Life, Politics, Games, Scripting, and Other Fun Stuff
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Well, I've made it into the Neverwinter Connection's DM Hall of Fame. Special thanks to all my players, especially Dave_O who would rather run his foot over with a car than forget to review me, and has me on his favorites list like 3 times!!!
We'll be moving our Neverwinter Nights game night to Mondays from now on. I'm always looking for Noobies to join our merry band, so if you would like to join us for some vicarious high adventure please, set yourself up with an account at www.neverwinterconnections.com and PM me. My handle there is "Urk".
My wife and I are moving to New Orleans in the not too distant future, and while driving home from an appointment to view a potential apartment my lovely wife allowed me to stop and explore the Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile. Foolishly I told her I'd be back in a half hour, then dashed from one side of the museum to the other furiously clicking away at everything I could find. An hour later she crossly pulled up next to me as I was snapping quarter bow shots of the Gato Class sub USS Drum.
I'll recommend some good WWII naval warfare games in the not-to-distant future, but this experience was the real thing, so sorry folks... no game talk today.
The star of the park is the battleship Alabama. Designated BB-60 she's a South Dakota Class Battleship. Launched in 1942 she served in the South Pacific theater of operations. She was nicknamed the "Lucky A". During her active service not a single crewman was killed in enemy action.
The Battleship was the largest most sophisticated machine of that era. All due respect to the devotees of Aircraft Carriers, the floating flat-topped buckets of WWII pale in comparison to the floating fortress of the BB: 2500 highly trained men integrated with the same clockwork precision of the CV crew into a single machine with a single function...
Destroy anything in sight.
And it was very good at it's job.
Lucky-A's armament would still strike fear into any foe not equipped with a state of the art guided missile system. Truth be told, most of today's anti ship missiles would be hard pressed to penetrate her foot thick armor plating. Mind you, if ships like this were still on the line that wouldn't be the case. These behemoths no longer have a place in the modern navy, but as recently as 1992 they served with distinction.
Shown here are 2 of Alabama's 10 Double 5" Gun turrets. Secondary weapons, any destroyer or submarine foolish enough to blunder into range of one of these batteries broadside would not likely live long enough to abandon ship. In the foreground you can see 2 of her 12 40mm Anti-Aircraft Auto Cannons.
The main armaments of the Alabama were 9 16 inch guns organized into 3 turrets, 2 mounted on the foreward deck, and one aft.
These guns were able to launch steel shells packed with explosives a little over 23 miles. Each shell weighs about as much as a Volkswagon bus.
On the aft deck you can see the catapult rail that would be used to launch one of Alabama's 2 OS2U Kingfisher Scout planes (pictured below) right off the deck. These planes would be used to scout the surrounding waters for enemy forces. The crane was used to recover the aircraft once they had landed in the water. Also seen here are 3 of Lucky-A's 52 20mm Machine Guns for use against enemy aircraft.
It was sad to see the condition of the old girl. She needs a face lift in the worst way.
The steel structure is in excellent shape, almost timeless, and the three degree list that is apparently left from Katrina is not even noticeable. But the wooden decks need to be completely replaced. The once polished teak is now gray and warped.
Most infuriating, however, is the thin layer of paint on the starboard side barely managing to conceal years of graffiti.
Sadder still was the condition of the Drum. Damaged in hurricane George she is now consigned to living the rest of her days mounted on blocks, her tail section a frayed and rusted out tangle of steel.
Many of the aircraft in the museum's collection are piled next to her, likewise twisted and mangled by storm damage.
But the saddest blow is the Vietnam Veterans memorial. The Huey, the foot soldiers angel of mercy in that conflict, was once mounted over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in eternal flight. Now it is gone, leaving only the skids freakishly suspended in the air over the rest of the sculpture.
Then I reminded myself that God did this. He reached down from heaven and swatted down that Huey. And it is God's contribution to this memorial that makes the starkest and most important statement of all. Have we done with the veteran's of that war exactly what we have done to their memorial? Have we left them underfunded and neglected? Have we let our shame of defeat and unwillingness to admit our own fallibility obscure the contribution these men made to our country and our culture, many with their lives?
To me that missing helicopter is a challenge to put up or shut up. It is a divine reminder that not all heroes fight and win. Sometimes all a man can do is fight and die.
I cannot recommend strongly enough a visit to this place. You have the opportunity to explore a battleship stem to stern. Take the whole day. You won't regret it.
And leave a few extra dollars in the collection jar at the ticket desk. Let's get that Huey put back up.
This is more than the home of Jame's Page's OHRRPGCE, it is also, I suspect, a clever reference to Boo the Space Hamster.
OHRRPGCE is an old school CRPG engine. Remember Final Fantasy 2? It could be easily reproduced using the OHRRPGCE (Short for Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Creation Engine). The system is VERY flexible, though. I'm using it to build a Star Trek Game that will likely never be finished but has allowed me to explore the system. A good stable core system supported by Hamster Speak, a powerful yet ridiculously simple scripting language.
I was surprised to find an updated released as recently as January. No longer a DOS system the system is now Windows Based, and is capable of supporting better sound, better graphics, and larger files. The only downside I can see is that the system can no longer build self executable games. An OHRRPGCE game file can only be played with a full install of the engine.
The Event with Skunkeen last Saturday was a success, but a less than stellar one.
The module, Alcohol Anonymous, was a very clever one. The build was amateurish and entirely Dependant on DM participation, but the plot and NPCs were amusing and the whole game had a very survival-horror feel, which is... to say the least... right up my alley.
This event was intended for aspiring DMs. As PCs died (and oh how horribly they died) they were given DM passwords and we taught them tricks of the trade as the adventure progressed. After the adventure the survivors also logged on as DMs and we began a question and answer session on how to use the DM client.
Now as a rule I run Open events. No passwords or anything. I'm always happy to field new players, or shall I say, I USED TO BE happy to field new players.
One of our invited players was running X-Fire during the game, and while we were playing an X-Fire Griefer calling himself RagdollKnight piggybacked in.
I've been running events on Neverwinter Connections for about a year, and in all those games... say 20 or more... I've yet to run into a griefer.
So this guy starts wreaking all the havok that a DM can Wreak, and a DM can wreak a lott of havok. He basically ruined the question and answer session.
I wasn't running a dedicated server, so it forced a server reboot and password change to boot him off. Very frustrating.
What is is with Griefers? I simply do not understand the mindset that ruining other peoples experience is somehow intrinsically fun. It seems even more pitiful than it is aggravating. Is your life so empty? Are you so small and useless in RL that you can only assert yourself by being a bully in cyberspace? I shall ask my wife about it. She's a doctoral candidate working on her degree in Psychology.
Anyway... Many thanks to Skunkeen for the event. We'll do it again... but next time it will be a password protected application only event on a dedicated server.
That's right... I said SWEENEY TODD. Truer to horror than the endless stream of prequels and sequels that Hollywood has been shoving down our throats for the past 5 years, Sweeney Todd is an elegant and terrifying return to what horror is supposed to be.
It's been so long since I've seen a truly GOOD horror movie that I had actually convinced myself that maybe Hostel 2 wasn't just a contrived, formulaic excuse to see some 2 seconds of inverted boobs. I was distressingly undisturbed by the image of a chick cutting off some jerks (ridiculously unrealistic latex) penis. I mean c'mon. What guy hasn't already lived through the same thing at least a half dozen times?
The feeling of relief I got when I watched Sweeney Todd is hard to describe. It feels like the end of a 5 year crap.
I saw Sweeny Todd in the 80's when it was on Broadway, so I was VERY skeptical when I saw it was being adapted to film.
I was wrong.
Tim Burton adhered elegantly to the original script, intent, and vision of what Sweeney Todd was meant to be. It was not a "re-imagining" or whatever the heck the Hollywood buzzword is these days for taking a classic and turning it into pop feces. They only changed a handful of lines, and only when it was appropriate to the change of medium. The changeover from stage to screen was done with astounding grace and skill.
The choice of stars, which had bile churning in my stomach as soon as I heard it, turned out to be extraordinary.
Let me explain... I LIKE Johnny Depp, but I still see 21 Jump Street any time he opens his mouth. The guy STILL looks like a kid, and the Benjamin Barker character is supposed to have just gotten out of prison after 14 years. Boyish good looks are just not gonna cut it. As for Helena Bonham Carter, she's hot. Every movie she's ever done has tried to ugly her up, and it never works. Mrs Lovette is NOT supposed to be hot! When I saw the stage version all those years ago the part of Mrs. Lovette was played (brilliantly) by ANGELA LANSBURY.
There's no way a pair of Hollywood Hotties were going to pull off Sweeney Todd.
Wrong again. I could go on for hours, and may yet when I have some more time... but the short version is...
What a fantastic freakin' movie!!! I mean nothing will ever touch the Broadway experience that, as a child, made me decide that I was going to dedicate my life to stage acting (yeah... well that's a different story). The stage version was much funnier. Stage happens from a distance which makes the whole serial killer thing a little less gruesome, but film is up-close and personal so it couldn't help but be a very different experience. Still... standing on it's own it's tons of stage blood n' latex fleshy fun!
Ummm... Don't bring a date, though, unless she's turned on by the sound of skulls being crushed on cobblestones.
Well, I've decided not to buy "The Witcher", even if it is my beloved Aurora Engine. I won't get into all the people that have warned me off it. Yahtzee put it best...
