Alice in Wonderland 2010 – Quick Review

March 13th, 2010

Alice in Wonderland 2010 Poster (Cheshire Cat, Queen, TweedlesBottom Line: Disney’s new Alice in Wonderland was a decent movie, but nothing to write home about. It didn’t feel like Wonderland, despite excellent character realization and beautiful visuals.

Midway through the movie, I realized that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted out of Alice. I didn’t think about it much going in, but eventually I realized that the thing I had been most looking forward to in a 3D rendition of Alice in Wonderland was disorientation. I wanted to feel like I really fell down the rabbit hole in the figurative sense, but instead it was just another adventure movie (albeit casted by some wonderfully weird characters). The story was predictable, and Wonderland should never have anything to do with that word.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie did have a few things going for it:

  • Beautiful visuals – the Red Queen’s castle was really something, and their realization of the look of the Wonderland characters was excellent.
  • Most of the characters themselves were fantastic. I absolutely adored the March Hare. Also of note, the Cheshire Cat was impeccably cat-like, the Tweedles were the perfect blend of endearing and odd, and Depp did a surprisingly excellent job with the Hatter.

Alice in Wonderland 2010 March Hare

I really wish they had just stuck with the original story, and I’m not even a huge Alice in Wonderland fan. They just didn’t capture me with the plot they chose – it was the only bland thing about the movie. Had they taken those characters and put them in a really good, really Wonderlandy story, the movie would have been something special.

Alice in Wonderland 2010 Beautiful Scene with Flowers and Gate

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Star Trek Online Overview – Part 2

February 5th, 2010

In Part 1 I covered leveling, ground weapons, and ambiance of Star Trek Online. Today I continue the overview with space combat.

Space Scene in Star Trek Online

Space combat is entirely different from fighter-style run-and-gun gameplay that I’m used to in space games. The ships are slow turning, massive things that rely on shields and heavy guns to get the job done. Aptly placed skill points improve meneuverablity considerably, but only to a point. You are always piloting a floating city, not a sports car – and for STO, this is a good thing.

Upgrading a ship comes in four primary forms: 1) Weapons, devices, and tactical consoles, 2) bridge officer skills and abilities, 3) your own skills and abilities, and 4) trading in the ship itself for another class as you increase in rank and gain access to better ships. I’ll discuss each of these below.

Space weapons consist of phasers, disruptors, and photon torpedoes, and can be placed in one of the front or rear weapon slots. The starting ship (everyone gets the same ship until reaching Lt. Commander) has 2 weapon slots in the front and one in the rear; more advanced ships get more weapon slots. Each weapon you equip has a firing arc. Right now my ship is equipped with a phaser bank with an arc of 250 degrees on the back, a disruptor with 250 degrees on the front, and a torpedo launcher with a narrower 90 degree arc. This means that when I angle myself broadside to the enemy, I can fire with both phasers and disruptors. I turn to face the enemy head on to fire off a torpedo. Devices are usually the equivalent of potions in WoW or inspirations in City of Heroes – one-off boosts to shields, weapon power, speed, etc. Consoles, one each for the positions of science, tactical, and engineering, usually provide boosts to a particular ship stat.

Bridge officers are acquired through mission rewards or by requisitioning them for credits at a starbase. You can get one of each class to man the stations on your bridge, each one bringing a single ability (in early levels, anyway) to space combat. You can have more than one of each class assigned to your ship, but you can only assign one of each to the bridge at any given time, one for each station, and will only have access to the chosen officers’ abilities during battle. Like ground abilities, space abilities for both yourself and your officers can be improved through skill point assignments. Note that ground and space abilities draw from the same skill point pool, so you must be careful to allocate skills to both types when you skill up. Space skills can improve virtually any of your ships’ stats, from overall power levels to maneuverability.

When you increase in rank from one grade to the next, such as moving from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander, you gain access to new, better ships. You can choose to pilot a cruiser, an escort, or a science vessel and can then begin investing points in a skill tree of the same name. According to Cryptic, cruisers are the slow, beefy, “tank” ships, escorts are the zippy damage dealers with lots of guns but few shields, and science vessels are somewhere in between with a focus on auxiliary systems such as deflectors, tractor beams, and sensors to find and incapacitate the enemy.

It took some time to get used to the control scheme of space flight, but with some practice I was finally able to get the hang of it. Controlling the ship and the camera independently is a must, since the weapons are able to fire from all angles of the ship, and the ship itself doesn’t turn fast enough to keep up with the action if you are relying on “straight ahead” viewpoint. Early space combat usually deals with two or three enemy ships against one, lending itself to some truly epic space battles. Despite these odds, I’m not often killed in space. However, I should mention that defeat is almost as much fun as survival, as your ship explodes in a dramatic, screen-shaking two-part explosion. There is a short respawn timer but otherwise no penalty that I have noticed.

Defeat in Star Trek Online Star Trek Online Defeat

During battles, ships are surrounded by shield indicators which give an instant visual cue as to where their shields are weakest. It looks distracting in the screenshots, but during battle the prominent visual display is really very helpful. Phasers and disruptors are best for taking out an enemy’s shields, while torpedoes are best against the hull, so it is important to see when an opening is present before the enemy can repair or redistribute shields.

Shield Display in Star Trek Online

After defeating an enemy, they sometimes drop loot in the form of glowing icons. Flying near one enables you to collect what is usually a common ship device but is occasionally a new bridge console or weapons array. Out of combat space loot appears in the form of “anomalous readings” which you can scan and collect certain combinations of to exchange for items in STO’s equivalent of crafting. When teamed, although combat loot is assigned to specific team members, out of combat loot is not (on the ground or in space), so it’s collected on a first-come-first-served basis.

That concludes the STO space overview. Next time I’ll give an overview of the character and ship editors.

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Star Trek Online Overview – Part 1

February 1st, 2010

If I were to say this is the best MMO I’ve ever played, I’d be lying. It’s not perfect. It has bugs, more than I think an MMO should out of the gate, but not more than is strictly acceptable for the genera. It has UI issues that annoy me, and the default camera settings suck. There is a rather excessive number of currency types. The AI and many of the animations are ripped straight out of Cryptic’s other major release, City of Heroes / Villains. These are all frustrating, irritating, and rather disappointing points about Star Trek Online. That being said, I’m still instantly hooked.

The best part about STO is the universe in which it’s built. Cryptic did a wonderful job of recreating the Star Trek world, from interface sound effects to Lenard Nimoy’s voice-overs while you explore the galaxy. They put all the right sound bytes in all the right places, making any Trek fan, especially those of the Next Generation series and beyond, feel at home. The races are also done well, keeping to their particular species’ quirks. References abound to previous series in the form of descendants of well-known characters. Sulu’s grandson is one of the first characters you meet, and I totally geeked out when I met Tom and Bellana’s son and saw a portion of his story.

Start Trek Online Space Flight

That’s all well and good, but a game’s strength has to be in how it plays or the story isn’t worth playing for. STO has two settings which intermingle constantly throughout each mission: space combat / exploration and away teams sent to the surface. Every mission I’ve played thus far has both components, often multiple times before the mission is completed. For instance, you might warp into a system to find the planet of interest guarded by Klingons, so you must defeat them before you can beam down. In another scenario, you might need to defeat a ship so that you can board it. The constant switch between ship and space was disorienting at first, but has quickly become second nature and is an integral part of what makes this game fun. I don’t find either type of combat inferior to the other, although I’m a bit impatient to rank up and receive more abilities which will make ground combat more interesting.

STO has a ranking system integrated with the leveling process. Each rank (ensign, lieutenant, leiut. commander, etc) has grades. You must be Lieutenant grade 11 before you can rank up to Lieutenant Commander. At first this confused me, but it became clear that “grades” are just levels, and the count doesn’t restart at each rank – so you can think of leveling exactly the same in STO as in any other MMO. The levels come as you allocate skill points earned through fighting and missions (comparable to xp), bettering your abilities. The ranks come when you are high enough level, and give you new abilities in which to spend points. This means you don’t unlock a ton of new “powers” as you level, only a few as you increase in rank. You do, however, get different weapon settings depending on what weapons you equip. You also get the abilities of your NPC officers as you recruit them, and you get “kits” to equip which give you one (ground) ability each when equipped. So although the acquisition of innate abilities is slow, you are able to switch out weapons, officers, and kits that augment this.

Each ground weapon has a standard fast-recharge, damage-dealing setting and a longer-recharge special setting. The special setting is either designed to Expose the enemy or to Exploit an already Exposed enemy. Successful ground combat consists of a good balance of both. Fortunately, each player is able to carry two weapons (their NPC officers only get one), so you can carry both an Expose and an Exploit weapon if you choose.

There is a lot more to ground combat that I won’t go into in much detail here, partly because I don’t have time and partly because I’m only level 6 and there is a lot I haven’t experienced in depth yet. Each character gets racial bonuses at creation which often factor in to ground and space combat both. Each class (scientist, engineer, or tactical officer) gets a different skill tree to enhance and different types of abilities, both of which add interest and tactics to ground combat.

I will end here so that I can get some sleep before work tomorrow. Look for an overview of space combat, character creation, and anything else that needs reviewing later this week.

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The Bus Ride

January 10th, 2010

The following is no masterpiece, but I’ve decided to give in to the writing bug I caught from a friend of mine and make a habit of doing writing exercises. So I figure, why not share them too, while I’m at it? I’m a bit rusty; don’t judge too harshly. :)

Prompt #221: Put a used car salesman, a banker, and a movie addict in a bus. Add a flat tire and an empty window seat. One starts laughing hysterically. Write the scene.

The Greyhound trundled down the highway, coughing out a cloud of dust and exhaust that could be seen for miles across the flat landscape. No one traveled this route, which was why no one was on it – except the bus with its three passengers.

One of those passengers, a slim thirty-something woman in a cheap business suit, stared out the window, bored nearly to tears by the unchanging, unending view.

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into this, Bob,” she began for what must have been the hundredth time since the couple got on the bus. She spoke in a high-pitched, overloud voice, so fast that the words seemed to tumble over themselves. “We were doing just fine before, but you just had to go and–”

“Sheryl,” the man cut in loudly, with the air of someone used to rehashing the same argument many times over. Bob’s voice, too, seemed comfortable at high volume, and held just a hint of Southern twang. “Sheryl, we were not doing just fine before, as you were happy to remind me of–” here Sheryl gasped indignantly and made as if to begin talking again, but the man overrode her by raising his voice even louder– “As you were happy to remind me of at least once a week! I’ve told you and I’ve told you, and I don’t want to hear another word about it!”

“You don’t want to hear another word about it?” Sheryl shrieked, laboring the first word with heavy sarcasm. “What about what I want? I didn’t want to leave our apartment! I didn’t want to take the bus! I wanted the window seat! I–”

“Hey, what about what I want?” called the only other passenger in the bus from a row near the back. “Like some peace and quiet!”

“Oh shut up, Baldy!” Sheryl snapped back at him venomously. Crossing her arms petulantly, she settled back into her sulky study of the desert landscape. The man sitting beside her, aisle-side, gave the balding man a grateful, you-know-how-it-is look over his shoulder, which the man did his best to ignore.

As the balding man, a banker as it so happens, was ostentatiously flipping his paper to a new page – though he had finished the entire thing hours ago – the bus lurched and swerved dramatically. Sheryl stood up, shrieked like a dying bat, and careened theatrically back into her seat, losing a shiny red stiletto off her foot in the process.

“Oh my shoe!” she yelled, as the bus came to a slow halt along the side of the road, but was cut off from further lament by the calm voice of the bus driver.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, folks,” the ancient little man rasped. “We’ve got a flat. I’ll just call roadside and we’ll be on our way again in a jiffy.”

“A flat?” Sheryl cried miserably. “Oh just when this day couldn’t get any better!” Shooting a look at Bob sharp enough to pop the rest of the tires, she began fishing for the lost shoe under the seat in front of her.

Deciding to take this opportunity to escape the confines of the bus and the theatrics of its passengers, the banker made his way forward. His hopes fell when Bob rose behind him.

“Good time for a smoke, I s’pose,” he said loudly. Ignoring another glare from Sheryl, he followed Bob out into the scalding sun.

“Hooey! I guess they don’t call it the desert for nothing!” he said obviously.

“No,” replied the banker blandly, trying unsuccessfully to move away from the other man. “They really don’t.”

“So what do you do?” Bob asked around his cigarette, flicking his lighter to life.

The banker sighed. “I’m a banker for Prime Trust. We’re opening a branch in Reno and–”

“A banker, eh?” Bob cut in, taking a short drag before continuing, unwittingly breathing smoke into the banker’s face as he spoke. “Now there’s a useful profession! Wish I’d known a good banker back home! Bet we wouldn’t have had to leave! You know most banks are criminal, I mean real scumbags, no understanding of life out in the real world.” He gestured expansively with his cigarette. “You know how hard it is to pay rent when you have a woman spending all your money? No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he added, correctly deducing that the banker hadn’t had a date in years.

“I heard that!” Sheryl shrieked indignantly from just beyond the bus doorway. She practically hopped out of the bus, struggling to get her shoe on while walking, before giving up and waving it at him instead. “If you actually sold something in your life– ouch, god!” she stood on one foot to avoid the scalding pavement. “If you weren’t such a lousy salesman and actually sold something once in your life–”

The banker, on the verge of pulling out the remaining fringe that clung morosely to his scalp, walked the length of the bus and tried to tune out their bickering. A cloud crossed the sun and the scalding heat abated slightly.

Then the world exploded.

That’s how it seemed to him, at any rate. One minute, he was contemplating the likelihood of the next rest stop selling earplugs, and the next, he was on his face, ears ringing, spitting blood and trying to suck air into lungs as tight as Sheryl’s well-toned butt. He raised his head, turning blurred vision to either side, and found his fellow passengers equally well off.

Bob was also on his face, Sheryl flat atop him, still holding her cheap red shoe. Her blonde hair was in massive disarray, her short skirt flipped up entirely as if to prove that her butt was in fact tight, and her face one of utter shock. Bob began to cough and sputter beneath her, and she looked down at him dumbly.

“Get…” he broke off into weak coughing, “get off me, woman!”

She blinked uncomprehendingly, and the banker stumbled to his feet, intending to help her up. His vision swam, and he stood rooted to the spot, staring around him. The bus was a fiery inferno, its twisted wreckage spewing black smoke as it blazed. So much for the bus driver. The smoke was not thick, but it worsened his already cloudy vision. The flames were what held his attention, climbing into the sky as they consumed what was left of the bus. What on earth had happened?

Bob groaned and cursed, and the banker came back to himself. He had to get away from this mess, out of the smoke, out of range in case something was left of the bus to explode. He shakily made his way over to his two companions, hauled Sheryl to her feet, and reached out a hand to Bob, who began coughing again and rolled over onto his back, exposing a bloodstained, tattered mess in place of his shirt. The place he had landed was riddled with rocks and had not been kind to unprotected skin.

“Oh my god, are you all right?” the banker yelled over the ringing in his ears, and began coughing as well. “We have to get clear of this thing!” he added, not waiting for an answer. “Come on!”

Still coughing painfully, Bob grasped the offered hand and struggled to his feet. He stood with hands on knees for a moment, then squinted around, going still when his eyes focussed on the bus wreckage.

“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Good lord man, we have to get away from that thing! Sheryl!” He grabbed her arm. “Sheryl snap out of it, we’ve got to move!” And he began to drag her down the road. After a few steps he stopped and looked back. “Well? You coming, Banker?”

The banker was rooted to the spot, his eyes wide, mouth slack. His vision had finally cleared, and he was staring at the horizon – all the horizons. Large columns of smoke rose from four distinct places, black specks danced in the sky in complex arial formations, and three huge mushroom clouds bloomed in the far distance. He realized belatedly that not all the noise in his ears was left-over from the explosion. Bob, following his gaze past their immediate inferno, stumbled to a halt.

Suddenly, Sheryl shrieked, sending spikes of terror up the spines of both men as they looked for strafing jets, falling bombs, or some other horror to match what they were already seeing.

“My other shoe! Now I’ve lost my other shoe!” she cried, looking at her feet. “How am I supposed to walk through the desert with only one shoe!”

The two men’s eyes met in disbelief for a moment.

“Your shoe?” Bob asked incredulously. “Your shoe? Look around you, woman! Those are bombs going off over there! Cities are on fire! And you’re worried about your shoe?!”

As Bob continued to berate his girlfriend for her myopic outlook, all the banker could think of was that, out of five billion people on the planet, he had to be with these two when the apocalypse finally came. Before he knew what he was doing, he began to laugh hysterically. The end of the world was really going to suck.

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Top 3 Reasons I Choose WordPress Over Blogger

December 20th, 2009

I just moved from Blogger to WordPress, and I’m loving it. Although I am only just beginning to explore what the software can do, I’ve already seen a few decided advantages over Blogger:

1) Extremely Customizable

If you know what you are doing and have your own FTP server, you can rip into the guts of your blog like a hungry zombie. Since WordPress allows you to download the entire open source framework and host it yourself on your server of choice, there are almost no limitations to what you can do with it.

On the other hand, if you don’t feel like going all “undead coder,” you can choose from hundreds of themes and plugins that never require you to open a css or php file, but still give you plenty of tools to make your blog your own. (Note that most of these options require that you have hosting; wordpress.com charges for all the extras – wordpress.org gives them away for free.)

The best part is, there is a large knowledge base and forum community to help figure out the many layers of WP.

2) Smooth Back-End Interface

Blogger’s dashboard felt outdated and clunky, but I just assumed that was par for the course. WordPress has shown me differently, however, with a clean, smooth interface that is arranged intuitively (for the most part).

You can see from the images below, it’s clear that WordPress has had some TLC that Blogger lacks. For one thing, WP utilizes the entire space; Blogger looks like it was built for a monitor resolution better suited to the ’90s.

WordPress Dashboard

The entire interface is just better designed, with better use of space, better organization of information, and smoother coding.

3) Categories for Your Categories

I blog about a variety of very different things, but none of them with enough volume to merit a variety of blogs. In Blogger, I organized them by a carefully chosen set of tags, but it always felt forced. WordPress addresses that need by allowing posts to be sorted by category, as well. The categories themselves nest, allowing for much finer control of the overall organization of a blog.

Not only posts can be categorized; I discovered today that feeds on my blogroll can also be organized in this way, and I can choose to show or omit each category. I follow a number of friends from Second Life, but I also follow a couple of gamer news sites, a friend’s blog, and a couple of design inspiration blogs. Now anyone who visits can quickly see which, if any, will interest them, and ignore the rest.

Closing Thoughts

To be honest, I’m disappointed in Google. Nearly everything they touch has magic (or maybe something more addictive – like crack) all over it, but Blogger is light-years behind WordPress. Perhaps the developers there have just thrown in the towel, conceding victory to WP. Either way, I’m never looking back. Between better core software and substantially more add-ons, WordPress is a pleasure to use and does exactly what I need it to.

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