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Still sick
2007-06-07 09:01:15
I went to sleep at about 3:30, and woke up at 6:30. Couldn't fall back asleep. Ugh. This SUCKS. I feel like utter shit; my throat hurts, my whole body aches, I have a headache...least I won't be going to work. But still. I wish I didn't feel so crappy :(
-sKy- -
Bad day
2007-06-07 03:11:30
Ugh. Today was a bad day. And it actually started out okay. I went to work from 12:00-5:00...easy shift, problem is it's TOO easy. From 2:30-5:00 the restaurant is pretty much dead, so as a busboy I have absolutely NOTHING to do and more or less just stand around for two and a half hours. Sounds nice, yeah, but this is what my job mostly consists of. It's boring, and the shift just never seems to end.
But that's not what made the day bad; in fact, I found more to do than usual at work so work was actually bearable today.
But when I got home, and turned on my computer, I got an error message at the startup that said my C: drive needed to be checked for consistency or something, so I let it do that. When it got to near 100% the computer froze, so I restarted it...and my C: drive was making these awful-sounding clicking noises, like it was trying to do something but couldn't. And when it started making those noises I restarted my computer again. The drive made the noises again, and when I FINALLY got it to my desktop it wasn't recognized at all.
I've tried every possible reconfiguration of wires and stuff, but it's obvious that the drive itself is probably just dead. I really, REALLY hope I can still get all the data from it - thankfully, of all the drives to happen to, the C: drive is the least vital (it consists almost completely of games, which I hardly ever play anyway, although I'd hate to lose a few of those save files, and After Effects is installed on there, but that can just be reinstalled somewhere else), so it's not a HUGE deal, but either way if the drive is dead I'm going to have to get myself a new one. The games gotta go somewhere, and I'm not cluttering up my E: (main) or G: (editing) hard drives with 'em.
So tomorrow I'm going to take the hard drive to the local PC center, hopefully they can extract the vital stuff (and at best, fix the thing). Luckily the rest of my computer is ok. However, after I removed the drive my computer was running slow as HELL - the task manager told me that CPU usage was at 100% consistently. Thankfully, after messing around a little I got that straightened out and it's running fine now. I'm going to try and finish my Pro video completely before I shut the machine down again, just because I don't wanna risk it. I'm almost halfway there though :P
So that whole ordeal sucked.
And then my girlfriend came over, and she was a bit sick. So I kissed her on the cheek a couple times, and within two hours of her being at my house I had gotten sick too. Now my throat hurts, my whole body aches...it feels like the flu, but man, it came on so damn QUICK. I think I might not be able to go into work tomorrow, which would be the only good thing to come of this...but frankly I'd rather not be sick :/
So yeah. Ugh. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I'm tired now though. I think I'm gonna post on the forums then turn in. 'Night .org.
-sKy- -
Rant
2007-06-03 12:33:05
|:<
Ben is not happy about the direction computer games are taking. Oh no, not at all.
Actually, I've felt this way for years now. But I'm writing about it now. For one thing, several excellent genres have all but completely died out. For instance, when was the last time you saw a truly great space flight simulator? These used to be common, hardcore games - X-Wing, TIE Fighter, FreeSpace, Independence War, Tachyon: The Fringe...it's been YEARS since a space flight sim has been released at all. YEARS. One of the greatest genres of all time is completely dead.
Not only that, but 4X (space strategy, usually turn-based) games have almost completely died out as well. Where the hell are this generation's Master of Orion, Star General, Ascendancy, Alpha Centauri? Granted, it's not gone yet - games like Galactic Civilizations II or Space Empires IV Deluxe are keeping the genre in an iron lung but it's only a matter of time before they disappear into the annals of history.
Nope, these days it's all about flash and money. You basically have two genres of PC games anymore: FPS or MMO. FPSes are pretty much dead to me - the newest good FPS I played was Call of Duty 2, and only for its multiplayer. Before that...probably Quake 3 Arena, which was released in, what, like 2000? Or maybe Tribes 2, which is the greatest FPS ever made, bar none.
MMOs, I won't even touch. Don't get me started on that tripe. MMORPGs are the worst. It's the only kind of RPG available for the PC anymore. Some of us don't feel like paying a monthly fee to throw our lives away. Some of us just want a good, solid single-player RPG. It sucks to know we will probably never have another game like Fallout 2, the single greatest RPG to ever grace any console.
*Sigh* All people care about anymore is graphics. And if a game doesn't have good graphics, it seems to immediately be thrown aside. Granted, the majority of us don't think this, I would imagine, because the majority of us have been around long enough to know the glory of old games. But what will the next generation think? They'll never play greats like those I've mentioned, they'll never even have heard of a game like Zork, which is entirely text-based and relies completely and totally on your own imagination. It makes me damn sad. I'm going to raise my kid on Windows 98 and my Sega Genesis. He's gonna play all the games I did. The most advanced console he'll have is an N64. And by God, he'll like it.
The other thing, which may seem more trivial but I feel contributes to the problem at hand in a significant way, is the way PC games these days are packaged. I remember years and years ago when PC games came in nice, big boxes, with nice, thick manuals. The boxes were beautiful to behold, the manuals so interesting to read. Games like Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm, and Independence War came with manuals that not only described how to play the game in great detail, but also had true STORIES in them with tons of background which added indescribably to the gameplay experience. Whenever I played these games, I'd make it a point to sit down and read the stories (some of which spanned upwards of 20 pages) and absorb the extra information (like the history of how each and every ship type came into being in the case of Homeworld: Cataclysm, which probably covered another good 30 or so pages). When I got around to playing the games...I actually felt like I was a part of the game. The game became more real, more tangible.
Companies can't do that anymore. They don't want to spend the money to make a thick, 100+ page manual, and either way the game boxes don't have the space to hold them. When i picked up Homeworld 2 and ripped open the box, eager to see the manual and read the story, all I got was a dinky 30-page manual, the first page of which was dedicated to a short summary of what was going on. Between Cataclysm and H2, something like...what, a couple hundred years had passed? And all I get is three paragraphs of crappy summary.
Fuck no.
This was about three or four years ago that I picked up the game. I still haven't had any desire to play it. Yet I've come back to Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm several times, each time rereading the manuals. The story is what makes these games. The lack of one in H2...well, why should I even care?
The glory days of PC gaming have left us forever. We will never again know the meaning of a good backstory, of detailed technical documentation which, although is essentially useless, adds a dimension of realism to the game that no 3D graphics could ever emulate.
We will never again know the thrill of shooting down an enemy space fighter with joystick in hand, or of finally conquering the last star in a galaxy before blowing away any remaining enemy units and being crowned Emperor of the Universe.
Such a shame :(
-sKy- -
2007-05-31 23:52:27
Am I the only person who hates the new logo? The text is ass-ugly and the "anime music videos.org" text is too small...come on people, we should have a logo that actually has something to do with AMVs.
Blah, oh well :/ -
DQY
2007-05-31 16:00:49
...has two accounts? O_O I never knew...
:roll:
JOURNAL: CrackTheSky (Ben S)
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