Emptyeye

While The Six Day Exile work is stalled–first by my laziness, then by some equipment compatibilities as outlined here–I figured I’d throw this idea out and see what anyone thinks of it.

I don’t have a lot for it yet, but what is here is Copyright ©2008 by me, Marc J. “Emptyeye” Dziezynski. Everything is in a very early stage, so a lot of the proper names and things will most definitely change before the concept is totally finished.

Essentially, when I first got into StarCraft, I had the idea for a StarCraft trading card game. I refined that idea today so that it actually doesn’t have anything to do with StarCraft anymore, but is closer to Magic: The Gathering meets the now-defunct WWE Raw Deal (Yes, there was a wrestling trading card game. Not only that, but it was pretty fun too..I still have some cards kicking around here, I’m pretty sure.). For the overarching concept, there are basically three factions–your Knights (Chivalry, saving the world, etc.), your Villains (Trying to take over said world), and for lack of a better phrase yet, your Damsels (Who are sick of always being imprisoned/tied up/forced to await rescue and have decieded to show that they can kick some butt too). It’s a paper/rock/scissors system, with Knights being strong against Villains, who are strong against Damsels, who are strong against Knights. Knights prefer direct combat and attacking their opponents. Villains like to summon creatures to do their bidding for them. Damsels generally prefer to stay out of combat and use magic to attack the enemy (I’m not sure how practical the difference between Knights and Damsels will be in this respect, yet.).

You can play as one of several characters, each with their own unique ability (Hey there, Raw Deal influence!)–one of the Knights can deal damage directly to his opponent once a turn, one of the villains can summon creatures at a reduced cost, one of the Damsels can heal herself if her health falls below a certain point and she has…magic (We’ll call it Mana for now, though I’ll need a different name for it eventually) to spare.

Beyond that, it’s very similar to Magic in execution. You start with 100 life points (Somewhat arbitrarily chosen and subject to change), and the object is to reduce your opponent to zero, using creatures/attacks/etc. The basic currency of the game as it were is Mana (See above), which you automatically generate one of for each turn. You can save it up to cast bigger spells/creatures/etc, or use it each turn. Some cards will allow you to generate more mana per turn.

The “vision” as it were is for about 200 cards, 50 or so for each faction (With the balance within each faction being tailored to their strength–Villains would have predominantly, though not exclusively, creature cards), and another 50 or so that anyone could use.

Yeah. Like the title says…but what do you think?

Well, no I don’t. But I’m not particularly happy right now.

This week was pretty much an idle one in terms of the site. I do have ideas for writings which I should really get up and running sometime soon, because I certainly haven’t been doing much lately as far as music goes, instead opting to laze around and play video games when I’m not working. Some would argue there isn’t anything wrong with this, but The Six Day Exile isn’t going to finish itself.

So today I finally tried to get up and running to resume work on said album. I say “tried” because I think I hit a major setback, and it wasn’t even the one I was expecting (Namely, Windows Vista not playing nicely with my extremely outdated version of Cakewalk SONAR…I still haven’t installed that on this machine yet, by the by). No, I went to install my Echo Indigo on it…and found out that the cardbus slot is apparently not the right size for it. Or, more precisely, there is a “notch” inside the slot that prevents the card from going in fully. Hopefully I can somehow remove it, but if not…without the Indigo, I have no idea how any recording/mixing/etc. I do on this comp will actually sound. And it really annoys me.

Anyway, yesterday I saw one of my friends from college that I hadn’t seen in close to three years. She graduated about a month ago (She was a sophomore in college during the one semester I finished up in Fall of 2005), and she’ll be moving out to Texas soon, so I went to her graduation party seeing as she lives around here for the moment. It was fun, and hopefully she’ll come by to see the apartment before she moves halfway across the country.

Until next week…

-EE

That’s right, in the singular. Similar to this post, it comes from an observation about work (Speaking of which, I should be grateful I even still have a job that I can make amusing observations about, thanks to the job climate, the state of the banking industry, and the cost-cutting measures in place at my place of employment). I’m not going to try to read too much into it, but suffice to say it involved copying a table in which “Women” was capitalized as “WoMen” several times. It brought to mind a Beavis and Butthead episode where for some reason, B&B stumble onto a feminist organization that called themselves “Womyn” (Because they weren’t just a subset of “Men” or somesuch), and the guys, having not heard of this, promptly inform the organization that they’re spelling “women” wrong. Don’t ask me why this came into my head at that point, but oh well.

This past week, a lot of the issues I had with the apartment got fixed, specifically the toilet and cable (The latter of which involved a simple reboot of the system on Cox’s end). As a result, the place actually feels something like a home now, and to celebrate, we had a housewarming (Apartmentwarming, I guess) party earlier today. It pretty cool, as some of my friends from Massachusetts showed up, as did my parents and a bunch of Jess’s family. So that was neat.

In about a week, work on The Six Day Exile will resume, for real this time. It’s a good thing I had everything backed up onto two external drives, because on of them has just about died. Luckily, the second is still up and running; late next week sometime I’ll probably get another one to keep that redundancy (A good thing when it comes to backing stuff up) intact.

Speaking of things being on the fritz, my Cobalt Flux continues to not work right even after a cleaning. I’m not entirely surprised, mind you–what it did isn’t really consistent with it being dirty, but rather some type of wire problem–but it is a bit disappointing. Well, more than a bit–DDR was about my only form of exercise nowadays.

Finally, I’m back into playing StarCraft. I’m not exactly sure why, to be honest. But I’m going through all the missions again to get some semblance of skill in the game back.

Until next week…

-EE

This week, I’ve been mainly busy settling into the new apartment. The main issue thus far is a broken toilet and an unresponsive son-of-landlord (If you’re curious, it’s one sort of family-owned business that my landlord is a part of, and the son actually lives in the same complex. It’s not like I randomly called the landlord’s son with my problems for no reason). The surface-level problem is that the flushing mechanism is a bit loose, so when water gets that high, it leaks out. Those plumbers among you are naturally wondering “But why is the water level getting that high in the first place?”, which is really the deeper problem, I guess. Anyway, tomorrow will come a call to the landlord proper if I don’t hear anything by the end of work.

Other than that, though, it’s actually been pretty interesting living without cable. The lack of programming means I’ve been catching up on Seinfeld DVDs that I got for Christmas years ago and never actually watched (You’ll also note that as of this writing, Amazon is advertising for people who need a last-minute Father’s Day gift. Wow, that really IS last-minute), plus one of the 87 bazillion editions of the original Star Wars Trilogy (By the way, while I’ve never seen it, to paraphrase Wrestlecrap’s R.D.Reynolds, “The fact that George Lucas, he of the Super-Ultra-Deluxe-Special-Editions of the Star Wars movies, refuses to officially release the Christmas Special, should be enough to convince you how bad it really is.”) and a documentary on their making. For some reason, George Lucas really likes shooting in Tunisia.

And that’s really it for now. Until next week…

-EE

One of the more interesting things I’ve seen in my trek to work from my apartment (Which I’m probably only going to walk a couple days a week, at least at first–apparently my ankles didn’t really like going from almost no walking to suddenly walking two miles a day two days in a row) is actually a piece of graffiti. If indeed it can be called that. The reason it’s interesting is mainly because I’m trying to visualize in my head the sort of conversation that took place for the object of the graffiti to actually see it. The piece reads “I LUV RAY MAC”, but what’s truly fascinating about it is its location–it’s on the ground, by a place where a u-turn can be made (But only by authorized vehicles–this is Connecticut, after all) on I-691 West, right by Exit 2. Really, it’s only visible from the overpass that I walk on on my way to work. So in order for this proclamation of love (Or “luv” more accurately) to be seen, the perpetrator first had to actually spray paint the ground with the letters, then somehow lure Ray Mac to the overpass where it could be seen, and finally essentially admit to committing..I don’t know what the technical name is. Vandalism of an Interstate maybe? I dunno.

I just found it sort of amusing, and tried (And failed, thanks to the sun plus the fence constructed to prevent people like me from falling off the overpass to severe injury or worse) to get a picture of the street art in question. I wonder if whoever took the time to craft it still luvs Ray Mac or not…

Just a quick post to say that I’m alive and moved in. We won’t have official Internet until next Tuesday, but I’m currently, um, borrowing someone’s wireless connection, and I’ll try to sporadically update between now and then when said connection is available.

Also, check out Rich Wilson’s comment on my review of Lifting Shadows. I apologize for not acknowledging it sooner, but I’ve been a bit busy with this whole moving in thing.

Yeah. Just wanted to say that I haven’t completely disappeared, although this will likely be the last post until at least Monday as I finally move into the apartment this weekend, and Jess and I will be without Internet access until Monday at the earliest. This may not be the worst thing that can happen; I have several games I haven’t even started playing yet, including one or two going back to Christmas of 2006.

Also, packing is hard. Right now I’m putting off packing up some of my clothes and the like, which I’ll move during lunch tomorrow. Then over the weekend, the real fun starts, as we get to move things like our bed and living room set and the like without the aid of a UHaul thanks to my being an idiot a communication breakdown between multiple parties.

A short edition this week, as I’ve been busy packing up for the big move.

• Speaking of said move, I’ve really got to get on renting a truck to transport our living room set. This is due to a miscommunication between Jess and my dad. Basically, Dad claims he said approximately “If you can’t find anything else, as a last resort, Marc’s uncle has a pickup truck”, whereas Jess claimed it was simply “Marc’s uncle has a pickup truck, so don’t worry about it.” As it happens, regardless or who misheard or misspoke, said uncle is away until Sunday anyway, and we’re going to try and move everything in Saturday. Perhaps you see the problem here (The set, while not technically an essential item [Really, I’d say the only true “essentials” are a bed and some shower stuff], would definitely be nice to move in Saturday).
• Also, packing is hard. I’m at the stage now where I don’t have that much of any one type of item (Example: PC games), so I’m throwing two and three types into a box to make the box’s storage space worth it (Example: This latest box is “PC/PS1/Game Boy Games”). Woo.
• I should really update my DDRecall page with my stats from Sunday. Eh.
• Thus far, Wizardry III hasn’t found any fun new ways of wiping out my entire party (Also, upon further investigation thanks to the Magic of Save States, the rock trap isn’t a teleporter, but rather simply a square that contains rocks that the game allows you to walk into…but of course, not out of. Note that while functionally it’s the same as teleporting into rock, I find the semantic difference fascinating). Indeed, I think I’ve found an unlimited healing item (Providing the character isn’t deceased or worse, that is). Wizardry…showing mercy? It’s not quite a totally foreign concept–Wizardry II had a similar item–but I’m at once grateful and a bit disappointed for the help.
• Finally, before I head to bed, here’s Chris “Not Brian Drummond ” Sabat doing his Vegeta voice. What makes it funny is what he’s saying (Which is “Momma Said Knock You Out” by L.L. Cool J). The best part: “Listen to the bass…go BOOOOOM!! Explosion!….unh.”

That’s not exactly the point of this post, by which I mean it’s really not the point of the post at all. But anyway, one of my job functions is taking various bank forms and loading them into the program of use at my workplace so that loan officers and such can print them out as necessary. One form in particular was interesting, as it discussed various forms that needed to be included with a package so that a loan can be transfered to someone else. The reason this particular form caught my eye was because practically every word on it was capitalized, except for one–”borrower”.

The full phrase was approximately “Good-Bye Form For borrower” or something like that. I don’t know if it was just a typo on the original form or what, but the subtext I took away from it was essentially “The customer is nothing, the forms are law.”

Just an observation. And with that, I’m off to find out what delightful ways Wizardry III to find to kill my entire party that I haven’t seen before (Though it’s gonna be tough to top the teleporter-into-rock, I must say.).