I have a brief twofer here:

Charles Stross with a fine piece of writing.

This is good reading, if you dig that sort of thing. I do. Canada kicks ass.

Posted by Ron as Politics at 2:24 AM EDT

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A couple of weeks ago, Square Enix, famed makers of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series, held a promotional giveaway on the launch of their new combined website (previously Square and Enix had been rival companies and are now merged). This promotion, a free demo copy of the upcoming title Front Mission 4, applied to the first 125,000 new users to register, so it doesn’t make me that special that I signed up in time. Of course I had no idea at the time.

Tuesday afternoon I went out to check the mail, and what do I find in the mailbox but a nice shrink-wrapped copy of the demo. What a pleasant surprise.

Today I got around to giving it a shot, and I have to point out, the screenshots I’ve seen don’t do this game enough credit. It is much better looking when you’re playing it. The screenshots make it look very dull, which is understandable, since this is a military game featuring a lot of grey background imagery, with big, grey mechs, snowy countryside, overcast skies, night missions, and so on. Despite that, some of the backgrounds are quite nice to look at, the skies are very nicely done and, the star of the show, the battle system, is very well done.

I would say that it reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics, except it is the future, so naturally, your characters are piloting giant mechs called ‘Wanzers’. Also, as is normal console RPG fare these days, the game has full voiceovers throughout, and as a result, the translation is much better than our beloved FFT. The game itself is also a bit more complicated to master; there are many different types of wanzers, each with interchangeable arms (each of which can accomodate up to two weapon systems), legs (of which there are three types), and bodies (all with different armour characteristics and power outputs). There are also 7 different “backpacks,” each with a unique function, including repair, jamming, jump jets, item storage, auxilliary power, and so on. And to incinerate the opposition, innumerable weapons are available, such as rifles, shotguns, machineguns, bazookas, and missile, grenade, or rocket launchers, the list goes on and on.

The soundtrack for this title is another triumph of tactical RPG sound design; the music is very low key and pleasant, such that you don’t want to pull the plug when your battle is taking a long time to finish (unlike Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which just gets irritating). This isn’t to say that the score is unnoticeable, though; it’s really quite good, in an atmospheric, background noise kind of way.

There are a few niggles, though. The characters are a very multinational group, and as such, the voiceovers, while better than 90% of all Japanese games I’ve played, are unfortunately riddled with over-wrought accents that border on being downright cheesy. There is no mistake as to what nationality the characters are supposed to be though, so I guess they do the job quite well, but it can get distracting when you’re trying to understand the story. The only other flaw I’ve uncovered so far is the flipside to one of the games’ greatest strengths: options. As in, there are too many of them! While this can’t be a bad thing for long-term play value, when you’re still getting used to the game, it can seem a bit overwhelming.

Well, in conclusion, I guess that promotional toy has done its job: I’m definitely getting in line for this game.

Posted by Ron as Games at 1:44 AM EDT

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I caught a very interesting program on Nova last night about the efforts of a group of Eurpoean art restoration specialists that sought to restore a Buddhist temple in the isolated Tibetan kingdom of Mustang.

From what I understand, by European, and therefore most ‘western’ standards, the mission was a complete success; the building was fortified in the traditional Mustang way, the murals were cleaned up using advanced techniques to preserve the original pigment while cleaning off the dirt, and the cracks were repaired. One problem remained, however, and this was the big gap between western and eastern values on the matter.

The interesting part was in the differences in approach. The european way was to preserve the original without altering it, to preserve what remains. To me, and most of us, that makes perfect sense; tampering with a piece of mediaeval art would be, to most western sensibilities, unthinkable. But not the people of Mustang. They demanded that if it was to be done, that the murals must be restored to original condition, including: painting in the gaps caused by the cracks, places where water damage from the roof had obliterated part of the work, and the parts where the underlying plaster had flaked away.

I enjoy being reminded that not every culture has the same values as the one I happen to live with. In this case, I can really understand their viewpoint, and in a lot of cases I would tend to agree with it. If something is disintegrating, and you value it, why not take steps to repair it and improve upon it so that others may enjoy it in years to come?

I find this ‘repairing the classic destroys its value’ mentality very much prevalent in another field that I am somewhat familiar with: classic automobiles. In said field, old vehicles are instantly worth less than they would have been in original condition, even if they were barely running before. Makes little sense when you consider that the whole point was they they work so that they can take you places. So for that reason, and in others that I have no personal examples for, I can really understand the sentiments of the people of Mustang.

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 8:50 AM EDT

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I don’t think I’ve mentioned before just how much I am growing to hate Bell. I’m not talking about my former employer, I’m talking about Ma Bell. I have cell service, if it can be called that, through Bell and it’s pissing me off even more than usual. Lately there have been a lot of calls spontaneously dropping in the middle of a conversation for no apparent reason. The phone is fairly new and digital so there is really no excuse.

I have a sneaking suspicion that because I’m always making mobile-to-mobile calls, which are free on my plan, that I’m being dropped by the towers in favour of calls that are using billable airtime. I have no doubt that the systems possess software complicated enough to make such decisions; I have seen much of their infrastructure.

Or it could be that the service just sucks in this town, like everything else. I really, really can’t wait to get out of here.

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 3:36 AM EDT

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For the past two nights, I’ve had related dreams, sequels in fact. I don’t recall if this has ever happened before or not, but it sure is neat. Makes me think of some of the concepts behind Hypnagogia. Similar, but much less Freudian and sexual.

The dreams I had were of myself, sometimes first-person, sometimes third-person, and I was at some sort of academy, which looked a lot like my public school in Blind River for some reason. At first I thought I was a teacher, but it later became clear in the second dream that I was a senior student, responsible at times for other students. It was in the second dream that I graduated and received my first assignment. Oh yeah, it was a Jedi academy. I did say it was odd.

In part one, the school was being evacuated due to some unknown threat. It turned out that the unknown threat was my old friend Kris Ashman. I met him in a dark hallway as I was making sure that there was nobody left inside. It also turned out that he was a Dark Jedi. We fought a running lightsabre battle in the hallway until it became clear that neither of us could gain any significant advantage, at which point he escaped, ending our little contest.

The second dream featured me accompanying an important old man and a young ship captain on some voyage. We became trapped on a planet by a tractor beam and had to lay low. After much hiding, I lost patience and decided to try to fly our ship against the tractor beam like a maypole to try to break free and escape. Unfortunately, all I did was get us noticed and crashed the ship into trees and buildings. Thank goodness for deflector shields.

I wonder if I’ll have another one tonight?

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 2:08 AM EDT

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Looks like I may have a job lined up for when I get to Windsor; Meghan’s neighbour’s son lives there and works in the electrical trade, and has asked for my resume so that he may distribute it. Nice, very nice. The guy barely knows me from a hole in the ground.

Anyway, I did go to school for that sort of thing; the electronics engineering course I took has its first two semesters common curriculum with the electrical program, so it’s nothing new. Besides, after all my experience in the field, I figure I can wire up just about anything, so it shouldn’t be too bad. I can think of a lot worse things than an electrical apprenticeship; in particular, if I can land a construction post, rather than an industrial one (work is easier and the pay is better).

Posted by Ron as Work at 8:54 PM EDT

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Lately, after beating the living hell out of Metroids all month, I’m on to the next GBA conquest: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Where to begin? The game’s predecessor, Final Fantasy Tactics, originated on the PSX console in 1997-98 and brought new levels of gaming goodness to the RPG genre and helped spark the Tactical RPG craze. The game was a plot-driven tale of political intrigue and religious heresy. In it, you fight to change the course of history, only to be totally forgotten, and having oh so much fun in the process. The game has two modes: an overland map, done in 2 dimensions with dots and lines marking cities, roads, and other points of interest. When you encounter hostile forces, the games switches to an isometric, rotatable, zoomable 3D viewpoint in which you battle for dominance in a turn-based mode.

Obviously, due to the limitations of the GBA, FFTA uses a fixed isometric viewing angle and pseudo-3D. However, the lack of a true 3D environment should be no problem for a strategy game, and that holds true nicely. In fact, the environments are, as a result, more thoughtfully laid out with respect to being able to see any given area of the map, and consequently, the enemy units placed there. That was a major “feature” of the previous title; half the time you couldn’t make out what was going on due to bad “camera angles”.

The gameplay is smooth and quick to learn, which is good, but there are some definite tradeoffs. The plot is fairly weak, but the gameplay more than makes up for this. They still haven’t ironed out some of the flaws in the tedious equipment process either, and in fact made things worse by removing the option to re-equip with “optimum” gear after a class change. And while the classic “job system” is retained, the ability-gaining mechanic comes from FFIX, where your abilities are “learned” from your equipment, which was definitely a “love-it-or-hate-it” system. I liked it, but I understand that I’m in the minority on this one. Truthfully, while it isn’t an inherently bad system, I did prefer the “abilities-come-from-your-job” method.

Another unfortunate is the soundtrack. Where the last title used a mix of subtle, yet moody, well sampled soundscapes ranging from calming backgrounds that you almost never tire of hearing to appropriately timed aggressive “pump-up” music, this game seems to contain almost exclusively “pump up” music and after playing for several hours, you get really tired of it. It’s not that the score sucks, it’s quite good, but it is a little overwrought and repetitive. Such are the limitations of the platform, and its intended audience, I suppose.

That brings up another point, and while you can’t fault Nintendo for doing it this way since their primary audience consists of mostly younger gamers, it is unfortunate. The game has a decidedly juvenile feel to it. The main characters are very “grade 6″ in nature, which has a direct influence, naturally, on the plot.

So if you’re just out looking for a solid tactical game where the battles are many with little story to get in the way, look no further. I know I can’t get enough.

Posted by Ron as Games at 10:50 AM EDT

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• Microsoft taunts Linux, “Bring it on!” Finally, the software giant realises that it is in their best interest not to smash their competition.
• What do you do when your spam email business falls on hard times? Sell branded undies, of course. That guy was making $2million a month!!! I had no idea the cash in the spam business was so good.
• Sort of seems obvious, but some expert has declared that there is a new wave of more powerful worms and viruses coming. It’s like any other technology that is used for any kind of attack, when measures are developed, countermeasures evolve to stop them or render them obsolete. I wonder what the nuclear holocaust or cold war of the computer age will look like? Will it be Big Brother-esque? HAL 9000? Everything locked down and computer/internet use restricted to only the licensed users? If so, this is clearly where it begins.
• Often the Open Source versus Commercial Software argument seems to be boiled down to a ‘which one is superior?’ type argument, but I think that they will both flourish in their own right, at least for the forseeable future. They both have their place, with separate strengths and weaknesses. Eventually, will the open source philosophy take over? Will that spell the end for the ‘intellectual property war,’ which has clearly gotten out of hand? The linked article mentions that collaboration software (like Office-type products) are the main weakpoint of Open Source, but if that’s so, how do the authors and maintainers of open source projects continue to do what they do so well? Clearly, many of these projects are not accomplished by some lone Linux hacker writing oodles of code for the greater good, but rather are accomplished by teams working together. Surely that must indicate that open source collaboration software is well evolved also. In fact, I think that in the future, if not now, major companies will begin to use the open source collaboration as a model for commercial software; in the open source community, programmers don’t work for assholes.
• So, scientists have found the virtual speed limit for the venerable ‘winchester’ hard drive. Created by IBM, Winchester is the technology upon which all modern hard drives are based and dates back to 1973. Seems there is a long way to go, at least virtually speaking. Though I read somewhere else recently, I can’t remember exactly where, that some have a less rosy prediction for the future of that technology. I think the prediction was from some expert at Seagate. But don’t quote me on that.

Posted by Ron as Computers at 9:57 AM EDT

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My body is currently having, and has been for the last several weeks, some kind of revolt. I go from sleeping 12+ hours at a time to not being able to to get more than 4 or 5 hours straight now, hence being up right now (previously unthinkable). Why couldn’t it have been like this when I had a job?

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 8:52 AM EDT

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Been doing a lot of thinking about this blog. Not sure if there is a point to continuing it. I do realise that my opinions are just that, opinions, but why should anyone else care to read them and why should I care if they do?

I could argue that the point is to keep in touch with family and friends, but I’m not sure any of them really care anyway; any who would, I can accomplish the same thing with a simple email or two; perahps an instant messaging conversation if we’re feeling chatty.

I guess the only thing I can think of is that it strokes the ol’ ego and sense of self-importance, hardly desirable qualities to maintain.

Posted by Ron as Computers at 2:52 AM EDT

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