#oneaday Day 141: StarCraft: The Board Game (Part 1)

[I’m away for the weekend so am away from comic-making tools. I could use Windows Paint, but I’m not going to. So there.]

We tried StarCraft: The Board Game for the first time tonight. My brother got it for me for my birthday back in April and I know he has been quite curious to hear about it, and I’ve been pretty interested to see how it plays, too.

Tonight, we spent a little while going through the basic rules and figuring out how everything works, but didn’t play a complete game. As is our norm for starting a brand new game — especially a complex one — it took us quite a while to get through even a single turn, so we decided it would probably make sense to treat tonight’s session as a learning experience, then have a proper game of it tomorrow.

As with many games, the rules initially seem quite complex but once you get them figured out, it’s fairly straightforward. Turns are split into three phases — planning, execution and regrouping. Planning involves every player assigning orders to the game’s planets, and these orders can either be “mobilise” (move units either between areas on one planet or from one planet to another, assuming you’ve built a transport covering the necessary navigation lanes first), “build” (build stuff, be this new bases, units, workers or upgrades) or “research” (acquire new tech and/or provide yourself with additional options should combat become a possibility). Execution involves taking it in turns to make these orders happen — but the order in which the, err, orders were laid down on the board is important here, as it’s possible for players’ orders to “obstruct” each other at times. Finally, regrouping involves “cleaning up” everything, making sure everyone has the right resources, and so on. Then you repeat. In theory, it’s relatively simple. In practice, there are a lot of variables to consider.

For starters, there’s combat. Combat is resolved through the use of cards which display two different attack and health values, along with a picture of one or more units. If the unit you’re using matches the one on the card you’re using, you use the higher attack and health values. If it doesn’t, you use the lower ones. Then there’s all manner of special abilities along with technologies that reinforce and upgrade your units to be more badass. It’ll take a while to figure out all the possibilities, but it looks like there’s lots of potential for strategic play with enough randomness to keep things interesting. Which is nice.

Anyway. It’s about 2:20am right now so I should get some sleep. We’ll be trying a full game tomorrow, so I’ll report back on how that goes tomorrow evening.

#oneaday Day 140: 21st Century Boy

It’s the 21st century. If you grew up in the 20th century like I did, this means that you’re officially In The Future, because saying “21st century” sounded like it was a very long way off and not, as it happened, just around the corner.

Since we’re officially In The Future, I think there’s more than a few pieces of technology that we should probably have mastered by now. And I’m not going to say “hoverboards” because “hoverboards” would be rubbish. I can barely stay upright on a skateboard, and certainly not on rollerskates, so why the fuck would I want to remove the wheels and stand on a sheet of plastic floating in mid-air? No. Fuck hoverboards, and sort this lot out instead:

Pay-and-display machines that don’t give change or accept card payments

Seriously. We’re living in a digital society where you can pay for things by swiping your phone in front of terminals and yet when you park your car you still need exact change to purchase a ticket? Balls. Fix it.

Computers that don’t tell you what the problem is

“An unexpected error has occurred.” As opposed to an expected error? WHAT WENT WRONG? And no, I don’t want to know the hexadecimal address of the piece of memory where something went wrong because I didn’t write the program. I want something in plain English. “Your graphics card is buggered,” for example, or “Your hard drive is too full for this program to work effectively.”

Microwaves that have a power rating somewhere in between the ratings listed on a packet of food

The microwave here is 800W. Food packaging lists cooking times for 650W, 750W and 850W. Is it too much to ask for microwave manufacturers and those who package food to co-operate a little bit?

Clocks that don’t auto-adjust to British Summer Time/Daylight Saving Time/Uzbekistan Testicle Appreciation Time

Changing the clocks is an annoying rigmarole anyway, and when some of the devices in your house do it automatically and others don’t, it’s a pain in the arse to figure out which is which.

Tiny things that you can’t find

Everything should have a phone number or GPS tracking, meaning if you lose your keys, you should be able to phone them and locate them.

Companies who will let you sign up online but require you to phone them to cancel

I’m looking at you, LoveFilm. You were deliciously easy to sign up for, yet cancelling required me to speak to some indecipherable person on a bad line and explain to them that no, I had phoned to cancel so no, I don’t want to extend my service or give them my payment information. Let me cancel online. I don’t want to speak to other human beings on the phone. I hate the phone.

Companies who insist that all correspondence must be done through the mail

And I’m talking about the paper mail that comes through your letterbox. In this digital world, there’s no real excuse for this any more. And while we’re on…

Companies who take a week to respond to an email

“We will get back to you within 7 days.” Probably with the wrong answer. It takes a few seconds to Google the question I had or to ask the person sitting behind you, to type in your response and to hit Send. Even if you have other people to deal with in the queue in front of me, I doubt it takes a week.

Erm. This may have become a bit more ranty than I intended. Oh well. We’re living in the future. These things should be sorted by now. So fix them, world!

#oneaday Day 139: Tr-Tr-TrackMania

Those who have — ooh. Hold on. [gets momentarily distracted by the new WordPress interface that has apparently launched today.] Pretty.

Ahem. What was I saying?

Oh yes. Those who have known me for a while will know all about my love affair with Trackmania United Forever Star Edition, née Trackmania United Forever, née Trackmania United. And indeed my Steam usage statistics would seem to back this up — with 24 hours’ playtime recorded on it, and nothing else close. Granted, Steam doesn’t seem to have tracked my playtime on quite a few games I know I’ve played through to completion, but 24 hours on a silly driving game is pretty substantial, and it just doesn’t get old.

Yes, it’s unpolished. Yes, certain aspects of it are inaccessible. Yes, it doesn’t tell you about a good 95% of the possibilities it offers anywhere in the documentation — but somehow, despite all this, a huge, dedicated community has sprung up around the game and has been supporting it and driving it forward ever since its release. So much so, in fact, that it’s spawning a proper, bona fide sequel, along with two exciting-sounding companion games.

TrackMania 2 Canyon looks like it will be a lot of fun from what I’ve seen so far — though the Canyon subtitle does make me wonder if it’ll have the variety of environments and vehicles that United offers, but it’s the other two ManiaPlanet games that intrigue me more, if anything. The possibilities on offer in ShootMania and QuestMania, offering the facility to create FPS levels and RPG games respectively, are potentially limitless. And while little has been revealed about how — and if — the three games will interact, the fact that they share a common community portal in the form of ManiaPlanet is immensely intriguing and offers some very exciting possibilities for those, like me, who are interested in game design but whose experience with building tools is limited to Lego, Scalextric and the Wolfenstein 3D map editor. (I remember trying to make a Duke Nukem 3D level once. That didn’t end well, much like several efforts to make a Doom level work in any shape or form. And those games weren’t even proper 3D. I like tiles. Tiles are good.)

For those who have never experienced the joy of TrackMania, it’s worth remembering that the game’s probably most oft-used environment — the stadium — is available as a completely free game to download, with a significant amount of content and the ability to make your own tracks as well as play online. It’s not often you see that sort of generosity from a developer offering what is essentially a “demo”, but there you go. Steam users? Knock yourself out.

Okay. That’s enough TrackMania ranting for this year. See you next year.

So I’ll see you on the loop-the-looped circuits, no?

#oneaday Day 138: Time Ticking Away

It should be abundantly apparent to most people by now that time is not a static thing and it moves at different rates according to what you are doing. The expression “time flies when you’re having fun” is absolutely true, but so, too, is the lesser-known “time crawls when you’re in a German lesson.”

So, without further ado, I present Two Lists Of Things That Make Time Go Faster And Slower Respectively.

A List Of Things That Make Time Go Faster

Having fun
Spending time with people you really like or love
Playing Arkham Horror
Playing Final Fantasy
Watching an awesome TV series on DVD
Sitting on the toilet whilst armed with an iPhone, book or magazine
Reading TV Tropes
Listening to an album… a good one, obviously
Going out for a “quick walk”
Going to the cinema
Clicking your heels together three times and reciting the lyrics to “Firestarter” backwards (I may have made that one up)
Being busy
Wanting to not be busy
Having something you want to say to someone stuck in your head, but not quite being able to say it.

A List Of Things That Make Time Go Slower

Staff meetings
Staff meetings in stuffy rooms (double effect)
German lessons
German lessons in stuffy rooms (see above)
Sitting on the toilet without any reading/play material
Listening to a boring person giving a speech
Boiling some water for pasta
Cooking something awesome
Going out somewhere you don’t really want to be
Hanging out with people you don’t really like
Working on something really, really dull
Being on the phone to someone you really don’t want to be on the phone to
Sending a text message to someone and you not being able to predict the reaction
Waiting for a phone call regarding a job interview
Watching a movie that is more than 2 hours long

There are, of course, plenty more. But it’s late and I’ve been working all day. Why not share some of your ideas in the comments? Oh go on. It’ll be fun, like social media.

#oneaday Day 137: Say My Name, Bitch

I have something of a — what — phobia? I’m not sure it’s that serious, but I have something of a thing about saying people’s names, for some inexplicable reason. It might be something to do with the fact that I never really liked my own name or the way my voice pronounced it when I was a kid (hence my habitual shortening of it to “Pete” everywhere in the world these days) or it might just be one of my many strange and inexplicable neuroses.

I can’t even pin down why I sometimes find it difficult to say the name of the person who is standing right in front of me and who, in most cases, I know quite well. Perhaps I worry I’ll mispronounce it (granted, it’s kind of hard to mispronounce most of the names of people I know, though I have no idea how to say the surnames “Ohle” or “Honea” to this day and worry if I ever meet the people in question face to face I’ll pick the wrong possibility and make a big tit of myself) or perhaps I just think that someone’s name is somehow a window on their soul, a piece of their person that is, well, personal.

I don’t mind people calling me by name, though, that’s the weird thing. And I’m aware it’s silly to feel odd about saying other people’s names — particularly if you’re calling out for someone. “Hey! You!” really doesn’t cut it in a room full of people — although to be honest, I’ve never really been one for calling out anyway, as I generally much prefer to just go over to the person in question and speak to them, as yelling just draws attention to 1) you and 2) the person you’re yelling at, who may not be grateful for the attention.

Of course, it’s easy to go the other way and start calling people by their name far too much. Then it gets a bit weird, people start raising their eyebrows and wondering why you’re “acting suspiciously”. Saying someone’s name too much is often seen as a sign of guilt, like you’re trying to avoid accidentally referring to the person as someone else, like an ex, or a hilariously deformed person you saw on TV that you can’t get out of your head while you look at your friend, however awful a person that makes you.

Maybe it, like so many socialisation things, is something you just need to practice a bit. It is, after all, one of the things about “growing up” — the moment when you stop calling adults “Steven’s mum” or “Mrs. Stevenson” and start calling them “Geoff”. (Steven’s mum’s parents didn’t like her much.) Perhaps there’s still some sort of residual hang-up in my mind about that, like so many things.

Ah well. One more to add to the list.

#oneaday Day 136: Childlike Wonderment

Everyone supposedly misses their childhood, a time of innocence and purity when you could make fart jokes without worrying about your potential audience. And sure, there are plenty of awesome things about childhood — and plenty of reasons to ensure you keep an air of immaturity handy should the occasion demand it. But there were plenty of shitty things, too. So, in the best tradition of online journalism, I present to you the Top Five Reasons Childhood was Shit/Awesome.

Shit: Enforced Sport

P.E. lessons were something of a necessary evil, but inflicting team sports on non-sporty types is just torture, particularly when said non-sporty types inevitably are the last ones to get picked for the team, leading to abject humiliation, even if it was unintentional. So fuck P.E. — I’d much rather we’d had sessions in the gym or something. Of course, our school didn’t have a gym at that point, so…

Awesome: Imaginary Play with Shit Props

My primary school was out in the country, so naturally this meant we had a lot of countryside things find their way into the playground. We had The Log, which was fairly self-explanatory, and found itself carved into an interesting assault course by everyone who discovered you could scrape a stick along it and make “piggy dust”. But we also had two tractor tyres, which could be stacked in various ways to make “flight simulators” of varying complexity. Which was awesome.

Shit: Inadvertent Bodily Functions

At school, you are statistically more likely to throw up in front of people, shit yourself or piss yourself than at any other time in your life, until you become an old person, when said risk starts to increase again. I think that’s really all that needs to be said on the matter. Pissing, shitting or sicking yourself is never pleasant — and even worse if there are witnesses. If you piss, shit or sick yourself when you’re older than a child, people assume there’s something wrong and that you need help. If you piss, shit or sick yourself when you’re a child, though, you’ll become an object of ridicule and never recover. Even years later, you’ll be Captain “Hey! Remember that time you shat yourself?”.

Awesome: The Acceptability of Lunchtime Farting Contests

Depending on your place of work, this may not apply, but for the most part, competing with your peers for who can do the best fart (and, by extension, who can discover the best position into which you can manoeuvre your legs and anus to create the most cacophonic flatulence possible) is unacceptable. But at school, this sort of behaviour was perfectly normal, if normally confined to the far end of the school field.

Shit: Having to Swear in Stealth

Swearing too much is the sole preserve of the chav, but everyone knows that a well-executed expletive can be enormously entertaining. At school, swearing was enough to get you a detention (though in my experience, these days kids swear so much it’s generally ignored by teachers) and at home it was enough to get you a good hiding/grounding. Now, as grown adults, you can call each other cocks with gay abandon.

Awesome: Sleepovers

You can have sleepovers when you’re older, but your friends tend to have their own house, and sleeping in their bedroom is generally frowned upon. But back in childhood and even into teenagerdom, sleepovers were a big deal. My favourite sleepover came after one of our exam results days, when my friend Woody “invented” the phenomenon of Emperor Farts, which simply involves quoting one of the Emperor’s lines from Star Wars, then farting. It’s funnier if you see it actually happening.

Shit: Subculture Segregation

Okay, this still happens when you’re older, but it’s particularly pronounced in school. Geeks don’t talk to the cool kids. Cool kids don’t talk to musicians, who are a different kind of cool, unless they’re in the orchestra, in which case they’re kind of a geek. Goths don’t talk to anyone. Chavs talk to everyone but usually to start a fight. And everyone stays in their own little clique. Grow up a bit and you’ll find yourself blending with a much more diverse band of people, particularly if you work somewhere like an Apple Store.

Awesome: Kids’ TV

Kids’ TV in the 80s and 90s was, as the rose-tinted spectacles will have it, awesome. A lot of it, to its credit, is still funny today, and entertaining for kids and adults alike. Contrast with the bullshit on kids’ TV today… and you end up sounding like an old man. But hey.

Shit: Constraints

As a kid, you had to be home by a certain time, eating at a certain time, in bed by a certain time. As a grownup you can generally do what the fuck you please, so long as you either haven’t made dinner plans with a hot date, or don’t mind pissing off your hot date.

Awesome: Simple Pleasures

As a kid, you can find entertainment and enjoyment in the simplest things. Parents get a new car? Get taken out for a ride in it! Found a box of old clothes? Play dress-up! Got some Lego? Make something awesome without the first thing that enters your mind being a three-dimensional blocky phallus! The possibilities are endless, and you don’t even need money for most things.

So basically, being a kid was pretty awesome and shit at the same time, just like being an adult. The key, then, is to find a way to balance out the awesome and shit parts of both.

So, who’s up for a lunchtime farting competition?

#oneaday Day 135: Patience is a Virtue

I’ve often been complimented on what is possibly my best virtue — my patience. I’ve developed this over many long and arduous years, and I attribute my possession of it as a virtue to two things in particular: video games and music.

Music’s contribution is obviously (possibly) from the amount of practice necessary to get to a good stage with your instrument playing, composition, singing or whatever. While I don’t do as much practice as I did when I was growing up — no exams or anything to aim for at the moment, for one thing — I can still sit down and actually work on something until I get it right if necessary. Sure, it might be frustrating for anyone sitting nearby to listen to the same few bars over and over at gradually-increasing tempi, but that’s why God invented electric pianos and headphones.

Video games’ contribution is, interestingly, almost the exact same reason — practice. I was playing my evergreen favourite game Trackmania United earlier today and it occurred to me that I was quite happy to sit there and repeatedly attempt each level until I got a result with which I was satisfied. It helps, of course, that Trackmania carries little to no penalty to failure, much like the notorious Super Meat Boy. Hit the “restart” button and, unlike many racing games out there, you’re immediately back on the start line, ready to go. The fact it’s so easy to restart and try again makes the whole thing a lot more conducive to repeated attempts. And the more repeated attempts you make without your head exploding or a string of expletives erupting forth from your mouth, the more your patience builds up.

Patience has come in useful in many life situations. When I worked as a teacher, I had to make use of it pretty much every day as the more unpleasant children out there have a habit of trying to “push” their teachers as far as possible until they snap. Sure, I did “snap” once or twice, including the time that drove me out of secondary teaching for good and left me on sick leave for over six weeks — I’m only human, after all — but for the most part, I managed to maintain composure even in the face of extreme adversity — including one time when a 14-year old kid threatened to knife me because I’d asked him (politely) to stop talking. Nice, huh?

It’s not just teaching where patience comes in useful, though. Waiting in a post office queue is a situation that practically demands patience (and judging by the amount of tutting and sighing that generally goes on in such a queue, not many people have taken the time to hone their skills) and so is attempting to explain to an elderly person how to use a computer. And there are many more situations in which it becomes useful. Mostly, though, if you’re patient about things, when the thing you’ve been patiently waiting for finally comes along, it’s worth the wait because you haven’t got yourself all wound up beforehand.

So chill out, relax, have a juice. That thing you’re waiting for is just around the corner. (Unless it’s a taxi, in which case you all know what “just around the corner” really means.)

#oneaday Day 134: Eurovision

I’d say “sorry for the late entry”, but looking at the clock it’s somehow only 11pm and yet my pissed-up state makes it feel a great deal later, and that going to bed and sleep would be a Very Good Idea right now. In fact, I’d already gone to bed before I realised I hadn’t written today’s entry, and promptly leapt out of bed to sort out that situation forthwith. Fortunately, my awesome girlfriend Andie has already succumbed to the lure of sleep, so she probably won’t notice that I snuck off to write this, at least until tomorrow morning, when she might read it.

The reason I’m so pissed-up is because of the Eurovision song contest. It’s been some time since I last watched it, but as I recall, the last few times I watched it also involved a great deal of drinking, even without the use of The Eurovision Drinking Game, the rules of which seem to vary from social group to social group.

Tonight’s rules involved drinking whenever you saw someone (not necessarily a lead singer) who was “hot”, any time there was a key change (disappointingly infrequent this year) and, as the evening proceeded, a variety of other criteria, including light-up outfits and “if you felt like it”.

As I say, it’s been a while since I watched Eurovision and the songs on display this year seemed disappointingly short of the usual cheesy nonsense and skirt-ripping usually on display. France, in particular, seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously, with a quasi-operatic number that seemed completely out of place. I hasten to add we’ve turned it off before all the voting is over — mostly because the voting goes on for hours and hours and hours but at least partly because of the amount of vodka and Tizer (classy) that has been consumed throughout the course of the evening.

Jedward were on fine form representing Ireland, exhibiting a song which required them to do little more than shout a bit whilst dressed as homosexual space marines while their backing singers did 95% of the work. The UK’s entry Blue was rather weak, with some dodgy tuning issues in the solo singing, but some nice harmonies. As usual, there were conspiracy theories about the UK entry’s mixing making it appear worse than it was, which I feel is missing the point somewhat — however much we used to enjoy dancing to Blue in Kaos “back in the day”, they were never that good really, were they?

Germany’s entry was notable for featuring a spectacularly hot lead singer (the same one as last year, I believe, not that I watched it last year) and a song that was actually quite listenable and a bit Portishead-ish. The fact it was quite listenable, however, meant that it was completely inappropriate for Eurovision.

In fact, the whole thing was disappointingly light on eccentricity this year — there was no Norwegian death metal, and only one group featured a unicycle. Maybe next year it’ll get back on track.

Also, it’s not the same without Wogan.

Anyway. I’m off my face (and surprisingly coherent despite this) so I’m off to bed now. Good night.

#oneaday 133: This Beat is Spidertronic

I hate spiders. Although I don’t hate them as much as when I was little, when the slightest hint of a spider (or indeed a piece of fluff that looked a bit like a spider, or anything with more than two legs that was smaller than a cat) terrified me to such a degree that I always had to go and get someone to help sort it out. And I’d practically shit myself if there was ever one in the bath, because bath spiders are always 1) huge and 2) ninja stealth masters.

I’m better now. I still don’t like the big ones (especially the ones that are so big you can see the hairs on their legs) but little ones are no problem. I have no qualms in hoovering them up or indeed going mano a mano with them armed only with a piece of toilet paper and some squeezy fingers.

Of course, the pacifists and spider rights people would say I don’t have to kill them, but if I didn’t kill them, they’d come and crawl over me and bite me. (I’ve never been bitten by a spider. But it would just take once to make all those childhood fears justified.) Perhaps they’re just being friendly when they come and crawl on you. But I’m not willing to risk that. If I see a spider and it’s someplace where it might a) fall on me b) crawl on me or c) fall onto something near me, it has to go — preferably into a Hoover.

Why are spiders scary, though? Is it the fact they have far too many legs? Possibly. Is it the fact they’re unpredictable and prone to sitting still for hours at a time then suddenly springing into action when provoked? Perhaps. Is it their colour? So you’re saying black things are scary? You racist.

Perhaps there isn’t a reason. Phobias are generally pretty irrational, after all. The statistical likelihood of being bitten by a spider is probably pretty slim, unless you — ouch!

Just kidding. I haven’t really been bitten by a spider. To my knowledge, there are no spiders in this room at this time (though writing that sentence has, of course, made me paranoid) so I’m safe. There is one of those weird semi-transparent ones hanging in the bathroom, though, which may have to be destroyed at some point in the very near future, just in case it invites its big hairy friends over for a party.

So anyway. Spiders can sod off back down the plughole. They can spin all the pretty dew-covered webs they like in the garden, so long as they don’t scuttle across my floor while I’m watching a scary movie or playing Silent Hill.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lovely girlfriend sitting in my room playing Katamari who needs some attention. Good night. Don’t let the spiders bite.

#oneaday Day 132: Sleep Tight

(Aside: “Sleep tight”? What the hell does that mean? For one, it implies you can somehow “sleep loose”, which sounds suspiciously like bollocks to me. But I digress.)

Sleeping’s a strange thing, really, isn’t it? It’s something natural and instinctive — so much so that it’s pretty much impossible to explain to someone how to do it. I know I can’t. I know that I can’t even explain it to myself, and the more you think about trying to get to sleep, the less able you are to actually do it. “Trying to sleep” becomes “lying in a dark room with your eyes shut trying not to think about anything and failing”.

Because that’s impossible. You can’t think about nothing. It’s actually impossible. There is no way you can completely clear your mind of absolutely everything, because even if you’re picturing darkness or a black wall or something, you’re still picturing something, not nothing. And your consciousness of the fact that you’re not clearing your mind, the fact that you’re thinking of something, not nothing, that makes things worse.

It gets even worse when it’s late and you know that you actually need to get to sleep otherwise the following day is going to be hellish, especially if you have to get up early. Not only do you have the pressure of trying to clear your mind and get to sleep (and inevitably failing) but you also end up opening your eyes every so often just to check how much time you’re wasting when you could spend it sleeping.

Then you realise your phone’s by your bed, so you figure a quick round of Bejeweled Blitz/couple of levels of Angry Birds/few weeks on Game Dev Story/couple of attempts at Tiny Wings/an episode of Cause of Death is just what you need to make you drop off. And so you play for a bit, and your eyes get heavy, but then you figure “what if someone’s said something interesting or exciting on Twitter?” so you check that, then look at your emails, then possibly send an email or two to people you’ve been meaning to email for ages but never remember to in the daytime. By now, your brain is full of words and jumping birds and Special Agent Natara Williams and so there’s no hope of you getting to sleep any time soon, so you go and get yourself a drink and/or a sandwich and/or a jammy dodger and then repeat the whole process over and over again.

I envy those people who can just keel over in pretty much any context and start happily snoring away. Clearly I need to sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber approximately three miles away from my phone and any other electronic equipment.