor will he do so for EQ in the future.

02-21-12 Still playing City of Heroes and have settled on two guys (me: The Oak King; Joe: Fusilier). Deleted other guys.

02-14-12 Played City of Heroes. Made 2 sets of guys: H1 and Mithril Mage. Joe made Uuo-118 and Mr. Blackboard. Had a ton of fun

02-06-12 Played another couple of games of Civilization IV but had continuing issues of OOS errors. Worked through some but still had issues.

01-30-12 Playing Civ4 but in the end, we decided to restart again and added some new rules.

01-24-12 Still playing Civ4 and having some fun.

01-16-12 Got Civ4 running again. Had a fun night.

01-10-12 Tried to play Civilization 4 but the game kept crashing. So we played EQ2 instead and had fun.

01-02-12 Played a bit of History Rewritten but my secondary computer has been crashing lately. First game went well, but then half way through the night it crashed constantly. Played EQ2 and went into a new dungeon and had some fun. Computer crashed once during that episode. Thinking it may be the power supply going bad, as it was always a bit under powered to start. Found a PSU for 40 bucks that should work.

12-21-11 Joe finally got his new computer. I set it up for him last night and he is so loving the graphics in EQ2 and in Civ4. Really great!

Changing the game night to MONDAY as classes schedules have changed.

12-14-11 Started playing on Monday nights because school is essentially over. Gives us an extra 30 minutes of game time – although unsure why, but that is what Joe says?!? We are still playing Civilization IV with the new mod and having fun; History Rewritten.

12-05-11 Tried a new mod called History Rewritten and it was fun, but I want to make some changes to it. Joe and I played on a Earth map, me being the Polynesians and him playing England. Fun so far.

11-30-11 Maybe a game tonight. Last night Joe called it off because his truck broke down and he couldn’t get it fixed. Undecided as to what to play, if we do get together – EQ2 or Civ 4?

11-23-11 Played a new mod called Rewritting History and had an absolute ball. Great mod with all new graphics. We are well pleased with it.

11-16-11 Played two games of Civ 4 – both on the Thomas War Extended Mod. Joe stunk at both of them. Both games I was doing well.

11-08-11 Played Civilization IV again and had a ton of fun playing in the original mod, Thomas’ War with a huge earth map and 10 opponents. Joe played Brazil and I played Mexico. We are both doing well.

11-01-11 Had great fun in Everquest II last night. Played some low level guys and took down three dungeons – last minute, we loaded our big guys into the game and took out several epic mobs.

10-26-11 Continued to play Everquest II. We journeyed to two new dungeons and had many hours of fun. Made some decent loot that we will probably just sacrifice to the gods or perhaps mute.

10-19-11 Joe and I continued to play Everquest II, playing our 90th level guys first for 2 hours then going on to play some tertiary characters for about an hour. Had some great BBQ chicken pizza as well. Thoughts of inviting Wade over circulated since we miss our good friend – perhaps soon I will have a new computer allowing him to play on my 2nd computer.

10-11-11 Great night playing Everquest II

10-05-11 No game because of studying for a test. Next week we are going to try and play Multiverse.

My Gaming History

I knew I was hooked on gaming ever since my brother came home from the store with an Avalon Hill board game called Starship Troopers. I am not sure what year that would be, but I would have to think it was the late 70s. It wasn’t until high school that I came across D&D; I remember pointedly each time I bought a brand new copy of the 1st edition set of AD&D — still to this day can I remember the smell of the binding, cracking open the Dungeon Master guide. It was only a few years later that I started constantly DMing and then writing my own adventures. During those formative years we use to play a different RPG every month, trying out dozens of games — Sadly after three moves I own only a small percentage of my original core rules booklets.

In 1980 I home published a little book called Phantasm Adventures. I typed all the pages up on a typewriter and photocopied and bound them. Perhaps 100 copies of this game exists, yet only recently I had people from Canada and England asked me if they could buy a copy for their RPG collections. I own one original copy of the game — the where about of the other 99 are a mystery to me.

It was during this time that Jeff Dee (the creator of many of the original art found in the 1st and 2nd edition D&D rules, and also the writer of Villains & Vigilantes), and later Jack Herman (co-author of V&V), both moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am unsure of the reasons he moved here, but I think it was a comic-drawing gig. The funny thing is I remember asking my mother if I could go down to this guy’s house and do some gaming, and my mom, always the worrisome type said no because it was in a rather unruly side of town (for Grand Rapids). So it wasn’t during the first alignment of the planets that I met Jeff Dee and started my game design career.

But the second time when again he posted a sign at a local hobby store looking for gamers a year later, I did finally get to meet him. It was here that I was introduced to V&V (the first super hero role-playing game). If I had to put a date, It was probably around 1984. Jeff Dee was the best GM I have ever played with — his campaigns were so imaginative, the stories were intricate, and best of all the battles were engaging. I remember always wanting to go to his house and game.

During this time, I also met up with Scott Bizzar (president of Fantasy Games Unlimited) and I pitched him a number of ideas on different full length gaming system including my little brown book called Phantasm Adventures. This was before the time of true word processing or very early on. If my memory serves me in 1984 the Lisa computer came out for Apple and that was the start of what I would call personal computing — although it would be another 15 years before I owned a Mac for a brief period of time. Alas, during this “Stone Age” everything had to be typed on either a typewriter or a bit later on my archaic Commodore-64 word processor.

It was in 1984 the I wrote my first adventure module for V&V called The Devil’s Domain. The adventure centered around a demonic figure trapped in another dimension trying to escape to Earth and a group of stalwart heroes trying to stop him. To this day I still get small royalty checks from the company every year.

In 1985 I released a compendium of super villains for V&V called Most Wanted III, having the prior two Most Wanted written by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman. This was another great production value module with artwork predominately done by Jeff Dee.

In 1986 I released my third and last V&V adventure called Return to the Devil’s Domain. By this time the franchise was seeing great growth but the overall production standards having slipped with shoddy artwork and poor editing.

In 1987 through 1988 I moved to Japan for a year. It was during the early part of my stay that I visited a bookstore and bought a Japanese game magazine called Game Graphix. On the back they put their address in English, I suppose because they thought it looked fantastical — as if a game’s magazine here would put their return address in elven, I guess. I wrote to the company and within a week I was sitting in their offices talking about games. The rest of the year saw the formulations of a dozen game books — I would write them in English, then present them to the editorial staff that would translate them into Japanese. It was during this time that I wrote and published Phantasm Adventures, Bloodbath, Bloodchant, and Multiverse.
in 1990 I was nearly considered for the producers position at Interplay, the maker of games like Fallout and Bard’s Tale. I was to work on a game called Castles. I flew out there and had serious talks with the president, but in the end I did not take the position.

When I returned to the states I continued to work on RPG designs for 10 years, working with every major publisher including TSR, Steve Jackson Games, Iron Crown Enterprises, and Different World Magazines. I still banged out expansions, modules, and map sets for the Japanese.
It was between 1987 and 1997 that I wrote such works as The Castle Guide and the Equipment Guide for 2nd edition AD&D. I also wrote a huge compendium for RoleMaster under the name of Heroes & Rogues. I also took a hand at editing for Hero Games, working on several super hero adventures for Champions. the Japanese continued to buy my creations including Advanced Phantasm Adventures. You can see more about this English version here:

http://emeraldtablet.wordpress.com/phantasm-adventures/

It was during this period that I was on fire on creating home-brewed game systems, just as desktop publishing was taking off. I created a dozen RPG systems all seeing a very limited print but I became a center of gaming fury in Grand Rapids. At one point, I remember, I had 12 guys in my house playing one of the games. I created such systems as TED&D (pronounced Teddy like the bear) which stood for Troy’s Enhanced Doom & Death; Realms of Ardaan; and Star Traders.

I finally got to work at a computer game company when I accepted a position at Bethesda Softworks, the maker of Skyrim among other computer games. I was to work in the offices and also collaborate on Dagger Fall. My stay at the company was short lived as I discovered that working in the industry was not as glorious as it sounded.

After returning from Bethesda, I entered the “Dark Ages” of design, not producing anything of real quality for 10 years. It was a time of placid existence, without thought of worlds beyond ours — even my gaming dried up and I became lost in the world of gaming.

In 2007 I returned with several community mods for Civilization IV, a computer game of conquest from Firaxis. Although not a programmer, I did figure out how to make large modification to the rules. To this day, I still get people from all over the world emailing about how much they enjoyed my mod.

in 2010 I was contacted by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman about writing a new module for V&V; This project is in the works. It was during this year that I was also contacted by some of the original editorial staff of Game Graphix in Japan and they sought to release a new version of Advanced Phantasm Adventures. Sadly, this project keeps lapsing because of many outside factors.

In 2011, I started another design project called Iron Age. It was built off from my game rules system called Bloodbath, but a bit more complicated. It was also backed up by historical research, hoping to put players into a relatively real world environment of history. My hopes is that playing the game will spur the players to learn more about the culture and history during the Iron Age. The development continues, but slowly.

Monday Night Games

This week my friends Joe and Wade came back over for another round of Monday night gaming goodness. As it happens Joe showed up first and we talked about what sort of games we wanted to play last night. The problem is that we have only about 4 and half hours, a bit less if we plan on having some food. In weeks past, we would all get a big pizza and sit around and talk about the next “big” game. For the last several, however, we decided in advance to eat quick and get on to more dedicated playing of a game.

We talked about playing some Civilization IV, with either a mod that I designed such as Multiverse or Extreme II or perhaps one of the many fine other mods out there. Those interested in a bunch of really great stuff, I urge you to go here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=171

Extreme II can be located here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=415468

And my mod that encapsulates magic, steam punk, and a ton of what if technologies can be found here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=440184

In the end of our conversation, we decided that we would allow Civilization to rest for another week and continue on playing our characters in the MMO (Multi-Massive Online) game City of Heroes. This is a free to play game, that has a very low entry point but delivers up great mounts of fun. So cool and exciting to create a hero or villain of your own design and then play it through scenarios and missions, collecting secret tips and plans. As you play the game, you gain levels with which you can select new powers or increase the strength of old powers.

You can find more reference here: http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/my_account/download_game_client/download_city_of_heroes.php

If you decide to try the game, you will notice that you need to select a server — basically a copy of the game spread over many computers. Your character will be locked to that server until you can transfer him, so make a choice. My friends and I are on Defiant, if you want to join us sometimes.

 

Wade eventually showed up and he told us he had transferred some of his higher level guys to the Defiant server, which makes missions a bit easier.

In the game, any level character can join up with any other level character through a mentoring program. The leader of the group decides the level cap. So if a low level guy adds high level, those more powerful characters become his level until the group breaks up, alternately a high level guy who adds lower level characters the new additions will be 1 level less than the leader.

Joe played his character Master Jailer throughout the night, while Wade and I switched through a couple of toons. I started out with my super villain called The Butternut Kid, a young cowboy with a fancy set of pistols, but later I moved to my other guy called Doctor Cloudstuff. Cloudstuff is a steampunk character with magical and technological powers to heal and also a crazy gun that is rather powerful.

Our adventures took us all over the map and we completed many missions that night.

 

Some did not end well and several times our guys had to be rushed to the hospital. Going to the hospital happens when the team is beat up and knocked out — it is a time penalty for not successfully managing the fights in a mission.

With a bit of luck and with some arguing amongst ourselves, we ultimately won the day and succeeded in our missions.

 

Each of my guys went up a couple of levels and I added some new powers.

It was a great night of camaraderie that I hope will continue next week.

First Impressions of Diablo III

I am sure most people that reads my blog have heard about Diablo III, a game from the company Blizzard. It is one of the crown jewels of the game company, aside from World of Warcraft and Starcraft. For the last ten years everyone who remembers Diablo II has been excited about the sequel. For years we were tantalized with screen shots and promises of the game to be released.

I cannot think of the number of times over the last five years of hearing “authenticated” rumors of the game’s release, with always the motto “It will be released when it is ready, and not a day before.” Year after year the game did not come out.  Often long lapses of silence from Blizzard causes people to think it was never going to be released.

Well the game is on the verge of finally coming out.  This weekend (April 20, 2012) anyone could log into their servers and download the game (it is over 4 gigabytes in size).  Playing proved a bit more difficult with the servers constantly going down, but it was a test for this sort of thing.  The true release date is May 15th of this year, so they have some bit of work ahead of them before release.

The game has a number of new character classes to play. The rich abilities and smooth programming is obvious the moment you start playing the game. Everything seems to work, except in a few rare instances of lag (which is more of the Beta thing, I believe). Each character can be played as either a man or a woman, different than the original game when if you wanted to play a sorcerer, for example,  you had to be a woman. Each model seems high detailed, but oddly all of them seem to have advanced palsy: they twitch, squirm, and teeter almost drunkenly when standing still — this is not good animation, sorry. If you let them stand long enough, they do have some unique expressions or animations which is very pleasing.

I think there is a number of cool aspects to the game,  but I am really not impressed with my two day sojourn of the beta testing for a number of reasons.  I had so much hope this game was going to be a continuation of the fantastic gaming of Diablo II, but with better graphics and more of everything.

Aside from the lack of server capacity, which is to be expected from a monumental release of a game like this — hundreds of thousands if not millions of players logging in on untried servers, I do not fault the designers or Blizzard for this. The Beta is exactly provided to test such things.

What I do have a problem with is the two fold contention of the company changing some basic game tenants of Diablo III and also having this attitude of “We know how to play the game, so we’ll make all decisions for you while playing”.

First the major changes in the game. First and foremost, it is a Software as a Service model. That means although you buy the software you never really own it. That to play the game, you must log onto their servers. They control every aspect of the game, from its content to the characters you will spend months playing. It is more of an MMO than it is a single player game, like it or not. Worse, there will be no player made mods for it — they control the servers and thus control the content. What made Diablo II so great was that over the years countless modifications to the game allowed for repeated play. That will no longer be possible. If the server is down, you cannot play the game.

Graphics are of course much better now than from 2000 with extreme resolutions and millions of colors, but to be honest the camera is so far removed no details can be seen when you add new equipment. There is a zoom mode when you go into equipment/inventory but it is not playable at this setting (I wish it was!).

Character generation although fluid and individual skills are impressive, they leave no room for tinkering. Fans of the new game will say, certainly you can select different skills and augment them with runes, but the days of having builds and skill points are gone. When two 30th level wizards meet, they are essentially the same! They have the same abilities and the same capacity of doing things. This mentality of “We know what is better, so we will decide how the character develops” seems thick throughout my weekend play.

Some classes seem outrageously over powered, such as the wizard. During my play I could constantly fire a spell never having to wait more than a second for my mana. However, other classes seemed borked right out of the gate. My barbarian and monk were constantly crying for their version of stamina to do any sort of special attack — this was so obvious in the first couple of hours I wondered how the designers would have not seen this?

Gone are the days of finding some treasure and having to wait until you discover its use or use a scroll on it to determine what it is. For some unknown reason, the designers thought this was not fun?!? All items are automatically known when they drop. Worse is that each player sees different treasure — No more scrambling for treasure, but also no more having to talk to anyone about a trade (you can buy and sell things on the auction which is so unbelievably sterile it is sickening). The designers have removed any reason to communicate with someone else in the game.

although you do eventually get a teleport capability, it is again at the hands of the designers and not under the control of the players. “Let us play, because we know when and where you can use it best.” This kind of surely, I am better than thou attitude pervades every aspect of the game.

It is suppose to be a multi-player game, but for some reason they have removed any reason why you would speak with another player? I was in multiple open games and no one ever said anything. Even when I talked, I was met with silence.

Blizzard went to great lengths to force players into the way they think you ought to play the games, yet allowed characters to be called all sorts of foolish and trite names. I would have thought that if the consistency of the world was to be maintained, which seems forefront in the minds of the designers, that a random or restricted name list would have been screwed on tight!

What astounds me about the game more than anything else is how easy they have made it. Aside from never having to fear death — and literally I played every class to 6th level I never died once. Did everyone here me? I never died — on most characters I never even feared death! Secondly, they hold you hand in every quest to the point of …”Hey I have played this game for 10 years, so let me lead you around by the nose” mentality. Everything is mapped out for you — you never guess where anything is at or where next to proceed. There is no room for exploration because they tell you everything that is going on!

This game should have been released five years ago, albeit with lesser graphics but there is nothing here I see that says “This is the reason we waited 10 years to put this out?!” I am still holding out hope for some serious play balancing, making the game harder, and options that allow for player interaction in the next couple of months.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

New Year’s Resolutions: 2012

This year I am simply making lists of things that I want to achieve or do better at. Straight up. Nothing fancy, nothing clever: pure aspirations of 2012. And with that, here is my list of resolutions for the year 2012:

Goals for 2012

Health
1. Get more sleep
2. Get my taste buds back–Instead of tart taste, tasting sweets again
3. Eat better meals, especially lunches.

• Stay away from sweets and sodium foods
• Eat smaller meals

4. Do not go to the doctor’s unless it is an emergency. Deal with the migraines and sinus problems holistically.
5. Take less medicine
6. Go on more walks and exercise more
7. Continue to search for a cause of the migraines

 

Spirituality & Knowledge
1. Read more on spirituality
2. Continue to go to college and finish degree
3. Delve into yoga and mental disciplines
4. Seek secret knowledge
5. Write the Treatise of Expert Knowledge

6. Go to the Library once a week.

 

Work & Career
1. Enjoy my new 4 weeks of vacation–well earned for 15 years @ company
2. Improve knowledge of computers, networks, and printing
3. Continue to submit resumes to dream prospects
4. Look at building a stellar resume/CV
5. Make contacts with game & history professionals
6. During the numerous library trips, bone up on some books

Education & Academics
1. Get an “A” in class in 2012
2. Finish my degree (BA in History)
3. Research Master’s Degree programs
4. Settle on further college/graduate school
5. Write & Publish a historical article
5. Make contact with Mesoamerican professors and scholars
6. Read more on the subjects

Home Repairs
1. New Carpet
2. Organize Den
3. New Roof
4. When it snows, try and keep the driveway cleaner
5. Update bathroom
6. Contract a mowing service
7. Trim trees and shape the yard up

Trips & Recreation
1. Trip to Ann Arbor for a Michigan Football game
2. Trip to Traverse City
3. A summer trip to Tawas or perhaps other three-day
4. Spend two nights a month going to the library
5. Go to one game convention
6. Keep dreaming & scheming of other trips

Reading & Writing
1. Read more: books as listed below
2. Return to Phantasm Adventures and finish the books
3. Start writing a new novel
4. Spend more initiative in work crafting better papers
5. Take a class in writing
6. Consider an English Minor
7. Continue with my several history and computer magazines

8. Keep blogging on the Emerald Tablet at least one time a week

 

Game Design
1. As listed above finish Phantasm Adventures
2. Write a V&V adventure
3. Continue to work on my Civilization IV mod
4. Try and self-publish a game on Lulu and re-enter the RPG industry
5. Create a website devoted to Phantasm Adventures
6. Create a website devoted to Bloodbath
7. Start to re-design a new RPG
8. Return to Podcasting

Game Playing
1. Continue to play Everquest II

• A. Get Shalimar to 90/90
• B. Move Shannarra to Primary Account
• C. Move Wiser to Primary Account

2. Reduce the two EQ2 accounts into 1
3. Play other games

• A. Board Games
• B. RPGs
• C. Other Computer Games

4. Continue to play Civilization IV & Keep working on mods
5. Play 1 new computer/board game every other month
6. Play a new board game once a month with Cherry or the guys
7. Balance computer games with board games

 

Movies
1. See more movies with my brother
2. Movies this year with my friend Alan Fish/Russ Mills
3. More movies this year with the wife.
4. Watch different kinds of things, and less repeats of the same
5. Research and watch movies involving the Inca, Maya, and Aztec

Computers & Software
1. Learn more about Windows 7
2. Get to 20,000 Tweets on Twitter
3. Less Facebook
4. Control Facebook and reduce friends to essential people
5. Read more on computers and learn more about software
6. Use computers to my benefit
7. Get a smartphone
8. Get a tablet (ipad or fire)
9. Get back to podcasting, creating a show for EQ2 and History
10. Pick up the following tools/software in 2012

• A. Multiplicity
• B. Fallout3
• C. Skyriim
• D. Civilization V

Communications in Order

1. Figure out our phone situation

2. Determine direction of internet provider, including ideas of going satellite or cable

3. Get a smartphone

4. Update wife’s phone so she can text

 

Thanksgiving Sci-Fi Marathon 2011

So as the holiday approaches, I am thinking of repeating my Labor Day Sci Fi marathon. What to choose?

I will be accessing most of my content via the Netflix streaming so what should I try? Should I keep to my favorites and watch something I know will enjoy, or should I venture into new ground.

I will update this entry this week, listing all the great movies and classics that I can find on Netflix.

First movie to launch the marathon: Super 8 — a classic story of youth and aliens.  Great story with many inspiring and funny moments.

Next: Way of the Warrior — Solid but often over used story of mystical martial arts set in the 1850s of psuedo-western style America.  Great fight scenes, but sketchy story and ridiculous dialogue.

Decided to try Hellboy next. I heard it was good, but didn’t know how good.  What a great movie for sci-fi and fantasy fans. It has it all: magic, technology, multiverse, fighting, and a bit of a love story.  Great!

While fixing dinner and putting up the Christmas tree, I turned on Star Trek The Animated Series. I remember it as a boy, and it holds up surprisingly well for a cheap animated show.  If you never have watched it, take some time to watch various episodes!

Sadly the weekend is over and the Thanksgiving Sci-Fi Marathon goes into the history books.  Overall, I was very surprised at the shows I watched.  I would have liked to watched more movies, but gaming and family obligations got in the way.  Next year, I plan on having a bigger, larger, more massive marathon.

Patch to MULTIVERSE

A new version of Multiverse is available for download at AtomicGamer. It is not what I would call an official upgrade, but more of a patch to the original mod.

Changes:
Civic Screen is now vertical to help out computers with small screens or resolution
Commander and Slave Ships now capture Barbarian units correctly
Stone should be more available
Oil should be more prevalent
Minor typographical changes

Multiverse Download: Patch 101

 

Starting Research for Age of Discovery

 

I am officially starting my development on my next mod, tentatively called “Age of Discovery” although it probably should be given a “II” since I had an earlier buggy version of the mod.

This version will be written completely fresh, from the ground up using a standard base mod template or using the non-animated leaders mod from Thomas War. I simply like the Thomas War mod as a basic template because it is complete but without being overly complicated.

My first step is to determine the years to include in the mod, for which I am thinking at this time to include the years between 1600 to 1800. Second, I need to include the major players which is basically the European countries that sailed to the New World and including major American Indian nations including those South America — most notably the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca.

I am also making the design decision not to change the basic structure of techs in the base game, but only stretching the technological achievements over the covered 200 years to the entire extent of the tech tree in the basic game. Thus, there will be no combustion engines, no flight, and no advance gun powder units. This will be all about the musket, bow, and cannon.

Ships will tap out with perhaps ironclad, or maybe not even that far but rather just advanced galleons. More research needs to be done.

I will update my research as I learn more about the leaders of the era, the technological advancements, and the feel of the game.