My Geek Notes

1-10: I don’t care about top 10 lists.

It’s been a long time since I last posted, I’ve received hundreds of emails from fans concerned about my absence. Rest assured that I am back and here to stay.

My attention has been stolen from me by some rather old games, both single player and multiplayer. I talk of the Ultima Games, specifically ultima 6, 7, 8, 9, and ultima online. I have made it my intention to play through atleast one of these games, while building up a character on ultima online at the same time. I will of course tinker with all of them from time to time, as my attention span is incredibly small.

Some great tools to take a look at if you are interested in playing the classics are available to help run the games in current windows, mac, and linux environments (there are probably others, but i don’t care).

Dosbox is a classic dos environment emulator that works incredibly well at running your old games without having to put much effort into it. I recommend downloading a front end if you have alot of games to play that are DOS based.

Exult is a project to recreate Ultima 7 for modern operating systems, using the game’s original plot, data, and graphics files (thats directly from their site). This baby gives you plenty of options and lets you play the game in a window without ever entering a dos environment. A must have if you are going to play this one.

Pentagram, much like ultima 7’s exult is a project aiming to create an Ultima 8 engine for use on modern operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows (another stolen quote). I played around with this one last night for a while, this one still has some bugs to be worked out, but for the most part the game is playable entirely in this new environment. Give a shot, it’s awesome to set the games resolution higher with a nice pixel scaler so that it looks more modern.

Anyways I better stop ranting on, there are tons of other projects available, just look them up on google and I’m sure you’ll find something that peeks your interest.

A friend of mine (Ikeman), mentioned to me that an artist he had read about uses Google SketchUp to layout his artwork so that his perspective is correct. I Had never really thought about using a 3D app to do quick layouts before sketching out a piece, and since perspective always gives me troubles this will be a welcomed tool.

From my first glance of the program it offers power in simplicity. Without knowing anything about 3D modeling you can come up with just about anything you can imagine (with detail being its limitations). Since I will mostly be using basic shapes to determine the angles I need for my art this will work just fine.

If you’re thinking about learning how to model in 3D, I would recommend 3d studio max, Maya, Lightwave, or even Blender. These programs offer much more powerful editing capabilities and many of them are industry standards.

I’ll post up some of the art I sketch over on “Sketch Up” when I get the chance. Take a second and download the application, give it a shot - it may just change your life. Google SketchUP Home-Page.

So, a few days ago I was helping my in-laws tow an R.V. that my father gave to them when I ran into an old friend of mine. After a brief bit o’ chit chat, he informed me that Lord of the Rings online was in open beta and that he found the game to be quite enjoyable. After we got home I started downloading the beta and went to bed, I think I dreamt about a cup of water all night - best dream I’ve ever had.

When I woke up in the morning the download was finished and ready to install (fast forward). After installation I created a character (A Lore-Master “Man”) and began my journey in middle earth. The game mechanics are a lot like World of Warcraft, which doesn’t bother me since I love WoW. The skill system is a bit different where in you develop many of your stats and skills based on deeds and quests etc. (I am still new so I don’t know how everything works yet).

Overall I have found the game to be quite enjoyable, the graphics are well done and the game-play is very enjoyable. Check out their site and see what you think of it http://www.lotro.com/

So world of warcraft has had its grips on me since the beginning of time (well, since it came out). I’ve created every character, and in many cases i’ve had characters achieve levels greater than 40 (two of which are 60+). I am located on the kel’ thuzad server and I am a horde player, the best kind.

Recently the burning crusades expansion pack was release and everyone had the opportunity to have their characters reach lvl 70. I myself held off and instead created a blood elf paladin with the incentive that I would not play in the outlands (the expansion zones) until my paladin was able to successfully play out there. Well last week I achieved that goal and even passed my previous lvl 60 druid up, I am now a lvl 61 paladin and I couldn’t be happier.

My problem right now is after getting to lvl 61 I am experiencing an insane amount of game burnout, I log in for only a few minutes and I am bored. I’ve had this happen before with my other character, so what I have decided to do is take a break from warcraft.

In the meantime I am playing another mmorpg (can you tell I like massive multiplayers yet?) this one is called Ryzom. For a massive multiplayer this game has a great story-line, with a huge emphasis on player involvement in the future story-line/plot of the game. This game just about allows total freedom in how you play you character. If you like to harvest stuff out of the ground and make items with the resources you find, you can spend all of your time doing that and you get better and better and it without having to spend all your time leveling up killing monsters. Now I am not saying you wouldn’t want to go out and kill monsters, this is one of the funnest features of the game AND they make it beneficial to play and group with other people. You can actually skill up faster if you participate and make yourself and active member of the community.

I’ve only been playing the game for a few days now and I am already impressed by the generosity of the players and the helpful staff (CSR’s). Right when I left the (noob island) where they start you out, I let people know on the universal chat that it was my first day and immediately I was offered assistance and I even had a player show me around the new zone and help me level for about three hours (I am now in his guild).

If you want a great experience and a friendly atmosphere with great graphics and an awesome gameplay format then I suggest you go to http://www.ryzom.com and download the unlimited free trial, what do you have to lose? ITS FREE!!

Ultra sound technology is amazing, being able to see inside of my wifes belly and even through our unborn child’s organs to see its heart beating and his entire skeletal system - breath taking. After much anticipation it would seem our child decided to take on the form of a boy! ( I don’t really think he had much of a choice, but it would be cool if he did ).

This is our first child and I couldn’t be more excited, we immediately went out and purchased clothing for his pending arrival - it’s nice to finally get some gender specific stuff.

Bored at work? Tired of harvesting fields all day? Need a break from reality but it’s 10:00am and too early to drink? Well now you can keep yourself busy by visiting http://www.kongregate.com/ . This website was built to function like youtube, only for video games. It’s a great way to see what kind of games others are putting out and it can help you decide what to do on your own game if you’re stuck.

Greetings Blog patrons! This is my first post on mygeeknotes, and you’re probably feeling pretty lucky to be here right now.

I guess it would be in good nature to share with you my interests as well as a few recipes I picked up from my travels around the world! (Actually I don’t have any recipes, I just wanted to sound cool.)

My work life revolves around working on multimedia projects in the web & flash environments, I love what I do and I get to play with graphics and code all day. When I am off of work, I like to explore all mediums of video games and video game creation. Now I am not a genius and I don’t know many programming languages (And the ones I know aren’t very powerful) but I do enjoy attempting to make video games. Currently I am focusing my attention of Flash and Flash Lite games (When I am not busy playing them).