I think I am in my prime at age 25, but when it comes to WoW, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Trying to get time to sit down and play has been a real struggle these last few weeks. Wedding tasks, moving, getting the flu, job; all these things prevent me from leveling up. Despite these hurdles I have gotten some time in.
I created a dwarf, Brulox. This turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated. I told the fiance about my character and that he was a dwarf. She asked if that was the same as a midget/little person. I replied that in some ways, yes they are, height being an example. In others, not at all. Dwarves are much more hostile and more likely to drink than your neighborhood midget. This made some sense to her (most little people we have been in contact with seem to be very well mannered). She then wanted to know if these dwarves were the same as those in the
Lord of the Rings, “you know, Frodo style”. Again I explained the differences to her, hoping that tackling it from a genesis perspective might yield some results.
Continue reading ‘WoW: Dwarf vs. Giant’
Something I forgot to post last week; humanity moved one step closer to robot armageddon:
Introversion Software is joining forces with the event organisers of CIG 2009, to host the first ever DEFCON AI competition aimed at creating the world’s deadliest bot.
The contest, scheduled for this September, is a part of an ongoing yearly event that attempts to create bots from videogames that are realistic enough into fooling an expert panel of judges that they are actually human players.
In what has been described as the “Turing Test for Bots”, the competition has chosen DEFCON this year as the game for which bots will be created.
This competition follows on from work that the best brains of Imperial College, London, have developed with a DEFCON API (Application Programmers Interface), which enables anyone to create their own DEFCON bot, in true Wargames fashion.
A group of talented programmers will pitch their DEFCON bot against enemy bots in a series of one-on-one thermonuclear chess games. The winner is the programmer whose bot successfully annihilates its opponents and racks up the highest death count. IEEE is offering a $500 prize to the deadliest DEFCON AI bot competition winner.
Let’s just hope the technology developed at this year’s CIG doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
There are never contests to see how bots can save humans, are there? Or how many cups of tea a bot can make in 10 minutes? It’s always obliteration.
If you fancy being burned by nuclear fire, have a read of Brice’s review of Defcon for Mac.
Those crazy cats at Aspyr have released the original Call of Duty and it’s expansion pack:
Call of Duty Features:
- Play through 24 epic single-player missions on four interconnected campaigns, or go online for Axis versus Allies team-based multiplayer action.
- Intense battlefield moments put you in the heat of the action, capturing the chaos of battle like never before.
- Together with your squad, take on Nazi forces through a variety of authentic combat missions.
- Move through the ranks, taking on more dangerous missions such as sniper missions and ambushes until you are promoted to tank commander.
Call of Duty: United Offensive Features:
- 13 new Single-Player missions!
- 11 new Multiplayer maps and 3 new modes, with vehicles including tanks and jeeps!
- Fight in tanks, jeeps, motorcycles, even a bomber.
- Work with your squad through snow and rain, using new weapons including flamethrowers and deployable machine guns, or by calling in artillery strikes.
- Join the 101st Airborne for the climactic moments of the Battle of the Bulge.
- Fight as a British airman shooting down German ME-109’s from the gunner position of a B-17 bomber, before transferring to Churchill’s elite S.O.E. and clearing the way for the invasion of Sicily.
- Finally, follow your Russian comrades into the Battle of Kursk, one of the greatest tank battles of all time.
Also, EA and DICE finally got around to releasing Battlefield Heroes, their casual, pay to customise shooter that’s playable in your browser. I haven’t had a chance to play yet, but Jim at Rock, Paper, Shotgun certainly didn’t seem that impressed:
I only spotted a couple of people who’d bothered to spend money upgrading the ultra-bland insta-soldier that you spawn with. I’m not quite sure how looking ridiculous helps you have more fun on the field of battle, but it’s never hurt the hobo clown denizens of a hundred MMOs, so I guess it’s going to work out here too. I can’t knock it too hard: if it pays to keep the landscape of gaming a little broader, that’s fine. But there’s not a chance in the multiverse that my sad, crumpled cashmoney is heading anywhere near those particular micropayments, and I doubt I’ll sink much more than an afternoon into this.
As there isn’t a Mac version available, I’ll have a play around with Heroes in Windows. I’ve contacted EA to see if a Mac version is coming.
I have always been a fan of horror games. Immersing myself in a frightening world makes for a compelling title that has the nasty side-effect of terrifying me of all hospitals, schoolyards, and abandoned mansions I’ll ever encounter. And now thanks to The Path, I can add the woods to that list. Continue reading ‘The Path for Mac’
It’s a good week for Virtual Programming. Russell mentioned they’re bringing Elven Legacy to the Mac and it looks like they’re also porting over Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena too. Marvellous!
It looks like the title struggled a bit during development, being dropped by Activision Blizzard, but was taken up by Swedish developer StarBreeze Studios. All I know about CoR: AoDA (great acronym) is what I saw in an interview a few months back; that according to the developers, it’s pretty damned cool.
I tried to pry some more information out of Virtual Programming - when’s it out? what will it run on? chicken or the egg? - but the buggers were tight lipped. I have their address. I will begin stalking.
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