As a celebration for handing everything in a few weeks ago, me and Morti took a group of ‘special ed’ kids (affectionately known as Anicom) down south for the weekend for the MCM London Expo, and it actually went pretty well. It’s a success if nobody gets fatally wounded, in my book. I spend the weekend getting drunk, laughing at hilariously bad cosplay, and gaming – At DDR:UK‘s stall on Saturday, and at Funland in the Trocadero on Sunday. Boy, the latter place is big, and I wouldn’t mind going back there again the next time I head to the capital. The convention itself was okay, but maybe a little too big for my tastes. I definitely preferred Auchinawa and Kitacon because they feel so small and cosy, and it would be great it we can get some small groups going to other conventions over the coming year.

Haum, I seem to be going a little hyperlink crazy, but never mind. As for Anicom in general this year… *sigh*. It’s a shame it ended up like this, I was hoping we could have a good year. Several things went wrong – I fucked up the shows at the beginning, we got bad opinions from some of our advertising materials, and I ended up pretty much on my own after Christmas running the society, with the other two dealing with personal issues / work / no motivation to help the society at all. Hopefully an all-new committee should be able to sort things next year (Mole, Mizzy and Alex) and restore Anicom to it’s former glory like it was in my first year. I’ll be sticking around to help the new committee out wherever I can (although does Mole really need help? Probably not.), and no doubt I’ll be lurking around in Middlesbrough until the end of time itself.

Oh and a final note: Other people seem to be writing blogs too, so go and say hi to Allan, Dave, Kai and Emily for me :3

I’m posting this from my BlackBerry, by the way – I thought I’d try out the new app and see what it’s like. On a train to Northampton now for Kitacon, so I’ll post when I get back on Monday with a quick report : D

As I seem to be procrastinating from my practical project assignment, I might as well write something up on here about more methods of procrastination – games. I did something like this before, so I’ll have a go at it again. I’ll try and focus on just Xbox 360 stuff, as there should be enough material there… and look. Look at all the games I’ve bought in the last 3 months since I got my new console. God damnit.

Battlefield: Bad Company – Starting to enjoy realistic shootan, at least it’s not Halo.

Borderlands – Cool start, but worried that equipment management will get confusing.

Burnout Paradise – Fast, fun game. Online is okay, when others aren’t retarded.

Fallout 3 – Wow, big game. For a completionist, will take months.

Forza 2 – Never been a fan of realistic racing. Still, quite good.

Lost: Via Domus – Pretty crap story, bro (coming from a Lost fan).

Mirror’s Edge – Great mechanics, quite short but surprisingly addictive. Grab the DLC.

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland -It’s not THPS2, but I like it. Nobody else does.

Battlefield 1943 (XBLA) -Great fun, really getting into the Battlefield series now.

Carcassonne (XBLA) -Wanted to try for ages, and it’s pretty fun stuff.

Castle Crashers (XBLA) -HACKAN, SLASHAN, BEATAN, SCROLLAN, PRINCESS RESCUAN.

DOOM (XBLA) – Still quite scary, even now. Ch4 custom levels are dickish.

Perfect Dark (XBLA) – Faithful update. Seems a bit easy, but great retro fun.

‘Splosion Man (XBLA) – SPLODE SPLODE SPLODE. Hardcode mode can go to hell.

Hopefully I’ll be back with more frequent updates soon. For now, back to coding…

Still don’t have access from home. Will have to do some more poking.

I might as well get around to doing one ‘top 2009′ list (even through it’s late), and here’s mine for technology I purchased this year (but not necessarily released this year):

1) BlackBerry Pearl 8100

Aquired around November (for free!) to replace a breaking Motorola Razr v3, and it’s a great phone that does nearly everything I want it to. Upgrading to a phone that can actually access the internet / MSN / Facebook / Twitter is a big step-up for me, and yet I still want to go bigger and better – maybe to a later model that can use 3G and WiFi. Not that I have the money, of course, but I guess that’s part of the ‘crackberry’ addiction.

2) Sandisk Sansa Clip+

I lost my Creative Zen Stone at some point in October (it had served me well), and took the opportunity to upgrade to something better. The Clip+ came well recommended from various portable media websites, yet it wasn’t advertised very well at all in the UK, and it was being sold dirt cheap, so even better. It’s a fantastic little thing with 8GB internal storage and expandable with microSDHC cards, and I’m glad I bought it. And so are the other people I know who own one, including my father. If you’re looking for something cheap and good, go for it.

3) Microsoft Xbox 360

So I actually got around to purchasing a next-generation console this year, and I’m glad I did, as I’m enjoying it far more than the Wii. I’ve enjoyed games like GTA IV (100%’d, including all DLC), Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge, and I still have a big stack of 30+ I’ve bought over the past month to play through at some point… although with the current state of university work, it doesn’t look like I’ll have much free time in the future at all. Hurr.

Fluxx (created by Looney Labs) is, put simply, a card game with changing rules. The basic rules, turn structure and even winning conditions are all determined by the cards currently in play at the time, which makes for a very interesting programming project. It uses a specially-designed deck, and contains several types of cards:

• Keepers are cards that can be played in front of you, in order to meet goal requirements.
• Creepers are cards which stop the player from winning, therefore most be passed onto others or discarded to win.
• Goals define the win conditions of a game, and can be changed at any point. Usually there can only be one active at a time, and requires a pair of specific keepers to win.
• Action cards can be played in order to change the playing field by re-arranging cards, swapping hands, and all manner of different things.
• New Rule cards change the base rules themselves, mostly saying how many cards can be drawn and played each turn, but can get more complicated (see below).

It really is an interesting game to design and program, especially with the mutable rules. For example, there’s a New Rule card called ‘Inflation’, which adds +1 to each numerical value on ANY card, which means storing all numbers on cards as variables instead of hard-coding. Constantly checking and modifying rule states and turn structures should be a challenge as well, but it’s not really graphically-intensive. I think it’s a game that would work very well on the GP2X handheld, and that Keith or Richard might appreciate it a little more than the standard broken platformer demos that seem to be on the handhelds in the lab. I’m hoping to get the graphical side of the engine up and running before Christmas (it’s coming along pretty well so far), and allow plenty of time for testing (although that’s probably not gonna happen, hurr).

I’ve managed to restore everything pretty quickly, with props to Host Media UK for the cheap and fast hosting service I’m now on. I fucking love Fantastico. I lost a few months of blog entries, but I managed to copy the text over from LiveJournal, so it’s all good. It’s made me remember the value of the blog, and now I wonder whether I’ll be able to go for post-a-day again. Wish me luck. See you tomorrow

The final year modules seem to have settled in, working on a few things at the moment. Most of my concentration is going to the Games Development module, working with Allan to develop a 2D adventure game engine in XNA by Christmas. The creative guys are bringing some initial assets together well for our presentation in just over a week’s time, so I hope we’ll have something to show from the programming side. The other independent module that I can start working on now is Practical Project, and I’m still not sure what to do for it. Something graphics-wise probably, because I’m not doing any 3D modules and I’d like to learn Direct3D – Tyrone’s my project supervisor, so he’s helping me decided a project. I shoudl e-mail him about it, actually.

Having to learn Java in the Multiplayer Game Development module isn’t too bad, although the course tutoring seems a little rushed from Jean-Luc. For anyone on the module, I’d suggest picking up Core Java Vol. 1 – it’s on the Safari Books website if you’re a student, and it’s helping me tremendously. Games AI is going alright, although I need to read more LISP reference material to understand the syntax. I also need to do more GP2X research.

So… yeah. Busy. But I’m enjoying it, and that’s what counts.

I’m looking forward to this year because I’m part of Anicom’s committee along with Bob and Morti. And it’s not just about the animu (although I’ve been running around frantically trying to get the show selection sorted the past two weeks) – It’s about making sure the first-years have fun, be social, and make friends. Most people are usually on games courses, meaning that sometimes they can’t be the most social people… so we try and help them along by introducing them to people with similar interests. And the more involved they get with the society, the greater the chance they’ll make more friends – yes, that means you, the fresher reading this. Join in and stuff. You won’t regret it.

The first few weeks of Anicom have gone surprisingly better than last year’s… well, disaster. We drew in plenty of people at during the stall, filled OL7 on the night, and ran a great games day on the Friday. Phil provided a great chiptune night in the second week, and the second session was just as popular as the first. So… yeah. Things are going very well, and I hope it stays this way.

So I’m now settled back in the ‘boro, everything’s found it’s own place in the new house, and nearly all of the utility bills are sorted out – 02 still haven’t activated the internet service, but that should be done by Monday, fingers crossed. The major issue was sorting out the pre-paid gas meter, which hadn’t been used for a year and had over £200 of debt on it. I must give a thanks to Kexgill for what they’ve done with the house, which was a complete trash when we viewed it a few months ago. New flooring, furniture, mattresses, wall coverings, the lot… I’d have to say that the house is better than the Python one I had last year, actually. We also managed to get a cheap TV for the living room off eBay, currently hooked up to a PS2 and two metal dance mats, which should be amusing as I flail around like a retard.

I’ve been playing Burnout Paradise on the evenings to keep me entertained, and it’s a pretty good game. It’s quite addictive as well, seeing as I played it for 6+ hours yesterday and ended up with a headache. Once you have the later racing cars, it’s like “HOLYFUCKINGSHITTHISISFUCKINGFASTAAAAAHHHH *crash*”, which is hilarious when you’re shouting at the screen. It does get a bit repetitive after a while, and the fact that all the events keep resetting until I get the final license is bullshit, but I don’t really mind doing them again. It’s fun, and that what games should be, right?