Dwarf Fortress Anecdotes

I decided not to call this a review since the sheer enormity of Dwarf Fortress defies "reviews". And I have only experienced a piece of half of the game. It's a free game! Downloads at 9mb so go grab it!
Dwarf Fortress looks like this:

a fast travel map

Everythings ASCII. Half the game falls under the banner of Free Roaming Roguelike. If you know what the term Roguelike means etc then chances are you already know what Dwarf Fortress is. For everyone else a Roguelike is a niche genre of games which are known for being super hard(core). Usually dungeon running RPGs where you kill menacing letters that represent monsters. No saving and when you're dead you are dead. The dungeons and equipment is usually randomly generated.
Dwarf Fortress started as a civilization simulator (inspiring aspects of minecraft actually) and eventually an adventure mode was added where instead of controlling a society you control a single person. Your character can then explore the world and even come across societies (or the ruins) that you built in an earlier game.
The world is procedurally generated, including civilizations, then time is passed and history is made, you can stop the process whenever you like and then that is you're random world created for you.

River scene

Due to the games graphics, you can run it on any pc (even mac!). Unfortunatly you'l need a good onboard graphics card on your brain to truly enjoy it.

The unofficial tagline of the game is "Dying is fun" and let me tell you, you have a lot of fun. I started playing last night, so I'm gonna write down what happened to my first 3 characters.

Saga of Three Deaths

I created a peasant girl called Tim (I got the fe/male symbols mixed up). She ventured forth, awed at the surrounding deserts. She got tired so decided to camp for the night in the middle of the wilds. Her final moments were spent stumbling through the dark being chased by Boogymen. Yes, Boogeymen.

My second character died in some inane kobold attack.

My third character was a noble hero called Caveworm (I think). He managed to accrue a group of soldiers to fight for him. Since noble hero's don't kill people, cronies do. They did a fine job of killing outlying bandits who had been causing the local village trouble. On their way back home Caveworm got the thirst for action, and hark! Before him was a loathsome tame duck. "I shall chop off its left leg" cried Caveworm as he took aim.
As he brought his sword down one of the soldiers spoke out to Caveworm "I cannot even recall your name, but you will fall to my sword!" "ai," said another, "and mine." the other two whipped out their weapons and in unison declared that they too shall get in on the action. Caveworms final moments were spent moving 3 metres from the duck before being brought down by a flurry of righteous blades.

From that moment on the soldiers swore to protect innocent ducks almost everywhere (as long as they were within a reasonable distance of course). The formed a fellowship that is now known as the Knighthood of the Duck.

Snow: Episode 4

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Snow: Episode 3

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Snow: Episode 2

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Matt: I do indeed have nothing to say.
Izak: I'm really digging this slow burning style of story telling. It's not something you see every day online. But I guess that's because "graphic novels" don't update everyday in the first place... Oh well, time to grind on with the next one.

Dans Dog - A childrens book

So I gave Becky a challenge to create a five page children's book before midnight. Not being one to not take up my own challenges (see 2011) she roped me into it as well. Crazily enough it turns out she has one massive rope since now Kathleen and even our favourite scribe Zara is doing it gave up. At the time of writing I haven't seen anyone else's results. I'll update this post with everyone else's projects when they are completed.

I went for a nice simple approach, so mine only took three hours and twenty minutes, including making dinner, eating dinner, and even letting my two year old nephew get involved in the drawing process. Although I'm pretty sure he was just hanging out so he could listen to music. Becky lovingly crafted hers in seven and a half hours. Kathleen Outlined 5 pages in the 8 hour period. But she's wasted since she's gotta get up at some unearthly hour. Sooo I guess we'll see her effort later.

Catch us on G+ if you're keen to get involved in another one of these challenges at some point. I'll give you your own circle and everything.

Parachute - EP10

It's been a while since I've done a proper vlog entry. I don't really count the last one since It wasn't really in the same vein as the others. I mentioned I was doing this video about three months ago and I'm only just getting round to put it up. I won't go into details, but let me just say the internet here hasn't been the sort of friend you can rely on to remember to pick you up from the airport at 4 in the morning. You'l ring Internet up after waiting round for an hour and he'll just mumble some excuse about sleeping through his alarm. But you know, he still expects you to help him move house in a few days.
Woops, I totally blew out my five minute rule for video length. By the way you can now find this video in the appropriately titled Video section of the blog.

G+ Whitespace

Last night Google decided to roll out a new G+ look. There are a number of things I don't enjoy about it. But one thing I don't mind is the "White Space". The colloquial term for the negative space between the feed and the chat bar (which is strangely reminiscent of another social network which shall not be named, Voldibook.)
If you've missed it there has been a huge meme movement of derogatory images of people filling the white space with things, pot plants, bacon, etc.

I wouldn't have done this post if it wasn't for my comments in an earlier item about the subject of de-cluttering sites. More white space is good! If I could remove the chat bar I totally would. I don't need that stuff. Perhaps I have less issue with this since I really don't have any white space.

I realize I am in a quickly shrinking majority at the moment. My screen runs at 1280x1024. So I really don't have any room to spare. While people running widescreens have tons. But really what is the alternative? Ads? Want some ads in there? Want another arbitrary feed of everything your friends are doing? Are you one of those people that thinks that this site here is a good example of how to take advantage of space? We shouldn't fear negative space, and we shouldn't hate change. Unless that change contains ads. In which case we should be upset that we are being monetized for using a free service that is run by people that have a good track record of sweet design.

Although I really don't like the black bars it sticks on the sides of images if they happen to not be at an appropriate size for the post. It looks a little like an amateur powerpoint presentation.

BrickForce Review

So I managed to be let into Brick-Force (BrickForce? The logo seems to style it different.) I tried playing during the stress test the other day but it wouldn't let me, but they made up for it by giving me full entry during closed beta anyway.

TL;DR Version This is a great game if you want Counterstrikey type action. But It's got a bunch of annoying ticks that makes you remember that it is indeed still under development.

What this game has: Map building, minecraft style. You can build your map then instantly set it up as a game, letting up to 16 others jump into it and shoot each other, offering critique along the way. If they really like it they can save it to their maps list, opening their own servers using your map. This of course means you never know what you're getting yourself into. One moment you're in an overcluttered sky kingdom, the next your on a barren map with a solitary burning building in the middle. That's the main catch with this game I think. You can actually tell the maps creators how bad it is to their face! Alternatively how great it is. I'm already a loyal member of a specific map which is slowly being fixed and cleaned.

You can also build your map co-operatively as well with a pile of friends, which I can't wait to do when I actually have friends.

Leveling and Stuff. I wasn't expecting this game to have ranks and weapon leveling. But it does. Ranks open up more stuff to buy in the store so you can customise your block person.

Clan Support. There is an entire server dedicated to Clan Vs. Clan. Another feature I wish I had friends for. Clans are slowly building at the moment, but nothing noticeable yet.

Headshots: Although as Matt pointed out, the characters are 50% head, so it should really just be "player shot."

Pros: Maps load really fast and there is zero lag. Big deal for me, being from a third world country (New Zealand). If you get bored of a map you just go find another one. The weapons are decent. Snipers can one shot and gunners can multi-kill. Decent rewards for playing, and there seems to be no need to spend real money on this game.

Cons: building things is slow when compared to Minecraft. When someone gets kicked everyone gets a big ugly message in the middle of the screen that you have to click to remove. There is no way to heal at the moment. 2hp and no bullets? Tough bickies. You'l just have to commit suicide.

But I'm sure they'l fix this sort of thing by the time it's alpha.

On a side note I took a bunch of screen shots for this post (the second image down for instance) but I got landed in a bunch of boring looking maps, and the interesting map I did get on was populated by snipers who wouldn't let me pop my head out of cover for very long to take a picture of them. Add me, I'm "Izak". We can run around killing each other. It'l be fun.

Snow: Episode 1

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I mentioned that Matt & I were making a comic together right? Well here's episode 1. We're naming them episodes for posts sake and not for any other overarching reason. For keen observers this is a reincarnation of Project:Snow A game we briefly worked on during my Doodle-A-Day year. The schedule is weekly, coming out every Sunday. Episodes will vary in length. I imagine that when I get back into the swing of uni the comic may go down to only two panels at a time. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

Pedo-pedometer

So I tried this joke out before drawing it and that was the response I got. So I thought it was a winner... And just hoped it would work better written down than it did orally.
So I just did my first presentation for our research paper. Steph and Becky wanted me to have cat whiskers as I did my presentation. So I got some drawn on with the whiteboard marker. Our teacher heroically didn't mention it. Allen also dared me to do it without any notes. So I stood up in front of the class and told everyone of this challenge as I defiantly screwed up my notes and chucked them on the floor, then read off my hand.

Oh while I'm on a roll of telling you about things I'm doing, I plan on making a weekly comic with Matt, the dude pictured on the right. I think we make a good pair. I figure we'll bring them out every Sunday. So hear that bro? You better start thinking of ideas for me to draw.

Ep9 - Typography

So I finished one of my projects, with sterling results might I add. The idea was to create letters out of rubbish. But rubbish isn't renowned for it's rigidity so I opted for mesh letters. I googled it and couldn't find anything similiar so I just went for it. So now next year when some poor kid gets the same brief as I did They'l be screwed out of at least one idea. 2 (full) days were spent producing the letters, from grids to finished products. another 2 (cruisey) days were spent collecting rubbish and prepping the letters for being strung out over the creek. about an hour was spent setting up. the letters stayed up for about an hour and a half, gathering a decent number of people. One Indian guy read it "Do.. I look.. Good.. In this.. I can read! I can read!" throwing his arms up in the air jubilantly. I changed lives that day.

Getting Hit On

This post is part of a blogging challenge. If you think it's a mint post then go and vote on the poll. My blog has the suffix of "http://goo.gl/XsCdh" Cheers.

My big tip for getting more hits is to name your jpgs descriptively before uploading them. If you aren't going to talk about your images in detail in the post then this is a must do for you. During my doodle a day challenge last year my images started having ridiculously long titles like "izak flash man girl pregnant comic kick.jpg". You wouldn't believe how many people google for comics of pregnant chicks getting kicked. And just imagine, I could have been missing out on all those quality viewers if I hadn't have written that ridiculously descriptive jpg title.

This tip isn't so much for getting new hits, but to retain your existing viewers or people that may have just stumbled over your blog and are thinking of coming back. Clean up your site! Get rid of unnecessary widgits jamming up your side bar. If people want to search your blog there's already something for that in the top left. If people want to follow you they don't need the followers widget for that. That's in the top left as well.

Jeffrey Zeldman points out that "Some successful sites, such as Amazon and Google, don’t so much redesign as slowly evolve their existing design." Always keep a lookout on how you can improve your blogs look. You don't need to change it completely to make it look fantastic. Also make sure that the template junk that surrounds your post doesn't outweigh the content itself. An average template for a twitter post won't have more than the date and the twitterers @name. Twitter knows that the content (meat and potatoes) won't weigh that much, so the template has been scaled back. If your a big poster then you won't need to worry about this so much. A regular blogger post has the title, a host of resharing buttons and a comment tab. You can add more if you like, but I wouldn't advise it. Some of the worst sites I have ever seen have been blogs, don't be one of those people!

Final tip for having a cleaner, user friendly site. Don't mix ads into your content! People go to your site for the soul purpose of reading your post, don't dilute your one selling point with ads. Stick them between posts if you must. Put them in your sidebar instead. And definitely no ads in your header or title. Unless you want your site to be ugly. In which case, go ahead.