While I was off last week I had a loan of Doom 3. What a load of old pants.

While it’s a joy to look at, and the graphics are DAMN good, the gameplay is disappointing.

Sorry. Did I just say disappointing? It’s piss poor. Or somewhere between disappointing and piss poor. I don’t know.

First off, the story is really linear. And I mean REALLY linear. I know the same can be said of similar games, Halflife is a good example, but at least Halflife gave you the impression that you were going somewhere or achieving something.

And scary? Not really. Well, there was this one bit…

I’d just wandered in to a room and handily dispatched a couple of big and nasties when I say aloud to the darling wife, “I don’t really see what all the fuss is”, and a corpse leaps off a console as I walk past. The under garments were an unfortunate shade of brown then, let me tell you.

But after that, when you realise that the corpses can’t be trusted, all you have to do is be wary of the shadows and realise that when the lights go off and you’re scrambling for the trusty flashlight, there’s some of those pesky undead creeping towards you…

I got bored with it pretty quickly and resorted to cheating to finish the last few levels. I know it’s not the done thing but I was so fed up with the same-ness of it that I just wanted to get it finished and get on with my life.

I’m hoping that Halflife 2 is better.

BigAl

This should have been posted for every day that I was off last week… oops.

So did I get two 5000 word short stories written last week? Nope. Started? Nope. Any ideas at all? Some, but something got in the way.

The bloody novel.

Yep, I couldn’t keep away from it. But, hey, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? At least I got SOME writing done during my “writing week”.

And as for the word count? No idea. Most of it is scrawled out on paper.

This week is “typing and tidying up week”.

BigAl

OK - here is the idea that is going to make me millions. Or rather, it would if I could get the credit for it. But remember - you heard it here first. Unless you heard it elsewhere.

We’ve all seen MMORPGs - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, and we’ve all seen FPSs - First Person Shooters. My plan is to combine the two into a massive MMORPFPSG!! Basically the idea is this: you have a first person shooter, much like Enemy Territory or Counter-Strike, which is basically objectives-based: capture this town, defuse this bomb, defend this thing, however, and here is the clever bit, the objectives for each place are defined at the wide-view level of the MMORPG. Thus if you like MMORPGs you can play this side of the game, but the squads that you are commanding may consist all or part of real people who are playing an FPS.

Of course - there are a lot of details to fill out, but that’s the basic concept. I think it’d be cool. The other half of the concept is to basically create a single world online, rather than multiple maps ‘n’ stuff, whereby a server may host a particular FPS set of maps, but they relate to the world as a whole. Thus all the servers work in collaboration with each other to run the game, and everyone is actually playing together.

I think it’d be cool.

mrBen

I’ve been spending a lot of my time recently thinking about usability. Don’t ask me why, but it’s something that has caught my interest of recent weeks. So here is a collection of random thoughts on that subject:

Double-Clicking

Following my recent post it was interesting to read peoples comments. I also disabled the final area of double-clicking that I used - double-clicking in the Windows file manager, which I hadn’t realised was enabled until I began thinking about it. And I’m pleased to say that I’ve found it really good - much quicker. The only real thing that you need to learn is how to select objects. Selection is done by hovering, which is not ideal really - why Windows doesn’t make better use of the middle-click like Linux, I don’t know. Selecting multiple objects can thus be quite fun, as can try to select things when that area of the window is not actually ‘active’, meaning that you can click, but not select. However, for the most part I currently prefer single-click action.

SymphonyOS

Just a quick note for this Debian-based distribution which is attempting a new way of presenting information - doing away with menus in favour of information displayed on the desktop. And this brings me to something that has been bugging me:

Desklets - are they usable/useful?

Desklets are small applications that run on the desktop and provide either information or a function. Linux has a number of programs to do it, Mac and Windows users have Konfabulator or Samurize (Windows only). There are probably others, but I couldn’t be bothered looking further.

I suppose my question is this - how helpful is this? I don’t look at my desktop at all - it’s covered in applications. Why is information placed there useful? I don’t really use desktop icons (although I have a tonne of them). Gdesklets are thus reduced, on my desktop, to startup eye-candy. However, for my friend Kester it’s great, because he has become used to running just a few applications minimised - this might perhaps be a way to work, but I can imagine that for me I would need applications to minimise when not focused to make it work, which would be a pain when you want more than 1 app open…..

Something that came to mind when thinking about this was an old desktop shell for Windows called ‘NextStart’, which still exists. Annoyingly, it’s not free NextStart assigned menus to hotspots on the desktop, but, more important, you could assign them to screen-edge or screen-corner ‘bumps’. Given that your screen edge is always “visible”, this is brilliant! One of it’s other cool tricks was that the menu system was cleverly based upon your actual folders, making it easy to create custom menus very quickly.

So - what am I looking for? Well - I would like some “desklets” that appear and disappear from the screen via an interaction that doesn’t involve clicking on the desktop anywhere, as this interferes with normal application usage. Screen bumps are good, although special key combos can work too.

Anyway - that’s probably all my thoughts for today; there are a couple more mulling around in my head, but I’ll get to them in due time.

Comments are, as always, welcomed.

mrBen

As you might have figured out by now, if you’ve been paying attention, I’m quite the fan of H.P. Lovecraft. Having written many short stories, few short novels and no full-length novels, it’s quite astounding that he has maintained such a following over all the years since his passing.

Part of that is due to the the dilligence of his friends with whom he shared a lengthy correspondence and their sharing of ideas and concepts. Even long after his death Lovecraft has continued to inspire and terrify.

And not necessarily in that order.

Noted authors who have added to the greater Lovecraft Mythos (a term which I tend to prefer to Cthulhu Mythos) include Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsay Campbell, Brian Lumley and even, in his own way, Neil Gaiman. Stephen King has named Lovecraft as an early influence, although you’d never notice.

Generally I’ve enjoyed all the Mythos-related work I’ve found… except for one.

At the Mountains Of Madness.

One of Lovecraft’s first (IIRC) short novels which I’ve tried to read several times. This was in my teenage years and maybe it might have been too much for me to manage.

Now, as I’m rapidly approaching my 4th decade on this planet, I want to give it a fair chance now. I’ve been swimming in the Mythos pool for a while now and perhaps, just perhaps, that’s what it’s going to take for me to finally finish this.

We’ll see.

BigAl