MechWarrior Online

I recently read an article about the development of MechWarrior Online (MWO). There seemed to be a lot of discontent amongst the players of this free online game. I gather that the development was previously crowdfunded. Then there was a lot of Beta testing. The developers and production company are making decisions to monetize the game. And those decisions are pissing off the faithful players who were on board from the beginning.

To tell the truth, I think I had purchased an old copy of MechWarrior. It might have been something like MechWarrior 2 or perhaps even the original version. That was back in the MS-DOS days I presume. I don't remember much about the game. I suspect my PC could not handle the processing power required to run the game adequately.

This time around I signed up for a free account in the MWO version. I thought this was a game you run from your browser. Instead it seems to be a client you install that plays over the network. The minimum specs appear too much for my cheap laptop. Don't have the CPU power needed. Don't even have the graphics card support either. Oh well. I guess this is going to be a pass for now.

Pacman Version Two

I am working with a friend this summer to write a Pacman clone. We are using the Java programming language. At first we just drew a Pacman and a ghost. We got them to move around the screen nicely. Now it is time to actually draw a maze that constricts the Pacman and ghost.

So far I hacked together a maze implementation. Pacman now responds to keyboard controls. Movement is choppy as the Pacman jumps from discrete maze cell to cell. Now I need my friend to get the ghost working in the maze.

After that we might add other maze items like power pellets and such. Or perhaps we will get some smooth animation going on. I think we should save that for last though. The goal is to get something impressive done by the end of summer.