Treece finally makes it to orbit, only to find that everyone there is shooting at him as well. After blowing up some raiders, he escorts a freighter to the middle of nowhere, finds that the Empire has a very low threshold for success, intercepts a few smugglers and finds that even cheating won’t let him win a race. Just a typical orbital jaunt in Precursors!
[Read More...]-
Let’s Play – Precursors – Parts 7 & 8
-
The Morrowind Diaries – Chapter 5
Chapter 5 – The Road to Balmora Heartfire 5 (Day 21) The last few stars were still out as I began my travels. I left Ald-Rhun through the western gate and was planning on passing southward through Caldera and from there on to Balmora. As I walked, I found myself thinking about things I had heard the previous evening. While passing the time indoors and away from the blowing ash I had spoken with several of the locals. One had mentioned a secret cult known as the Sixth House that was killing Imperial citizens. Another, a bard, had said the appearance of this cult and the general increase in violence across Vvardenfell was a sickness of the soul caused by a lack of faith and a love of sin. He said that the bad dreams and omens people had been experiencing were a sign that the people had abandoned the Temple and fallen into greed and wickedness. He said more but I once again found myself remembering the strange dream I had experienced just as I arrived on the island. It continued to haunt me for some reason and I strangely felt as if my own destiny were tied in with that of Morrowind. These thoughts had troubled me in my sleep and they continued to do so as I made my way along the road. Hisin Deep-Raed My thoughts were interrupted when I spotted a figure standing alone on the road. I made a friendly gesture as I approached
[Read More...] -
Echo Bazaar – Wandering the Paths of Wilmot’s End
So I’m wandering the paths of Wimot’s End. I know them well by now. I stop by the man with the bowler and tell him why I am here. I then spy on the faithful functionary to see what is in his paperwork. I then go back to the man with the bowler to promise not to kill anyone then swap a duffel bag for a different duffel bag five times before checking in with the woman feeding the fish. After I complete this sequence three times, she gives me a set of Collated Research. Yes, I am still playing Echo Bazaar. Sadly, I have reached the current limit on the story, my stats are all currently maxed out at 120 and I am just grinding out the storylets necessary to get the next item out of the Bazaar Side Streets. Right now I am working on collecting Collated Research in order to join God’s Editors. I need 12. It takes 11 actions in Wilmot’s End to raise my “Dramatic Tension” by 1 point. I need to raise it to 2 (three points) to get one set of research. So 33 actions plus one more to collect the research means I can get (almost) 3 per day if I do nothing else. That’s 4 days to get the 12 I need. Sadly, that’s all I really have to do right now. Before this I ground out War of Assassins missions in the Forgotten Quarter in order to get enough “Use
[Read More...] -
What’s the Difficulty, Kenneth?
Last night I was looking to kill a few hours and so went into my Steam games list looking for something light to pass the time. I really didn’t want to get into anything serious so I pulled up Majesty 2. Majesty 2 calls itself a “fantasy kingdom sim” but it really is more of an RTS. You build guild halls (and other buildings) to encourage adventurers to move to your kingdom then set quests for them to perform. It’s kind of the reverse of your normal fantasy game in that you’re the one assigning the quests instead of the one doing them. Yeah, that isn’t looking so good At any rate, I drifted through a couple of missions then suddenly the difficulty spiked. The enemy wizard was dropping fire spells on my village which burned down my market. Then a werewolf wandered into the town and killed almost all of the adventurers who had come there. Without a market I had no income with which to entice more adventurers to come to town and with no adventurers there was no one to protect they peasants so they couldn’t rebuild anything. I was getting more and more frustrated, more-so when I remembered that I had started playing a “light” game to relax in the first place. So I decided to just crank the difficulty down to minimum (since I was just playing as a distraction anyway) only to find that the game
[Read More...] -
Level 5000
I had been climbing for days. I don’t know exactly how long I had been on the ladder. I had tried counting for a while, numbering each rough, corroded rung as it passed in the dim glow of my biolight, but I had lost count somewhere in the tens of thousands. I do know I had slept three times, hanging clipped to the ladder, but in the darkness of the shaft I had no way of determining how long I had gone between sleeping. So I continued to climb. I was starting to wonder if I should climb back down and try to find another upward access from the maze of vents I had previously been traversing when a change in the shadows indicated an end to the shaft. The ladder finally ended in a horizontal panel. It was frozen in place, but a few sharp blows were sufficient to break the seal produced by decades of oxidation and it finally, reluctantly drew aside. I pulled myself up into the room beyond and lay for a long time, allowing my arms to rest as I lay motionless on the padded floor. After some time I stood up and looked around. I was in some sort of maintenance closet. Several machines I did not recognize stood along one wall, a faint, almost unnoticeable vibration being the only indication that they still functioned. Part of the air circulation or food fabrication systems I presumed. Certainly not one of the enormous electromagnetic generators
[Read More...] -
Review – Kerbal Space Program
Ground control to Major Tom. Ground control to Major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. Lately I’ve been playing a bit of an independent game called Kerbal Space Program. The game is a spaceflight simulator in which you design a rocket, put it out on the pad, launch it and attempt to get it into space and successfully return it to Kearth. The game starts in the vertical assembly building where you build your rocket from a series of predefined components. You can choose from a variety of solid and liquid fueled rockets, fuel tanks and motors as well as structural components like stage connectors and stabilizers. You put together one or more stages of the rocket then put the capsule containing your Kerbals, the inhabitants of the planet, on top. Then it’s off to the launch pad. There you can fire off the first stage of the rocket and see if it lifts off or if it simply falls over and explodes. Once off the ground you are responsible for controlling the rocket, jettisoning stages as they burn out and adjusting its pitch, roll and yaw and the thrust of the liquid fueled engines in an attempt to successfully gain altitude and get into orbit. Once there (assuming you managed to make it) you can burn your engines again to cause the capsule to re-enter the atmosphere and descend by parachute to a safe landing. The game is harder than it looks. It is easily
[Read More...] -
The Morrowind Diaries – Chapter 4
Chapter 4 The Ald-Rhun Thieves’ Guild Last Seed 28 (Day 13) Now that I had made up my mind to move on I decided to leave Balmora immediately before I began to have second thoughts. After a quick glance at my map I headed for the northern gate and left the city. My plan was to follow the road past the Moonmoth Legion Fort until I reached the Foyada Mamaea. I planned to proceed up the foyada until I reached Ghostgate then turn east to reach Ald-Rhun. This seemed to be a much more direct route than trying to follow the roads through Caldera. Dwemer Bridge I briefly became disoriented in the dark but after a short time found my way to the Foyada Mamaea where it was crossed by a Dwemer bridge made of some strange metal. I briefly examined the area and decided there was no convenient route to the bottom of the foyada from there and started to cross the bridge to check the opposite bank. To my surprise, I saw a figure on the bridge but as I approached he yelled at me in anger. There was a flash of light as the figure summoned a skeletal warrior then he began to throw bolts of electricity at me. Knowing something about Magicka, I charged towards the wizard and ignored the skeleton. The mage attempted to back away from me but became trapped between the side of the bridge and a crude cart which was parked there.
[Read More...] -
At the Array
The beacons and the sweeping beams of the Interdiction Array glittered ahead of me, an out-of-place brightness against the faint dusting of the Void. I sat in the command chair, eyes half-focused on the view outside and half on the image on the overhead monitor. There, the Sun hung faintly against the darkness. Out here, at the edge of the Void, it was but a little brighter than the only slightly dimmer and slightly more distant stars beyond. Still, it was the only Sun I had ever seen in the sky and the thought that I would probably never see it again caused me to doubt once again the course I had sat myself upon. I rested my hands on the controls and noticed that they were shaking slightly. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and the shaking diminished but did not cease. I sighed. I had been waiting out here too long. Unfastening my harness, I allowed myself to drift upwards out of the seat a bit and stretched. I then punched the heat button on the coffee pod and fumbled for a cigarette. I would have liked something stronger but after several days with no sleep I couldn’t take the chance of getting too relaxed. “At least I’m not talking to myself yet.” I thought, then winced. I had said it out loud. Oops. So much for that. I lit the cigarette and took a deep pull from it. The shaking faded and I released
[Read More...] -
The Man Behind the Curtain
When she arrived in the Emerald City, Dorothy and her companions were groomed, dressed and prepared for their encounter with the Great and Powerful Oz. Upon entering his chamber they were awed and frightened by the Great Oz floating before them, wreathed in smoke and flame. Of course, Toto then finds the man behind the curtain who is running the whole thing. Like a villain being unmasked by Scooby and the Gang, the Great and Powerful Oz is revealed to be just a con man from Kansas. The con man then gives her companions what they want and Dorthy is shown that she has the ability to go back home herself and she returns to Kansas. I have always wondered… why is this considered a happy ending? Sure, she is happy to be home at first, but she will wake up the next morning in her black-and-white world, knowing that the bright, colorful world she left behind was only a dream and that the only magic in the world was the work of a man hiding behind a curtain creating an illusion through smoke and mirrors. I’ve been thinking about Dorothy and that man because DragonCon is coming here to Atlanta next week. I’m planning on going this year, for the first time in around a decade. You would think that I, as a long time Atlanta resident and Science Fiction fan, would have been a regular attendee but that hasn’t been the case. Actually, I haven’t been to any
[Read More...] -
The Morrowind Diaries – Chapter 3
Chapter 3 – More of the Balmora Thieves Guild Last Seed 22 (Day 7) It was just before dawn when I awakened the next morning and I exited into the cool darkness. A few of the town guard were wandering on their patrols but otherwise I seemed to be the only one yet awake. I was walking towards the gate when I passed the eastern guard tower and thought it may be interesting to climb to the top and view the countryside from there. The lower level of the tower was empty except for some racks on the wall holding a few, basic weapons. I climbed to the next level and found a bunk room with a bored guard standing watch. The guard seemed a bit put out by my arrival but simply told me to be on my way. I was about to do so when something on the top of a closet caught my attention. It seemed to be the hilt of a sword; one of higher quality than any I had yet seen in Morrowind. Obviously it would not be possible for me to examine the sword more closely with the guard in the room so I descended the stairs to the first landing and considered my options. I decided that, while bored, the guard was likely to remain where he was for some time and that my ability at sneaking around was still too slight to allow me to enter the room undetected. I was about
[Read More...]