The Dodgy Lady Incident

So I just spent the morning walking up and down Queen Street looking for Mag Nation so I could get a copy of idN. I'd been talking about it last night and figured I should pick up a copy to keep me and Cinto inspired. No dice, so I walked past a dude begging for money and went into McDonalds for a consolation prize. I didn't look at him but he still said "Have a nice day then."

Fluffy Asian Spotted with Street View

On my way back to work I get stopped outside the diary just up the road. Next to it there is a surreptitious Escort Service which I've only seen muslim looking dudes going into. I always look when I go past in the hope I'll see a real life hooker. Alas they always look normal or downright ratty, nothing like Sin City at all.
Anyway, this Maori lady comes running across the road at me and goes "Excuse me Excuse me! Can I use your phone! I'm stuck in town and I need to text someone."
I oblige and hand her my phone, staying as close as possible and vowing in my mind that the kiddy sized cup of juice in my hand is the first thing I'm going to drop when I start chasing her down the street for my phone back.
As she's texting a guy in a dull red car across the road revs and screeches off. Angry tire sounds galore. She looks up angrily at the leaving car and tuts. "My friend ganked him, he's really mad."
She goes on to say that her friend had "ganked" them last night like a bitch. Apparently her friend had (She quickly cranes her neck past me down the road) "Snowballs" and stuff to trade but it all went tits up. "I don't want to hang around to much longer in case he gets back. he's getting angrier and angrier."
"Oh." I reply. "Does that txt your sending let your partner know where you're gonna meet?"
"Hmm, where should we meet?"
"... I really don't know."
As we wait for her partner to call back we sit on some steps and I try and pry from her whether Ganking means stealing or ditching. I was 80% sure it was stealing.
She asked where I worked and I said I worked at a magazine. She gasps and tells me not to print anything she said. I said not to worry, I'm a designer, I don't do any of that writing stuff. I mean, where could I possibly put my words for just anyone to see, right?
Her partner texts back "I dnt hav bus money"
Well crap. I'm not gonna hang around her much longer while she tries to remember all her friends numbers and texts them one by one.
"how much do you need for your bus?" I ask.
"5 dollars or something."
"Oh yup, probably 5.60." I whip out a ten that's in my pocket and give it to her.
"Oh wow thanks so much, wait could you text my partner back and tell him ok?"
she dictates to me a message to send and then gives me a hug and leaves.
"Where's your work?"
"uh, it's just down the road."
"Oh ok, well I have your number now, thanks so much!"
Shit. I've just gotten involved in someone's drug network.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat

After a recommendation from work, and previous experience with Shadow Of Chernobyl I decided to get the next game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Call of Pripyat. A prequel to the original game which really pushed free roaming FPS games. The engine is a bit clunky, and reminds me of how Morrowind would feel if it was remade right now without any watering down for the consoles. Pripyat is very much a PC game.

Shadow of Chernobyl took a slightly more linear approach to its level design, while Pripyat instantly throws you into the wandering.

It was vaguely terrifying starting in the swamp land, considering I had previous experience with what this world had to throw at me.

My first mission I took was with these dudes that wanted to raid an old rusted ship lying in the marsh. Unfortunatly I wasn't familiar with the inventory system, so when I went to loot the body of the first person we downed I accidentally put all my inventory onto him, thinking his inventory was mine. 

This wouldn't be so bad if the guy pictured above didn't have the same idea and raid the body as well. So an NPC took all my stuff. What a dick. So I reloaded. There was no way I was going to start the game off with no food or ammo.

 My first encounter with the local wildlife went pretty good I think, bumbling around in the dark and I just happened across them.

The game isn't afraid to throw punches at you. It really doesn't care. I got directed to this NPC who could help me on my Downed Chopper Investigation (My main quest and point for being in the Zone, the radiated center area of Chernobyl). Everyone I talked to said he was crazy, but I was still surprised when he shot at me when I opened the door to has rust house. I almost blew him away, and it was only some weird restraint that stopped me from doing that. I'm not sure if I can kill NPC's. But it definitely feels like a possibility.

When Notch isn't making Minecraft he's a barman.

Shhhhhh

This dude here does weapon mods and stuff. Apparently the more vodka you feed him (Vodka also doubles as an anti radiation potion which makes you tipsy) the better he gets. Unfortunatly more than 3 bottles just sends him to sleep. So I was screwed there.

The game doesn't hold your hand with the quests either, and sometimes the quest items can be rather obscure. Keys don't float in mid air and glow with an arrow pointing at them in other games. It's just hiffed on the ground. I spent a decent little while collecting all the bits and pieces I needed from an abandoned army convoy on this bridge. I make it sound annoying and obtuse, but it's actually quite fun.

Every now and again there are "Emissions" which turn the outside world into an apocalypse. During these things you need to rush to find cover of a building or cave and weather the storm. The building pictured above is one I had to rush to. Just prior to running to it I was in a bandit camp that had pushed me over the line when they tried bullying me for more money for a hostage than I was willing to pay. So I wiped them all out (The hostage just gapped it out of there and didn't even help me out). Then the emission started to rumble in. Unfortunatly I had a short amount of time to get to the shelter and I had just saved. So there was no going back. I had to try a couple times but when I got into the shelter it was crawling with Skeletal rat things and old dead Stalkers wandering around.

 Zombies in this game still use their weapons. Their just shambly dumb versions of regular people I guess rather than "zombies" which are out to eat you.
I fought my way in, hiding in a cellar, listing to all the mutants wandering around in there with me. That was the moment I decided to do this post. It's an awesome game.

Also it has all these wide areas and bits of architecture to muck around inside. The game can go for a decent stretch of time with no shooting so you can have a breather and just poke around. I wonder how many bits I'll never actually see inside these buildings because I'm to chicken to go into any dark rooms in there.

I picked the game up for like 2 dollars on a Steam Special. Put it on your wishlist and wait for it to roll back round. It's worth it, even at full price.
Apparently "Clear Sky" (the third installment) sucks out loud. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Steam Summer Sale: The Swapper

Well, I think we PC gamers have put up with enough garbage from you consolers. Time to get back to more important things, like actually playing games, instead of being shocked at each new revelation which makes whatever console your into pretty much into the console you already own.

Fortunatly, since we've been so good Steam has rewarded us with it's Summer sale, which often happens in summer and not winter, you're thinking about the winter sale.

If you aren't aware of it, this event does crazy sales. Like 75% off type crazy. That means you can pick up a whole pile of decent games without really spending any money if you have the self control. Bruce from work likened Steam Sales to guys to what shoe sales are to girls.

Unfortunatly I'm still not over my last two games, Farcry 3 and Battlefield 3. So I've been feeling a slight pang of guilt every time I buy another game I know I'm not gonna play straight away.

The games I have so far are: Alan Wake, Hotline Miami, I Am Alive, Just Cause 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and The Swapper.

The Swapper is an amazing puzzle platformer. Seriously amazing. The aesthetics of it put in mind of Prometheus, just something about it. The giant lost alien civilization and the british accent might help a bit with that as well.

With that said, if this was a movie I could see it produced into something like Event Horizon, except a little more slick.

as well as the environments the music is ambient and soothing. The only stress you'l get with this game is how hard the puzzles can be at first. That and maybe eye strain from all the fuzz they do. When the lighting in the game goes yellowish it suddenly reminds me of Abes Odyssey. Only a passing resemblence though.

I actually started playing this above all the other games because I had a pretty bad headache at the time, and I wanted to play something that didn't want to shoot me in the face all the time.

This game feels like an oasis... An oasis that asks you whether or not all your clones have souls.
Tap the images for a larger 1920x1080 version.

Sorry I've had FRAPS running and I've constantly been taking screenshots, it's starting to become a nervous twitch.

Mr. Sunny Vector

I'm not sure how you actually get to this guy. But I somehow managed it anyway. I'm assuming it's when you don't have any emails selected. Anyway, I assume he hangs out with Mr Jingles... Stop looking at my emails, the sun is the main event you creep.
So here he is in his fully vectored goodness.

Download Mr Sunny Vector Icon Here

I didn't realise before that Illustrator didn't do inner shadows. It's something that even inDesign does as a vector, so what the hell is going on there. So if you go to pull apart how I made the vector you'l notice that there is some clipping mask weirdness going on.

I made a white box around Sunny, with the sun shape cut out of it, the did a drop shadow. I then made a clipping mask the same shape as the sun and used that on the white box, thus the only thing the clipping mask shows is the drop shadow. This should create the effect of an inner shadow quite nicely without to much effing around. Oh I used CS5, this sort of problem might not be a problem anymore in Illustrator CC, but I doubt it.

I don't know what to think of CC. I guess it's cool. I like the idea that there won't be any new versions, just a continually updated product.

Electoral Commission Vector Logo Icon

Download the Government voting thingy Icon Here

Note, you'l have to rotate it a couple degrees clockwise to get it into the same orientation as the original. Sorry about that oversight. This is one of those logos that are impossible to find anywhere, because elections are boring as hell, so no fanboys are ever gonna go out and try and get some extra hits by blatantly plagiarizing it and handing it on for free like it's their god given right.
Little parties are starting to pop up everywhere. First someone noticed that Peter Dunne wasn't meant to be hanging around the beehive anymore, and was loitering around the outskirts nicking biscuits and tea. So he had to go off and make himself legit again. Then the hugely fantastic Civilian Party started up and now there's rumours of this Pakeha Party, whose main achievement so far is getting a bunch of likes on Facebook & making a pile of people get defensive about race relations.

Tron: Uprising Vector

Download The Tron Vector Icon Here

The cartoon was awesome, and everyone agreed, except Disney, who purportedly said it had poor ratings, because the stuck it on at midnight behind a paywall with three armed guards shooting anyone who came anywhere near it.

So it's going the way of Firefly, which is sad. It had awesome visuals and a decent storyline which appealed far to much to the older viewers. I don't see why that's a bad thing, Older people have more money than a kid. It's cutting out the middlemanchild and getting right to the source.

So to celebrate I made the icon which features on Trons and Becks suit.

I have to say, they really got my sweet spot by adding in the Tetris T block in there.

Super Hard Deep V-Neck

+Quin Polderman inspired this one after he talked about what his life plans were. Plan A was doing graphic design, plan B was security stuff and plan C was V neck modeling. I told him that he could do plan A & C at the same time. I like to make fun of my profession, no one should take their jobs that seriously. Unless you're a surgeon, in which case I hope you never have a "shitty day at work" and never go into work in the morning planning on only doing half ass jobs. Half ass jobs are special plastic surgery jobs where someone has a skewed butt which needs to be corrected. If symptoms go untreated it usually leaves people in weird sitting positions where they tilt to one side.