Achaea - Dreams of Divine Lands

http://www.achaea.com

I used to play this game often a couple of years back.. one of the few text-based MMORPGs that are actually good and immersive.

The account is free and no downloads required, as a simple Java applet opens up and connects you to the Achaean world. We move and play by entering commands that are quite logical and simple. There's also a 'Newbie channel' that connects you to a sort of ham-radio network where you can keep asking your problems with the game and you'll be helped by the experienced players on the go. Pretty neat.

The world has six city-states and lots of dungeons and waste-lands around them to go 'make your bones' (kill a few monsters to get experience). The lands are multi-level, so you can go deep into a dungeon vertically as well as horizontally. The game's pretty open-ended, so a player can choose what he wants to do in his game-life: be a warrior, merchant, politician, thief etc.. (maybe I repeated two professions.. ;-) ) It has lots of races, Elves, Men, Dwarves etc etc, and one can become great by completing quests, or competing with other players or simply being good at whatever one wants to do. The ultimate goal is to become "The Greater Dragon", achieved on reaching level 99.. which gives you in essence a lot of goodies and you're a big guy then. :-) The game's pretty nice with fast-paced action, and quite a complex fighting system..

One thing I did not like about the game was that its too easy to get killed and at some points, it gets too mundane and we keep getting lost. Its a little confusing finding your way around the place, especially in the wastelands.

Another thing I think the game needs (though maybe the philosophy of the game is to be like it is now), is a full-scale 3D environment. Slick graphics coupled with the game-play would make Achaea a killer project.

I travelled back in time!

Yeah I did! I beat the system, stuck one up theirs. My Temporal Re-alignment.

See, its just a matter of perception. Time is the perception of events flowing by.. its a "perception" of what's going on. We naturally set a certain time as morning, and fervently believe it to be morning. Suppose I was brought up to believe that the green thing that sits on trees, flies around and eats chillies is a rat, instead of a parrot, I would fanatically believe that it is indeed a rat!

So, since I get a little loony around the pre-exam days, especially if I have a lot of course still left and am a few hours short to cover it all.. I decided to simply travel back in time.

A couple of days back, I was supposed to spend all afternoon revising Physics, and the entire evening doing Chemistry till 10 PM, and the rest of the time, till about 2 Am doing Maths. I got lazy and slept off on my table all afternoon, and the Physics was critical.. I had to finish it otherwise I would lose a lot of free marks. So I got up cursing myself at 6:30 PM, and mutely cried out at the injustice of time being uni-directional and linear. Then I got an idea. I simply set my clock back to 4:30 PM, and fervently and fanatically believed it to be 4:30 PM and considered that the Sun had simply decided to go home early and that I was perfectly on schedule.

And guess what? I did work right on schedule. I finished my Physics & Chemistry by 10 PM, only wondering a little as to why everyone had emptied the streets and gone to bed so early and what was wrong with the world anyway? ;-) Then at 1 AM, I finished Maths early and felt very happy that I had completed things right on schedule! And derived greater pleasure on seeing that the real time was 3 AM and that I had returned home victorious after saving my past from losing lots of free marks.

Cool idea eh?!

PS: This idea is only applicable for single day journeys. Multiple day journeys will probably end up with you turning up for an exam after everyone's solved the paper, gone home and you disturbing the night-watchman's sleep.

"That language" just got cooler!

I had always thought of Perl as "that language". Today after looking at a link (click here) sent by a friend of mine, I realised that it is way too cool!

Beginner's Guide to FPS Gaming

OK, nothing too great, just that I've noticed kid players (not in terms of age, but in terms of skill) in UT and Quake (all versions) type FPS games run in intricate straight lines and turn at right angles. I mean, I just fall off the chair laughing when I see such stuff, notwithstanding the fact that I too must have done that for a couple of days when I was a toddler. Anyhow, the point is that "RUNNING IN PREDICTABLE PATTERNS IS IDIOTIC AND MAKES YOU TARGET PRACTICE FOR OTHERS".

So if you're not comfortable with aiming and jumping, just trying running in a zig-zag manner. And even the zig-zag should not be with constant time-period. Just move randomly. And after some practise, you'll be able to aim at people perfect even while running zig-zag. Never stop moving.

And please! "MOVING YOUR CAMERA AROUND, I.E YOUR MOUSE WILDLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS DOES *NOT* MAKE YOU MOVE RANDOMLY". Believe me, I've seen players doing that too.. moving your camera/gun randomly is standing at one place and twisting your neck & head around wildly as if its going to fall off.

Once you're comfortable with moving around randomly, start jumping. The first thing I tell newbie players is to use W+A+S+D instead of normal arrow keys. That is because you are going to find it really easy to have a big space-bar configured to jump rather than some miniscule R-Shift key or something. So while using W+A+S+D for movement, you just can hit your thumb on a large spacebar and you jump. Its really awkward doing that with arrow keys. Jumping is really really important. It makes it really hard for anyone to aim at you. And in UT, double jump, i.e jumping again once you're in mid air takes you to a height that can create a psycological impact on your target. Attacking from higher elevations always gives you a psycological advantage. Again, please don't jump in predictable fashions. You still should move while in mid air. Touching the ground only to jump again. And after a lot of practice, you'll be able to aim perfectly at people even while in mid-air. Lots of beginners give up, since that requires a lot of practice and playing with strong players. But don't overdo jumping. Jumping and shooting when there is a stationary or a stupid *straight-line* player is idiotic. Run, and shoot with a careful aim. Don't waste ammo. Your gunfire will draw people, especially since experienced players always listen carefully to the sounds around them. Anyone who wastes too much ammo is a kid. And they come in for their prey. Always.

This brings me to the last piece of advice: Play Online. Play online regularly, and play with only the best. Don't try to boost your ego by playing against bots or equal-level or below-level players. Play in rooms with really godlike players. In the first few months, 99% of the time you will end with a zero score or something similar to that. But the experience you get will soon boost your skill to something far more than what you had earlier.

That's all I have to say. There may be certain things that several of you gamers out there might not agree with, but I'm talking through personal experience.

Of Global Conflicts...

For some wierd reason, I got interested in trying to find the total number of global conflicts (civil wars, proxy wars, disputes etc) and decided to pop around the internet listing out.. and was really shocked to see that I have already filled 3 sides of register sheets and still counting. Wierd.

Useful links:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/disputes.htm
http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/
http://www.ndcf.org/Conflict_List/World2002/2002Conflictlist.htm

I dunnit!

No single event in my life has EVER driven me do something as insane as this: Create a blog to celebrate it. :-P. I mean I've done stupid things, but celebrating by creating a blog.. that tops them all..

Anyway, here's what I need to celebrate about: I FINALLY managed to design (actually redesign) and work out a circuit for my own guitar distortion effect! Alright, it might not seem such a big thing for most reading this, but you can hardly imagine the agonizing nights.. months of them actually, trying to get hold of components: first by travelling half-way across the city to the only respectable electronics shop I knew, and then resorting to breaking the solder on old junk electronics and salvaging parts.. and believe me, nothing's worse for your fingers than that (except of course if you decide to give them a bath with acids, like I did in the school lab). Then meeting with failure after failure when the guitar WOULD NOT just make any sound in the speakers.. or actually, the circuits wouldn't either make any changes in the sound (read:distortion) or they simply wouldn't send out anything. I could bang the guitar for all I cared, and the circuits wouldn't emit a beep to commiserate.

Oh and not just the circuit, my guitar too has a story.. I was broke (spent all my funds on computer upgrades) at the time this story is based, and all I had was an acoustic non-amplified simple guitar (I love it). One day before our farewell party from school, I and couple of other friends got this wierd idea of holding a rock show (you know.. play a couple of neat songs) at the farewell party for us, as a surprise.. we would be conspiring with a few 11th grade juniors to set up our stuff before-hand and all of a sudden we would jump on-stage and you know.. do the thing to 'shock and awe'.

Anyhow, we started jamming at my friend's place and I had temporarily hooked up some pickups to my acoustic and was playing with some distortion software (Guitar FX BOX) on the computer. That friend is a very talented keyboardist, and had played at some really cool places, and used to play keyboards only.. hated string instruments. I came to know the extent of that hate when I happened to look into one of his cupboards, and to my utmost horror saw a beaten-up, dusty, man-handled electric guitar that otherwise seemed to be very elegant in its days. It looked very very old though, so old that its manufacturer's name and tuning knobs had worn off. It looked vintage. He said that it had been lying inside that cupboard for a decade (did I mention that the guitar had around it a thriving eco-system of spiders and other creepy-crawlies?). And he gave it off to me as he said it was apparent that he didn't want it. An electric guitar for free?! Who'd refuse that.. of course I had to repair it a lot, work out the internal wiring as mysteriously, someone had pulled out all the wires in it. I had to fix a new spring-board too, as someone had salvaged it out of it probably.

Now, back to the story, which will end in 32 words: Today, the evening before my university entrance exam, I have finally managed to work out the circuit (and hear my speakers emit those heavenly crunchy sounds.. sounding exactly like the legendary tube-screamer overdriven). All that was missing in it all these months was grounding/earthing the right spots! Hurray!

Story ended, now about myself: Nothing. I'm just an electronics hobbyist, avid guitarist, avid programmer, and graduated from high-school a month back (12th grade or its equivalent). Love music, all types (except rap and pop.. can't bear it). Favorite genres: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock. I love classic rock and actually all rock and metal music, right from Led Zep, Pink Floyd, GnR, KISS, to Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, Machine Head, Slayer etc..
Most respected bands: Metallica, KISS, Slayer, GnR, Led Zep.

I don't know if anyone reads this post or not (I don't care, I just wanted to express the triumphant feelings). If anyone wants to really follow this blog hoping to get some more posts, I think you should check back in intervals of decades or so.. I was too lazy to even delete my last blog, let alone open it and write a new post. ;-)