BF 2 Progress

At my historical rate I will achieve the rank of Gunnery Sargent in 137 days. That seems a bit much, but I only play an average of less than 15 minutes per week. My concern: BF2 server numbers continue to dwindle.

Right after 2142 was released, it seemed like there was not going to be much of a change. In fact, I was surprised at the number of people playing 2142, considering the number of people still playing 2. It seems this has changed. Actually, I haven't bothered to play 2142 in a while, so it is possible that players are leaving the franchise in toto.

The number of servers available for a given size filter - small, medium or large maps, has gone down from about 150 to 200 per band to more like 25 to 50 per band. Now, my methods are perhaps not the best gauge of the playing population. I don't play any of the mods, and can not say how many people or servers the are for this.

In general, this is not too bad. I believe it has reduced the number of jerks playing in general, which is OK by me. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I'm going to get all of my ribbons if I can never find a server running the "Night Flight" Special Forces map.

It may be that Battlefield 2 is drawing to a close.

I like 2142, but as I have said before, I think 2 is a better game. It also runs just a titch better on Larry.

Random

1) A-H says he's been offended by Larry. That's not really surprising, Larry has that effect on people. He's loud, full of hot air - especially after a round or two of Battlefield 2 or anything which demands graphics juice, and honestly has the manners of an ape. No help for some people or notebooks in this case.

2) I think I'm going to start on a new bit of science fantasy. I'm about due. I haven't revisited the U.E.P. - Holy Earth Empire for a while, so I'm thinking about something in that vein. Maybe.

3) Never start numbered lists if you only have two things to list.

4) See three.

Ignore this post...

I'm just trying to fudge my Larry icon around the intertubes...

Defined Me

I am not my job. In fact I bear a marginal and shoddy resemblance to my job, often to the great pain of my colleagues and superiors. I point this out because it appears that David, does.

Now, I always knew that. Which is not to say he is wholly defined by his job, just very majorly. I'm also not saying this is in fact a bad thing. He has a good job, when he is occasionally allowed to do it, and he avoids letting other people re-define him by their impressions of his work. This is a modern take on the job definition of self, and certainly I think a healthier one. Recognizing that in spite of the malignement of misguided direction, one's work has value, is very important in this gestalt.

I am not defined by my disease. I am constantly exposed to people who do this, and in fact exist in close proximity to a person who's entire definition of self is composed of a complicated (and occasionally wrong) impression of the aspects of several illnesses. Many of these are long term and incurable. As someone who has an incurable (if well controlled and relatively common, as well as treated) condition, it would be easy to allow this to happen.

I am defined by three major roles - Husband, Father, Gamer. An occasional dash of son, though my parents and I are not so close as some. I realise this only because of the effort I will spend to mix these things successfully, and because of the torment which an imbalance of these three aspects can/will bring.

Cold V9.6.5

Or something. I hate being sick. Somehow I suspect I'm not entirely alone in this.

Productivity is in the toilet and I'm dragging my self into work just to avoid sleeping all day (which usually makes me feel worse, contrary to popular wisdom).

Someday I will fix the Diablo Message of the Day. Fix is a bit of misdirection in this case, as the bulk of the code was embedded in the template (bad me!) which got wiped when I changed it. Meh. This time I need to remember to copy it to a file someplace.

Art for MoMdotNet has stopped for the moment, mostly because I can't draw when I can't see through watery eyes. Good news is, based on what I was doing last week, I think I can draw horses that will at least be up to the level of the unit art.

If you're a Blender person (the 3d tool, not the kitchen appliance), check out makehuman. This is a project still in alpha, I think, but basically it's a person modeler. You can use it to create fairly complicated humans, the export the figures as .objs, which can then be brought into Blender and finished for use.

Stuff to do: figure out how to reduce the number of polygons. I'm sure this mesh is way to complicated for use in a game.

Aw. Crud.

Well, I started my page revamp (you may have noticed).

I blew away the motd code. I'm sure I don't have a backup. Ironic.

Intertubes. Must be full.

Enjoy art:

Mysteries of the Universe Revealed

There's this guy, his name's Justin. He's working on a redeux of Master of Magic, which I may have mentioned in passing is one of my all time favorite games, ever. For those of you not familiar with the original, check it out at Wiki. The original game had some short comings, many of which were probably platform driven constraints (read DOS based PCs really didn't have the juice back in the day), but overall the game had all of the fantasy empire you ever wanted, and probably a bit more.

Back to Justin. Justin has been hammering away on re-creating MoM in a nice Win32 environment. His primary goal seems to be a faithful recreation first, but in a desing which should then be easily expandable. Based on the screenies available, he's doing pretty good so far. But it's a hobby project, so the waiting is par for the course. And a couple of weeks ago he posted a note that he was taking a break, just after he started working on the combat module.

I have to admit, I've identified the combat mechanics, especially the simulated opponent, as one of the truly daunting tasks to design and code. There's a lot of think box stuff in there. Honestly, if he can get it working, I think he will have passed one of the higher hurdles. I have faith. Also about this time, he put a general request on his page for art submissions. You see, Justin, unfortunately, can't draw.

Now, this is not to say that I can draw. There's plenty of evidence kicking around here to indicate that in fact it may be against the law for me to refer to some of my electronic scribbles as pictures. On the other hand, he seemed suitably impressed.

So I'm doing the art. La. I've started with the "High Men", and I've made them over in a pseudo-Napoleonic style. I've started making notes on other races. The down side is we (and now it's become we) will eventually want to have 3d models for in the game. And I've really just started with blender. Nothing if not challenged.

Oh, and if anybody has any recommendations on horse drawing tutorials, I'm all ears.

Most importantly if you would like to contribute, let Justin know. I defer to his choices, as it's his project.