Rorschach.net

I wrote this over on Quarter to Three (where I’ve been reading and posting for the last 6 years) and I’m pretty proud of myself.

Wow I don’t follow this thread for a little while and it turns into awesome.

A developer gets riled up about how his game he’s been pouring his life into the last few years is perceived on an popular Internet forum and engages said forum in not the most PR friendly way. The meta-discussion on another popular forum riles up the owner of the first forum (who has no doubt poured much of his life into his project) and he engages that forum in not the most PR friendly way.

Quick, someone start talking shit about this thread on OctopusOverlords or GamersWithJobs so Tom can go over there and mess stuff up. The cycle must not be broken!

Every summer we used to pile in the car and drive to Ohio. Not a short trip from the middle of Kansas and it always took us several days to drive. Of course since there were 4 kids packed into the sedan, I am sure it felt even longer to my parents. We’d arrive and spend a week visiting with grandma and all our Aunt’s & Uncles. We often got to go fishing or on boat rides in lake Erie and always got to make “suicides” at the bowling ally my Uncle Dwight and Aunt Pat owned. I hit college and haven’t been back since so Paul and I joined my Mom for this year’s reunion.

We spent most of the time seeing where my Mom grew up, played ball, went to school, worked and got into trouble. At the reunion we looked at photo albums of “kids” playing who now have kids of their own and tried desperately to get a photo of the siblings where they weren’t horsing around. We did not succeed. Dwight & Pat have recently finished a beautiful log home where we stayed. It was such a fun and relaxing trip. We will have to make the reunion a more frequent part of our summer plans – but without cross country drive with my brother’s.

Photo’s are posted in the Gallery. Video to follow.

If you keep up with this blog you’ll see that I’ve been working with (volunteering is probably more apt) a game developer studio in Vancouver for over three years on their game called Sword of the Stars. The game came out towards the end of 2006 but unlike most games that was not the end of it.

Over the past 20 months SotS has been upgraded seven times (including a paid expansion) and is quite different from what it was back in September of 2006. So the team has wrapped up all that work into a new Collector’s Edition and is selling it for $30. There’s a new demo out including six walk-through movies explaining the basics of the game done by yours truly.

SotS puts you in the dual roles of the leader of an interstellar empire and admiral of a battle fleet. You pick a race to command and each of the five races are unique not only in abilities but the way they move from system to system. In the strategic portion of the game you take turns to explore a section of the galaxy, expand your empire, exploit the other empires you find and then exterminate them. Thus the name of the 4X genre. Once your battle fleets meet an enemy you enter the tactical portion of the game with each ship fighting each other in real time.

If this sounds like the game for you please give the free demo a try and let me know what you think!

Many of you know our dog Roe. Last year our dog Roe had an altercation with a van at 50 miles per hour and lived to tell about it. As I wrote about his accident and his life with with us I realized I did not have enough “baby” pictures to capture some of his amazing talents. Fortunately, Roe has made a full recovery and I’ve started documenting his talents. Now we have video of his remarkable understanding of gravity and how to use it to get more food. At age 11, has recently learned started learning new tricks and has a good command of the old standby “shake” to add to his repertoire Enjoy!

On Sunday the wife and I put the bikeracks on the car and drove to Coronado. From there we rode on the Silver Strand bike trail. About 25 miles (there and back) of the bay on one side and the ocean on the other. We rode along sidethe Coronado golf course and then headed down the bike path of the narrow length of land that attaches Coronado to Imperial Beach. We saw the SEAL training grounds (one lone guy humping a big pack across the dunes) and the Navy antenna that featured prominently as a background shot for John from Cincinatti. Silver Strand beach looks very nice, we may have to try it out some time.

The ocean breeze on the way out turned out to be a headwind on the way back so I was huffing pretty bad by the end of it. We wrapped up with a lunch by the ferry dock. Fun day out and about in SD

How do people feel about Gears of War for GNO in June? It should be somewhat bargain bin priced and with 4v4 multiplayer we should have the opportunity to whup up on each other and avoid the rabble of XBL. Good choice? Any other suggestions? I’ll send something out via Xbox later today.