Yeongcheon Sidewalk and View

Korea is different. That's the great conclusion of my first full week at my post. Since this is the very first post of the saga, let's set some details down.

Location: Yeongcheon City, Gyeongsangbuk Province

Occupation: Public School Teacher

Grade(s): Middle and High School

If there's anything else, I can't think of it. I don't currently have a camera but rest assured -- I am working on that. Without a camera, it makes talking about a lot of things really boring. I can't show you any of the awesome stuff I'm talking about. Thankfully, my good friend Geoff can show you. Thanks to his blog, I found out I live pretty close to him; I was worried I lived quite the distance from everyone. His building looks nicer than mine. Anyway, check out his blog for now and trust that I will actually update mine in the near future.

Geoff's Blog: http://geoffsasianadventure.blogspot.com/

NOTE: The word play in the title is just to get it out of my system. I wouldn't dare subject you to it on a consistent basis.

Not every developer codes their engine for proper multi-gpu scaling or even multi-gpu support. Some Starcraft 2 players are still smoothing out rough edges after the patch that fixed stuttering and slow down. The upcoming Final Fantasy XIV does NOT support SLI, at all. The recent MMO All-Points Bulletin does not support SLI either. This is not "the list" but it is merely an example of games still being released today that don't support SLI. Let's not even travel backwards to games that don't support SLI or don't scale well.

In addition, you're looking at about a twenty degree idle temp increase (comparing 2x460s to 1x480) and increased power consumption. I think this is a solid step towards making SLI reliable but if you're thinking about the cost savings then we're not there yet. This especially rings true to me someone like me who is only looking forward to FFXIV as his main title for 2010 while he takes Starcraft breaks and catches up on his giant Steam library of unfinished titles.

If you're the kind of guy that says, "I want to play Crysis 2 on Ultra and laugh at the people who spent $100 more than me on reliable across the band power," (yeah I just made an auto reference) then by all means go for it. Just get real used to play Crysis 2's 5 hour campaign over and over because all you're gaming addict friends are going to laugh right back when all your GPU-muscle suddenly disappears in the games everyone is playing.

The achievement nVidia has accomplished is destroyed any reason to think about a Crossfire setup. If you're looking for a power house setup, you're still looking at the GeForce 480 or the Radeon 5870.

NOTE: I'm too lazy to put a pic in, imagine something creative...

The Hyur watches as his Hume brothers will die a painful death in the next few months

To quote a true veteran player on the FFXIAH.com forums, the new expansion/DLC is "the same old shit with this update, just more waste of time." So why are you still playing? I know why I am back to playing. I've bought the game twice and originally played at release and I don't have one level 75 character to show for it. Should I just quit while I'm behind and wait to crush it when FFXIV comes out? The money doesn't concern me. Assuming I end up going to Korea, I really do have it to burn.

There's no bonus for importing FFXI characters so why are you still trying? Maybe because your discount laptop can't begin to dream of running the FFXIV benchmark? I know my computer scored "Low." Which is exactly what I scored when the original FFXI benchmark came out. This time around, I don't feel bad because I know the Japanese still can't make optimized code to save their lives in the gaming industry.

I don't even know why I want a 75 anymore. It'll take me at least a month to hit 75. Probably another two weeks to hit the new cap of 80. I'll be taking a month break to get adjusted to life in Korea. That leaves me with about two weeks to enjoy my capped RDM. Two weeks to try my hand at a Dynamis, or Sky, or Sea (whatever those are) and you know go after all my merit points. You would be mistaken to think for a second that I'll be playing FFXI once FFXIV comes out. I'm not 14 anymore, I don't have that kind of time to waste. So should I quit already? I feel like I'm at that point. Maybe my friend Scot is just rubbing off on me.

They never did finish this one...

I picked up Alpha Protocol on Steam (a week before the massive summer sale, which makes me furious) much to the dismay of my friends and against the multitude of reviews bashing the game. I've been waiting for this game since Obsidian announced it forever ago. I was ready to see what they could do on their own without Bioware's legacy backing them up. In conclusion, Alpha Protocol was a pretty awesome ride.

Okay, so I lied, it wasn't awesome. It was actually mediocre in practice. However, the overall experience isn't a slow plodding treadmill of mediocrity. It's the logical conclusion from the two extremes. It's like Obisidian knew what they were good at (traditional CRPG sequels) and then they saw Mass Effect and decide "Oh noes, look what our big brother is doing, we can do that too!" In effect, they took their same buggy, unfinished approach and make something even more lackluster of an engine than the depressing experience that is Neverwinter Nights 2. Every single weapon except from assault rifles are depressing in their purest state. However, a lot reviews discredited pistols as useless when all the pistol abilities are disgusting good. Chain Shot and aiming criticals out of cover are almost broken good. I'm digressing from the overall experience though.

The first thing you need to do is play the game as a spy. The game likes to suggest at times, that you can be some sort of super Rambo agent. Don't do it. You will just be frustrated in the beginning and laughing at the foolishness by the end (in a, this makes no sense, sort of fashion). Alpha Protocol rewards stealth and takedowns almost religiously. Only one part of the game literally forced me to fight. When I say it forced me, I mean, I engaged by overpowered instant stealth power and my attackers still saw me and began to beat the living snot out of me. Shame on me for paying in to a broken system and never leveling my hand to hand skills. I wish I had recorded that fight, I barely survived and abused the poor a.i. Now that I think about it, I only survived the Taiwan boss fight due to abusable A.I. pathfinding while my broken stealth skill recharged. Man, I want to complain about the poor a.i. but there are times when I feel like they left it in the game because of how broken some of the fights can be if you're not specialized in killing things. Again, shame on me for maximizing stealth.

So I say play the game as a spy but I complain about the game severely punishing me for it. Well, outside of staged battles, most of the game is stupid easy (as I played on hard mode as the recruit class) if you invest in stealth. Being able to turn invisible at a moments notice is stupid good for stabbing multiple people in the face without so much as chime on the alarms. Man, Alpha Protocol is such a broken and horribly executed game that I can't believed I enjoyed it so much.

The game likes to make you pick locks and hack keypads. I didn't level the skill to make any of this easier. Honestly, they get stupid hard about halfway through without skill in sabotage. So hard, I couldn't actually pass them with the Xbox controller. I had to switch the controls to keyboard and mouse (you can't use both at the same time for some reason) and use the extra speed and precision from the mouse to key the job done. By the way, did I mention that the game is nearly unplayable with a keyboard and mouse? The mouse smoothing makes the stiff WASD movement horrendous. I found myself sitting out of cover and running the wrong way in to cameras and guards far too often for the super spy I like to play. Plug in a X360 controller and it's smooth sailing...of course until you need to crack a safe or bypass a door, which is pretty often actually...

All the reviews are true, the game has bad (often laughable) combat, depressingly poor a.i., and nearly last generation graphical presentation. So what is there to love? Well if you really like role-playing games, you're going to love Alpha Protocol's story. People say it's good but they're used to Mass Effects crap about killer robots from deep space that jump through a lot of hoops to destroy lifeforms instead of just firing a giant laser beam. Modern entertainment magazine don't even recognize greatness these days. Let's forgive them for ripping the Burn Notice style introduction, the character interactions and story depth truly shines in this game. In fact, it's been the best story experience since The Witcher. Scratch that, in many ways, it's more enjoyable than The Witcher. The shining points are the dossier and the relationship on characters. Actively finding intel on characters will affect available decisions and story options. Building relationships with them will also affect how the missions play out. For what the story lacks in depth and scope it makes up for in its dynamic nature. Honestly, Obsidian should just fire all their programmers and project managers since they can't code for crap and fail to release games in a timely fashion but give all the writers a nice Christmas bonus along with contracts to work for CD Projekt and add some dynamic nature to The Witcher 2 (which may be taken care of if the press info I'm reading is any indication; don't even begin to talk about the simple forks, that often break the quest mind you, from the first game count as dynamic storytelling). Or maybe, Obsidian should send them to BioWare and...wait nevermind BioWare is owned by EA and doomed to make trash for the rest of its existence (ME2 showed the signs of being a generic mainstream title, I can't imagine what horrors are in store for Dragon Age 2 or any new IP assuming EA lets them take a break from making ME15 over their lifetime).

Ugh, I'm burned out with hatred and frustration now. If you like story (which you know, is the reason people play RPGs) then Alpha Protocol is the game for you. If you want something to tide you over until ME3 drops this fall/winter, then pass over Alpha Protocol. In fact, you should probably run far away from anyone with a copy. If you look at it with mainstream shades, the game is a horrid piece of trash. But if you can ignore all that, then by all means -- enjoy the story of espionage and betrayal that leads to lasting homicidal friendships. Not nearly worth the fifty bones I dropped on it but definitely an easy purchase at $30 or less (did I mention how much I hate Steam and their sales at times?!).

NOTE: My reviews are highly subjective and never based on pure rational thought. Trust my opinion, it's often fueled by Haterade and to be taken with a heavy amount of salt.

I don't have a lot to expand upon. I got a lot to do and I really don't have the time to do it. I don't expect to be working for much longer, I really need to free up time to get everything taken care of. Maybe next time I post, I'll work up the energy to share my views on a variety of current events.

Until then, lets all wait for E3 and inevitably more information on Final Fantasy XIV.

I will not be attending Xanbats #3 this week. Oh well, my Ibuki needs a lot work anyway. I might just give up on the season. Missing two rounds and going 2 and out last week don't make my chances very good.

Tried practicing today, my PP ended up getting cut in half. On the bright side, my execution has improved again. SJC from target combo in to command dash is almost ready for battle. My next goal is to actually learn the overhead link and jab to strong link. Also on the docket, I need to incorporate command dash and backdash in to my play style. Definitely need less slide and no more jump in kunai. It's coming along though.

Still don't know for sure about Korea and I don't expect to for a month. That's okay though, right now I need to focus on this TEFL course. Which has been hard because there's so much I want to do. My mind has been filled with game designs and it sucks to put the dream on hold but I think I'm doing the right thing. If everything works out, I'll be in a much better place to develop titles and build a team.

Interesting posts are on the way, I'm going to kick it in to overdrive this week. In the meantime, what are you doing? Comment or e-mail me with the details or a link to your blog.

For starters, I needed some cash. I took up a job working for a pretty well known store franchise. I'm not going to say which one because, I may very well rant about it later and I'm not here to smear anyone's name when I vent on my personal blog (well sometimes, but not for this). Even so, a lot of people have jobs and still manage to blog. Unfortunately, my job calls me in anywhere between 10PM and 4AM and I usually work a 10+ hour shift. So, whatever daylight I have left gets spent on...

Getting things in place to go to Korea. I finally sent off my application packet for EPIK. I had my recruiter interview, EPIK interview, and preliminary offer already. Now they just need to review my paperwork and send me a real contract. Yeah, throw me in the category of the JET-rejects that decided to hop on the Korea boat. There's more to it but I don't mind be put in that box.

So, in preparation for going to Korea, my recruiter suggested I take a TEFL course through ITTT. Now, I really have no time as I have to drop 100 hours in one month in order to receive my certification on time. If that wasn't enough...

I was working on getting my first game prototype out. I say was because my computer's hard drive is pretty much dead at this point a long with all the project code I had so far. Fortunately, I suppose, I wasn't far a long so I didn't lose much but without a dedicated machine, I'm not about to tackle a one-man game development show right now.

Those are the major things going on with me. I'm still volunteering on the weekends and occasionally I'm helping my dad out. Whatever free time I do find right now gets dumped in to practicing Ibuki in Super Street Fighter 4. I should talk more about SSF4 later. For now, look for some more personal focused posts and wish my luck with my Korea placement. I'm hoping I haven't sent my documents too late.

The App Library is Lacking

It's kind of expected that there wouldn't be a lot of apps with the new operating system. It doesn't help that the N900 is the only Maemo device on the market and it's not exactly priced for mass consumption.  Consequently, there are really only a handful of apps sitting in the Ovi Store and you're best bet is to just add the Maemo Extras repository and run through the free database. Maemo Extras is littered with goodies like non-Jabber (AIM, Yahoo, etc.) support, an SSH server, widgets, and media utilities. However, I still don't have a solid game I want to play on my phone not that it really matters...

The Battery Sucks

To be fair, the battery is actually really good. It's just that between the wifi, fm transmitter, 3.5" 800x480 screen, and multi-tasking apps on a 600mhz processor, you tend to run out of power pretty fast. I can't imagine how bad it'd be if I had 3G running. You can easily expected a day with high-moderate/low-heavy usage. Don't expect much more than that though. I'm pretty sure I max out around 26 hours myself. Just for a feeler, I keep the Facebook widget running, an RSS widget, my e-mail synced every hour, the weather widget every 4 hours, and podcast checks once a day, and about 4 IM services connected. That's a lot of passive internet access and processing but easily understandable. During the day I rarely use the GPS but I often use the FM transmitter while I drive. When I used to keep the GPS on for location-based status updates (pretty much a constant GPS line open), I would need to recharge near the end of the day (thinking about 6-8 hours of life). So yeah, if you really push the potential of this device, the battery will easily die before the end of the day.

Interface Quirks

I'm not going to go over something someone has done much better: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=47126

In short, there are some little things that end up bugging you. In the end you get used to it but, I'm sure we'll see things go over smoothly when Maemo 6 rolls around in late 2010.

Hardware Limitations

The N900 is one of the most powerful devices you can snag right now. Unfortunately, without all the restrictions of iPhone and other proprietary locked down devices, you can actually notice slowdown. There seems to be a constant rvalry between my media player and surfing the web. Heaven forbid we add flash and blend the lines together. For some reason, embedded Flash playback performs horribly on the N900. It most-likely has to do with the high-quality video sites like Joystiq, Vimeo, and sometimes Youtube default to. Your best bet is always downloading the video first and playing back it back separately. If you start treating your computer like a modern slimmed down laptop (like I tend to do) then you're going to realize the limits of the 600mhz processor and 128kb of RAM.

Conclusion

The device is awesome. I really like it but with these issues, it's really not an everyman's phone. Tinkering with my phone and the possibility of developing on it makes the N900 a no-brainer pick-up. Anyone else, I'd suggest they stick with S60 or wait until next year to switch to Maemo. If you're still feeling adventerous after that, by all means, pick it up and enjoy the ability to make Skype calls whenever you want (yes it works beautifully over 2.5G).

Side Note: Opera 10.5b is some sort of hotness (get it with the custom Aero Glass skin).

Addendum: Opera went crazy on me for a second and I almost lost this post. It clearly doesn't like WordPress. Probably some non-standard CSS/JS/HTML in this complex monstrosity that is one of the best blogging engines around. However, WordPress had a copy of the draft so it's all good.