Easter holidays are progressing quite quietly so far. Things I did:

• tried Borderlands with a friend
• got rather into Radiant Historia for the NDS
• tested Stacking and bought the full game
• read the Da Vinci Code (English version) after the book has been lying around almost half a year
• watched the already mentioned Alan Wake Let’s Play
• tried to help out an acquaintance troubleshooting his World of Warcraft login problems

I have to acknowledge that the WoW troubleshoot was by far the most interesting thing, since we had to do some trace-routing which turned out fun, due to its great “hacker feeling” though it simply is an maintenance tool.

Things I should’ve done:

• assignment for class A
• preparing for test in class B

Part I - The Signal

And I’m finally through the Alan Wake LP (which I picked up thanks to my friend Trayzard). This last entry does contain some minor spoilers that I couldn’t quite write around without overcomplicating things. To make this more interesting to you I’ll not be marking them.

It turns out I was not completely right. There is indeed one tiny new element of gameplay in the epilogue, that is (of course) reused in the DLC. Which interestingly turns out to be a good thing since there would’ve been need to explain a new type of supply caches otherwise.

On a sidenote I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an aggressive playground before. ;)

Oh and about the deerfest waggon: The LPer is right about that one. Should’ve been in the main game but I’ve already complained in the last post as far as I remember.

The ovens are great environmental objects on their own but for environmental kills they’re absolutely awesome.

Why did we have to wait for the funny and sarcastic Barry till the DLC? I don’t get it. He’s hilarious.

The impression that I got from the first DLC is great. Everyone should see what the birds look like deeper into the DLC. It’s a pity that you’d have to force yourself through the main game to get the context though. Too bad. If you have Alan Wake however and for some reason have not played The Signal, shame on you.

I wonder if the right side of the wordy minefield is a nod to “the right path”.

Conclusion: Too bad the best thing of Alan Wake is in its DLC and not within the main game.

Seriously, though. I wished my world would’ve floating words in it that come true if you shine light on them if you know what I mean. Boom! (also mind the typewriter sounds.)

Part II - The Writer

“Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. That’s why they’re crazy” ~Barry

Now I have to admit it. I love you, Remedy for going back to that place again in the DLC. And look at those pretty fireworks!

I have no clue why the main game didn’t contain as many great effects as the DLC did. Rotating the house didn’t feel out of place for a single moment and felt completely natural compared to those space shooters who go for the gravity-manipulation concept.

…I laughed so hard at “MAKE A CYLINDRICAL OBJECT ROTATE” a.k.a. the Starfox 64 reference.

Also the well’s puzzle ought to have been in the main game. Can’t believe how amazed I’m about the DLC compared to the game I was quite bored about. Who would’ve thought they meant the “running in a wheel part” literally. Right next to: who would’ve thought that the water is that hard? Possibly the guy who decided to spare/get rid of the swimming animation. Duh.

The psychiatric talk is… weird. Really weird. I imagine it’s only there to stir the player up, to try to tell him that all he has achieved up until this point is useless. I’m not sure what the overarching point is since Alan is by far not as guilt-ridden as depicted by the part of him that’s clearly already insane.

In my opinion the lighthouse makes a nice real section, since it is clearly the symbol of hope. The secondary usage of this symbol as a indirect weapon is a wonderful gameplay mechanic the devs can be proud of.

And I conclude with my final thought: Though the real ending is a cliffhanger, it was probably the best possible way to end this story in a non-cheesy way.

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Alan Wake (X360) pt.3 is part 3 of Alan Wake (Let's Play):

1. Alan Wake (X360)
2. Alan Wake (X360) pt.2
3. Alan Wake (X360) pt.3

By now I’ve finished watching the LP from the previous post until the end of the main game (read: excluding the two DLCs). I’ve also jotted down another batch of thoughts about the game itself.

First things first: The game will get extremely repetitive after a while. Well, the thing is, once you are a few hours in and got used to the Taken and the possessed things trying to murder you (looking at you barrels and other heavy environment objects), the game stays that way. There is nothing new to see at this point. My basic conclusion is that with the acquisition of the flash-bangs you’ve basically seen every gameplay mechanic of the game. And it’s not like there were a lot of them to begin with.

I am ashamed by what the LPer called a puzzle there (in the mine). That’s not a puzzle it’s simply “press obvious button to continue” and then “press next obvious button” after that. It does not qualify as puzzle.

I acknowledge the effects at the stage being very well put into place. In case people are lost here: I don’t want to spoiler anything but I’m talking about the Anderson farm.

I am totally into how the music ties into the narrative at the farm, it’s so beautifully done and one of the few things I don’t consider forced creativity in the game. I love it though it certainly has some cliche-y appeal to it.

On a slightly related note I do now know why Youtube has so much traffic. As browser streaming and its quality is (thanks to Adobe Flash) either crappy or extremely mean to my poor CPU I’m downloading the files using Jdownloader and watching them locally. Thanks to a totally messed up first try and a second that got me some more evil .FLV files in which sound and video were out of sync I am now downloading the videos a friggin’ third time. So much for that.

Uhm, concerning the resource caches… I’m sure it’s quite comfortable and intuitive to have those “emergency” boxes around, though I’m not sure how it fits into the big picture that they also contain ammunition. Thought that might be a hint to one of the pages describing war preparations. Nevermind that. The game does indeed explain that at the end. I was overhasty when I assumed that it would not.

Heads up to the devs for the Lord of the Rings reference. Wasn’t quite that spectacular but felt right there. (Twice even.)

Also the fact that the devs thought it might be cool to take away all your stuff from time to time is really annoying, especially if you don’t have a chance to pick up the lost equipment afterwards. I mean, it gets old after the third time, doesn’t it?

The second Alan exclaimed “more birds” I was instandly reminded of the birdphone, in case anyone else also went through the The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening LP. It’s the birdphone’s revenge!

And, uhm, seriously… the Night Springs episodes are just crappy. I might be me remembering and simultaneously glorifying the old times but the Twilight Zone was a way better show and the episodes were frighting. Night Springs in contrast just feels so cheap it’s disgusting. - The worse thing is that I’m not sure if is like this on purpose.

The idea of the plot-item being related to a childhood memory isn’t only quite original but also an adorable piece of creativity. Somehow I am aware that it’s terribly childish but that item just convinced me that Alan Wake was not that bad. I mean, there are still lots and lots of things I don’t like but there are definitely some highlights of creative work that I can’t ignore.

I found the ending to be extremely unsatisfying but was quickly reminded that my friend Trayzard told me that Remedy had planned to release Alan Wake in multiple Episodes so I assume most people were comfortable buying an seemingly incomplete game. Well done Remedy. So off to the DLC videos I am.

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Alan Wake (X360) pt.2 is part 2 of Alan Wake (Let's Play):

1. Alan Wake (X360)
2. Alan Wake (X360) pt.2
3. Alan Wake (X360) pt.3

Okay, so by the time I am publishing this I’m about 4 hrs into an “Alan Wake” Let’s Play. This is a a little collection of thoughts that came to my mind while I was watching one video after another.

First things first: I think the faces look horrible and I have a hard time sympathizing with the depicted characters for that reason. Secondly I don’t get why exactly the collectibles are Coffee Thermoses but I think it’s pretty damn awesome. Also I would like to thank the LPer for the whole lot of comments he edited into the video (subtitles) since I wouldn’t catch any of the references without this imaginary cheat sheet.

But there is an awful lot of things that disturb me about Alan Wake. The compass shows nothing and still takes away precious real screen estate (Though I admit not knowing if this is only so in nightmare mode since the LP only demonstrated this difficulty setting). A smaller indicator showing the next direction would’ve sufficed instead of making a giant radial dial of nothingness. Which is interestingly only partially covered by the health ring. Besides every time a Coffee Thermos is picked up it makes me want to check if the health meter has grown. (hint: it does not) Moreover I am continually confused by the way it displays the amount of ammunition you have at disposal; since the counter is not the amount of ammo left in your pocket/backpack/whatever but the overall amount. Nowadays I tend to think that the ammo in the little displayed chambers of a gun is already subtracted from that count. This is not the case in Alan Wake.

Also I think the game might be more immersive if it was to fade out the HUD when it’s not needed. It is so linear that during the time I’ve watched there never was any need for your next main goal to be displayed on screen all the time (or any secondary objective since there are none next to collectibles). While I’m talking usability here I want to point out that the optional TV show-collectibles (called Night Springs) ought to have an “watch” Button that zooms the camera in to view the show better. The way they are now it’s not really fun to watch them. Also the Manuscript pages are somewhat cruel to the eyes. The whole game has that dark appeal and almost never shows it light sides, though every time you find a manuscript page you are offered to read it immediately. While I honestly love the fact here that they are read out loud to you, they are very, very bright and burned my eyes each time the LPer watched one of them during dark sequences (read: all the time).

And I still think it might be a good idea to have health added when you find coffee. I mean, c’mon he’s a writer. Basically he falls into the same cliche as computer science people, otaku, and uhm well, basically everyone who manages to have a lot of work done alone at the computer alas typewriter before the computer. He practically lives on coffee. Our entire industry does. So gimme my healthy coffee, Remedy!

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Alan Wake (X360) is part 1 of Alan Wake (Let's Play):

1. Alan Wake (X360)
2. Alan Wake (X360) pt.2
3. Alan Wake (X360) pt.3

A few days back I started playing Venetica for Xbox 360 as I had a nice chance to receive the game (read: free). Anyway, I thought the game had to be very interesting and otherwise quite nice given the fact, that Venice is doubtless a perfect location for a video game. But the game tries very, very hard to throw away its immense potential. There are bugs, achievement glitches, graphical errors and all sorts of UX (user experience) atrocities that just want me to take the disk and break it apart. I have already compiled a rather lengthy list of things that are bogging me most in order to review it properly at Firefly-Nexus.org.

Nevertheless I guarantee you that it’s been a long time ago that I’ve last been that disappointed by a game which - at least in my opinion - had an enormous potential. The product that has been released here is not only unfriendly to the player but also incomplete in terms of QA (quality assurance) to a ridiculous amount.

There used to be a nice time when console games would be tested better than PC ones since they couldn’t be patched. That time’s gone but also there is no willingness to patch games that are bugged. Dark days are already here, my friends.

OK. This time it was my term to be the presenter and the other students were to be the harsh people criticising me as I usually do them. At first I’ll admit that this was by far not the best presentation I’ve yet given or even could have given. Due to me being lazy and generally speaking having a little time scheduling problem, the given time for layout, content and preparation was about 3hrs. Now I was quite lucky that I could reuse a style I had previously used for my final exam in school before for the visuals and layout. Also rather a lot of work concerning the content had already been done by a student last year (kind of like my predecessor). I simply had to create some slides around some nice looking words, fling in a bunch of pictures and present them in an appealing way. I managed that though the time I had left for an oral preparation was about 20 minutes (exactly the time it took me to get to the university on foot). After all I don’t have problems at all giving presentations and I really like to speak English. In addition to that, the nice layout and the fact that I didn’t use cheat sheets or some kind of notes gave me quite some points.

After all of the presentations we were asked to fill in some “Feedback sheets”. I asked my teacher if I was allowed to have an early look at mine and after permission was granted I read through them all. Well… nearly. I dismissed the positive feedback as it didn’t have anything to learn from. The negative things I’ve “earned” most often were “speaking too quietly” and “confusing”. Well, I admit my presentation being uhm… a bit loose at all, since I had used way too little time preparing it. And regarding the quiet voice that is just something that has to be trained. Not everyone has to give a speech every day and so you can’t realize your flaws or have the practise you need to be a great talker.
I also remember one sheet saying that it took me longer than usual to set everything up. That was based on the fact that I brought my own notebook, because I didn’t want to rely on the university’s old version of OpenOffice.org since I had already seen that OOo’s backwards compatibility was not that great when another student fired up an “.odp” Secondly I wanted to use my notebook’s remote control to move between the slides which proved to be rather comfortable and looked very professional. Nevertheless there’s been more criticism. I’ve stood in front of the presentation, between the projection and the audience. Well, that isn’t too hard considering that the room’s layout was not done with the concept in mind that someone would want to use a remote to show slides instead of sit at the head of the class and just share what’s on his/her screen.

Uff. Gotta go. Already falling asleep in front of the notebook.

For some time now I’ve been rewatching the old Stargate series and especially Stargate:Atlantis which I prefer over the original SG-1. Doesn’t seem to be a big deal, I admit that. But the fact is that instead of my mother tongue German, this time I watched everything in English which was quite nice. I don’t claim to have understood everything that has been said but I’m quite comfortable with what I was able to grasp. By now I have seen all five seasons of Stargate:Atlantis and eight seasons of Stargate:SG-1 (which leaves two more to go there… but I’m not really into the whole Ori thing). Also I’ve just watched some really old stuff: It’s a cartoon called Roswell Conspiracies. Originally I had seen that many years ago on the German station SuperRTL. Not that they’d have any program of quality nowadays, but they had some good series back in the days of my childhood. I liked Roswell Conspiracies quite a lot and just now rewatched the first season with a friend. Also I simply adored Bob Morane back then (the cartoon, I never knew there was a comic until I had read its wiki-entry).

So back from the old memories to something more productive: I’ve revisited and archived around a third of my unfinished work concerning abandoned projects. I will provide them for interested people in a .zip archive as soon as I’ve looked through some more documents. The reason behind me revisiting all those “corpses” was that I wanted to integrate some of the very best ideas into Project:Rosetta. Still, they are yet to be fully integrated as I’ve just created some scribbles and a vague table with the old content. Some of it will certainly prove useful… I guess…

Lately I’ve had to sit through several presentations during my English classes at university. Fair enough I’ll have to prepare and hold my own next week. I’ll come to that. But I’m getting off topic, back to the presentations which I’ve already seen: You know what? Bad things stant out more. They get easily recognized. Sometimes it’s kinda hard to avoid doing all those pesky mistakes when giving presentations. I’ll try to avoid some of them. But what is it that’s disturbing me that much? Well…

• Don’t f***ing remind me every second that you’ve said something before. I swear the next time a presentation contains more than one “As I’ve already said before” I’m gonna hurt somebody.
• This is NOT a reading exercise. This is supposedly a presentation. Act like you know this fact.
• There’s absolutely NO need to fill in “yeah” or “and” when you don’t know what to say. If you HAVE to fill in something, try stretching a “well” while you’re looking for your path.
• Test your equipment. Test your software. Make sure to use backwards-compatible files when presenting in dubious environments (this is especially true for 3rd party devices and/or operating systems) (OpenOffice.org 2.x @ university)
• Your presentation “comes to an end”. YOU do NOT. (“I’ve come to my end”)
• If you can, bring your own system (not including the projector). Saves the hassle of unwanted popups, the need for removable media and file-compatibility issues. (Apple Quicktime Update Popup @ university DURING PowerPoint presentation)
• If you want media, fine then, HAVE media! Though the flow of your presentation WILL suffer when you have to jump out of the slides during the presentation to show a video. Try to embed media or show them at the start/end of your presentation.
• If you want to be nice, use a roadmap. That gives the interested listener an overview of what to expect and the bored people a plan how long they have to endure you.

I think the main process of writing is the writing itself.

It’s not the preparation.
It’s not the note-taking before.
It’s not the task of improving what you’ve written down by exchanging words and phrases over and over again.
It’s the action of writing. The movement of the pen. Your fingers pounding the keys on your PC/Mac/laptop. The fluency of thought you experience.
Try it now: Take a pen. Take a sheet of paper. Write.