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February 28, 2005

And there shall come ... a blog!

Okay, I know I'm probably boring to tears non-CoH players out there with all the CoH nattering I'm doing in my main blog. So I'm going to try to create a separate blog for that stuff.

Let's see how it works.

Things to do here still:

  1. Recent comments.
  2. Edit link in post footer.
  3. "But wait there's more" auto-expansion. {skipping this)
  4. MT-Notify.
  5. Formatting buttons for comments.
  6. Link list (my blog, list of links).
  7. Include recent links on main blog
  8. Proper copyright/CC notice.
  9. Proper typeface for page logo.
  10. Smarty reformatting stuff.
  11. Acronym stuff

Posted by Dave at 9:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: This Blog

Stamina prerequisites in City of Heroes

Since I've been looking at Stamina for ... well, for practically every character I have ... something I missed in my reading:

Stamina requires two other powers from the Fitness pool (Swift, Hurdle, Health) as a prerequisite, and cannot be taken until level 20.

Knew about the level req, but not about the other pre-reqs. That's annoying.


Posted by Dave at 9:33 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

I can stop any time I want

At least I'm not playing that addictive of a game. (Quietly tallies up the number of PB&Js and Chinese delivery he's eaten over the last week or so ...)

Actually, while Kitten can be a bit of a distraction during the game, she also provides some good (if involuntary) "breaks." Which is probably annoying to the folks running with us at the time, but that's the way it is. And we're trying to make an effort to also make sure she doesn't feel like a MMORPG Orphan ...


Posted by Dave at 7:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

CoH snapshots

Maybe I should set up a new Gallery page for these ...


Dear Mom,

I think I'm finally beginning to hit it big here in Paragon City. Somebody asked to take my picture, and then sent me a copy of the print. Neat. Did that ever happen with you and Dad?

Hope all's well there, and that you weren't involved in that Alien Eggs thing I heard about there the other day. Anyway, things have settled down a bit at the office, so I expect to get out for more "action" in the coming weeks. With luck, I may get invited onto one of the Super Groups they have here.

Love,
Torchielle





A good chunk of Saturday was taken up with the "P Squad" -- top-to-bottom in the picture Margie's P-Siren (Bubble Defender), Stan's Puck Bunny (Grav Controller), and my Psi-clone (Illusion Controller).

Missions were slow (no tanks to wade in, no blasters to nuke the bad guys) but, frankly, nothing could effectively stop us, especially when we managed to dry-gulch a hapless thug like the one in the pic.



After a while we got tired of (a) the Hollows, and (b) teaming with all squishies, so we headed back for the "real" part of town (Steel Canyons), and Stan swapped out his character for Robenmatsu 3 (tanker, on the right), so we had someone to draw good aggro for us.

Psi-clone is here in his going-to-church clothes ...



One of the really keen bits about CoH is teaming with the wife. That's tended to involve lots of new characters, as Margie plays around with different archetypes. Here's the Buckle Brigade: my AR blaster, Honeygun (left), with Margie's longswords scrapper, Kazima (right).

(Kazima was a celestial type that Margie put together for the Necropolis game a while back. Since she couldn't have wings, Margie went for the horns instead. Fun character, especially running around with that oversized broadsword ...)


Posted by Dave at 7:25 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

CoH Update

Because you really wanted to know. I can tell.

Current roster:

I could put the above info in the sidebar and update it there, as someone noted. But that would suggest an obsession with the game, like every other post was going to be about CoH or something, so I think I'll give that a pass at the moment.

I set up Global Chat ("/chatbeta 1"), but I can't figure out what I want to use as my "handle" -- using a character name (the default, and, for me, currently "@Velvet Jones") is a bit too ... obsessive for my taste. But I don't have a normal semi-anonymous nom de plume I use. And you only get one chance to redefine your handle. Hmmmm. It would, though, resolve the annoying problem of people building and changing around long lists of heroes for me to track. Ahem.

Our connectivity this weekend was really wonky. Mapserver disconnects way, way, way too frequent -- except when in door missions (more limited maps) and while moving. Really irritating. I'm tempted to blame it on our network connection altogether, but that the server we were on (Champion) had an emergency we're-kicking-you-off-now reboot last evening makes me think it wasn't just us (though the problem didn't seem to get better afterward). I did some preliminary research into a cable gateway; nothing resolved yet (and not likely to do so until next weekend at the earliest, anyway).

Margie's all "What character do you want me to work on while you're away on business this week?" To which I'm "What makes you think you won't see me online? They have broadband at the hotel I'm at ..."


Posted by Dave at 5:46 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 27, 2005

Weekend of (mostly) Heroes

FRIDAY

After Margie Gras, Margie and I did a bit of CoH, and went to bed (too late)

SATURDAY

Mostly CoH, mostly Margie and Stan and me, mostly in the Hollows in an oddball Illusion Controller/Grav Controller/Bubble Defender combo. Slow, but steady progress through way too many tunnels.

Eventually went elsewhere with Stan taking on his tank, which changed the dynamics a lot, obviously. Still, much enjoyment, and got Psi-Clone up to my second-highest character (at 11).

SUNDAY

Okay, so how many people have gone to church "as" their City of Heroes character? Not many, I suspect, for obvious reasons. Since Psi-Clone actually, ahem, resembles me and ensembles I wear (tan slacks, rust-red shirt, tweed sports coat), it wasn't exactly a bizarro moment, except for the association that nobody around me except Margie would appreciate.

Back home after the birthday party Katherine went to, a bit more late afternoon CoH, interrupted by an emergency reboot on Champion, which gave us an opportunity to Feed and Bed Down the Child.

So, nothing too exciting, but some nice fun with the family.


Posted by Dave at 6:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 25, 2005

Rrg. Argh.

Last night, I had problems in my CoH play:

  1. I let myself get pulled into a mission just as I was heading off to bed -- resulting in serious lateness of beddy-bye (and failure of alarm this morning to get me up on time).

  2. The mission (Kill Dr. Vazhilok) was too high of a level for Velvet Jones (at 13), but since Lee, some other Phalanxers, and, eventually, Doyce were getting hooked in, and there were offers of Sidekicking and Exemplaring, I figured, what the heck.

  3. I got almost no XP for stuff, except, to be sure, a 300XP/300INFL mission success bonus at the end. That seems to have been because, even SKed, there was an 8-level difference between my character (the lightest weight, SKed to 16) and the highest (24). Leastways, that's how it was explained to me.

    We tried a couple of different configs of SKing. In some cases, the Mortificators and Abominations and Murk Eidolons were all green and grey (and went down with one blow for no XP), and in the final config they were all red and purple (but still were surprisingly hittable and fragile, though still with no XP).

    It was, however, fun. And I got a keen Enhancement I can't use yet, but it has all the crinkly stuff around the edge that means its a DO or SO. Xenon something or another that can enhance my damage (always a good thing).

  4. Group Invisibility is a wonderful thing, but, esp. combined with bubbles and a bunch of other combatants, it is almost frelling impossible to tell WTF is going on, or what you're hitting, etc.

  5. We killed the Good Doctor, but decided to clear his chamber in order to take a group pic for the FP. That's when things went horribly, horribly wrong, starting with my suddenly getting whaled upon by three red Mortificators, who quickly took me down, down, down. I spent the rest of that battle exchanging quips with the equally dead Lee (which is never, to be sure, a dull passtime).

  6. I had just Awakened myself, was stagging to my feet -- and the cable modem service died. Or, at least, the cable modem started doing this cannot-find-data blinkenlights routine. And it wasn't just a few seconds, but at least 15 minutes before we gave up and went to bed (Margie was being "kind" enough to stay up with me while she played with her new scrapper, Amorpha).

    So, after all that, no group pic. At least for me. Adventure Interruptus. Rrg.

Damnably enough, with all that, I still had fun (and got to wear my nice new FP duds for the mish). Go fig.


Posted by Dave at 7:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 24, 2005

Groups? Super!

When I was a wee hero of 5th level or so (with Velvet Jones), I got an invitation to a Supergroup. "Woo-hoo!" I thought, and leapt at the chance (even though I didn't have any Leap pool powers).

And ... that was about it. The extent to which the SG played any role in my gaming was that the daily announcement, and other idle chatter, cluttered up my chat window. There was occasional news about task forces, all of which was geared toward a higher level than I.

But that was about it. Nobody contacted me. Nobody said hi. Nobody let little ol' n00b me know what was shaking.

Then Doyce posted about SGs, and answered some questions thereto:

I think the lion's share of the SG's are really meant to be little more than a permanent Team-up, or a Friends List with a channel of its own and an excuse to have a slightly different costume. And that's about it. Fine by me.

The bigger groups... the one's that are more organized... the 'real' groups, if you'll pardon my arrogance, are more than that.

a) Online friends and allies. People that you like.

b) Support network. "Guys, I need a hand with these Vahzilok." "What's a 'Crey Medic'? Are they dangerous?" "Oh hell, I just dropped 54,000 influence on six of the wrong kind of enhancement!" "Ugh... what power should I get?"

c) Pool of cool teammates. Now, the bigger the group, the more likely this will work out for you. The Phalanx has about 55 people, and that works out to about 6 to 12 people on most nights, varying levels, with thicker clumps in the 20 to 30 range. That's about a 20% online presence, so adjust accordingly for an SG of 10 people.

d) Folks who 'get' what you're doing.

d-1) You're in the Elements? Well, you know that it's okay that you and the rest of the folks in your SG have more than a passing, polite interest in leveling. Conversation will be businesslike and efficient. Chatting in mid-mission is not done, and generally confines itself to 'Boss', 'add!', 'snipe', 'pulling', 'found it', and 'need a Bounce Back'.

d-2) You're in the Phalanx? You know that the folks in your SG will be chatting during the missions, in character: swearing about fascist mystic vampires, asking about where each other grew up... do your folks know you're a 'hero'... what a 'hero' *is*, and why those Crey Medics keep taking skin samples from you during fights.

Which sounded pretty cool. He made some recommendations, based on the groups he was involved in, and since I tend to trust the D-Man when it comes to RP, I made an application, and ...

... well, after an interesting in-character interview at the feet of Prometheus in Atlas Park Lake, I am now a probationary member of the Freedom Phalanx. W00T!

And, in the course of the remaining evening, I chitchatted (in character) with various folks as they came on and off. I got invited onto an appropriate-level mission in the Hollows (where we eventually got our butts handed to us, sliced and arranged nicely on a bed of troll-green lettuce ... but it was fun), and generally had a ball. Since Velvet is something of the bad girl/party girl, and has a nice Southern accent, there's plenty of RP stuff I can do for flavor.

Again, fun stuff. It's not necessarily what I'm going to be doing every outing, but it's a nice added flavor bit for one of the characters. And the group seems pretty nice, which is an added bonus.

Oh, and I get a nice alternative Supergroup uniform! Which, as I look at it, looks sort of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleadery. Not that there's anything wrong with that ...


Posted by Dave at 7:11 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 23, 2005

CoH - Issue 4

I find it amusing that CoH refers to its upgrades as "Issues."

Here's an interview on Issue 4, which focuses on PvP (Player vs. Player) action. Want to fight other PCs? Sign up at the arena. Not something I anticipate doing, but I know it's been a huge demand of some folk.

The other Issue 4 changes are fairly minor, though there are more costume features:

Costume pieces! Lots and lots of new costume pieces. These are mostly inspired from the world of manga and anime, but I think everyone will enjoy these new options. And we?re adding specific sliders for various body parts. Players will be able to adjust the size of their shoulders, arms, legs and even their foreheads!

Spiffy. Costuming is one of the best features in CoH, and this should help even further.


Posted by Dave at 9:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

City of Heroes - Linky Goodness

Various CoH articles I've bookmarked. Note that some articles may be found at multiple sites.

General sites

Specific pages

I have several others I need to add to the above list, but I didn't bookmark them, just printed them out. Later ...


Posted by Dave at 8:21 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

February 22, 2005

CoH character roster

All on the Champion server:


Posted by Dave at 10:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Return of the Native

Finally played Selene the Claws/Regen Scrapper again, after about a two week hiatus, working with Margie's bubbler P-Siren. Had the most fun with Selene I've had in a while, which makes me think she'd definitely a team player, not a soloist. Just a thought.


Posted by Dave at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

February 21, 2005

Okay, okay, another CoH recap

Because I know you were all just waiting on tenterhooks for one.

We played a bunch of CoH this weekend.

Margie actually developed some additional characters, trying out different archetypes. Unlike I, who simply creates things that sound cool, Margie actually does research on this stuff. Yeesh.

I ended up creating an additional character, too, so that I'd have someone immediately-post-tutorial to team with her. That would be Totally Unstable, my Rad/Rad Defender. Fun guy, and remarkably effective. He's in the pic to the right with TT, Margie's Flame Tanker.

We did a fair amount of teaming up with others -- the Testerfolk (who were kind enough to SK us or Exemplar down, since they play around at rarified levels above us), Stan, Scott -- or, at least, chatting with them. Two noteworthy adventures that ended rather frustratingly, though:

  1. Hunting the Jewel of Hera in caves in Perez Park. Ended up with Stan and Margie and me having cleared the caves, found the jewel -- but still lacking one dimwitted Circle of Thorns dude hiding somewhere. We ran around for a good 45 minutes in there, at least, searching high and low, before giving up and exiting. Frustrating.

  2. Outcast base against Electric Eel in the Hollows. Yikes. Don't know how the adventure geared up so high (perhaps Doyce's scrapper), but after many painful adventures on the second floor, including deaths, we finally battled through to the bad guy's lair, only to find multiple purple and red folks who were two-shotting Doyce and then finishing Stan and Margie and me up for dessert. Yikes, redux.

    After the last assault -- where I could eventually see from my perspective on the floor that we were down to just Eel, and had him down to about 20% HP, the others on Doyce's "I got more debt than George W. Bush" recommendation to simply quit the mission for another time.

    Rrg.

I did manage to get Velvet (after too many deaths) up to lucky 13th level (helped by some direction to stores in Steel Canyons by Doyce). I need to do some teaming with her, though -- most of the activities were solo, and I want to get back into the fray with her.

Some of the best times were Margie and me running duos. Lots of fun pulling the bad guys and defeating them in detail. Good stuff. Left a lot of crap undone for the weekend, but it was a fun time nevertheless.


Posted by Dave at 10:02 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

City of Running-Dog Stooges

I deeply regret that this page of video game reviews, hosted by the Maoist Internationalist Movement, does not include any reviews of City of Heroes. One might speculate, though, from this review of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Knights of the Old Republic ... or should we say Cossacks of the Old Republic?

Although many people have given this role playing game rave reviews in the united $tates for mostly technical reasons, even the rabid fans have admitted that it is easier to be evil in this game and that the Jedi Knights are too much more powerful than other characters. Apparently one way to "win" is to kill one's traveling friends.

The universe of Star Wars is not unlike our own. There are the common people, and there are the "great" people. Unlike in our own world, however, the "great" people in Star Wars have their own caste of warrior slaves with special powers who, under the guise of "maintaining stability" move against any insurrection and crush any move to advance the society.

In this game, the player takes a role of one such warrior that calls him/herself a Jedi KNIGHT. The manufacturer doesn't even try to hide the connection to the exploitative feudal system of the Middle Ages.

Actually, the Jedi are a bit creepy, but that aside.

Perhaps a review like this of CoH would work:

City of Heroes ... or should we say City of Oppressors?

[...] Even as the bourgeois citizen technocrats on the street flee from the so-called evils they, themselves, have unleashed -- proletariat workers trying to take purses that rightfully belong to them, sprocket "robot" workers trying to build a world of their own, organized military resistance, alien "invaders," and those who are driven mad and descend into religious opiate ceremonies -- the self-labelled (and government-sponsored) "heroes" strike back against these true representatives of the masses, striking them down and sending them off to the unseen fates their masters decree.

Unrest must be suppressed, in the City of Heroes. Groups of malcontents who band together must be crushed. Those who stand out must be beaten senseless -- doubtless without resort to the private medical care doled out to the "heroes," who then must labor under crushing debt until they further serve their mysterious masters.

Yeah. I like that.

(via BoingBoing)


Posted by Dave at 7:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

February 18, 2005

City of Costumes

One of the coolest things about CoH is being able to design your own character's appearance. The character editor is wonderful -- indeed, it begs for copyright/trademark abuse just because you can do so many classic characters with it. But it's so wonderful that the places where it doesn't quite work are all the more irritating. Things that are missing:

  1. Huge Females: You can be Female, Male, or Huge. The Huge characters are actually Huge Male characters (judging from the lack of mammaries), which makes hulking female characters difficult to do -- you simply end up being beefy-but-statuesque.

  2. Kids: Kids (and teens) are not simply short adults -- except that's really the only option you have. Inspired by a classic side-kick? Sorry, old chum.

  3. Just Plain Folk: Every Male is cut. Every female is highly-bazongaed (as Jade points out). Want someone not quite as heroic in stature? You're out of luck, except to the extent that a costume (e.g., the business suit) may drape those bulging pecs.

  4. Civvies: You can make pretty much every kind of costume you can imagine from the classic spandex set -- but only from the classic spandex set. Try to go for more ordinary clothes -- a baggy sweatshirt, or an untucked tee, or something like that -- and the choices are much more limited. Granted, that's part of the whole Silver Age vibe of Paragon City (and it's amusing, when I'm in the sports-jacketed Psi-clone how many supers come by to "rescue" me as if I were a civilian), but a lot of comic book costuming since, say, 1985, has been much more casual, streetwear sorts of stuff. I mean, you can do some of that -- a business suit, jeans, a tank top or form-fitting T -- but it's still a lot more limited compared to the cornucopia of other uniform effects.

    So, for example, K-Two has cargo pants and a black t-shirt, which isn't bad, except that the shirt looks more like a wetsuit top. Sister Chinook has as close to a sweatshirt as I could manage, which wasn't very close.

  5. Accoutrements: The game lacked capes when it was first issued (and even now they're a lot more limited, though there's good game-story reasons). I'm sure it's because they add a lot of complexity to rendering, and that's probably why two other obvious heroic accoutrements -- jet packs and wings -- are also missing, along with some of the specialized weaponry and gimmicks of the comic world -- Cap's shield and the Silver Surfer's board and Gambit's staff are good examples.

    For that matter, weaponry other than guns, axes, swords and katanas is missing. It's a bit goofy that the bad guys can go after you with baseball bats, and the cops flip around night sticks, but you can't have either of them.

  6. Chest logos: Okay, there are a zillion of them, but wouldn't it be cool if you could submit designs yourself (requiring human vetting, natch). Or if NCSoft approached some organizations (sports teams and colleges come to mind) to see if some of those logos could enter the game? Heck, even if they had to charge, I'm sure there are plenty of sports buffs and alumni that would pony over to have their favorite team's logo on their hero.

    The game could use a bit more flexibility with how the chest logos can be placed. Each top has defined for it the size and placement, which can vary dramatically. In some cases this makes sense -- for the business suit, the chest logo becomes a small blazer patch on the left breast above the pocket. In other cases, though, it doesn't Dealing with women's breasts seems to be a particular problem, as at least some top designs shrink the logo and place it just under the neck (e.g., Sister Chinook's maple leaf). It would be great if you could set, as a "detail," both the logo size (small, large) and its placement (either breast, centered, high, bicep).

    Finally, you can put letters and numbers, but how about short words? Athletic department shirts, for example. Or a character name or trademark ("Fair Play!"). You could, if you want, enforce the obscenity filter, and I'm sure some folks would be "inappropriate" anyway, but I think those things could be worked around.

None of these are deal-killers by any means, of course. More of a wish list, along with the ability to make a (subtle, perhaps) costume change each or every other level.


Posted by Dave at 9:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

"Ha! Chicken a la King!"

Okay, that's a way-too-geeky reference to a George of the Jungle gag (um, the cartoon, guys -- sheesh), but the point is that sometimes it takes a while to get a joke, and sometimes something that seemed merely amusing turns out to be damn-frelling-hilarious once you're more familiar with what's being poked fun at.

Thus, the couple of weeks last June that Scott Kurtz did City of Heroes-related strips in PvP, starting here.

For individual highlights, you can just look here, here, here, here, here, and here. Too, too funny. At least if you play CoH.


Posted by Dave at 7:41 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

You can tell when Dave's been nattering on about something for a while ...

... when he creates a blog category for a topic. To wit, City of Heroes (technically set up as a subcategory of Gaming, where those posts were previously living).

UPDATE: Well, this entry got obsoleted when I actually moved all this stuff into its own blog. Yow! I guess that's a real sign ...


Posted by Dave at 7:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: This Blog

City of Married Heroes

Well, City of Married Players, at least. Wouldn't want anyone to be confused between a post title like that and a picture like this:

On the left we have my character, Sister Chinook, Magic Controller (ice control, empathy). On the right we have Margie's K-Two, Natural Scrapper (martial arts, agility). These two bad good girls hit town in Paragon City last night, and the town (and the players) are still exhausted. We dinged up past 4th level by the time we called it a night, and I suspect we'll be getting some more play in this weekend.

Fun stuff. Margie's interesting to play with. As those who've RPGed with her won't be surprised to hear, she's a strong strategist and planner, and took advantage of the delay in installation yesterday to hit the CoH boards. She has strategies for who to hit first, how to maximize her powers, etc., and once she gets the interface down pat, she's going to be a nightmare to the villains of CoH.

Especially with me to back her play. :-)


Posted by Dave at 6:26 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 17, 2005

Now I know I'm getting into serious gaming ...

So Margie got all of City of Heroes and its related patches in and ...

... got all sorts of errors about how her video card didn't support functions X, Y, and Z, meaning she was S, O, and L.

Downloaded the latest driver, which took care of Y and Z (and thus O and L), but didn't do much for X (and thus S).

Hrm.

So she called me, and I ducked over to Best Buy, the Insidiously Convenient Tech Store Near the Office.

Now, I've intentionally stayed away from the whole video card thing, which tends to be focused on gaming fanatics who spend zillions of dollars to get stuff with the highest frame-rate-pixel-DDR-mega-buffer-socket bits and argue over it with a ferocious take-no-prisoners passion usually reserved for theologians and talk show pundits.

Eek.

So I really haven't dealt with anything having to do with video cards since it was my job to crack open cases at the office and put in dual-head video for the CAD stations. So it was with some trepidation that I approached the video card aisle.

That I approached it "backwards" and started with the expensive $350-500 cards didn't allay my fears.

I'd picked up a CoH box, so I had the minimum and recommended video configurations. And, of course, I didn't see any thing that exactly matched.

And so I was reduced to seeking help from one of the passing BB Guys, who, frankly, didn't seem to know a huge amount more than I did (though he knew enough to point out that, yes, one of the cards on the list was up on the shelf).

And then came the question -- did Margie's Sony Vaio computer have an AGP socket? Or did I need a PCI card?

Well ... crap.

(Ponder, ponder, ponder.)

Ended up going with a different card than BB Dude recommended -- a PNY nVidia GeForce FX5700LE. I went with AGP because, if the Vaio had it, then I wanted to use that, rather than the PCI. And I could always return it, right?

Got back to the office. First off -- what Vaio model do we have. Hrm. No reference to it in the blog. Rats. ...

... and then I found a reference to the reference page for the Vaio at Sony's site -- for our model: PCV-RX360DS. Where, in turn, I found a completely worthless Users Guide ... and some marketing info that shows ... yes ... an AGP slot!

(And, yes, though a PIII/866 is close to the minimum specs for CoH, it's still a scosh above that, and the 512Mb RAM should help ... and the GeForce FX5700LE is above the recommended spec just a scosh.

Now, as long as it's the right kind of AGP slot, I should be relatively home free. (He said, with great optimism.) Though, to be sure, the minimum specs include using (!) a 56k modem. Gads. It looks like it should be, though -- found one ref to this Vaio having a 4X AGP slot, and the FX5700LE is referred to as being 4X/8X.

Hmmm. Looks like someone has gone through this (or close enough), but didn't leave much info. This thread on the other hand seems to be full of people who seem quite certain of what the correct course is when dealing with going from onboard video to a video card ... not all of which courses are the same. The Sony site seems to indicate for my model that it should autodetect the video card going into the AGP card, which would be the ideal, for sure ...

We shall see. We're having dinner out so we can go a Kindergarten orientation at Katherine's pre-school tonight, so I'll have to screw around with this after we get home. Crossing fingers ...

(Now I remember again why I've usually avoided the whole video card thing ...)

UPDATE: And the card is pretty, and has heat sinks a-plenty, and a fan. On the bright side, this should also resolve a problem that Margie was having with another game (SimRestaurant or something like that) she got a while back. Not that she'll ever want to play another game ...


Posted by Dave at 2:43 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

C: vs D:

Margie's hard drive at home is divided between C: and D:. Everything, of course, is installed on C:, and copying over a 900Mb CoH installation Zip file probably didn't help things any. So the question came up of how to easily shift things between C: and D: without un/reinstalling various applications (bleah).

The three ideas (here described for WinXP Pro) came to mind. Best to have all apps closed during this:

  1. Do a Disk Cleanup. This is in the Start menu under Accessories / System Tools / Disk Cleanup. If there's old installation files, unused temp files, etc., lurking around out there, this is the place to easily clean them up. Doing a defrag afterwards wouldn't be out of place. (Margie had already done this.)

  2. Move the swap file over. Under Control Panel / System / Advanced / (Performance) Settings / Advanced / (Virtual Memory) Change. Use this screen to add a paging space on D: and eliminate or minimize the paging space on C:. There may be restarts involved, or multiple iterations to do so (hard to tell, since it turned out that this had already been done on her machine during a previous space crunch; I took advantage to add a large custom size to support upcoming CoH play). (Official MS KB article here.)

  3. Move My Documents over to another drive. Right-click My Documents (off the desktop or the Start menu), then choose Properties / Target. That will show you the current target folder set for your account as the My Documents folder. Click Move ..., then choose where you want it to be (e.g., in D:\, creating a new folder called My Documents there). Accept, and Windows will ask if you want to move the contents over there, too. Yup, you probably do. (More info here and here.)

FYI.

In theory, you could some (or, more easily, all) the applications under C:\Program Files to D:\ by doing the move and then tweaking the registry, but, damn, that sounds like asking for trouble.


Posted by Dave at 9:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

My Master Plan is Working, Bwah-ha-ha!

Tuesday night, after Margie watched me got pounded into the concrete in City of Heroes: "You know, I might like to do that." Followed by, "So tell me about the different archetypes and power sets."

Wednesday morning, over the phone: "You know, you could set me up on one of the slots on your account, and then while you're at your Search Committee meeting tonight ..."

Last evening, before I ran off to said meeting, I sat her down at my notebook, and watched her build a character ...

Greetings to Bud Strong, Natural Scrapper (Martial Arts/Super Reflexes), latest hero in Paragon City! "Don't make me come over there!" And he smokes a stogie ...

Margie was about a quarter of the way through the tutorial when I left on my meeting, and when I came back two hours later, she was still sitting in the chair (with only one tech call in the interim -- "What do I do when it says 'Mapserver Disconnected'?"), though I know she'd gone up to put Kitten down.

By the end of the evening -- a far, far later evening than I'd have gotten a pass on without comment -- Bud Strong was up at 4th level, and Margie was having tremendous fun with various disorienting attacks and killer kicks. Great stuff. And we ended up chatting about for another half hour in bed after that.

So I transferred the install Zip file over to her machine, and she'll probably kick off the install process-and-patch process today. Which then means we can both play. Bud will have to be rebuilt on Margie's account (or whoever she wants to run), but I look very much forward to teaming up with her (and maybe trying some Defenders or other Controllers to do so).

And I don't feel guilty at all ... After all, every addict loves to see his friends get hooked, too.


Posted by Dave at 6:29 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 16, 2005

Pride goeth before XP Debt

Margie switched off the TV. "Honey, I'm heading up."

"Okay, I'll be coming up in just a minute." I'd gotten back from the Vestry meeting, tidied up the kitchen for the cleaning people, and was finally getting down to some admittedly-brief City of Heroes play, running Velvet Jones around Steel Canyons, beating up on Outcast gangs.

"No problem," she replied. She came over behind me, watching me play. She asked a couple of questions. I explained what I was doing, how I was balancing toggles, dealing with Endurance, what the various colors of villains meant, the difference between hunting and running missions, how the bad guys behaved, how the civilians behaved, etc. She pulled over a chair and sat down.

I got over near the south transit station, beat up on a couple of guys, then spotted a largish group. Four white, one yellow. Hmmm. I expressed a bit of concern over the numbers, but Margie said, "Go for it."

Ah, well. So I powered up a bit, then threw myself into the fray. A minute or two later, five Outcasts down with no really serious threat that couldn't be handled in-battle by healing and endurance Inspirations.

Catch breath. Look around. Hey, there's another group, same setup. One yellow, four whites.

"Go ahead," Margie said. "Impress your wife."

So I made sure I was all healed up, powered myself up, and set once more into the fray.

Wham, bam, punch, munch. "You're going critical," Margie noted as my health flashed down to yellow, then orange. No healing Inspiration left, but Dull Pain should do it. Click.

Few moments later, I noticed it hadn't gone off. And that -- hey, that stun a moment ago must have knocked down my defensive toggles -- son of a -- gotta click aga--

Thud.

Just goes to show you, guys. Trying to show off for the women-folk in your life will only get you in trouble.


Posted by Dave at 6:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 15, 2005

Collect the whole set!

Okay, after this I promise at least three non-CoH posts. Really, truly.

City of Heroes trading cards, as mentioned yesterday.


Posted by Dave at 7:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 14, 2005

Picking Teams in City of Heroes

While CoH has pretty strong solo play, even at higher levels, half the fun is teaming up (and more than half is teaming up with folks you know).

That said, teaming is a crap shoot. It's difficult to tell, unless you're doing the team picking, whether an invitation from someone to join a team is a good idea or a bad idea.

Rule #1: If the person couldn't go to the trouble of coming up with an interesting comic book hero name, decline the invitation. "Fredasdfasdfasdf" is probably not who you want to run around with. It's up to you whether proper capitalization counts.

That said, I dearly wish that there was a way to tell something about the person inviting you in, short of /telling them back to say, "Hey, what level are you, and what are you doing?" Which, I suppose, would be the proper and intelligent thing to do, but it's annoying that there's not some sort of facility to do that. (If there is, somebody clue me in.)

Rule #2: You do not want to be the highest level person in the group. Either your presence will skew the mission difficulty upwards (if you're the leader), or else you'll simply get the lowest experience rewards. In either case, it's not a good thing. From a personal levelling standpoint you probably want to be mid-low in the group, though, obviously, not everyone can do that.

Now, there are things you can do with Exemplaring that I don't yet fully grok. But, in general, if the rest of the team could either be your Sidekicks, or close to it, you probably don't want to run with them unless they're people you know you're going to have fun with (because you know them).

Rule #3 (aka "Doyce's Law"): Don't be afraid to say "This is just nuts, let's leave" about a mission -- or, for that matter, about the team you're on, if it's clear that they're not a disciplined group. Undisciplined teams are inevitably dead teams. Missions that start out all red and purple are not going to get easier further in. Teams that don't recognize that aren't smart, and dumb teams are inevitably dead teams, too. Suck up the time investment and quit, before you throw good online hours (and experience debt) after bad.

Okay, enough nattering for the moment.


Posted by Dave at 9:49 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Look! Another way to spend time on CoH!

Create your own CoH trading card. Coolness.

(via Doyce)


Posted by Dave at 3:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 12, 2005

City of Heroes update

Well, since Champion just went down, current update ...

I've narrowed my playtime to just four characters (which is still too many for quick advancement, but there you go).

Velvet is still my highest, at 11. She's beginning to get a high enough level that she needs to start adventuring in scarier places, like Steel Canyon, or (again) Perez Park. She's still a high-power punch-em gal, though she's now had a couple of very bad team experiences in the Hollows that have given her a bit of debt.

Snipehunter, my previous hard luck case, is up to 9. Been on some good teams with him. The "snipe" power has come in quite handy. Torchielle, his fire-based sister, is up to 7, and I still like her best.

Psi-Clone has been the most fun, though, between his "hey, you, you now hate your fellow bad guy, so go whale on him" powers and his blind and his not-insubstantial spectral damage ... plus, in case folks might think he's a mean SOB, he's doing heal stuff for parties, too, so that's all good. Endurance-draining, to be sure, but a good excuse to stay far, far away from the action ...

Mission-wise, it's been a mixed bag past few. Had fun with Avocet on a larger mission, and with a number of Stan's characters (with a number of mine). Stan and I SKed to Doyce and Jackie last night, which taught us both a lot about the fine art of weakling blaster/controllers and how to support the big guns effectively without being a target yourself.

I've had good teams and bad teams, the latter defined as either (a) not well managed, with nobody directing or nobody listening to direction, and/or (b) going up into missions that were way, way, way too overpowered for us, leading to grizzly deaths. And, of course, there's the definition of insanity, which is trying the same thing twice, thinking the results will be different ...

... but when it works -- when you battle through, when the plan is followed, when it succeeds even after it all goes to hell, when the bad guys fall like chaff or fall only after repeated, desperate pummeling -- then, damn, it works. And it's a hell of a rush.

No regrets so far.


Posted by Dave at 9:34 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 7, 2005

City of Heroes - My Cast

So what's a game of City of Heroes if you can't show off your characters? I tend to rotate through these guys, which keeps me from getting any one person up to a higher level very quickly, but also keeps things more varied for me. I'll usually play one through a mission or up to a level before going on to the next.

All these folks, by and by, are on the Champion server, if you're looking for them.



Velvet JonesAt the top of the list is Velvet Jones (science-based tanker - invulnerability, super-strength, jumping). She's my highest character at the moment, 10th level (huzzah), and in a lot of ways my favorite, as she can just run in there and start whomping on the baddies. No muss, no fuss, and everyone loves a tanker (a nigh-invulnerable whomping machine) in the group.

She's originally based, game-wise, on an NPC in my original Justice Squad game (who eventually became a PC played by Tracy), a bad girl who let herself get boosted up by Dr. Dread, but later turned on him and, kinda-sorta, fights for the good guys now. Visually, she's inspired by one of the Steve Jackson "Cardboard Heroes: Modern" chars.

Doyce's comment is that she has the advantage of being highly visible to healers during battle.

I have a starter-variation on her, Velvetty, over on Pinnacle server, just in case Champion goes down.



SeleneNext on the list is Selene, the white tiger woman from the novel that no, I haven't finished it yet, dammit I'm working on. She's a magic-based scrapper (claws, regeneration), at 7th level. She's the one Lee recognized (appropriately enough), and one that Doyce had dummied up a copy of early on in a way that made me seriously jones to play CoH, and, thus, her.

She's missing her tail, annoyingly enough (it's one of the "pants" options, and I didn't even think of it until I'd already invested enough time in her levels to to make me unwilling to recreate her). She's been a problematic character, more vulnerable and less effective in combat than I think she should be -- I need to do some further work on her tactics, get her in some teams, etc.

Those few who've read the story will hopefully find the screencap as eerily appropriate as I did when I ran across it.



SnipehunterSnipehunter is up at 8th level (mutant-based blaster, energy blast, energy manipulation, flight), and another character I'm struggling a little with. So far, Snipehunter holds my personal records for being knocked out of battle and going into debt. Blasters are a lot of fun, zapping from afar (and now he has Sniping, which was the original idea), but they're fragile as hell after a point unless backed up by an appropriate team.

I have done some team runs with him, which went fine until the team got run off to "find someone who can get us more xp" and instead got us into the hospital. I need to do some more that are a bit more successful ...

I like the costume (though I'd tweak a couple of the patterns a slight bit if I had the chance). I can't wait until he can fly at a more decent clip, since hover is a real time sink to use effectively.



TorchielleTorchielle was the first of my next wave of characters, after I'd been playing the first three up five or six levels.

She's similar to Snipehunter (mutant-based blaster, fire blast, energy manip), but I'm having more fun with her. For one thing, I like fire blast better than energy blast (just for the effects, if nothing else). Second, I really like her visual appearance -- the leather gloves and boots, the suede-like tunic and tucked pants. And the red hair, of course. She looks like someone who works around fire. I think my initial visual inspiration was Tess Turbine, a visiting character in a Powerpuff Girls comic I read to Kitten that evening, but the powers and colors are fairly different. At any rate, she's one of the least garish characters you'll see running around Paragon City (some of whose denizens make Velvet look dull and muted).

Backstory (for what it's worth) has her the child of two of the previous generation of supers, their "logos" incorporated into her own.

She's up to 5th level now, and I'm looking forward to playing with her more.



Blue.ShieldBlue.Shield was an interesting experiment. You can create male characters, female characters, or "huge" characters (who, lacking breasts, are basically male). Selene should have been (as I envision her) a huge character, not as svelte as she is, but that wasn't an option. Blue.Shield, a crippled cop in a cybersuit, is my one huge whomper. I was going to do a scrapper, but ended up with a tanker (because having someone that big and armored who can't take punishment just doesn't make sense), so he's a tech-based tanker (invulnerability, battle axe), 5th level.

Basically, he goes around and hits stuff. Hard. I think he's visually really, really fun. The only thing that doesn't quite work is the axe, which I picked up based on a guide recommendation for something that did faboo damage; someone like him should have a club or just hit with his fists. Ah, well.

Biggest problem I have with him, though, is his size. It's hard to see past him to the villains -- especially when they're tiny folk like the Clockworks. I keep having to adjust the camera angle up and down over him. For all that, he's pretty darned impressive, and fun. Seeing him pound his way through the streets or jumping off bridges should give him some sort of "aw, crap!" advantage over the bad guys.



For some reason, I don't have a screen shot of Ground-Pounder. He's a magic-based scrapper of some sort, simple green t-shirt and jeans. He's Marine who got a blessing from his Irish grandma before going off to WWII, leaving him a hella bruiser and much longer-lived that he ought to be.

He's turned out, though, to be a lot less differentiated from the others than he ought to be, a lot less interesting to play, and at the top of the list of characters I'm likely to drop (reflected in his only being 3rd level).



Psi-cloneLast on the list is Psi-clone, who's my first mentalist-type of character (mutation-based controller, illusions/empathy). He's up around 4th level now, and a lot of fun, since he basically tricks the villains (so far) into fighting each other, or else standing still while he sics damage-causing illusions on them. It's slow, but it's effective, and oh-so-fiendish. Eventually, with his healing powers and the like, he should be good for some team-ups.

I don't know what inspired me visually here. Kinda goofy-looking, if you ask me. Though he does blend in with a crowd on the streets of Paragon City (which, I think, sometimes leads other heroes to poach on my targets). He's not my favorite character so far, but I have a warm spot for him nonetheless.


Posted by Dave at 9:50 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

City of Heroes - Random Thoughts

I've shied away from MMORPGs for years, realizing that, with aliases like "EverCrack," it was likely to be too addictive and too much of a time sink in a life like mine that's already 120% books. Add to that a distinct lack of interest in most of them (except to occasionally look over th shoulder) and that was pretty easy.

When Doyce, then Jackie, then others I knew started getting hooked on City of Heroes, and when I had a chance to see it, I knew that I was doomty-doom-doom-doomed.

For the uninitiated, the publisher summarizes CoH like this:

Realize your comic book dreams in this massively multiplayer online role-playing game that is home to an entire universe of super-powered heroes and villains. Build your own unique hero from millions of possible character combinations and venture into Paragon City to discover all the danger, wonder, and excitement that await you!

In the rich 3D backdrop of Paragon City, gamers take on the roles of heroes, using their supernatural abilities to fight evildoers. Go up against villains and ne?er-do-wells, alien invaders, evil gangs, and organized crime rings to bring peace and justice to the good people of Paragon City.

Create your character, choosing from many hero types and powers. Then personalize your character?s appearance with the game?s extensive Costume Creation system. This incredibly versatile tool allows you to mix and match clothing pieces, hair, facial features, costume details, colors, textures, and patterns. There are literally trillions of different combinations to choose from, allowing you to create a totally unique character.

I mean -- what there doesn't push a button for me?

Of a mercy, I've discovered that I can actually manage CoH in my life. Even with Margie gone, the child and cats got fed, the house stayed clean, I got enough sleep to stay on my feet, and I was in warming up Margie's side of the bed last night before she pulled herself away from her post-travel e-mail and decompression. Margie's also suggested some disincentives to my not being in bed at a reasonable hour, and those are hard to argue with, too.

So while I probably won't have too many 6-hour CoH sessions any time soon, I should be able to get in an hour or two, here or there, as schedule permits and as inclination allows.

So why am I enjoying it so much, beyond what's obvious above? A variety of reasons.

  1. When it comes to computer games, I've always favored First Person Shooters (FPS) to others, and CoH definitely fills the bill here. It has the advantage over most of the ones I've played or seen that it's highly playable in either solo or multi-player mode -- you can do a lot of what you want on your own (esp. if your time is limited), but there's also lots of opportunity (and even requirement, on some levels) to team up with others.

    The biggest dis-ad, related to that, is that it's an online game. That makes its performance dependent on your network connection. And CoH seems to be notoriously sensitive to certain network connection problems. I've had periods of repeated Mapserver Disconnects. Not enough to make me drop the game, by any means, but annoying (and likely a combo of the wireless/router/cable connection I've got going).

    Most online FPSes work in an arena or mission mode -- you're one of a few people running in an isolated setup. Most MMORPGs use, instead, an isometric view, as you look down on an abstracted, wide 3/4 perspective on the character. By running in a FPS mode, though, CoH is as close to immersive in an MMORPG as you can get. You can actually toggle into a through-the-eyeballs mode (though I find that limits your field of view), and in cases where you want something more than the over-the-back mode you can swing around to get different perspectives, but as it stands, it does just what I want.

  2. The control interface is pretty clean -- a limited amount of keys to do things, with the capability of doing most else via on-screen tabs or through macros. I find the online chat interface to be difficult to master (probably one of those "with practice" things), and while you can limit your messages to an individual, a team, a super-team, your local vicinity, or global, it's far too easy to do it to the wrong audience. For me, at least.

  3. I love that you can design the costumes, and that the costuming tool is so easy to use and flexible. One of the few quibbles I have with the game is that once you're in a costume (including appearance), you're pretty much locked in until you are a high level and have a lot of Influence to spend on a cosmetic change. I understand the game (and metagame) rationale for doing so, but some sort of minor tweaking would be awfully nice (especially when you discover that you've forgotten something, like, say, a tail on your cat-girl). Some sort of minor limitation (X amount of change per Level) would address a lot of this.

    For that matter, it would be nice if CoH allowed you to design/review characters offline, outside of the bounds of the server. There may be game security/hacking issues involved, but it would be nice to figure out some character design stuff outside of Actual Play Time.

  4. I like the heroic aspect of the game. While it's possible to portray yourself as a grim-and-gritty character (through costuming, naming, etc.), you really can't do much more than whomp on the bad guys. And even then, all those blasts and blows and other bits of game violence are part of "arresting" them (they are, evidently, automatically teleported away to a holding facility once subdued).

    This is one reason why, conceptually, the upcoming City of Villains doesn't appeal to me. I like being a hero. I don't need to be able to destroy property or rob people or stuff like that to get my vicarious jollies. Or, as G'Kar put it (in the B5 ep "A Late Delivery from Avalon"), "By G'Quon I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys! And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor!"

    I like making for lots of villainous floor thumps, though there are plenty of Ancient and Overwhelming Forces out there waiting to deliver to me the same.

    For that matter, I like it that you never really die (another fine comic book convention). Instead, unless you are revived by one of your team mates, you get resurrected back in a hospital. At early levels, this doesn't do you any harm; as of 5 or so, you start incurring "debt" that slows your advancement

  5. I like the civilians. I like that they run around in panic about the bad guys (except, perhaps, for the cops, who are generally useless and are just as likely to run away even from simple gang members). I like that they come and thank you profusely when you save them. I like that, though they are often threatened, they are never actually shown being hurt.

    As you rise in levels, you fairly quickly get to the point where certain opponents aren't worth going after -- they don't add anything to your experience or your influence for defeating them. Which does lead to some oddly disconcerting moments when you find your hero running past people being robbed or threatened with assault without doing anything about it. The game rationale (you have bigger fish to fry and more lives to save) and metagame rationale (leave 'em for the noobs) don't fully satisfy. I almost wish that the game would mask out the gray villains from sight.

  6. Though listed as a MMORPG, there isn't much "role" there beyond what you project. Everyone is, for the most part, a pragmatically fearless hero, and there are no specific rewards for "good role playing." There are said to be some of the CoH servers where there's more done in a role-playing way, but I haven't searched it out (and, to be honest, aren't much interested in this context for doing much more RPing than I throw in with my origin stories and typed accents).

  7. I love the array of powers available. The balance of game play makes some things (like flight) a lot less common than in actual comics (meaning you spend a lot of time running from one place to another), but most any power you can imagine from the comics (except wings and shape-changing, and even that's just a sorta thing) is available.

    The wide array of power combinations and growth paths and enhancements to powers you can buy makes for a huge variety of characters, even leaving off the costuming issues. That makes for ongoing fun game play, as you try out different combinations of heroes you've always wanted to be/see/run. (It also makes for a huge body of "gaming the game" knowledge -- "this power is better than that power, especially if you tweak it with this enhancement and go on this mission at that stage and ..." -- of the sort that I prefer not do dive too obsessively into.) It makes things much richer than one might imagine, and makes the more repetitive bits (repeated missions, standard set pieces) the more noticeable but endurable.

    That said, the environment is amazingly rich. Detailed city maps, with different areas and sub-areas being more or less dangerous, more or less associated with certain groups of baddies -- each of which behaves differently, has its own motivations, its own meta-plot (which might intersect with yours more or less depending on the type of character you are -- magic-based heroes will tend to encounter or be directed toward different villains than tech-based heroes). The layers of depth and breadth to the overarching tale of Paragon City is breathtaking, and you can participate in or ignore it however you wish. Triffic stuff there, even if things can seem a bit repetitive at times.

  8. The interaction with other players give the game a complexity that a stand-alone game couldn't provide. Teaming up can be a lot of fun, but it can also be terribly frustrating if you have a leader who doesn't know what they're doing, or team members who can't maintain unit cohesion and discipline, or just folks who don't understand basic tactics.

    And let me say, just as a side note, that one advantage we have of not living in a world of supers is that we don't have to put up with folks who really, truly, cannot come up with decent or original or correctly-spelled aliases/personae. Except for folks in the hip-hop/rap industry, of course.

    (Some spelling bits are workarounds to the rule that hero names have to be unique. So if Shotgun is already take, you might try Shot-Gun, or Shot Gun, or Shot.Gun, or Mr. Shotgun, or Shotgun Man, or The Shotgunner, or (and this is when it starts to get goofy) Shotgunn, Shottgun, Schotguun, or Shahtguhn, or other things that start to create questions as to whether you actually know how to spell the word (or whether you shouldn't just give up and come up with a different frickin' name).

    It's great fun, though, when you encounter someone you've met before ("Yeah, that was a good run in the Hollows. Wanna team up again?") or even when you stumble across someone you know in RL. I was standing around, waiting for the rest of a team to finish up doing something, when a passing creature said, "Dave?" And, again, "Dave?" "Yeeeeaaaahhh?" I replied, not quite knowing how someone would recognize me.

    Turned out it was Lee, who had seen a screen shot of the character I'd sent to Doyce, and had recognized me. We had an abortive chat, as I had to run off with my team, but it was really cool being recognized. And it was even more cool Saturday night when he and Doyce and I teamed up on a fun mission, and I felt I was able to contribute and hold my own. Yay.

Stuff like that.

CoH isn't without flaws, but it's a lot of fun, too, and worth the time I've put (in a managed way) into it. I look forward to it being more fun for some time to come. And, I suspect, to making more comments about it here.


Posted by Dave at 10:42 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 5, 2005

Weekend update (so far)

Things that have happened or are happening:

  1. Margie's still off in Frisco with Jackie and Mary, having (it sounds like) a grand time. I miss her gobs and oodles, and am ever-so-glad she'll be back tomorrow evening.

  2. I'm doing a decent job (I think) of keeping the City of Heroes play time to a reasonable amount -- not staying up too late, feeding the child, watering the cats, etc. I've a big post on the subject brewing.

  3. Margie sounded bemused, in a teeth-gritting way, upon learning of my new addiction pastime. I think she blames Doyce, fortunately.

  4. Went on our annual vestry retreat up at the Easter Seals Camp. Good time, as usual -- lots of opportunity for bonding and planning and consideration of where we've been and where we're going. It should be, I hope, a good year (which will be a nice finale to my vestry term).

  5. While I was up there, and Margie was in Frisco, Kitten got to have a "sleep-over" at Doyce's. Neither she nor Doyce nor Justin seemed much worse for the wear when I arrived back this afternoon.

  6. That opened an opportunity for Doyce (on his PC) and I (on Jackie's PC) to do some CoH team-ups, eventually roping in Lee on a rather nasty but enjoyable dungeon crawl mission. Good stuff.

And that's been my life. Tomorrow: getting the house back in order.


Posted by Dave at 10:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

February 4, 2005

Madcap journey redux

So, in the tradition of the Amazingly Insane Last Second Trip to the SDCC Last Year, Margie and Jackie have reciprocated by fleeing to San Francisco for an extended weekend, leaving Katherine and me on our lonesome.

I am proud to say that not only did I finish the laundry, but I did the dishes today, not to mention taking the kid to pre-school (and picking her back up shortly).

And, for those times not soaked up with Incredible Domestic Duties (and Employment), I'm finding something else to while away the hours.


Posted by Dave at 7:59 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
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