WinForAll

So you know how matthew has gotten me addicted to several games over the years for varying periods of time, including NETHACK WHICH MADE ME LOSE ALMOST AN ENTIRE YEAR OF MY LIFE? Yeah well, welcome to his latest attempt to ruin me.

www.minecraft.net

Minecraft is a game where you build shit out of bricks. That is pretty much its purest form. When i discovered that the bricks didn’t fall down i went about making a FLOATING ISLAND IN THE SKY:

COMPLETE WITH UNDERGROUND SWIMMING POOL:

AND BUILT IN GAGS:

The island alone is estimated at about 5,000 cubes. The castle at 1500. Each cube was a click of the mouse to place, and half a second holding left click to mine from somewhere else, barring the 1000 dirt blocks donated to me by the newtown mine project. I spent far too much of my life on this (almost the entirety of three days) and now i hope i don’t think of another project or it may be the end of me.

Seriously, dammit matthew.

I play on the same server as matthew, address *SNIP because they have griefer problems and dont want their server given out* if you want to drop in to check out my doom fortress or just want to try minecraft for yourself in non-boring mode (which sometimes is called “multiplayer”).

Comic should update at midnight. If it doesn’t i’ll sort it out in the morning. Night chaps!

I got addicted to hon, although not by the same magnitude as i was addicted to nethack. Perhaps thats because nethack taught me some lessons that i am now applying. Regardless, i just lost two weeks of my life to it. I somehow managed to fit 130 games into that time.

Also i’ve been playing alongside a troll, whom i am on the good side of because i’m good at team fortress 2. Go figure. A bit of him has rubbed off on me. Yes, me, normally so slow to start a fight, and so quick to end one, if by unorthodox means. He’s gotten me into a few bad habits. For starters now whenever we get a kill we spam “RAPED IDIOT” in allchat. Also we have a lot of binds that…well…i’ll let you see for yourself.

SHADYS BINDS:
1: Prepare to EAT those words
2: Along with this slice of HUMBLE PIE
3: Straight from the oven of SHAME
4: YOU CANNOT IGNORE MY GIRTH
5: RAPED IDIOT
6: Serious business
7: How about a spot of rape, wot wot?
8: It seems you underestimated my girth
9: Diagnosis: GIRTH
10: Some are born with girth. Others achieve girth. Others still, have girth thrust upon them.

In retrospect, my douchebaggery knows no bounds in the presence of hon players. But that is simply because they’re so adorably serious that you can’t help but tease them. Team fortress 2 players, they have balls. Counter strike players will just douchebag you back. But hon players? They’re just…..SQUISHY.

WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?! *sobs*
There must be some cure for my addictability, which i am almost certain is not a word but regardless i am entitled to use it as such because there is nothing else that suits the purpose as well, and i was never one for nitpicking about what you can and can not attach particular suffixes to.

Its funny because I’m skinny

Now, apparently i’ve gotten a few (one) people addicted to nethack with my previous blog post about it, and after hearing from my colleague matthew that i am no longer addicted to it, they want me to write a guide on how to quit. So, here’s to you buddy.

Option 1: Conventional quit

The conventional quit is very difficult, almost impossible, unless you have some immediate alternative. The most important thing about your alternate gaming options is they have to both be awesome and easy to pick up. A game of total annihilation may be awesome, but easy to pick up it is not. No, what you’re looking for is a deadly combination of Peggle, for those times when you need something to pick up quickly, and a high-quality multiplayer shooter (Team fortress 2 *cough*) or MMO for when you intend to play for a while. And for the love of GOD, delete your desktop icon, yeah?

Option 2: Rage quit.

This is the one that managed to get me off the game for a good few months. I had gotten a wish from a djinni early in the game, and wished for a +2 blessed greased gray dragon scale mail. Ever since then i had been doing awesomely, at that point in time it was in fact the farthest i had ever gotten in a game of nethack. And then…then i met a werewolf.

It was just another monster. I stabbed it, and then it died. But in my haste to kick its ass, i didn’t notice the little “You feel feverish” message that is given when you contract lycanthropy (the were-disease). Then, on the next floor down, i morph into a werewolf and my gray dragon scale mail breaks. GAH. Then i pray to cure my lycanthropy and my god gets pissed and level drops me. I don’t remember exactly how the rest of it went, but i died pretty shortly after that, and it was a rage-quit the likes of which had never been seen before by mortal men. I rage-quit so hard you could see it from SPACE. If you plan to rage quit, get really really far, and then screw it up in the most irritating way imaginable. It worked for me.

3: Win.

Now i’m pretty sure you’re going to hate me for saying this, but this was the only permanent solution for me. Its not as hard as you think. Get reflection, and magic resistance, and all the intrinsics. Remember to engrave Elbereth when in trouble, and think before each move. Play with nethack.wikia.com open behind it, and go for victory. You’ll become part of an elite minority, the proud few who’ve finished nethack. What one can do, another can do. It might just cost you a significant portion of your life, is all.

Good luck

PLAYTESTING. THATS RIGHT.

I signed a nondisclosure agreement, so I can’t divulge any specific details about what i was actually testing, but i’ll say a few things about the overall experience.

After entering halfbrick studios, the second time i’ve entered a game studio, I was ushered into a small room with two people who I knew HAD to be QA staff, seeing as they were running a playtest. That said, these two men struck me immediately as programmers, the likes of which I believe I have been granted extra-sensory ability to detect by being a programmer myself. Anyway, i’m getting sidetracked.

Going into this, I had set out to give them as much accurate, helpful and constructive criticism I could. While the entire thing was made up of coloured boxes, and the same person was used as placeholder art for pretty much every single object, it was as enjoyable as can be expected for the tutorial level of a handheld game. I think I managed to help them iron out quite a few visual feedback issues with the state of the world, not to mention a lot of gameplay suggestions which i’m almost tempted to buy the final game just to find out if they included them. The reason i say “almost” is i don’t actually own a DS, so the game would be worthless to me, and the day i buy a handheld is the day i lose the ability to daydream on public transport.

…where was I? Oh right.

What’s more they were taking all these notes while i wasn’t even doing anything interesting, which I guess is why they have a job and i don’t. That said, I haven’t applied for any game studios yet, and after that playtest I think halfbrick will be one of my best options. I almost wet myself when i think about the possibility of being finished with all this education bullshit. All I want to do is program and get paid for it :\

Or i could NOT program, and get paid for THAT! That would be even better.

….I’ll get back to you.

Shady out.