I promised a CC2 blog entry, so here we are. Many image files abound. Fair warning: Most of them are pretty freaking large.
Understand that these are all a fair amount of work on my part. The Tharavel map took probably about a week of solidly working on it, some of which was learning how to do things in CC2 I'd never done before. Niriath Henning took most of a week. Littlefang took two solid days of work. Bremberthwaite maybe about half a day, because it's very small and simple. Utna took a good long time, since it was the first CC2 city I'd ever done.
The complexity of all this comes from the way CC2 works. If you've ever used a CAD program, you'll understand what I'm talking about - CC2 is at heart a simplified CAD program. Unlike say, MS Paint, all the lines you draw are little objects you can move and manipulate. That gives you a great deal of power, at the cost of being harder to work with. *shrug* Further complexity comes from the fact that I'm not making these up, I'm transferring them from already printed material. In the case of, say, Littlefang, that means I don't know ANY of the angles, and most of the distances are hard to figure, because the map was non-gridded 1 cm = 10 feet, with lots and lots of little 2.5' and 5' walls and such. Pain in the ass, figuring all that out, trust me.
There are others I've done you may or may not ever see up here. The two remaining castles from the 2nd Edition Castle Guide. The other castle from Dragon #145. One of the castles from the Castles boxed set, a monstrosity that took me something like 6 months to complete, and an exercise that learnt me a whole bunch of stuff about the program. You may or may not ever see the Hagia Astrapia in Araxus, or Thurii's mage school. They all existed, you'll understand, but when I built my new comp, I accidentally obliterated about three years' worth of CC2 work. Ah well. I've been wanting to CC2ize most of these for most of a decade (CC2 came out in 1998, for the curious, and I had CC1 before that). They'll keep.
Now then.
The great work, such as it is. That's a fairly big chunk of my very own D&D world, Tharavel. Currently under construction for about 3 years, with no sign of slowing down any time soon. *grin* The parts you don't see...well, let's just say there's a whole continent and a half or so of stuff to map someday.
Littlefang, Lower Levels
Littlefang, Level Two
Littlefang, Level Three
Littlefang, Upper Levels
The first of three castles from Dragon Magazine #145, May 1989. My favorite issue of the magazine, simply for the castles. As it happens, Littlefang wasn't TOO bad to copy. I'd done most of the angle work previously, and understood more or less what I was doing. Still time consuming, but.
Niriath Henning, Sublevel One
Niriath Henning, Ground Level
Niriath Henning, Level Two
Niriath Henning, Level Three
Niriath Henning, Levels Four-Six
This is another Dragon #145 castle, second in the series. It was completed from a half-finished CC2 file I had of it, somehow salvaged from the Great Death of '02. There was a lot of little experimental stuff I tried out here, most of which ended up working, and taught me a lot. The aesthetics of the whole thing is one thing I figured out finally that I liked - The FR Atlas-style color scheme, small border, the bit with the compass, and especially the little purple text, which if you click on in the real file, will open up the map files for the rest of the castle.
A tiny little one-map affair from the Castle Guide. Fairly easy, once I figured out how to do the big tower - non-45 degree angles are pretty tough, but once I figured out how they did the cartography for the Castle Guide, it flowed together pretty well. *shrug*
A city I sort of randomly constructed one day, this was supposed to be the centerpiece of an all-human D&D setting I came up with one weekend. Said setting will likely be folded into Tharavel at some point, but for now, it's a chance to practice with City Designer 2. For a first try, I figure it works reasonably well.
So, how about some Civ?
Cole and I played a multiplayer hotseat game from about January to the other night as the Incans and Mayans. The Last of the Mayincans is over on the Civ page.
RBC9 is over. We've lost, victims of rampaging out of control Mongol hordes. Between that and the Last of the Mayincans, I haven't got a lot of love left for the Hittites.
Too, it's looking like RBC11 is about over, but it's got a while yet.
Also, I've been playing around a lot with CC2, the 2nd Edition Castle Guide, and a certain 1989 Dragon Magazine. Maps rock. Castles rock. Castle maps rock, too. If I can ever figure out how to get good images, I might put a few up.
Yeah. And apparently my HST 407 paper is going pretty well. This is good.
For something COMPLETELY different. The HST 407 paper-writing theme song.
When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay
When Johnny comes marching home.
The old church bells will peal with joy,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
To welcome home our darling boy,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The village lads and lassies say
With roses they will strew the way,
And we'll all feel gay
Whn Johnny comes marching home.
Get ready for the Jubilee,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give the hero three times three,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The laurel wreath is ready now
To place upon his loyal brow,
And we'll all feel gay
When Johnny comes marching home.
Let love and friendship on that day,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
Their choicest treasures then display,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
And let each one perform some part
To fill with joy the warrior's heart,
And we'll all feel gay
When Johnny comes marching home.
KILL THE EVIL PAPER! RAISE THE BANNER OF REVOLUTION! DOWN WITH THE TYRRANY OF SCHOOL! STUDENTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! DESTROY YOUR HOMEWORK!
Right. Anyway. Been up since like 1pm yesterday, have a 3 page chunk of my 20 pager due in like, 2 hours, and the GODDAMN MAIN SOURCE I WAS USING DECIDED TO CRASH ON ME. KILL! KILL!
Sorry. Working on that. Really. The stick is helping a lot. It's a big stick. A very nice stick, as sticks go. Sort of hurty, or so I'm given to understand. I wouldn't know personally, you understand. I'm not hitting myself with it.
What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs
rolls over your neighbor's dog.
what's great for a snack, it fits on your back, it's log log log.
it's log, it's log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
it's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good.
President Bush's whole support of the Federal Marriage Amendment deserves a lot more thwacking upon that I can give it right now, but fortunately there's people like Andrew Sullivan to do it for me.
I really want to say I'm surprised by the whole thing, but I'm really not. Just one more reason to vote for whoever it is gets the Democratic nomination.
Along those lines, Nader, go away. We don't want you. We told you that in 2k, and you didn't listen to us. Now run off and go play in the corner or something.
Quoth Whir, in regards to the current picture of Bush on CNN.com right now:
"I think he looks rather dignified. You know, in that "OMG! Someone's shoving a carrot up my ass" way."
[edit]
And for more entertaining stuff, we present this letter for your amusement.
You may or may not remember from, uh, eight days ago, the whole big list of Civ games I put up. Well, RBC12F has ended. Rome has fallen. Good times were had. Have fun reading, Toast.
Now that the camera has a battery again, and I really do need to get another one of them at this rate, I took a shot of the awesome custom repaint MadCat III I won a few weeks ago. The darkish, awesome-looking one? Yeah. That's it. The other one is the random Bannson's Catapult I keep around for no apparent reason. Because desk ornaments are fun.
So the news of the day is that my paper topic for HST 407 got shot down on Thursday, and I have until about Monday to come up with a new one. So I'm digging through various things online, such as the Congressional Globe for July 4, 1861.
The Senate's proceedings therein take like 2-3 pages, and are on the order of "Right then. Here's some messages from the President and the cabinet secretaries. We all done, then? Excellent."
The House of Representatives is slightly more chaotic. It's on the order of:
Clerk: Ok. Down to business. Roll call.
Guy 1: I object. Flunky over here wasn't properly elected. He went and got elected in Virginia, then voted in Ohio because he felt like it.
Clerk: Right then. Well, we can't deal with that until we have, like, a roll call and a Speaker and stuff. I'm just a powerless flunky.
Guy 2: Well, there are these guys from Viriginia who shouldn't be here. They're all filthy rebel scum.
Clerk: Were you not listening or something?
Guy 2: Sorry.
Clerk: Now then...
Guy 3: But wait! This other guy shouldn't be here either!
Clerk: Dammit. Listen to me when I speak. Now. Elect a Speaker. I'm tired of this crap.
So they do.
Speaker: Right. Now, let's get some rules established...
Guy 1: About that guy who shouldn't be here...
Speaker: Argh. Ok. Well Flunky, is it true?
Flunky: Well, yes. I did in fact get elected in Virginia and then vote in Ohio because I felt like. However, I will attempt Clintonesque word games and deception about this, which nobody will buy. In addition, I will be very worried about the whole "Virginia rebel scum" thing.
Speaker: Right. Can we get on with it now?
Guy 2: No. About that rebel scum thing.
Speaker: Let's argue about this for a page or so, then refer it to a committee.
Guy 2: Ok, I guess that works.
Speaker: Now, on to busine...
Guy 3: But this other guy.
Speaker: Screw this. I hate you all. Why can't we be like the Senate? They're done by now. We haven't even got started. This sucks. I wish automatic assault rifles had been invented so I could go postal on you all.
Lame as the jokes are, many of these are pretty funny. Given certain conversations recently, the Oregon Trail ones were funny as hell.
Because I find this blog fairly interesting. Must remember to get back there at some point.
On another note, today, in the "I've been awake since like 11 am on what was technically yesterday" sense of the term, sucked. This has been one of those terms where I'm not even remotely prepared for anything at all, despite the desperate longing to be so prepared, and despite vague motions to actually attempt something approximating real preparedness. On occasion, you get your face rubbed in your lack of preparedness, and today was That Day.
I should start by noting I had like 6 hours of sleep. One day I will learn to better regulate my sleep habits, but the fuzziness of schedules here in undergradland doesn't really lead itself well to that sort of thing. Ah well. In any case, I had all of about 2 hours to study for my poli sci midterm at 1, catch a shower, and get some caffiene into the system. I thought about eating, and honestly, I've been absolutely STARVING lately for some reason utterly beyond me, but hey, who has the time?
As it turns out, said midterm consisted of questions that I had either A, read the book for, or B, hadn't read the book for, but understood at a pretty decent level. Because, well, explaining the differences between libertarian capitalism, socialism in the communist sense of the word, and welfare statism (otherwise known as the fuzzy blend between Marechalian "rah rah sweatshops!" libertarian capitalism and Soviet "yeah, bread lines rule!" communism practiced by most of the world), really isn't that hard. Oh well. It's a 200 level class. I shouldn't be surprised. Back in the day, I used to do this sort of thing all the time. Apparently in the last year or so, I picked up some good study habits. Scary, really.
Anyway. I sort of belatedly realized at that point that I hadn't read Conrad's Heart of Darkness for my 7pm 19th century Europe class, and hey, maybe I actually, yknow, should, especially since the attendant 450 word paper is part of like, 27% of my grade. So I did, it being only like 70 pages, and wrote the paper. I don't recommend the book, incidentally. Or our resultant lecture on imperialism, actually. That blog thread we had here covers it in slightly more detail than what we appeared to get. And as to Conrad, well, yes, contemporary views on imperialism is important. Unfortunately, my tolerance for the prose style of the turn of the century in a book written without a great deal of chapter or paragraph breaks is pretty damn low. It's one of my great problems with the 19th century, right up there with the whole stuffy conservative Marechalian feel (Hi Marechal!) to the whole thing.
This is, of course, why I am currently taking two courses dealing in the 19th century. Because as we know, I'm a glutton for punishment.
Speaking of which, prospectus and annotated bibliography for my Abe Lincoln class is due Thursday, which I obviously haven't started yet. $NUMBER paged paper due for PS on Friday, which I NEED to make. And I REALLY need to get my airline tickets, and me without a concrete plan yet.
And I'm really hungry, dammit. And nothing's open. And I want to go to bed anyway. So I think I will. Nyah.
It's been a busy sort of weekend. Saw Fight Club again on Friday with Tali and Laurent, which as always was entertaining. Fight Club rocks. Yesterday involved a whole lot of sucking at pool, and a whole lot of D&D, as Kyle's being shipped off to Korea for a year or so. And later on tonight, I have the OTHER D&D game, whereupon we all ponder our new level 1 existances.
On another note, I've been working on my world again, which is really going to suck come schoolwork tomorrow, but ah well. I shall need to attempt to post a map at some point, because I think my new map is pretty awesome. But.
Also, there has been much Civ, which I haven't been talking about, but have been playing for some time now. Among other things, we have:
RBC5 - Fuedalistic Mongols rampage on the world with horse-shaped objects. Open game, but I was there for a pretty good chunk of it. It's currently my top game in my HoF, displacing Epic 10.
RBC9 - Hittite Charioteers try to pull Mongol-style rampages with chariots, which works not as well. Still in progress, sort of.
RBC11 - Byzantine Communists try for a 100k culture victory. Also still in progress.
RBC12F - The Fall of Rome scenario from Conquests. Our team is the Ostrogoths. Note the "F" bit - We've gone all the way up through "H" in an effort to claim the entire first page of the CFC succession games forum, or something. I think somebody's playing every single civ except the two Romes. Just started this one.
So, in a stunning display of brilliance, after reminding myself ALL WEEK about this stuff, I drive home, remembering to pick up Office 2k, CC2, and Fight Club.
I did, however, forget the ethernet cables, without which my laptop is essentially crippled, as well as my original DD2 disks and my Office 95 CD, which means no installs for Dwip tonight.
Considering I'm dying to work on a few things IN WORD, that's sort of a problem.
*snarl*
Also, I have been thwarted by rd_parse once again, but I've been being thwarted by rd_parse for like 4 years now, so no big deal.
Well, I've gone and resigned from Tonto. First time in 3.5 years that I haven't worn the Tonto_ prefix. I won't elaborate on it here, it's all in the post, but it was time for me. *shrug*
On another note, we played some pretty good Mechwarrior down at the shop. As I've always wanted to take some pictures of the thing, I have done so. They follow.
Me Getting Stomped: Me getting thrashed. The mech getting shot in the back is mine, the two infantry by the tank in the middle are mine, the rest is either his, or dead units of mine. That little orange mech in the center is a killer. It's also mine now, thanks to a trade for the for the dead brown one by my caffiene supply.
Fun At the Pool: Nasty fighting in my last game. He charged up, we all got in close range, and started duking it out. My mechs are the same as last time, everything else is his except my two infantry and helicopter. It ended up with the chopper and the infantry chasing down his last surviving mech for my only win of the night.
The Davion Legions of Doom: Rema's random I think 3,000 point army, in disarray as he's building a 600 point army to fight me with.
VTOL Wars: The view from behind my Donar (the white thing) facing down Rema's two VTOLs, one of which is Wahab Fusili, the unique Balac. My Donar beat him down. ;) Note the awesome city terrain, which is hella fun to play on.
Marauder Wars: Two Marauders, the white one mine, the red one in the background Rema's, face down Greg's helpless agromech. The assorted other white guys are all mine, failing massively in their attempts to shoot the building with the yellow circle they're pointed at.
Marauder Wars, Part II: The Marauder Strikes Back: Rema's Marauder facing down a very frightened-looking Bill Magnilov in his agromech, with a couple repair vehicles backing him up.
You know it's going to be one of those classes when your brand new D&D characters, begging for seperate lives of their own, begin having little conversations in your notebook.
Picture, if you will, a dwarf, of the same general physical characteristics as Gimli, from a race where Gimli is the stereotype, sitting at a bar being questioned by somebody.
"So your name is...Grog Halfplow?"
"Grogni. But they call me Grog on account 'a I likes me ale, see. The Halfplow bit, well, great-grandpa Derek was a bit...odd. Took up some undwarvish ways, like farming. Me, I liked the mines better."
"That explains the pick at your belt. What about those massive burn scars all over your body?"
"There were some orcs, once."
"Yes?"
"Like I said. There WERE some orcs. You could also say I got a bit excited with the alchemist's fire during the party."
"I see."
Dwarven fighters, for the note, are fiendishly hard to get away from the cliches on. Really, really, fiendishly hard. Especially at 1st level. Everybody at 1st level is a cliche.
And then there's Moriyama Kaigen. But I'm not up for explaining what a sohei is right now, so I'm not.
Because out of context Marechal quotes make the world go 'round, or something.
Or, you think it would, but no, no I can't let the opportunity go by. *brings out the ol' moral superiority stick* Yeah, that's right. I'm going to keep 0wnZ|ng you with this stick until I see fit to stop. =p Oh hell yeah.
You know, I was thinking about a new MP3 player, too. But...yeah.
The fight you take is equal to the fight you make, or something to that effect.
So, Sunday night. Weekly D&D ritual. You may recall that we had twice previously fought a certain very large spikey black monster with psionic powers to a standstill, losing our robot, and then losing me. Well, this time, we went down for the third try at the thing. This time, we had a plan, however, involving lots and lots of fire and acid damage which it can't regenerate.
The other two times, we had had a bunch of shrieker mushrooms to have it come to us. However, last time we fried said 'shrooms, which meant we had to explore. So we did. All of which was unimportant except for a certain side cave, where we got ambushed by the monster.
*zot* - Our fighter gets mindlocked for 12 rounds.
I see it, grab the flaming burst sword from said mindlocked fighter, and am about to charge the monster when...
*zot* - I'm down for 12 rounds.
And the other two valiantly took it on for a while, until we all finally got back up. I got in a couple of swings before being mindlocked again. Seebo the gnome eventually went down, though he DID paralyze the monster first. Unfortunately, the monster could still paralyze US, which it did. So the whole thing ended up with Seebo dead, me getting my brain sucked out until I went to 1 int right as I came back to life, got my four rounds of swings in or so, then died at -19 hp or so. The rest of the fight didn't take long, and our party is now monster food.
It was, however, a mighty combat. Some 30 rounds or so of fighting. I went through two complete mindlocks, 12 rounds each. We had a great plan to defeat the monster, which just didn't quite work. So we done pretty good. I am...mostly content. With the exception that I think this entire combat has been a pretty good illustration of why I will never ever use psionics in any game I run. Because if I understand how the saves work, it's either going to be really easy to make, or really impossible, depending on die roll. And that's screwy.
'sides. That's why we have mages.
And next week, we gather together to make characters for the new game. We'll see how that goes. It's going to be level 1. I haven't been level 1 in like a decade.
In the spirit of desk shots, I offer a view of my own, slightly messy, desk. I remind you that this is a BIG desk.
Too, I have absolutely no idea who Katie is, and why she thinks she stole my towel, before I even moved into the room.
I thought about posting some other random pics of my humble abode, but I think perhaps I'll wait a few. Like until after I've cleaned a bit. Strange idea, I know.
Today's been a good day. Took care of my passport, made my car like me again, and got that doctor's appointment I need. Then I went home. And I'm there talking to my parents, and I'm like "Yeah, so why did I need to bring my checkbook, again?"
Dad walks off, comes back with a laptop carrying case and some shopping bags. Santa had Arrived.
And the people of the world rejoiced.
I got, amongst other, lesser peripherals, a very nice laptop and a very nice digital camera, upon which the preceeding shot was taken. There is much goodness and joy in the world.
Oh, and I swiped a box of cornflakes, too. Cornflakes rock.
(You non-MUD types will have to forgive this one, I'm afraid.)
Well, here we are, camped inside Argalath's Keep, sleeping after beating the hell out of some undead. Oddly appropriate time to be saying this, I guess.
One score days and eight years ago, I came forth into the world of Multi-User Dungeons. It was January of 1996. I'm all of 15 and a month. I'd had my first computer of my very own, a blazing fast P166 with a monster 1.2 gig hard drive, and it was about time to explore the wonders of the Internet.
Understand that I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 1993 or so, and roleplaying was something akin to life at that point. So when Dad began describing these things called MUDs, I was all ears. It's like D&D, except it's on the 'net with like 30 other people? Sign me up.
It's pretty easy to start a MUD. All you need is some basic proficiency in Linux, some disk space, and some bandwidth. You can download a codebase to get you up and running, complete with some stock areas and such, with ease. And 1996 was like, the Age of MUDs. This was, of course, before Everquest and the MMORPG craze. So everybody and their dog ran a MUD.
I picked one, at random, called the Crystal Shard, because of a certain RA Salvatore book. I think I expected a Forgotten Realms MUD or something. What I got was something that wasn't exactly a stock MUD, but wasn't trying all that hard to escape the generic fantasy mold, either.
Didn't matter. I loved the place. Dwip the dwarven warrior was pretty fun to cruise around the world, killing stuff. There's nothing quite like the thrill of jumping in some random portal to the other side of the world at level 1, or picking up a crappy dwarven waraxe think it's the best weapon ever.
I met a pretty good group of people. I think Cam was first, Samson second. Darkelf, who became Serpent. Whir came later. There were a few others from the time.
How I met Samson is a tale in and of itself. I had been playing for, oh, maybe a week at that point. And here's this guy on chat offering a bunch of maps of the world for free. Well, shit. You better believe I'm all about THAT. So he asks me for an email addy. I knew I HAD email, of course, the addy was written on this little folder Dad gave me when he set me up. But I'd never used it. So, in my vast experience, I told him my password, thinking it was my email. Oops. He set me straight, and I soon had maps. Real live maps, in all their ASCII glory.
Probably a couple of weeks later, I decided that, yknow, this mapping business sounded pretty good, so I'm like "Say, you want some help with this stuff?" Yeah, actually. I think the Cartographers' Guild had been going in name before that, but we kicked it into high gear. In amongst gaining levels and stuff like madmen, we proceeded to map the entire MUD. Everything. And we gave away, then sold, the things. Made a killing. Ended up to where the immortals running the place came to the Guild for maps.
Those were good times. So good, in fact, that they ate about 6 months of my life. I would sleep for like 4 hours, go to school, and MUD all night when I got home. On 28.8 dialup, mind you. This was 1996 after all. My parents were eventually annoyed enough to get me my own phone line.
Eventually, I wanted something a bit apart from just being your average mortal player. I wanted...more. To build things, create things. So, one night in August '96, Samson and I became members of the immortal Kingdom of Graecia, one of I believe five dedicated to building the Shard world. We were under a guy(?) named Murik, who I think we saw...once after. But it gets better.
Back in the day, with the SillyMUD code Shard ran, building an area was pretty tedious work. Everything, and I mean everything, was numeric, and for a lot of things you had to add some pretty attrocious numbers together. Plus you have to be able to write like a hundred little room paragraphs, plus populate the place, plus come up with unique objects. And the formatting was pretty strict. Miss a ~, you'll crash the whole place. And doing things by hand, you miss a lot of ~s. Nevertheless, I finally wrote an area, Samson wrote his, and we even got some code done to link the two with a quest. That was pretty special. Not many people did that, in the day.
We had to wait about three months to get those areas installed. Murik was gone, remember. Finally they dumped Murik, installed a guy named Teklord in charge of us, and that worked well for a time, call it another couple areas or so, before Samson and I got fed up with the slow pace of progress. We had an agenda, see. So we pondered, and plotted, and half-jokingly talked about a revolution and overthrowing Tek and taking over. Little did we know we were being secretly listened to, snooped, by some of the higher-ups. So we got hauled on the carpet for that conversation. It was...frightening. In the days before IM progs, there was email, and we did something like 20 emails in the course of that conversation. It came out well in the end, though. Samson got installed as Kingdom Lord of Graecia, in charge of a big chunk of the world, and I was his right-hand man. Pretty much only man, as it turns out, but nevertheless.
Between the two of us, we transformed what was singlehandedly the worst, most underdeveloped, most totally shithole kingdom on the MUD into the single BEST kingdom on Shard, all by late 1997, working by hand, with code which crashed more than Windows 95 ever dreamed. I believe at one point I was the single most prolific builder in the entire place, except a guy named Lister, who was Kingdom Lord of New Thalos, and who had been there since like, '93 or something. If I'm proud of nothing else I've done, I'm proud of that much.
You have to understand that being an imm on Shard exposed you to a LOT of petty political crap. Getting snooped by your superiors was par for the course, and if you were to see said superiors, you were lucky. Egos and attitudes reigned. At one point, one guy got his girlfriend installed as a KL, which annoyed us meritocracy types quite a bit. As it happens, some of the protests were a bit loud. Samson got deleted. I followed him into it. The Shard eventually spiraled into oblivion, and despite a few brief revivals, has never really come back.
But I've been doing this for 8 years, and it's only 1997. What's the deal?
We cheated.
September 4th, 1997. A day which will live in infamy. On that day, Samson and I opened the Lands of Solan, one day to become known as Alsherok. Those of you wondering why there's an Alsherok in that URL up there now know. Samson ran the show as Implementor, I got to be head of building.
I said before that pretty much any idiot can start a MUD. We're living proof. We didn't have much. The Smaug codebase we started on was at least stable, and had way better features than Shard's SillyMUD base. We had our areas from Shard, having kept copies (luckily. Samson's areas all got obliterated, and only one of mine got kept, returning GR to the sinkhole it had once been). We got a few folks from Shard that we knew to come with us and help build.
Amazingly, it worked. As a builder, I fell in love with the much easier online creation system that Smaug has, and started writing areas again. Samson, despite having very little knowledge of how to write C, managed to pick it up, and slowly but surely, we became something.
Time has passed. The MUD community is dying, killed by Everquest and those like it. Our textual format, command line interface, and lack of graphics and music have kept us from the hands of the younger generation. With college, I no longer have the time to write areas like I once did, though I still make my contributions here and there - I've written some code, suggested things, outlined many of the features that make Alsherok what it is. Over years of tinkering, Samson has made something unique of the code - we call our codebase AFKMud, now, any I now have my name on a copyright now. Something else to be proud of.
My glory days of morting, of building, have passed, I think. We may be sort of hanging on through inertia now. But I say that it's been a lot of fun.
I'd like to make mention that my homework is really pissing me off right now. It's making me tired, and I hate being tired.
And for some reason I'm completely full, and yet I keep thinking of jerky and getting insane attacks of mouth watering. And I mean, of the sort where your mouth tingles for a sec, this little jolt runs through your mouth, and then *gush*. I dunno. Strange.
And I figure since I read Megatokyo like every single day almost, I should probably stick a link on the side, so now there is one. Whee.
In the spirit of updates and such, I suppose I should offer one up, even though most of my attention blogwise is concentrated on that raging history thread down there. That having been said:
Lots of school. I have more reading than I care to think about, more work coming than I care to contemplate. This is, however, the last of it for a time. In case I haven't made this entirely clear, it does appear as if I will be going to England in the spring. So if I make it through this term, I'm free and clear. This is good.
My creative urges are running rampant lately. I've done some more work for Alsherok, and even gotten further in my revision of Tharavelan history. Almost done with the timeline for that, in fact. One more sitting should do it. I need to sit down again and look at races and classes with a critical eye once more, and rewrite a few things for the historical changes, and fix the map again, but that's...it, pretty much. Having been poking the thing for something like 3.5 years, that's sort of frightening.
I blame the resurgance on my having done some actual fiction reading for the first time in a while. That Adventurers link has been sitting sort of unobtrusively over there for years now, and I've kept up with the author's various ramblings over on his site out of some strange sense of fan loyalty. Well, he's started writing them again, I've started reading them again, and that always makes me want to go work on something. Creativity breeds creativity. Yeah.
Too, I probably just want to play. The gang is about to go tackle that annoyingly large monster again, except we haven't for like two weeks because of school and the stupid Superbowl. Football sucks. Grrrrrrrr.
Not a word, Marechal. Not a word. You either, Cole.
Also, I'm bloody well starving. My fault for not really eating dinner today, though I did have a bag of jerky. I almost had a second, but that bag is sort of bloated and has drops of some liquid or another on the inside, and I don't trust it. So it's just me and the animal crackers, and they're not filling me up enough. I'm absolutely dying for some pasta right now, or maybe some fish and chips. *sigh*
