BootheNet.com

So, It looks like I just played my fastest nethack game ever. And I’m definitely not counting a game where you just leave the Dungeons of Doom on the first turn by walking up the stairs you came down on. I’m talking about legitimately sitting down to play a game and see how far you can get.

So this one lasted 28 moves, and is the only game where the entire message log appears in my character dumpfile.

I’ve decided to attach this dumpfile so that you guys can laugh at my stupid mistake of stepping on a dart trap with a rogue. Previously, the fastest I had died was getting killed by a Succubus after drinking from a fountain on lvl 1. But I think that game went like 140 moves or so.

cboothe, chaotic male human Rogue

                              ---------
                  ---.---  # #.<......+
                  |......  ###|...$...|
                  |.....|  # #-........
                  |.....| ### ---------
   ------+---   ##....%.|# #
   |........|   # |.....|##
   |....@....#### |......#
   |........|     -------#
   |..>......
   ----------

Cboothe the Footpad     St:10 Dx:18 Co:11 In:14 Wi:11 Ch:11  Chaotic
Dlvl:1  $:0  HP:0(12) Pw:2(2) AC:7  Xp:1/1 T:28

Latest messages
  Hello cboothe, welcome to NetHack!  You are a chaotic male human Rogue.
  What do you want to ready? [- b or ?*]
  d - an uncursed potion of sickness (in quiver).
  What do you want to ready? [- b or ?*]
  b - 12 +0 daggers (in quiver).
  #
  What do you want to adjust? [a-f or ?*]
  Adjust letter to what [eg-zA-Z]?
  Moving: l - an uncursed lock pick.
  In what direction?
  You destroy the kobold zombie!
  b - a +0 dagger (in quiver).
  #
  Name an individual object? [ynq] (q)
  What do you want to name? [a-dfl or ?*]
  What do you want to name these daggers?
  A little dart shoots out at you!
  You are hit by a little dart.
  The poison was deadly...

Your inventory
  Weapons
  b - 12 +0 daggers named ammo (in quiver)
  a - a +0 short sword (weapon in hand)
  Armor
  c - an uncursed +1 leather armor (being worn)
  Potions
  d - an uncursed potion of sickness
  Tools
  l - an uncursed lock pick
  f - an uncursed sack

The sack is empty.

Final attributes
  You were fervently aligned
  Your alignment was  10
  You were stealthy
  You are dead 

You didn't know any spells.

Vanquished creatures
  a kobold zombie

Voluntary challenges
  You went without food
  You were an atheist
  You never hit with a wielded weapon
  You were illiterate
  You never genocided any monsters
  You never polymorphed an object
  You never changed form
  You used no wishes

written by Chris \\ tags: Nethack, Video Games

Just wanted to drop in a note to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

I took some pictures, Val took some as well. I’ve got mine in right now. I’ll put Val’s in the album later. Here’s the link to the album:

I also managed take some video. Now, I didn’t do any video editing at all. But I cobbled the raw video I took together just trying to get it out fast. So here it is. I apologize for shaky video and stuff, I’ll probably take this down in a couple of weeks.

I ended up getting Valerie an iPod Touch, there are tons of great apps and stuff, and with the home sharing, we only have to buy them once between us. But since her phone is provided by the school, there’s no reason for her to get an iPhone. So hopefully, she’ll enjoy it.

I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. *strange looks* Yes, I already had an Xbox 360. But unfortunately, it broke on Wednesday Evening, I was playing Fight Night Round 4 on it, and it lost the Red Colorstream, then after a little while longer, it finally gave up the ghost and quick outputting video altogether. I tried the composite cable as well, and it did the same thing. Started looking it up, seems to happen sometimes to people, and the Xbox was way out of warranty.

Unfortunately, though I don’t play too many games on it, it has become a staple in our home mainly for the streaming of Netflix to our HD TV. So it had to be replaced (It didn’t hurt that I still haven’t quite finished Dragon Age and need to do so). Anyway, So, I ended up getting an Xbox Elite. It’s much quieter than the other one, plus it has an HDMI port on it, which will be nice if I ever pick up a cable.

Alright, well, once again. Merry Christmas Everyone!!

written by Chris \\ tags: Christmas, Pictures, Video, Xbox

So, in my Facebook feed I have a friend who plays bunches and bunches of those mindjolt games, various puzzles, etc. Most of those games are crap, I’ve tried a few here and there.

Well, one day she posts the comment (after scoring a high score) that a game was ‘pretty good’, but she wished it had a preview piece feature similar to Tetris. Well, most flash games aren’t a good puzzle like Tetris is, but her comment made me try it.

And Now; I’ve been playing the darn thing in the evenings at home whenever I get a chance for the last several weeks. It is a very good game.

It’s called “Combine” I’m sure you can Google that if your interested in trying it and you’re not on Facebook. But the thing is, it’s different. It is a puzzle like Tetris, but it’s not against the clock. In fact, you have as much time as you want to place your piece each turn, the only key is how you rotate and place it.

But the kicker is that when you connect at least three circles orthogonally, the pieces don’t just disappear, they turn into a new colored ball, which you have to combine, also the pool of balls the game gives you will grow to include that color. So over time, the game will give you more balls of varying color and it slowly fills up your grid.

So, here’s my rant, I love this game, I think it’s a great game, and the low ‘twitch’ and ‘reflex’ factor make it a very interesting puzzle. But as you get to the higher difficulties, the game breaks down, in that the pool of balls I am getting are so intermixed I can no longer combine them as needed.

I feel like I’m doing the best I can, but there are people in the high score list scoring multiple hundreds of thousands of points, and the best I can get is something like 130k.

Anyway, I was bored one night and recorded my playing of the game, set it to some generic music in garage band and posted it to youtube, it happens to be my current high score game as well. Maybe you can give me some pointers?!? I sped this up 2.5 times to make it fit on youtube in the allotted 10 minutes.

To me, it looks like I’m doing pretty solid, but it breaks down fast at the higher levels.

I’ve also started playing a similar game on my iPhone. It’s called Alchemize, it has the same idea behind it. It does have a preview feature.

written by Chris \\ tags: Alchemize, Combine, Facebook, Flash, iPhone, Video, Video Games, YouTube

It looks like the stars have aligned, and I’m going to be able to go to the Tennessee Game Days again this year. You may remember that I’m not all that interested in gaming as much as I have been in the past. But the people at Tennessee Game Days are so nice, and I’ll get to meet up with some people that have become some very good “con” friends.

Plus, the cons typically reinvigorate me. Make me think about games again. But I’m not playing any of the crappy games that have gotten me in this funk lately. In fact, I’d like to stay away from new games completely. Maybe stick with some old classics that I know I’ll like and have the degree of interest and fun that I’m looking for.

The only new game I think I’m interested in playing is Planet Steam. I’ve been wanting to try it seeing as how I’ve been told it’s the best board game implementation of M.U.L.E. A game that I spent at least a few weekends of my youth playing.

Other than that, I imagine I’ll play Power Grid, Age of Steam, etc. I think I would like to get in a game of Die Macher. I wouldn’t mind playing a game of Samurai Swords. Perhaps I should add that to the geeklist.

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, M.U.L.E., Planet Steam, Tennessee Game Days, Video Games

I mentioned in a post late last week that I had started a trial account for World of Warcraft.

This game came out in 2004 and wasn’t really something I was all that interested in playing. One reason is I didn’t even have broadband until 2005 anyway, and at that point I never really spent much time on a computer gaming anyway.

But I wanted to give it a shot and finally got around to it.

So I started two characters. I did an orc warlock. Got him up to 16th level But he dies everywhere. I can’t get any descent armor and the voidwalker is a poor excuse for a pet. Plus he has no ranged damage dealing except his spells which all use so much freaking mana. That when I finish killing something I sit down to drink spring water and get my mana back, and boom. The thing respawns and starts attacking me again.

I need for something to stay dead when I kill it. At least until I leave the area or something. That’s freaking as hell. (Diablo II things stay dead till you log out, seems they could implement something like that).

Next I started a Night Elf Hunter. This character was much easier. After he got his pet. I didn’t even have to stop playing most of the time. The pet kept the creature off me while I stayed back and bowed them down. This was actually kind of entertaining. The only thing I had to be careful of was staying away from large groups, and pulling off one or two with my pet. Of course, with the respawning I had to usually pull them and kill them pretty quick to complete my quests.

So I’m go along, completing quests. But I never seem to get anywhere in my quest log. As of the time of this posting I’m still at 12-15 quests in my log. Everytime I get any progress going forward. I get another three in my log. With no end in site. And a couple of the quests are just there to piss you off.

I mean seriously. Walk to this town (which takes about 20 minutes to do in game time) and give a message to this guy. Then when you give him the message, he asks you to take the response back (and hence another 20 minutes of game time walking back). Seriously I didn’t sign into World of Walking… And they won’t even let you get a horse till you are level 30.

So, I decided I would try to get this hunter as far as I could on the trial account which ends on May 10th. But tonight, I’m playing it and I’m completing quests and notice I don’t get any experience for them…

I read the Trial FAQ. Apparently I’m limited to Level 20 in the trial account. So, I guess you can tell, I’ll most likely not be getting this game any time soon. If I could pick up the Battlechest for 20 bucks or something I’ll pick it up and play it for 30 days and see how far I can go on that, but at 40 bucks for only 30 days, and then 15 dollars/month after that I’ll pass.

For now I’ll stick with Diablo II…

written by Chris \\ tags: Blizzard, Diablo, Diablo 2, WOW