Plight of the Halfling

I spend a lot of time playing Angband these days. My name is Thread. I am a Hobbit Warrior. My super strength and dexterity allow me to swing my katana fast to chop down my enemies. These stats do not come naturally. I wield rings and gloves that boost my abilities.

I am a bit concerned about my health. Not that I am sick. But I do not have the reserves required to take many blows in battle. I search for the potions to cure this deficiency. But old Drago in the black market refuses to stock such items. I return time and time again to find other nick nacks for sale there.

I cannot fault Drago too much. He did find and sell me a wonderful chain mail that resists all kinds of attacks. Good stuff. Now if only I could locate an item to prevent the attacks that leave me blind, I shall be ready to dive into the dungeons fo Angband.

Notch Getting Busy

Recently Notch, the creator of the game Minecraft, participated in a 48 hour game creation contest. He spent the two days coding up a game from scratch. Notch has a lot of fans. About 10,000 of them watched as he streamed his computer screen while developing a game. Apparently this was an epic experience.

Notch banged out Java code. He did not need to Google any specific topics. Damn. The guy must know his APIs. The result was a 3D game that wss running a few hours before the 48 hour deadline. We need this guy participating in some roguelike 7DRLs. He might create something revolutionary.

This guy does have a day job. He works on his Mincraft game, as well as some other new games coming out from his company. You got to give this developer credit. He know how to knock out code.

Creepy Girl

I just stumbled upon this web site of a weird girl. On the web she is known as creepy girl. Her eyes track your mouse pointer. At first some thought this was a hot 3D rendering. However that theory has been debunked. It is really a bunch of photographs that are layered to look like 3D.

So So Rogue

I got an iPhone this past year. The apps looked just too delicious to pass up. I downloaded some that my friends had. Then I searched for some myself. I also tried out some apps that were on the top of the popular lists. Finally I tried out Rogue for the iPhone.

Now all of the elements of a roguelike were in there. But the game did not keep my attention. I think the problem was the navigation. One of the fun things about roguelikes is the ability to control actions through the keyboard. The iPhone usually wants you to touch the screen to perform actions. This just did not translate well for the Rogue game.

I have since removed the app. Not sure if it was a free one, or a trial one that would require payment later. Either way I was not going to play it. Perhaps there will be an Angband port to the iPhone some time in the future. I would give it a try. But it needs to come strong.

False Advertising

I was reading about a company taking developers to court. Then I saw an advertisement on the page that looked interesting. There was a hot chick on display. I was "game" for it. So I clicked through.

It turns out this was some sort of war game. I should have figured that out since the game was called Warflow. Still I wanted to cash in on the hot chicks. They were nowhere to be found. Thus, I got the heck out of there.

I understand that you want nice graphics to lure people to come play your game. But if you don't want people to bolt, choose advertising images that match your game please. Otherwise you fail.