Salut!
Time for being really blunt (and nerdy)!
I'm working on my diploma, at the moment. It's related to sound and 3D-printing - the whole thing will, when finished, read an audio file, generate a ready-to-print 3D-model (consisting of multiple amplitude/frequency graphs layered next to each other) and be printed. After that, RFID-Tags can be inserted into the 3D-representation of the song/sound. Those Tags can be read, of course, which will select the appropriate audio file and play it.
Monday, 27 October 2014
Sunday, 5 October 2014
Of Girlfriends of Steel
Aloha!
"Girlfriend of Steel" is the title of a rather old visual novel/dating sim which uses the cast of Neon Genesis Evangelion to tell it's story.
I played through it.
And it was...weird.
The writing is good, the characters and their actions seem fitting to the personalities of the Evangelion-Anime. The "game" starts by introducing a new character - a girl, which takes a liking to Shinji, and is hilariously forward about it(in a good way).
The game itself (=the engine) does have it's problems. I already mentioned that it is fairly old; 3 resolution options that only scale the box around the picture frame in which the story happens and no scaling of the pictures that seem to be at 640x480. Saving can only be done whenever you can take actions of your own - most of the game is self-running, can't be paused and doesn't need any input.
Really, it's more like an anime with still frames and the occasional optional input for more exposure of the world. Only the last decision in the game makes an actual difference, choosing one of three possible endings - there is one other choice in the game, but it only affects whether or not you get to see a kissing scene. This does not affect the progress of the romance in any way.
The biggest issue is, without a doubt, the already mentioned self-running. You can't play the game at your own pace, it advances through the dialogue at a predetermined pace without any pausing, with saving only possible when the game decides that you should be able to do some arbitrary actions that don't affect the story.
For enduring this, you get a fully voice-acted pseudo-dating sim that's true to the source material and feels like it could be part of the anime.
I enjoyed playing it because of the characters; the actions and reactions felt fitting, especially Asuka's.
So long everypony, until next time!
"Girlfriend of Steel" is the title of a rather old visual novel/dating sim which uses the cast of Neon Genesis Evangelion to tell it's story.
I played through it.
And it was...weird.
The writing is good, the characters and their actions seem fitting to the personalities of the Evangelion-Anime. The "game" starts by introducing a new character - a girl, which takes a liking to Shinji, and is hilariously forward about it(in a good way).
The game itself (=the engine) does have it's problems. I already mentioned that it is fairly old; 3 resolution options that only scale the box around the picture frame in which the story happens and no scaling of the pictures that seem to be at 640x480. Saving can only be done whenever you can take actions of your own - most of the game is self-running, can't be paused and doesn't need any input.
Really, it's more like an anime with still frames and the occasional optional input for more exposure of the world. Only the last decision in the game makes an actual difference, choosing one of three possible endings - there is one other choice in the game, but it only affects whether or not you get to see a kissing scene. This does not affect the progress of the romance in any way.
The biggest issue is, without a doubt, the already mentioned self-running. You can't play the game at your own pace, it advances through the dialogue at a predetermined pace without any pausing, with saving only possible when the game decides that you should be able to do some arbitrary actions that don't affect the story.
For enduring this, you get a fully voice-acted pseudo-dating sim that's true to the source material and feels like it could be part of the anime.
I enjoyed playing it because of the characters; the actions and reactions felt fitting, especially Asuka's.
So long everypony, until next time!
Monday, 22 September 2014
Of Unknown Enemies
Evenin'!
X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I played it. It's not bad - I would even go so far as to say it's a good game. Nowhere near great though.
Why, you could be asking your screen right now - and I shall provide the answer.
Enemy Unknown is a re-imagining of the first game in the franchise, named X-COM: UFO Defense, released back in 1994. The basic mechanics are pretty similar to the original, with exceptions for the most frustrating and/or random events the game threw in your face. It improved, compared with the original, almost all aspects of the game (unless you count being unbalanced, massively unfair and bonebreakingly hard as an aspect). BUT! One thing hasn't improved.
Performance.
Now, my Laptop isn't exactly bursting of power, but it's decent enough to play most games at highest resolution(1920x1080), with the really intense options lowered or disabled (looking at you, AA) to reach somewhat stable 60 FPS. Enemy Unknown isn't the prettiest of games - certainly no Crisis. But it still runs like the proverbial ass, with 30 Frames AT MOST, at 1280x720, without most fancy graphics-stuff disabled. There is absolutely _no_ reason for it to be this hungry. I'd compare it, in terms of graphical fidelity, to Prey, the Shooter from 2007 (Good game by the way. Play it if you haven't.). I still soldiered through it, and got a very rewarding experience. Tough, punishes mistakes, but fair at it's core, with rare occurrences of leveldesign-BS. I had tons of fun while playing it! The ending wasn't very good, but I didn't really expect them to have great writing.
I did try to play the expansion as well (X-COM: Enemy Within).
And got, with the same settings I used for Enemy Unknown, 22 Frames.
What the flux compensator.
Uninstalled it after that, and resumed playing League of Legends.
~160 Frames.
At least someone knows how to optimize their engine. :D
Farewell, for now!
X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I played it. It's not bad - I would even go so far as to say it's a good game. Nowhere near great though.
Why, you could be asking your screen right now - and I shall provide the answer.
Enemy Unknown is a re-imagining of the first game in the franchise, named X-COM: UFO Defense, released back in 1994. The basic mechanics are pretty similar to the original, with exceptions for the most frustrating and/or random events the game threw in your face. It improved, compared with the original, almost all aspects of the game (unless you count being unbalanced, massively unfair and bonebreakingly hard as an aspect). BUT! One thing hasn't improved.
Performance.
Now, my Laptop isn't exactly bursting of power, but it's decent enough to play most games at highest resolution(1920x1080), with the really intense options lowered or disabled (looking at you, AA) to reach somewhat stable 60 FPS. Enemy Unknown isn't the prettiest of games - certainly no Crisis. But it still runs like the proverbial ass, with 30 Frames AT MOST, at 1280x720, without most fancy graphics-stuff disabled. There is absolutely _no_ reason for it to be this hungry. I'd compare it, in terms of graphical fidelity, to Prey, the Shooter from 2007 (Good game by the way. Play it if you haven't.). I still soldiered through it, and got a very rewarding experience. Tough, punishes mistakes, but fair at it's core, with rare occurrences of leveldesign-BS. I had tons of fun while playing it! The ending wasn't very good, but I didn't really expect them to have great writing.
I did try to play the expansion as well (X-COM: Enemy Within).
And got, with the same settings I used for Enemy Unknown, 22 Frames.
What the flux compensator.
Uninstalled it after that, and resumed playing League of Legends.
~160 Frames.
At least someone knows how to optimize their engine. :D
Farewell, for now!
Monday, 15 September 2014
Here I am again, look at me again, here I am again, on my own!
Avast ye!
Alright, back on track.
Vacation time is over! I'm back to a regular schedule, and with this,
regular blogposts will also resume. Promise. Time to talk about some
stuff and roll up loose ends!
Star Wars:
The Campaign died a short
and painful death, because one of the players decided that I didn't
like his character and announced that he would leave. After I threw a
fit and made him realize that he could have ASKED me about it before
deciding my opinion of his character for himself, he said that he
would give me one last chance – which made me even angrier, but
sure, let's play the session "next week" – for two weeks,
total silence. Then, he suddenly announced that he was now playing a
different game with a different group, because the Star Wars-one "is
dead anyways". So I decided that he is now dead to me, short and
simple. Since no one else showed any interest, I shrugged and
threw it in the bin.
Minecraft: Playing on a
Server now, whenever I feel like it. It's Modpack(Vanilla Minecraft
is boring) is called "Monster" – because of it's
monstrous size and loading time, I would assume. It takes my Laptop
about 2-3 Minutes starting it. Remember: Minecraft. So it's basically
a massive memory-hog that also eats performance for breakfast. Still
fun to figure out all the different mods, and get them running in
some convoluted machinery that fills an entire room just to make you
coffee. The not-fun-at-all part for me: Lots of kids, almost no one to
talk to in a civil matter.
I've even been to their Teamspeak-server a
couple of times – there's just not a single person there to talk to, most of the time. Well, actually, there is one
person there, almost always. But she just listens and never talks
herself. So all of my visits have ended in me either talking to
myself(which is a thing I do, but I don't need TS for that), or
trying to talk to the random stranger that just appeared, only to
realize they barely speak english and sound like they are talking
with a washing machine on their head.
Theme for my next entry:
X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Be excited!
Or don't. Your choice.
Arrivederci!
P.S.: Title: Iron Maiden - 2AM
Monday, 25 August 2014
Of Printers and sleeping (or lack thereof)
Cheerio Lads!
Yes, there is a reason why I haven't been writing anything here. It's quite simple, really - I got myself a 3D-Printer. I've been so busy modeling, printing, fiddling around with the settings, printing some more and accidentally cutting myself with the exacto-knife while cleaning up the prints that I barely payed attention to anything else. Now that I've got the basics down though, I can slowly divert my attention away from my shiny new toy and start to actually be a useful member of society again.
The most interesting printing project I finished, up until now, is probably the Raygun of Space Dandy. A friend of mine is doing a cosplay of Dandy, and my response was "LEMME PRINT THE GUN PLEASE I WANNA BE USEFUL PLSPLSPLS".
Turns out, I AM useful, given enough time to model the damn gun in blender. Printing it was fairly easy - modeling it was the hard part. But I endured, I printed, and tomorrow he'll start working on the details - painting it, for instance. Pictures will follow.
I am thinking about attending the convention myself - not cosplaying, but advertising my 3D-printing-capabilities. Cosplayers do need a lot of stuff custom-made...
Goodbye, for now - getting tired, haven't had much sleep. Prints take, depending on their size, up to 6 hours for me, and since the printer is in my bedroom, I had to compromise on quality sleeptime.
For science!
Yes, there is a reason why I haven't been writing anything here. It's quite simple, really - I got myself a 3D-Printer. I've been so busy modeling, printing, fiddling around with the settings, printing some more and accidentally cutting myself with the exacto-knife while cleaning up the prints that I barely payed attention to anything else. Now that I've got the basics down though, I can slowly divert my attention away from my shiny new toy and start to actually be a useful member of society again.
The most interesting printing project I finished, up until now, is probably the Raygun of Space Dandy. A friend of mine is doing a cosplay of Dandy, and my response was "LEMME PRINT THE GUN PLEASE I WANNA BE USEFUL PLSPLSPLS".
Turns out, I AM useful, given enough time to model the damn gun in blender. Printing it was fairly easy - modeling it was the hard part. But I endured, I printed, and tomorrow he'll start working on the details - painting it, for instance. Pictures will follow.
I am thinking about attending the convention myself - not cosplaying, but advertising my 3D-printing-capabilities. Cosplayers do need a lot of stuff custom-made...
Goodbye, for now - getting tired, haven't had much sleep. Prints take, depending on their size, up to 6 hours for me, and since the printer is in my bedroom, I had to compromise on quality sleeptime.
For science!
Saturday, 2 August 2014
Oberservations and suicidal heroism
Hey y'all, nice to meetcha!
Basic observation: If you have planned a relatively short session (~3-4 hours), and you have parts in your content where only some of your players can really do anything: Do not allow them to drag this part out. Push them through it. If you allow them to drag it out, your other players will get bored or frustrated, sometimes both.
I had a chase across the surface of a moon planned in the Star Wars-campaign. Did not happen because the close combat-experts decided to question scientists for hours. Ranged players were bored.
Games!
More specifically: Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.
I had a ton of fun playing it with two of my friends, shooting people and getting shot. I died the most: my Unreal Tournament-Instincts are hard to overcome, I just ran into a room with the LMG and gunned people down, dying in the process. Took me about 2-3 hours to start using cover, blind-fire and all the other mechanics one of my friends dubbed "tacticool. Was less messy, died less, still had fun.
Running into a room, heavily armored and guns blazing, shouting "'MURRICAAAAAA!" is still hilarious, and surprisingly effective.
I also played A LOT of X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Will talk about that soon.
That's it, I'm out!
Basic observation: If you have planned a relatively short session (~3-4 hours), and you have parts in your content where only some of your players can really do anything: Do not allow them to drag this part out. Push them through it. If you allow them to drag it out, your other players will get bored or frustrated, sometimes both.
I had a chase across the surface of a moon planned in the Star Wars-campaign. Did not happen because the close combat-experts decided to question scientists for hours. Ranged players were bored.
Games!
More specifically: Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.
I had a ton of fun playing it with two of my friends, shooting people and getting shot. I died the most: my Unreal Tournament-Instincts are hard to overcome, I just ran into a room with the LMG and gunned people down, dying in the process. Took me about 2-3 hours to start using cover, blind-fire and all the other mechanics one of my friends dubbed "tacticool. Was less messy, died less, still had fun.
Running into a room, heavily armored and guns blazing, shouting "'MURRICAAAAAA!" is still hilarious, and surprisingly effective.
I also played A LOT of X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Will talk about that soon.
That's it, I'm out!
Monday, 28 July 2014
Of Pens & Papers: Warcraft, more Starwars and killing Hitler with teenagers
A wonderful [insert local time here] to you!
Warcraft!
Last week, I participated in Warcraft-P&P. The GM adjusted the setting a bit, retconning most of the retcons Blizzard did for WoW. It was fun, but not because it was Warcraft - the Setting made no difference, at least for me. We could have been playing "Generic Fantasy 3" and it wouldn't have made any difference for me or my immersion. This may be, in part, because I don't really care for the Warcraft-universe, yes, but there is a much bigger factor: The amount of players on the table. 6 people at the table, 1 GM; 5 players. Keeping everyone's attention, advancing the plot, telling the story and tending to all those NPCs the players are trying to interact with gets increasingly hard the more players you have. Not feeling "at home" in the Setting also didn't help, as mentioned some sentences ago.
Star Wars!
The Star Wars-campaign has turned out to be quite a surprise for me - mainly because I am now the GM. The first Session with me as Gamemaster was well received (the players said they liked it - surely they wouldn't lie?), now I just have to pull them properly into the plot.
The Wookiee is still weird, and the playstyle of his player is even weirder - takes a lot of getting used to, similar to the newest crewmember. The ex-GM is now one of the players, and he is playing a Gargoyle. In Star Wars. Now, Gargoyles do seem to be a thing, but only as monsters/critters, and only on the Dark Side, at least in official lore. However, there was an actual (and kind of overpowered) statline for them on one of the wiki's, so after some balancing, I let him have the stone-skinned, winged monster who is a nice guy.
Killing Hitler!
I honestly never thought I'd be writing that as a caption. Ever. But since it happened, I might as well write about it. A subset of my friends, me included, enjoy nerding out about Neon Genesis Evangelion, to the point where we tried Pen&Paper in that setting (And yes, we turn just about anything we enjoy into Pen&Paper). After 4 Evangelion-esque campaigns, the player least qualified for GMing in general, out of all my friends, just really, really had to try and lead an Evangelion-like-campaign himself. It started out 2 years ago, on new years eve. Then we didn't play his campaign, until the next new years eve - but now, he suddenly decided "HEY, LETS PLAY MY CAMPAIGN; I HAD A GREAT IDEA FOR A SESSION!".
Now, knowing my friend, I thought "Oh boy".
But hey, sure, let's do it.
First, time froze (but we - the playercharacters, teenagers who pilot giant mechs for a living - didn't). Then we discovered that there are others who didn't get frozen as well. One of those was a scientist.
He explained to us that someone is trying to change something in the past, and that time freezes, adapts to the changes, and then moves on. And, of course, that we have to stop that change. Our characters didn't exactly like the Idea, but did it anyway.
But what did they prevent from happening, you ask?
Nazizombies. We prevented Nazizombies, by travelling to Berlin, entering a timeportal, killing Hitler, killing the Timedemon that was inside of him, and returning to our own time.
And once again, time was saved from the evil Timedemons by THE TIMEPOLICE! Or, rather,
3 16 to 18-year-old teenagers.
You might already have noticed that this all is a bit too over-the-top stupol (stupid+cool) for my tastes. But it was absolutely what I expected from my friend, who has absolutely no sense of taste whatsoever(according to me).
Still had fun. Really stupid, stupid fun, but fun nonetheless.
That's all folks. More next time (Which will be sometime this week).
Ciao!
Warcraft!
Last week, I participated in Warcraft-P&P. The GM adjusted the setting a bit, retconning most of the retcons Blizzard did for WoW. It was fun, but not because it was Warcraft - the Setting made no difference, at least for me. We could have been playing "Generic Fantasy 3" and it wouldn't have made any difference for me or my immersion. This may be, in part, because I don't really care for the Warcraft-universe, yes, but there is a much bigger factor: The amount of players on the table. 6 people at the table, 1 GM; 5 players. Keeping everyone's attention, advancing the plot, telling the story and tending to all those NPCs the players are trying to interact with gets increasingly hard the more players you have. Not feeling "at home" in the Setting also didn't help, as mentioned some sentences ago.
Star Wars!
The Star Wars-campaign has turned out to be quite a surprise for me - mainly because I am now the GM. The first Session with me as Gamemaster was well received (the players said they liked it - surely they wouldn't lie?), now I just have to pull them properly into the plot.
The Wookiee is still weird, and the playstyle of his player is even weirder - takes a lot of getting used to, similar to the newest crewmember. The ex-GM is now one of the players, and he is playing a Gargoyle. In Star Wars. Now, Gargoyles do seem to be a thing, but only as monsters/critters, and only on the Dark Side, at least in official lore. However, there was an actual (and kind of overpowered) statline for them on one of the wiki's, so after some balancing, I let him have the stone-skinned, winged monster who is a nice guy.
Killing Hitler!
I honestly never thought I'd be writing that as a caption. Ever. But since it happened, I might as well write about it. A subset of my friends, me included, enjoy nerding out about Neon Genesis Evangelion, to the point where we tried Pen&Paper in that setting (And yes, we turn just about anything we enjoy into Pen&Paper). After 4 Evangelion-esque campaigns, the player least qualified for GMing in general, out of all my friends, just really, really had to try and lead an Evangelion-like-campaign himself. It started out 2 years ago, on new years eve. Then we didn't play his campaign, until the next new years eve - but now, he suddenly decided "HEY, LETS PLAY MY CAMPAIGN; I HAD A GREAT IDEA FOR A SESSION!".
Now, knowing my friend, I thought "Oh boy".
But hey, sure, let's do it.
First, time froze (but we - the playercharacters, teenagers who pilot giant mechs for a living - didn't). Then we discovered that there are others who didn't get frozen as well. One of those was a scientist.
He explained to us that someone is trying to change something in the past, and that time freezes, adapts to the changes, and then moves on. And, of course, that we have to stop that change. Our characters didn't exactly like the Idea, but did it anyway.
But what did they prevent from happening, you ask?
Nazizombies. We prevented Nazizombies, by travelling to Berlin, entering a timeportal, killing Hitler, killing the Timedemon that was inside of him, and returning to our own time.
And once again, time was saved from the evil Timedemons by THE TIMEPOLICE! Or, rather,
3 16 to 18-year-old teenagers.
You might already have noticed that this all is a bit too over-the-top stupol (stupid+cool) for my tastes. But it was absolutely what I expected from my friend, who has absolutely no sense of taste whatsoever(according to me).
Still had fun. Really stupid, stupid fun, but fun nonetheless.
That's all folks. More next time (Which will be sometime this week).
Ciao!
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