Demonac's Blog [Another Gaming Comic]

AGC #437

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:49:36 GMT

Like the subject line says, here's AGC #437; back to the D&D campaign (more or less).

A few notes from the moment...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:06:54 GMT

I should make more twittery point-form posts every once in a while because otherwise these little observations are lost (or shared only with my girlfriend).

I've been in the new house over two weeks, and we're fairly settled
Despite how busy we've been, I don't feel like we've made much progress
Based on the above, I'm starting to feel like a dick for not having had my friends over yet.
The post office claims they're going to give me my refund if I go there today.
Getting out the receipt I need, I knocked over the dinosaur guarding my important paper.
Starting to question the security value of said dinosaur
A few days ago we were walking behind a man in an electric wheelchair who was feeding birds
The flock that followed him grew each time he paused to "bird-bomb" an area with breadcrumbs
We had fun imagining him taking revenge on, say, the public library with his avian army
We joked that he was probably the most interesting thing that would happen that day
Tried to close an old bank account and found somebody's OAS was mistakenly deposited there for two months
*Sigh*

AGC #436, Mission Unreasonable

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:48:02 GMT

AGC #436 goes back to gmail chat (which looks a lot prettier than my version of the in-game WoW chat window from #435).

Champions Post-Mortem

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:50:46 GMT

Well, the Champions MMO free weekend is over. Really, I the timing was pretty poor for me, I had to work prettymuch all weekend, and that meant I couldn't coordinate with quill18 to try team action or anything (problem totally on my end).

It definitely seems like a much better City of Heroes; you get your travel power right away (after the tutorial anyway), and they have a lot of great costume and power options you can customize, like you can choose whether you fly with rocket boots, hover on a disk, glide around like Iceman or the Human Torch, or just go superman style. Plus they have tunneling and swinging (with the classic "web straight up to nowhere" and all). While they have great costume options like various animated tails and wings, and asymmetrical arm/leg elements, it looks like a lot of other costume elements have to be unlocked. And I found it irritating that if you start with weapon powers (swords and/or guns), usually you can choose the style of your weapons - but you can't actually SEE what you are choosing in the character building screen, because they only come out when you use those powers.

The quests are nothing like CoH's bear bones all-the-same stuff. I mean, it's an MMO, most quests will be very similar. But in Champions you go around the world and do things that make sense like in other MMOs, not just "kill 50 of these guys" followed by "go into another wearhouse and clear it up/click on something". And most quests are give you a big circle demarcating their area on the minimap, so you're rarely left wondering "northwest of what?"

Obviously I didn't get very far, but the leveling seemed good. You have a lot of flexibility to take whatever powers you want - you can go 'broad' in the tree if you are willing to go a little less 'deep', and even then they try not to penalize you *too* much for splashing. So prereqs are usually like "3 Fire powers OR 5 non-energy-generating powers from other trees" (your first power is always an attack that generates energy, which itself gives sort of an interesting gameplay element). At some levels you get new powers, at others you get your choice of stat increases (you can take +8 to one stat, +5 each to two, +3 each to four stats or a blanket +2 to all ten stats, but each increase is 'named' and can only be taken once. So you can't just take +8 strength every time, for example), and at other levels you gain the ability to 'enhance' one of your powers, either a general upgrade, or a power-specific modifier like adding a buff proc or a debuff, or something that changes how the power works a little. It has a lot of potential, assuming it is balanced.

Overall, I give it a provisional 'thumbs-up', but I can't see myself paying for it, and in order to properly gauge it against other MMOs ("Is it as fun as WoW") you'd really need opinions from some people who've played both at the max level for some time.

In other news, a big thumbs-down to everything else everywhere. After we paid $40 for mail redirection, two weeks later not one piece has been redirected, right up to my pay stub which I found at the old address yesterday. I call them up, and they are like "oops, we didn't give the notice to the actual letter-carrier". And their supervisor is mysteriously not in to answer the phone (or to answer for the screw-up, and the 4 packages they lost in the 2-3 months BEFORE we moved).

And it's taking forever to get an estimate on installing eavestroughs. And my new chqs came really fast, but my name was mispelled. And we're still trying to clean up after various calls that we missed during the FIVE DAYS that our phone was cut off by a Bell screw-up that we are somehow paying $55 for. I'm getting so tired of calling places and disputing things.

AGC #435, Slow to catch on...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:35:50 GMT

Here's AGC #435 for your viewing pleasure. By which I mean it's ugly. But by now, nobody looks at the pictures anyway :)

Champions Online Free Play till November 2nd

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:06:30 GMT

Well, if you haven't heard, Cryptic's new MMO (makers of City of Heroes) is having a free play weekend.

Now, I haven't played it for more than an hour and a half or so, so please take these assessments for the unfair assumptions they are, but:

(A) It has the potential to be much better than City of Heroes.
With the same great character appearance options right from the start (plus a lot of improvement, like pretty much all the arm/shoulder/leg options can be applied to both, the left or the right side), better power selection options (there's a "custom" option which lets you pick and choose stuff from different power sets), plus genuine RPG-style loot/gear upgrades and slightly more interactible environments (you can pick up, club with and hurl most crud you see in the streets, if you're strong enough, and it looks like throwing a large object is a great "pulling" option)...
...all this means it's much more like what everyone wanted City of Heroes to be in the first place.
(B) It's still a whole hell of a lot like City of Heroes. If you enjoyed CoH, you'll probably enjoy this. If CoH bored you, well... I have no idea what they've done for advancement and late game, since I've only done the tutorial. The devs have had one whole MMO to learn from their mistakes, so they may have figured out how to reward, entertain and retain players better. Or maybe not. Who knows...
(C) It's only a weekend, but it's free. So if you love making characters, playing with the appearance options and checking out what a bunch of different powers feel like as much as I do, you may just get about 70% of the enjoyment you'd get from buying the game, then you can just delete it afterwards and save your money.

But you do have to love a game that refers to "respec" options as Retcons, and plans in a future update to let you repeat quests as "flashbacks".

AGC #434 (oh BTW, there was a #433)

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:31:44 GMT

AGC #434 is out, now that I have internet again (after 5 days of being screwed by Bell Canada, what service you get for the compulsory $55 moving fee, *sigh*).

NOTE: IF YOU ONLY CHECK FOR UPDATES ON THIS BLOG... and not on the actual comic homepage, you should go here first for AGC #433, because I somehow managed not to link it when I posted it.

There is still soooooo much to do. I have an insane number of phonecalls I need to make that I couldn't for the last 5 days (already went over on my cellphone minutes just getting my phone installed so I could get internet back).

Plus we need to get curtains for the front and back doors (privacy plz!) and put up the chain on our front door, make some minor improvements to the support structure of our basement, of course we need to buy a power drill for that (and probably a circular saw). All this we are working on, but lack of internet hampered our efforts greatly, and now that we got it back... my week of vacation from work is up, and I'm going back tomorrow.

And we still have to figure out when to have people over and stuff.

WE EXIST AGAIN!

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:40:45 GMT

After 5 days, Bell finally unf***ed our phone line, one quick call to our ISP and boom, we can now communicate with the world again.

To anyone who tried to call me/us since, oh, the evening of the 21st, no, our phone number has NOT changed, it was just in an alternate universe for a week in there.

Will try to update more later, but for now I have to make calls before the end of the business day and change my address on 30,000 websites.

arg.

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:49:55 GMT

sorry, I've been incommunicado since we moved because Bell screwed us royally.

Disconnected our phone in the morning before we got up - that part was fine.
But they were supposed to simultaneously connect the phone at the house...
Well they supposedly couldn't do it remotely and needed to send a tech. Which they did INSTANTLY. While we were nowhere near the house and wouldn't be for like 10 hours.
Tech leaves a note that they missed us, call 310-bell to reschedule, which we did when we got there, and they said they couldn't send anyone until the 27th. So when they said no tech was required, they could send one instantly without any notification, but after that, we get screwed for 5 days...

And our internet was DSL, so they can't hook it up until bell catches up. I called a bunch of different phone companies on my cell, and asked DSL if they could drop a "dry line", but apparently it's impossible for anyone to do it with less than 5-10 days warning. So we are over on our cell minutes and out of touch until at least the 27th, and there's nothing we can do (this is the library computer)

The move itself went great, with my manager Dana and her husband helping out. We offered $200 for the move, which is half what it would cost with movers, and everybody is very happy with that. Went pretty smooth, we've already gone back, cleaned up our apt and returned the keys, so we are officially moved.

Or will be when we get internet back.

I have keys!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:39:51 GMT

There was a lot more in the way of stress and obstacles in the last few days than there should have been, but we finally have to keys to our new house. Of course, they came so late in the day that after waiting for 6 hours to get up and go there, we're going to end up eating first.

So tofu first, walking around taking pictures after!

[edit]
Wow, they left us a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't part of the agreement, including a nice dining room set, a porch swing, two old vacuum cleaners and a barbecue. It's like we won on the Price Is Right.

I have to say, the previous owners were very nice, and we really appreciate how they have helped us out (I'm sure they were more inclined to be nice because we made it a quick and easy sale for them, and didn't try to drive a hard bargain).

Here's a way to use sound science and logic, +evil marketing = everyone wins

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:23:59 GMT

It's called FullBar, and it's the critical component of the "aquafull" system. Critical, in that without it, people could use the science and change in behavior to succeed at their weight-loss goals, but the company wouldn't make any money from it.

Here's the system.
1) Eat a fullbar.
2) Drink a glass of water.
3) Wait 30 minutes.
4) Eat a normal dinner.

The television ad compares the science to the way stomach surgery works; both methods reduce the amount of food required to trigger that satisfied feeling that you get when you are full. And, as far as truth in advertising, they don't say anything that is false, or even dubious (that I can see). Due to the magic of fullbar, your body will give you that satisfied "full" feeling after consuming much smaller portions of your favorite foods. You eat what you want, but can still manage your calorie intake without even thinking about it.

What does the fullbar actually do? I'm assuming... nothing.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with reality, should easily determine that (A) the system probably does work, and (B) if it does work, it definitely works without the fullbar part (the part that costs money). I guarantee that glass of water does more to fill you up than some expensive little bar, and actually, drinking one glass a half hour before each meal seems like a damned effective strategy if you find diets are leaving you craving more food. If for some reason, solid food is required in addition to the water to achieve the optimal effect, I'm sure there's a simple inexpensive substitute, which doesn't have to pay for all the expensive packaging and major cable TV ad campaign.

But if they weren't selling you something, it would be more of a public service ad. The marketing is clever, and doesn't lie (to my knowledge), but is still deceptive. Of course, the worst part is the line that suggests you can also eat a fullbar at other times when you're hungry. They wouldn't be crying if you went through more than one box of their product per week - though the extra snacking would probably be counterproductive to the dieting part.

http://www.fullbar.com/

AGC #432

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:41:37 GMT

AGC #432, as we get closer to moving day, I think I've got enough stuff ready to avoid missing/delaying comics, but we'll have to see.

I did get to get see my sister (home from overseas for a short while), and I should probably talk about that because it was nice, and she had interesting stories. But my weekend schedule got mixed around at work and I need to sleep now. Preferably faster-than-average sleep.

AGC #431

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:23:17 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy AGC #431, which has nothing to do with the holiday. At all. Zero.

Now I must hasten to bed so I can catch an early morning bus to dad's place to see my (recently and temporarily back from Korea) sister for a couple days. I'm pretty sure I'll still be making moving-related phonecalls even from the bus. Moving day is like... next week...

AGC #430

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:59:33 GMT

Boing! AGC #430

Finally got caught up on the new season of Big Bang Theory... good stuff. Now we're just trying to figure out when Shark's Tank and Dragon's Den are playing exactly. Shark Tank has already changed schedule at least once in the short time it's been on. And yes, they are the same show, but one is in Canada, the other in the US, and in practice it's just more of a good thing.

Hmm, let's see, what's up...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:18:33 GMT

Well, my sister is back from Korea. She's probably still very jet-lagged from all the time-travel, but when she recovers I'm sure she'll go right back into shock. "Look! There's a white person! And another one! This place is full of foreigners!" Of course, she'll be launched right back there in a couple weeks, because she renewed her ESL teaching contract, but I'll be heading back to my hometown for a few days a week from now to see her. And we'll be like:

"Hi" "Hi"
"How are you doing?" "Okay. You?"
"I'm good. I'm buying a house." "Cool, can I see it?"
"No, because I take possession a couple days after you leave." "Well then screw you."

I'm busy trying to plan for getting things changed over, but I still need to figure out exactly how we're moving (we don't have a vehicle, nor do we have a lot of burly physical-type or unemployed friends - though if anybody wants to prove me wrong and volunteer to help, even though we're moving on a weekday, please let me know). We're probably going to end up paying 400 for movers, which will probably turn into 500 even though we don't have that much stuff and the house is going to look really big and empty with our meager furniture. We're going to buy a couple of office-surplus ugly square heavy desks for our computers for under 100 bucks delivered. Then the house will still be empty, but we'll have better desks.

And of course we're shelling out for lawyer, and cable hookup, and transferring phone service (I could swear the other time I did that it was free, but now it's $55.00), and opening an account with the Natural Gas company, and the water-heater-rental company, and the lawyer is transferring the utilities, and we're paying for home insurance, and also term life insurance, and we need to transfer internet (and probably change providers), because we don't trust any of the big companies (Bell, Persona and Rogers all suck). Then I'll have to order new cheques (my current ones are from at least 2 addresses ago, and I plan to stay at the new one for a long-assed time), and then I need to change my address on approximately 1.2 million different websites. x2 when you count my GF changing HER address on at least as many (some the same, some different).

But right now I need to order Greyhound tickets on 7-day early discount to save 3 dollars. We might need 3 dollars.

AGC #429 - Like the Fast Food version of healing

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:32:50 GMT

Here's AGC #429, revenge of the "what the hell is Charisma?" argument, at least to a minor extent.

Fell ill Wednesday at work, just had a headache come on in the middle of my shift, then get worse within a couple hours until I was pretty nauseous. So eventually I got home, threw up and slept the night away. Was fine by the next day though.

AGC #428

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:20:39 GMT

Time to turn the tables in AGC #428.

Random Facts

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:01:29 GMT

Moumar Khadafi (yes there are a million transliterations of how to spell that one) has a (nearly) all-female group of bodyguards. Talk about stuck in the Cold War era, he must still be shooting for his own Bond film.

The week starts on Friday on the website of the local second-run movie theater. Maybe this makes sense in movieland, but when I looked up their schedule on Thursday, was I really so wrong to assume that the times I was seeing listed for Friday would hold true for THE NEXT DAY? No Ponyo for us...

People make digital answering machines that don't take batteries. To be clear, people mostly DON'T make answering machines anymore, it's hard to find a decent one, especially that isn't built-in to an overpriced phone, but apparently of the ones that DO exist, many don't have a battery backup to save your messages if there's a brief power interruption. I know, I don't understand it either.

AGC #427

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:40:31 GMT

They are still fighting in AGC #427. For the first fight of the adventure, they are having a bit of a rough time...

The other day, when walking home in the pouring rain with my umbrella, each time I passed some poor soaking person without an umbrella I had to restrain myself from saying (in a naive but 'helpful' tone) "It's raining". Because most of the time in life, the funniest thing to do is not actually a good idea.

A month from now we should be living in our new house... so much to do...

AGC #426

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:39:32 GMT

AGC #426... because everybody makes mistakes sometimes. I'm pretty sure the next one will be funnier, but sometimes this happens during combat.

AGC #425

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:48:52 GMT

It's been a long week, but here'sAGC #425, which if my comics had titles anymore would probably be something like "Love the cloud".

Now, I wouldn't compare what I do for a living to really hard and/or stressful jobs, like police, firemen or construction workers. That said, I have a lot of responsibilities relative to how much I'm paid, and a fair amount of stress and decisionmaking, which is why I usually work a little less than "full" full-time. I also value my time at home over that extra bit of money I would make working 40h. So I can tell you that having worked 8 of the last 9 calendar days, almost half of which being 9+ hour shifts, I am tired. But I got the comic up anyhow, so yay.

D&D online is pretty cool so far. I don't know if it can hold interest as long as something like WoW, but for now I'm enjoying the upgrades, options and gear, and the feeling you get from everyone having different skills that benefit the party. As you advance and face harder challenges, it also has a lot of interesting puzzle-solving (in between the wanton smashing of monstrous humanoids) that is less common in most MMO games. And 3.5 edition Dwarves are still awesome.

AGC #424

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:24:24 GMT

In AGC #424, the Universal Justicars see their first combat of the adventure.

I'm doing well at planning and getting the comics ready, and I'm thinking I might try cranking them out a little faster, like every 4 or 5 days for a while, as long as I don't see any signs of burning out. I do need to keep a little ways ahead though, in case I can't get any work done when I'm moving and stuff. That said, it's going to be a long lonnnnnnng week at work...

The other day I watched The Dark Knight again. It's funny all the things they did with that movie: the Joker is disturbingly violent, yet there's virtually no blood in the film; there's never any real challenge for Batman in hand-to-hand combat, yet despite that there is no shortage of conflict, drama or suspense. The weakest parts of the movie by far are the places where Batman uses his superior technology (derived from immense wealth) to solve a problem, often resulting in some really dumb 'movie magic' tech that makes it harder to suspend disbelief, but overall it's a great movie, and a makes me wonder again where the franchise is going next - will Heath Ledger's tragic death kill off his incomparable Joker? How can that character not be a prominent part of the film(s) to come?

Unrelated... I will have to find some time to try out D&D Online when it goes free tomorrow (Sept 9) though.

AGC #423

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:43:35 GMT

Here is AGC #423, continuing the Warforged Adventure/Deep Sky One story arc.

Also, with a significant amount of help from certain readers (THANK YOU!), almost half of AGC's 400+ comics have been transcribed into OhNoRobot's database. Because of that, I've added a search bar (like the one below) to the archives comic viewer page. You can now search for my individual comics by the text in them. Of course, with only 180-ish of them transcribed, there's about a 50% chance that the one you're looking for might not be there, but if so you can always transcribe it (with the transcribe link underneath the comic) so that people will be able to find it in the future.

Through the looking glass...

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:54:02 GMT

A few days ago, my GF learned that I had not seen the movie American Splendor. We don't spend a lot of time rewatching stuff that we have seen before (my movie-watching habits were many times more repetitive when I was single), but she did want to see this one again anyway, and felt it was something I definitely needed to see.

So we watched it today, and I must say, it's kindof creepy. As much as she and I are way different than Harvey Pekar (pronounced "pee-car", not "pecker") and his principal love-interest... there are a LOT of superficial similarities. And with a long-running webcomic where I write about what I know and where one of the main characters looks like me and mimics some of my idiosyncrasies (though that is fiction), and with all those D&D excerpts where I wrote stories based on what I and my friends were really saying, well, one can see how I must have at least something in common with the guy who became a hero to many people by writing about his gritty and often miserable real life (filled with his humorous insights).

It was a little bit like watching myself and my GF in an alternate universe (with a lot of the tender parts filtered out). I'd like to think that our universe is going to work out better for us, but who knows. Having said all that, don't judge us by those two people. Similarities aside, they aren't us... they are very grumpy :P

Visiting the vampires...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:09:55 GMT

So we snuck into the health-lab-place early this morning to get some routing blood-tests done before it got busy. We arrived 15 minutes after the 7:30 opening time, so only 23 people were in line waiting ahead of us. Each person walks up to the desk and grabs a number, then sits down. Then eventually they call your number, take your test-request papers (from your doctor), and ask you if you're fasting. [HINT: If you say no, you get sent home, and have to try again another day after fasting for 12 hours. So freakin' fast!] Then they send you to sit back down, assuring you that you will be called by name when they are ready to actually test you.

Now, this would all be fine, except that when you are waiting there is nothing to do but watch THE FOOD NETWORK. Nice choice of programming for 12-hour fast victims. "Today I'm making babyback miso ribs, smashed potatoes with soy nut sauce for a nice crunch, and a fabulous light-tasting three-bean salad with a miso vinaigrette..."

Anyway, I spent all day calling people and getting estimates then calling other people to find out if the estimates were insane, then getting more estimates, while downloading and scanning and sending back all manner of crap. Every day I think that by the end of the next day I'll have the majority of it taken care of. But I'm always wrong.

Which reminds me:

In response to an odd wobbly noise near the window:
GF: That car doesn't sound so good.
DEMONAC: That's not a car. It's my scanner going back into power-saving mode.

Sad, wobbly-sounding dying equipment aside, though, gmail has been down for the last 20 minutes and it's really putting a crimp in the "sending back all manner of crap" business.