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shannon_aI indeed had a restful weekend, as planned. No stress, no social obligations, just a couple of errands.
I spent the majority of the weekend playing Rise of Nations, the computer game I bought Friday night. It didn't obsess me as much as, say, Civilization III can, but I probably played it something like 10-15 hours over the weekend: several turns in the Conquer the World game; several turns in the Alexandar game (neither of which I did that well in); and a complete game scenario set in western Europe.
On the downside the game continues to be buggy. Certain scenarios crash when I try and load them. If I can get past the first minute, it seems to be fine. A couple of the tutorials failed (one before I loaded the patch, one only afterward), and one of the Conquer the World scenarios (The Cold War). Annoying & unprofessional, but I still have plenty to play with.
The game is, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, RTS. It does play a lot like everything from Warcraft up, but I've come to enjoy its differences from my couple of days of play.
First up, the economic & techonological systems are practically overwhelming. There's just so many options that I don't see any way to get a handle on all of them. Still, it's better than, say Civ3 where you have a similar breadth of options ... in every frickin' city.
The combat is really where any RTS succeeds or fails and I still haven't decided where RoN sits there. It's got an elaborate rock-scissors-paper system where some units are better against others, and it's easy to grab all of a specific unit type in combat, but I just don't see how you can regularly align one type of unit against a specific type of an opponent's because the combat goes too fast (my complaint with any RTS; I'd rather have more time to think). Also, because units are created so quickly, combat can be really back and forth: if you and your opponent are anywhere near in balance you can throw units at each other pretty much forever. Still, there's some tactical and strategic possibilities here ... if the speed of the game actually allows it.
The graphics look good throughout the game, but they really shine in the modern era, the bit that I thought I'd find least interesting. You can hear the machine guns going and see the artillery streaming down on a city like a firehose, and the jets do all kinds of cool looping and spinning. Its no wonder that Christian fundies say that violent computer games are bad for society, because they sure make violence look cool.
The Conquer the World scenarios are a really neat twist that I haven't seen before in RTSes. They comprise a set of linked scenarios, which is pretty standard, but they're linked through a master "game board" where you control territories which give you benefits; when you invade additional territories you're thrown into new scenarios, some of which are really standard (crush your opponent in 90 minutes) and some of which are totally well defined as appropriate for the territory. It's like an RTS with a Risk overlay.
Anyway, after 3 days I'm eager to play more, though probably not till next weekend since I'm booked up until Thursday. (Actually maybe I'll have some time tonight, since I just need to finish up some reviews that are largely done.)
On Saturday I also stopped by Comic Relief for their New Year Sale. I picked up DC: The New Frontier (vol. 1) and the final volume of X-Statix, finally catching up my list of new TPBs I wanted, which got out of control in December due to a couple of simultaneous publications and not enough cash therefor.
Thus another thing I did this weekend was read all 6 volumes of X-Statix, in order. X-Statix was always a weird comic: a look at pop culture and a look at the violence in superhero comics, all with beautiful artwork by the guy who did Madman. It didn't reread as well as the original read through, because the shock value was gone, but it was still quite enjoyable.
I'd originally been sad when I heard that X-Statix had been cancelled, but now having read it through I think that it had really hashed through all its themes, and more volumes wouldn't have been that fresh (like, say, Strangers in Paradise, which is just rehashing nowadays, and which I wish would finish up).
One of my errands over the weekend was to stop by Ross Monday night to buy some shoes & pants with Christmas money.
I walk enough that I tend to wear straight through the soles of my shoes, and I really notice this when the rainy season starts again and suddenly my socks are wet. (Conversely, I don't understand how I manage to rip apart my pants.) Thus, this was a bit of a priority.
I figured it'd been a week since Christmas, and so Ross would have recovered. No luck. They had huge gaping holes all over on their shelves. I found a total of one pair of pants in my waistsize and three slacks, of which maybe one total was the right size. Ha! Meanwhile, they had no men's shoes smaller than 10 1/2.
I found a pair of shoes for slightly more at the discount shoe store next door, and so I'm now safer from the rains. Pants will have to wait for another day.
Meanwhile, our 10 days of rain seem to have finally come to an end.
Kimberly was unfortunately sick over my whole extended weekend. She's been doing quite badly for days, weeks, or months depending on how you count it, ever since a period over the summer where she was doing good enough that she actually tried to work.
We watched some TV together (From Earth to the Moon and Dead Like Me) and played a game of Rumis and shopped & ate, but other than that spent much of our time apart.
I'm getting pretty concerned about her physical health, since she seems worse off than any time since when she started having her problems, 4 years ago now. Hopefully she'll get into the doctor soon.
Back to work today; my prime meme for the week is cleaning, which has indeed gotten started today.
I spent the majority of the weekend playing Rise of Nations, the computer game I bought Friday night. It didn't obsess me as much as, say, Civilization III can, but I probably played it something like 10-15 hours over the weekend: several turns in the Conquer the World game; several turns in the Alexandar game (neither of which I did that well in); and a complete game scenario set in western Europe.
On the downside the game continues to be buggy. Certain scenarios crash when I try and load them. If I can get past the first minute, it seems to be fine. A couple of the tutorials failed (one before I loaded the patch, one only afterward), and one of the Conquer the World scenarios (The Cold War). Annoying & unprofessional, but I still have plenty to play with.
The game is, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, RTS. It does play a lot like everything from Warcraft up, but I've come to enjoy its differences from my couple of days of play.
First up, the economic & techonological systems are practically overwhelming. There's just so many options that I don't see any way to get a handle on all of them. Still, it's better than, say Civ3 where you have a similar breadth of options ... in every frickin' city.
The combat is really where any RTS succeeds or fails and I still haven't decided where RoN sits there. It's got an elaborate rock-scissors-paper system where some units are better against others, and it's easy to grab all of a specific unit type in combat, but I just don't see how you can regularly align one type of unit against a specific type of an opponent's because the combat goes too fast (my complaint with any RTS; I'd rather have more time to think). Also, because units are created so quickly, combat can be really back and forth: if you and your opponent are anywhere near in balance you can throw units at each other pretty much forever. Still, there's some tactical and strategic possibilities here ... if the speed of the game actually allows it.
The graphics look good throughout the game, but they really shine in the modern era, the bit that I thought I'd find least interesting. You can hear the machine guns going and see the artillery streaming down on a city like a firehose, and the jets do all kinds of cool looping and spinning. Its no wonder that Christian fundies say that violent computer games are bad for society, because they sure make violence look cool.
The Conquer the World scenarios are a really neat twist that I haven't seen before in RTSes. They comprise a set of linked scenarios, which is pretty standard, but they're linked through a master "game board" where you control territories which give you benefits; when you invade additional territories you're thrown into new scenarios, some of which are really standard (crush your opponent in 90 minutes) and some of which are totally well defined as appropriate for the territory. It's like an RTS with a Risk overlay.
Anyway, after 3 days I'm eager to play more, though probably not till next weekend since I'm booked up until Thursday. (Actually maybe I'll have some time tonight, since I just need to finish up some reviews that are largely done.)
On Saturday I also stopped by Comic Relief for their New Year Sale. I picked up DC: The New Frontier (vol. 1) and the final volume of X-Statix, finally catching up my list of new TPBs I wanted, which got out of control in December due to a couple of simultaneous publications and not enough cash therefor.
Thus another thing I did this weekend was read all 6 volumes of X-Statix, in order. X-Statix was always a weird comic: a look at pop culture and a look at the violence in superhero comics, all with beautiful artwork by the guy who did Madman. It didn't reread as well as the original read through, because the shock value was gone, but it was still quite enjoyable.
I'd originally been sad when I heard that X-Statix had been cancelled, but now having read it through I think that it had really hashed through all its themes, and more volumes wouldn't have been that fresh (like, say, Strangers in Paradise, which is just rehashing nowadays, and which I wish would finish up).
One of my errands over the weekend was to stop by Ross Monday night to buy some shoes & pants with Christmas money.
I walk enough that I tend to wear straight through the soles of my shoes, and I really notice this when the rainy season starts again and suddenly my socks are wet. (Conversely, I don't understand how I manage to rip apart my pants.) Thus, this was a bit of a priority.
I figured it'd been a week since Christmas, and so Ross would have recovered. No luck. They had huge gaping holes all over on their shelves. I found a total of one pair of pants in my waistsize and three slacks, of which maybe one total was the right size. Ha! Meanwhile, they had no men's shoes smaller than 10 1/2.
I found a pair of shoes for slightly more at the discount shoe store next door, and so I'm now safer from the rains. Pants will have to wait for another day.
Meanwhile, our 10 days of rain seem to have finally come to an end.
Kimberly was unfortunately sick over my whole extended weekend. She's been doing quite badly for days, weeks, or months depending on how you count it, ever since a period over the summer where she was doing good enough that she actually tried to work.
We watched some TV together (From Earth to the Moon and Dead Like Me) and played a game of Rumis and shopped & ate, but other than that spent much of our time apart.
I'm getting pretty concerned about her physical health, since she seems worse off than any time since when she started having her problems, 4 years ago now. Hopefully she'll get into the doctor soon.
Back to work today; my prime meme for the week is cleaning, which has indeed gotten started today.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-05 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-05 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-05 01:38 am (UTC)I do admit that when you get fighters and bombers, it did get fun levelling the computer's bases.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-05 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-05 04:51 pm (UTC)