Been awhile, Kiddies.
I'm sure at least some of you have been chomping at the bit; after all, in days gone by when I'd poof off for a week I'd come back with a new version of something or other in hand.
'Fraid not. I haven't touched the GECK. Haven't even played FO3, other than enough for the next installment of Nos' Adventures.
Which, by the by, is almost done. Screenshotted, mostly written. Would already be up; but it got a tish out of hand and dialog heavy, and is currently sitting at twenty pages. Somewhere near five to ten more before done; depending on how damned wordy I let it get.
Even managed to work in a Monty Python reference.
Anyway.
In other video game related news, I finally picked up copies of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines; as well as the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions for Sins of a Solar Empire.
While I quite frankly can't stand the LARP crowd, I'm nonetheless a fan of the World of Darkness - the vampire subsect thereof especially. There's just so much potential for fun.
Most of you probably never played Bloodlines. It was from a small studio, and while the concept was great, the execution was... lacking. So bug-riddled as to be un-fucking-playable. So bad the original version makes FO3 look good.
Picked it up on Steam (which I hate, by the way. Make me log into an online service to play a game I own offline? Fuck you.), but had little choice. I haven't seen a disc copy of Bloodlines in four or so years.
Even the patched version on Steam is loaded with bugs. But, like other games I favor, mods come to the rescue. Picked up The Clan Mod for it, and just finished a playthrough. So nice; and oh baby can you rock the undead house with that G36 and some grenades.
Played as a Malk, because hey; life's more interesting when you're batshit fucking insane.
Last time I played the game (years ago) was as a Ventrue. Not as much fun dialog, but that Dominate ability is so damned useful...
Arsenal Mod is definitely a requisite for any Bloodlines install. (included in the Clan mod install) Still has the normal game problems, though. Namely lack of ammunition carrying capacity. I mean, come on. I'm a super-strong, preternatural killing machine but can only carry ten rifle mags? Shit, I can handle thirteen here in the real world. Probably more, now that I think of it - I haven't ran a poodle-shooter seriously since 2006, and they have invented some neat new six mag carriers in the last couple years...
...But of course, you guys don't care about that.
The Sins expansions follow the classic Stardock pattern, as seen previously in Galactic Civilizations 2: base game made of fuck and win, first expansion acceptable but not groundbreaking, second expansion garbage.
I kind of like Entrenchment and its added starbases and such. Diplomacy? Crap. It's yet another instance of a game developer deciding that the way to keep a game interesting is to make it harder and more complicated across the board. It's a brilliant theory that results in nothing more than a convoluted mess.
Diplomacy does this by making it impossible to maintain good relations with another empire without following their asinine "missions", which usually involve attacking another empire that you happen to have a peace treaty with. Gets old fast.
Back to FO3. I picked up a few decorating ideas while running around the LA nights drinking blood, and will probably see about actually getting them into the game soon; being as my immediate urge to engage in said acts of darkness has been sated.
Don't want to give any time frames, though. Hell, there's decent odds I'll up and decide to disappear into another game for a week or two before I get around to actually GECKing something screenshot worthy up.
Hey I played Bloodlines and still pop it in to enjoy theses days but never did look for mods for it even if it badly needs them....
ReplyDeleteSins stuffies were fun as for awhile but yeah...
Was wondering where life stole you.
Oh, the usual.
ReplyDeleteMassive depression; wondering time and again why I bother getting out of bed.
Distracting self with pointless video games and shooty stuffs.
Finally got in to a dentist on Tuesday. Did not help my outlook on life in the slightest. Nice to know I can still render a medical professional speechless, though.
Currently been awake since 0200 and am once again wondering why in the holy hell I bother.
I recently purchased from Steam the id Superpack because, despite my love for all things Doom, I owned nothing with the name Quake on it and had always wanted to play the games in that franchise...
ReplyDelete*looking back over one shoulder nervously*
...but surely there must be a way to get around having to log in to Steam to play these games. Probably illegal and thus of course we mustn't speak of it, but surely there's a "crack" or some such thing...
Oh, there is a way around the copy protection. I've heard about it (although that's totally not the version of Bloodlines that I played before, because that would be illegal and immoral, and thus wrong), but it's supposed to be a pain to manage.
ReplyDeleteDon't have the skills to do it myself, and I'm not up for getting suez0r3d, so I just leave it be and bitch.
Quake shareware on the old Pentium 100, The good ol' days. Now I play it on the Wii. I also have the Id pack. Try getting your game files validated and get updates on dial up. Then having your ISP disconnect on you for "inactivity". Thank the gods for Opera's auto refresh.
ReplyDeleteHerculine, you may need to look up on the forums to get the expansions working if you haven't already. Unless your good at the launch command line.
Yeah, I couldn't get the expansions to run yet. I HATE doing anything through the command line. I like to click an icon and things just magically work, or at least have a nice GUI with pretty buttons marked "press this button to make it work". A computer programmer I definitely am not, though fortunately I'm not totally computer illiterate either. Thanks for the heads-up... at least now I know what direction to investigate in when I finally feel determined enough to try to run those.
ReplyDeleteReally? I've always loved command line work.
ReplyDeleteInstead of navigating eighteen in-game menus I get to just put a "-option" in the shortcut. So much easier and straightforward.
But, as an old DOS gamer, I got used to that stuff early on.
Kids today don't know how to game. I remember having to set up the IRQ and DMA in each game I wanted to be able to use my sound card. (IRQ 9, by the way)
Nowadays it's all DirectX. Point and click and the devs still can't be bothered to make the friggin' things work half the time.
Only problem I had was the command line stuff in Steam is hidden. Took me a bit to find out where to insert the switches.