Has it really been over a week since I've posted here? Well, my apologies for the delay – it's been a busy time for me over the last week, and I just haven't been able to find the time to write anything. I've meant to though, so hopefully I'll be getting back on track with this post. In the interest of everyone's time, here's a quick list of everything I've been up to over the last couple of weeks that has contributed, in one way or another, to my lag in blog posts:
Met my brother at a bar and watched my dad play music for a few hours; I also saw a woman drop a cake straight onto the floor of a bar
Took a trip to San Francisco for my work, got halfway there, and then realized my boss had texted me the night before to tell me the trip was off
Worked on a game that you might just see on TV someday (hopefully!)
Took another trip to San Francisco for my work, and was nearly late to the meeting because I followed my own directions wrong
Worked on a redesign for my blog, scrapped it, then started working on it again
Fixed a long-standing server bug in the Reflect system (thanks for the help, Matt!)
Worked on a redesign for Reflect Games, scrapped it, then started working on it again
Watched the two-hour long season premiere for Lost, and the hour-long preview before it
Finished Fallout 3 (goody-two-shoes style)
Went home to see my dad before he had to have a minor procedure done at the hospital (he's doing fine now, thankfully)
Played some quality Team Fortress 2 with Yourself (alltalk servers are basically Skype on steroids, eh?)
Finished Prince of Persia (need to play it again for achievements)
Got my previous landlord to drop a bogus move-out bill after catching their cheating, and exposing it to them
Released a Windows Vista/Windows 7 compatible version of Linked
Began learning Visual Basic all over again
Watched a few classic episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with my mom
Rediscovered my love for Joe Frank (an awesome radio show)
Bought World of Goo on Steam
Almost finished reading Lord of the Rings (I'm on page 947 now!)
And probably a lot more stuff that I can't remember right now, due to the ever-growing fatigue I'm feeling from writing such a long list!
Anyway, you probably get the idea - I've been a bit busy. I'll try to get back on the blog a bit more this week though... I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk about, but which I just haven't had the time to organize into coherent sentences yet.
Thanks to everyone who continues to read my sparse posts - I appreciate it!
The inevitable end of my holiday vacation has arrived. Actually, it arrived yesterday, since that was my first day back at work after a New Year's four-day weekend, but I was feeling too lazy to post anything. Technically, I guess my brain was still in holiday mode, so maybe it is right to say that my vacation ended today. In any case, it's the new year, I'm back on the blog, and I've got a lot of gameage to talk about.
I had a great Christmas at home - it was nice to spend an extended amount of time with my family, play (and lose horribly) at Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, and other non-electronic games. We watched movies and sat around talking and joking with each other. I had a lot of fun hanging out with my mom, dad, and brother. And later on, after Christmas was over, I had another fun holiday weekend spent with my girlfriend. This included an awesome birthday (I'm 27 now, yikes!) with a nice dinner with my parents, a lunch the next day with just my girlfriend, a trip to the theater to see Yes Man (which was hilarious), and lots of cake and presents. So maybe you can understand why I've neglected the blog lately!
Like many people out there, I've also been sucked into playing a lot of games lately, since I got a few of them for Christmas. My mom and dad got me Fallout 3 and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, and my brother got me Prince of Persia, so I've had my hands full. Of the three, I think my favorite is Banjo-Kazooie, since you can build just about any kind of vehicle you want, and thus, play the game just about any way you want, but I am enjoying all three for their own merits. Fallout 3 is proving to be the time sink that is par the course for Bethesda games, and Prince of Persia has been a surprisingly fresh and fun experience, akin to the Sands of Time game, though with less frustration (so far).I'll write more about each game individually in the coming week as I continue to play through them, but for now I just wanted to drop a note to let everyone know how things are going for me. Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season!
Oh, and I'll be raffling off the copy of Half-Life 2 + HL2: Episode 1 again soon - so stay tuned!
Thanks to everyone who entered the raffle to celebrate Marty Blog's 100th 95th post, and congratulations to the winners, listed below! I threw everyone into the mix to receive the special Half-Life 2 + HL2:Ep1 prize - if you won, and you don't want it, let me know and I will raffle it off again.
Third Prize ($5 game via Steam): BenRK
Second Prize ($15 game via Steam): Zeno
Grand Prize (Mass Effect or $30 equivalent via Steam): MischiephX
Special Prize (Half-Life 2 + Half-Life 2: Episode 1): Zakreon
I will be contacting the winners via email. Hope to see you all around the site again soon, and thanks for helping to make this a successful raffle!
I know, I know - this technically isn't my 100th post. Well, no matter - I've been busy with things, and haven't had time to lead up to 100 before my holiday vacation, so I'll make an exception and we'll do the raffle at post 95. It is a good time to be charitable, after all.
I am happy to say that Marty Blog is still going strong into the final weeks of 2008, and I am pleased with the way the year has gone for the blog. I've been able to (semi) consistently post here about things that I care about and find interesting. I've had a great time talking about these things with members of the GMC and Reflect Communities here. And I've even moved past the default theme (and hopefully will move past my current theme with something better in 2009). In short, it's been a fun year, and I look forward to a continuation of that for the next.
Anyway, enough of the formal stuff - you're probably reading this because you want in on the commemorative raffle, and frankly, I don't blame you. So here goes!
To help celebrate the continuation of Marty Blog, and to give back to everyone who's helped make the blog fun for me, I've put together another little raffle - Marty Blog's second Post & Win!
What can you win?
The grand prize for the raffle is a brand new (digital) copy of BioWare's awesomely fun action-RPG, Mass Effect! If you've already got a copy of Mass Effect, or if it's not really your thing, I'll also let you sub in any other single game of equal or lesser value ($30) that's currently on Steam.
Additionally, second and third prize winners will be chosen, and each will be able to choose from any single game currently on Steam for $15 or less and $5 or less respectively. Steam's catalog has grown impressively since the last raffle, and there are some great new games available now, so there should be something for just about everyone there, for each prize value.
Finally, I've got a spare copy of Half-Life 2 + HL2: Episode 1 just sitting in my Steam account, ready to be gifted. If you're interested in that as well, say so in your post, and once the winners have been chosen, I'll take all the losers (you're all winners to me... really) and do one final drawing for this lovely prize. This one is non-negotiable because it's actually just an extra copy I have.
Note: Many of the games on Steam, including Mass Effect and Half-Life 2, are rated Mature by the ESRB, and may contain violence or sex. I have no way of verifying people's age, so I will assume that if you enter the raffle, you are 18 or older, or you have your parent's permission to play games of this nature.
How do you enter?
Simply post a comment below (make sure to enter an email address I can contact you with in the appropriate area of the comment form). Feel free to post suggestions, criticism, long manifestos of support and encouragement, dear John letters, requests for personal advice, announcements about the sentry gun you just built, or whatever else you can think of. Everything is welcome!
Your name will only be entered into the raffle once, no matter how many comments you leave, and registered users of the site who comment will have a slightly higher chance of being chosen.
Entrants must have a Steam account, or must be willing to register for one if they win. Steam is free, it's a great service, and I am happy to promote it. If you win and I am unable to award you your prize within a reasonable amount of time, the item will be re-raffled. Apologies to anyone who lives outside of the U.S. or who doesn't have access to Steam or it's catalog of games.
Attempts at entering your name into the raffle more than once (or any other kind of cheating) will result in your name, and all aliases thought to be associated with you, removed from the drawing. And of course, Marty Blog reserves all rights to make the final decision on the validity of any entry.
Entries close at the end of the holiday weekend - Sunday, December 28th at 11:59 PM PST - so be sure to make your comment before then! Winners will be announced the following day. I wanted to have winners announced before then, but I figured I'd give everyone out there a chance to enter, and of course, I'd also like to give myself some time off over the next few days. Win/win.
Thanks again to everyone out there who reads Marty Blog now and then. I truly appreciate your visits to this site, and I hope that the site remains fun and enjoyable to you as we move into the future! And yes, I know I recycled that from my previous Post & Win, but I think it's still very applicable. I hope you all have happy holidays this season!
Late Friday afternoon my girlfriend and I found ourselves wandering around Blockbuster, suffering from that affliction everyone gets when they go into Blockbuster Video without a real idea of what they want to get - slack-eyed, drooling, wandering slowly, aimlessly, watching endless amounts of videos scroll by as you move around the perimeter of the store.
I stumbled across a whole shelf where at least a hundred copies of Love Guru were supposed to have gone.
I spotted a growing plague of Blu-Ray movies. I'm going to stop going to Blockbuster if they ditch DVD's in favor of that trash.
And then, just as I was nearing the end of the alphabetically arranged wall, I spotted Wall-E, and remembering I had wanted to see the movie, snatched up one of the few remaining copies. My girlfriend couldn't find anything herself, so we snapped out of the delirium, paid, and drove home.
We had a quick dinner, took care of the few things around the apartment, and settled in to watch the movie.
From the opening montage of a trashed earth to the film's glorious finale, I was both moved and impressed by Pixar's latest film. I won't discuss the plot in detail, since I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone. If you haven't seen Wall-E yet though, go out and rent it - it's worth the monetary, physical, and emotional cost of visiting Blockbuster (or whoever you rent movies from).
I went into Wall-E not knowing anything about the setting, the characters, or the plot. I'd not read anything about it, save for a few minuscule complaints (and counter-complaints) about the "message" within the plot and something about the Apple noise being played in the film. The few ads I'd seen on TV were vague. Being a fan of Pixar films though, I was intrigued by the look of Wall-E despite having no real exposure to any media surrounding it.
The story follows Wall-E, the last surviving Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class robot as he goes about his daily routine helping to clean up a ruined Earth, his friendship with another robot with a much different directive, and their adventure as they do all sorts of robot-y things to help make the world a better place to live. One thing I found really refreshing in all of this is that the two robots communicate almost entirely with gestures, as neither has the ability to perform advanced vocals of any kind. Through much pantomiming you learn a lot more about Wall-E, his friend, and their plight than you might have if the film had included more traditional dialog between the two bots, and this mechanic of storytelling really helps you feel the same sense of curiosity that Wall-E feels as he travels around and discovers new things.
The story is complimented by some of the best visuals I've seen in a Pixar movie to date, as well as a musical score that speaks to the same inquisitive nature of film's protagonist. I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed the visuals and host of sounds in the movie, but I'll cut that short and simply say that I was impressed, and I really think Pixar went above and beyond with Wall-E. This movie was fun, entertaining, and has a great message about the future, about friendship, and the rewards of teamwork, and it's got my complete recommendation.
After finishing Wall-E, I continued my bonding experience with the couch and watched some other movie on one of the time-limited movie channels I have, and then went back to my computer to play around with Terragen 2 sky boxes. I finally figured out why those seams were showing up on the edges. It was a good night.
I'm finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents' house, and I can hardly believe it's already December! Where has this year gone?
Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today.
A recent episode of The Simpsons took Apple down a peg, as Springfield mall got its first "Mapple" store. It was quite enjoyable. Of course, all the YouTube links are gone now, so you'll have to find the episode yourself.
The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve's original port of the game. Normally I don't get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa. You can view the trailer below and find out more about the mod at the official site.
I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I'm a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.
I'm glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight. Sorry about the slow rain example, I'll play with it and see if I can get something up that's a little easier on the older machines soon as well!
That's all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you're not from the U.S.)!
Update: I've made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6. The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.
You can download the new example at the link above!
So anyway, BlizzCon! It was awesome. My brother and I arrived in Orange County bright and early on Friday morning, picked up our passes, dropped off our luggage at the hotel, and made our way into the Anaheim Convention Center to see what Blizzard had in store for us.
The entire convention center was dark, illuminated only by multicolored lights and spotlights shining the Blizzard logo on the ground. Various islands of booths, displays, and photo areas were placed around the floor, and much larger areas were sectioned off to house many rows of computers set up for people to try out all of Blizzard's latest and greatest (Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Wrath of the Lich King).
In the convention center's largest room, a massive hall of chairs had been set up for the opening and closing ceremonies, and for other announcements and forums where the audience size was expected to be large. At the opposite end of the center, a smaller stage had been set up, as a special place for awards to be handed out to tournament players, as well as an alternate viewing area to the live events happening in the main hall.
Various other areas included a small elevated platform with a desk on the top, at which a few commentators would sit and deliver their take on the event as it rolled on (for pay-per-view viewers), two merchandise stores, a retrospective on past Blizzard games, a collection of concept art, a TCG/adventure game store and play area, information booths, and small bars, where drinks of all sorts could be obtained. An upstairs room was also reserved for other segments of the conference, and huge screens were set up all over the convention center so that no matter what one was doing, the important stuff would not be missed.
After a quick breakfast at the Rainforest Cafe (the only restaurant that was open at the time) in Down Town Disney, we arrived at BlizzCon. My brother (Spencer) and I wandered around for a while just taking in the various sights and sounds. We leaned over the low barrier to watch fans trying out Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 for the first time. We gaped at the seemingly endless lines to get into the Blizzard stores. And we checked out the display set up for Blizzard's past endeavors in gaming, which included the Lost Vikings games, an isometric racing game, and of course, Warcraft.
We then settled into the standing-room-only crowd in the main hall to watch the opening ceremony, which lasted an hour, and then filed out again to go look at more stuff. We briefly visited a discussion panel set up for World of Warcraft's UI design, and then decided to head back out for a breather - we both only got about two hours of sleep the night before, and the lack of rest was starting to affect the experience. There was nothing else we wanted to see until later in the day, so we trudged a few blocks down the road and back to our hotel, and after looking through our BlizzCon goody bags for a while, we were both fast asleep.
We ended up heading out again at about five o'clock. We made a quick stop for pizza and were on our way back in only about twenty minutes. I had wanted to check out the World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 art shows, but we'd slept through them. I was happier to have had some revitalizing sleep however, and throughout the show we got plenty of chances to watch the actual games being played, so I wasn't disappointed in the slightest. The /silly contest was in progress when we walked back through the doors of BlizzCon, and we proceeded to watch over two hours of fan-crafted jokes, the dance contest, and though we missed the formal competition, many fans dressed in their best imitations of their favorite characters from Blizzard's games. The dance contest was the best part; seeing a full range of people, men, women, fat, skinny, young, and old recreating the dances their characters perform in World of Warcraft was really funny at times, and slightly impressive at others. We also saw a brief (and funny) interlude by The Guild, and this was all hosted by a very lascivious Jay Mohr.
Once the festivities were over for Day 1, my brother and I walked back over to Down Town Disney and hit up the ESPN Zone for some beers and arcade games. Lucky for us, Spencer is a DisneyLand annual pass holder, so we got 15% off of everything in DTD. He smashed me at hoops, I got winded on a bicycling arcade game, and then we went back to the hotel for the night.
In the morning of Day 2, we went back to ESPN Zone, but this time sat down in their sports lounge for some breakfast and to catch up on all the football going on the weekend. At around noon we made our way back to BlizzCon to catch the show for upcoming World of Warcraft dungeons, as well as part of the Q&A that followed. The dungeons looked pretty sweet, and though I rarely have enough time to do the scheduled runs with my guild, I hope to explore them at some point.
One member of the audience, who asked an argumentative question about hunters and their pets (if I remember correctly), had the gall to tell the game's designers that they were wrong in their judgement of his question, which was met with furious booing from the crowd.
After all that, we decided there wasn't much else we wanted to see until the closing ceremony that night, so we left BlizzCon for our hotel yet again, and ended up playing a few games of the World of Warcraft TCG, which actually turned out to be pretty fun (especially when I almost came back from a near shut-out with just one well-timed card). We had debated whether or not this time would have been a good opportunity to get in line to try out Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2, but we decided against it, as the lines for those games quadrupled after the dungeon preview session ended.
At around five o'clock, we descended on BlizzCon for the final time, arriving early in hopes to grab some seats in the main hall. Walking in, we noticed that about 75% of the seats in the hall were already taken, but to our dismay, every available seat left was being reserved by someone for a group they belonged to. At one point, we encountered someone saving four seats for friends, and we also observed at least one man with a disability (he was walking with a cane) being denied a place to sit by one of the seat-savers. I'm still planning on writing Blizzard to complain about this. If people wanted to see save a seat for themselves, they should have sat in them.
In any case, Spencer and I decided we didn't want to watch the three hour closing ceremony standing on the sidelines of the floor, where the acoustics prevented much of the audio from even being understandable, so instead, we made our way over to the second stage on the other side of the center, where only a handful of people had gathered. We weren't sure if they would show the closing ceremony on the handful of screens there, but figured it was worth the chance, as we'd be standing to watch in the main hall regardless of if we were there when it began or had to hustle back over. My brother bought us a round of beers, and we sat and waited.
As it turned out, the closing ceremony was indeed played on the second stage, and we had a good time watching it as we took turns buying rounds of drinks. Two comedians, including Patton Oswalt, gave performances, and were followed by Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, and finally a performance of various Blizzard game music by Video Games Live. I didn't catch much of the opening comedian (he was dressed like a lumberjack), but I thought Patton Oswalt was pretty funny. L80ETC was alright, though their music isn't really my type, and I really enjoyed listening to Video Games Live. By the time the whole thing was over, Spencer and I were on our fifth or sixth round of drinks, and we stumbled back to our hotel room and got to sleep pretty early that night.
We got up early on Sunday and ran over to Disneyland for a few hours of rides (I hadn't been in over ten years!) and then we made our way back to the hotel a final time to get our stuff together before our mid-afternoon flight home. I would have liked to have had more time to spend at Disneyland, but by the time we were leaving, the park was getting to be so full of people anyway, I was partially glad to be leaving.
All in all, it was an awesome weekend, and despite the amount of running around, standing around, and junk food, I came out of it feeling pretty good on Monday - which is rare for my usual trips. I think I owe a lot of that to the fact that we ended up getting a decent amount of sleep every day of the trip, save the first. I would definitely attend BlizzCon again, but maybe again on another year when they have another slew of huge games on the horizon. It was good to just "nerd out" and enjoy myself for a weekend.
Of all things BlizzCon, there was really only a few things that I didn't like. The seat-saving bit was annoying, and expectedly, the bathrooms at the convention center got particularly gross at times. The only part that I really didn't anticipate (and probably should have) was that when you got into large groups with others, to stand and watch a performance or when a large crowd was exiting one of the halls, you were treated to the overwhelming smell of body odor, with the occasional fart thrown in here and there. I would liken it to the smell of a locker room after a football team just had a big game. Kinda gross sometimes, but not so frequent or strong as to be a deal-breaker. Still, if you're planning on attending BlizzCon, expect to get a good whiff of this smell at least a few times!
For the curious, I thought I'd list the contents of the BlizzCon goody bag, which I was pretty impressed with (even though I know a lot of it is the standard give-away fare, with a Blizzard theme attached):
Blizzon Pass (with World of Warcraft character name included)
BlizzCon Gift Card (includes code for special WoW mount, and participation in upcoming StarCraft 2 beta)
World of Warcraft Heroes of Azeroth TCG Starter Pack
Inflatable Frostmourne Sword (some bags had inflatable Paladin hearth/bubble instead)
Special StarCraft 2 board game square
Rubber BlizzCon keychain
Metallic Diablo 3 keychain
Orc mask
Diablo 3 stress ball
Kleenex packet with "QQ Noob" printed on it
Zerg Creep packet of colored goo
WoW mousepad
WoW Alliance necklace
Pandaren Brewmaster beer holder & bottle opener
StarCraft 2 wristbands
Double-sided WoW/SC2 comic book
Bookmark
Postcard
Hand Sanitizer
Diablo 3 Cinnamints
WoW Pin
Event map & schedule
There was probably more stuff in there that I forgot to list - but that's a lot of stuff as is, and I was anxious to drop that sucker off at the hotel room so I wouldn't have to carry it everywhere!
Anyway, I think I've rambled on long enough. I had a great time, and I hope I can visit sometime again in the future. BlizzCon rocks!
Soon my brother and I will be packing up and getting ready for what will hopefully be a fun two days down in Anaheim, as we attend BlizzCon 2008!
I've been so busy with work and other things over the last few days, I haven't really had time to even think about it, but now that we're a day before the event I'm getting very excited about going. After only a short flight and a quick ride, we'll be heading over to the Anaheim Convention Center and getting an early start on the long days Blizzard has planned.
I don't have much more to say for now, other than I'm getting more excited as the event draws closer. If you're interested in seeing BlizzCon but weren't able to get tickets, Blizzard's apparently struck a deal with DirectTV for a live PPV broadcast, so you might be interested in that. Either way, with upcoming games like StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, it should be a great show, and I will be back to say more about everything when I can!
My girlfriend had some business to do in Las Vegas this weekend, and I tagged along for the trip. It was my first trip to Vegas, and definitely won't be my last; I had a great time, and even made it out with only a small gambling debt.
I flew out on Friday and met my girlfriend at the hotel, a small-ish but nice place only a half block off the strip, which proved to be a great location for refuge after a lot of walking in the desert sun. I was surprised to see the rows of slot machines inside the airport terminal - it seems one can gamble from the moment his or her plane arrives to the moment it leaves again.
That night we went out to take in some of the typical tourist stuff: the local hotels, casinos, and the sights around them. The Bellagio was probably the nicest spot, with the amazing fountain show out front (synchronized to the tune of Chicago's "All That Jazz"), the glass ceiling in the foyer, and the beautiful fall conservatory display (which was sadly under partial construction at the time).
Caesar's Palace was also pretty incredible. We wandered around the indoor casino sections, clubs, restaurants, shops, and other faux sky covered venues 'til our feet hurt.
The next day, my girlfriend had to a work event in the morning and afternoon, so I spent a good deal of time just walking around, looking at everything. After we grabbed an awesome breakfast at Paris, I hit the Miracle Mile Shops, and then the Vegas strip. I ducked into the odd casino here and there to cool off (it was hot outside), and before my walk was through, I'd finished off two sodas and a bottle of water. I got to see some more great stuff, like the Venetian gondolas and the pirate ship at Treasure Island, and of course, I did a little gambling on one of my breaks from the street. Throughout the trip, I only gambled about $40, and though I did have small winnings here and there, I lost it all in the end. I had a good time doing it though, so I have no regrets.
After getting some much-needed rest in the hotel, my girlfriend arrived and we went out again. We had a great dinner at Pampa's in Planet Hollywood, and then took an impromptu limo ride over to the MGM Grand to catch Kà, one of the handful of Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas.
Kà is the second Cirque show I've seen, and though I imagine it's quite hard to be as blown away by the wonder of a Cirque show as the first one you see, it was an absolutely amazing show. Through a series of performances which expertly mix theater and acrobatics, the tale of two siblings and their travels to re-unite is told. This show's signature is a moving platform which serves as floor, wall, and everything in between as the performers run, climb, fight, bounce, and slide over it. It's hard to describe it in words without giving too much away, but I highly recommend seeing Kà if you're even in Vegas and have time to see a Cirque show. It was truly incredible.
My girlfriend and I finished off the night with a quick walk over to New York New York, and just barely made it onto the roller-coaster there. It was fitting to end the last night of a whirlwind trip on a whirlwind ride.
On Sunday, we got up early, had one final breakfast (a champagne breakfast!) at the Caesar's Palace buffet, gambled a few more dollars, and then headed to the airport. A fun weekend for sure. Hopefully we can visit Vegas again someday when we've got a little more time to play around.
