LJ Referrals, Perl Geekery, 3L337 G4M3R 4CT10N, Webtestery...

[thorfinn]

LJ Referrals

• Warren Ellis, a.k.a. mistersleepless is pre-publishing one of his upcoming novels, entitled "Listener", plus a lot of random side-fiction. You should all go read everything on his LJ.
• docbrite is Poppy Z. Brite, and her journal is quite interesting.
• officialgaiman is Neil Gaiman's blog's RSS feed.
• nsfw is q_skud_'s "Not Safe For Work" syndicated blog, with plenty of interesting rantage.
• rebelcoyote is a US soldier in Iraq. His journal is, as a result, quite an interesting read.

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Perl Geekery

Template Toolkit is truly the module of champions. It is the bestest template engine ever, and I have no idea how I lived without it.

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3L337 G4M3R 4CT10N

Well, I finished Homeworld 2's single player campaign last weekend. It's really quite good. Took Homeworld, and just plain made it better. entrippy? I can see why you needed to pull some long hours to tweak it at the end there, and I strongly suspect you were right to have done so. It's good, and I can see where it could have been dire, if the mission triggers didn't fall out just so... It felt vaguely like the AI was a bit stupid, but I'll get to playing the multiplayer AI at some point, and that should tell me for sure. The AI may not really be stupid, but we shall see. I must admit to being curious to try a different fleet-plan through the campaign and see how things play out.

I wound up mostly settling on purely gunship corvettes, purely bombers in the fighters, and purely torpedo frigates (minus two defense frigates and two marine frigates), switching to 50% torpedo frigates and ion frigates once the destroyer class capitals became available. That seemed to give me good offensive and defensive coverage, especially if I mostly stuck to the "Frigate Strike Force" configuration. Handling the fleet in bulk was really quite nice, and it seems to me that the defender has a lot of advantage. Perhaps the defender advantage was due to my fleet-plan, since gunship corvettes plus torpedo frigates makes for a very defense-heavy fleet, with the primary offensive craft being the bombers and capital ships.

Anyway... pounding the AI to hell and gone seemed to be mostly a matter of ensuring that my fleet stayed in defensive mode, and plus some careful selection of incoming targets. The odd bit of selecting damaged fighters and corvettes and telling them to dock worked well too, as did ensuring that my fleet stuck together as much as possible. Making sure I had a full complement of resource collectors, and dividing them up into two groups of ten (ten for repairs, ten for collection) helped a fair bit too. Oh, and carefully avoiding the hazardous-materials areas of space entirely, on the maps that had them, since ships don't auto-avoid hazmat space.

I also decided that marine frigates really weren't worth the effort for fleet engagements - it was generally easier to make sure I won each battle sufficiently well to be able to fill out the fleet and have at least 30000 RUs spare, at which point blowing up the enemy ships and recycling them was far easier than micromanaging the attention required to actually conduct successful boarding actions whilst there's a full fleet engagement going on. I made a similar decision regarding minelayer corvettes - I just didn't bother with them at all.

We shall see how that plays out one I engage in some AI multiplayer action... I should get together with tyggerjai for some Hot Multiplayer Action ™ soon, methinks.

Oh, and I shall get Medieval Total War ™ next, on the grounds that I really liked Shogun ™ Total War, and Medieval looks good too.

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Webtestery

The Ultimate LiveJournal Obsession Test
Category	Your Score	Average LJer
Community Attachment	40.86% There's something special about you. Every once in awhile, one of your topics gets everyone chatting.	26.22%
MemeSheepage	45.61% An expert on multiple-choice questions, an whiz at the cut-and-paste	31.22%
Original Content	33.87% Some stories must be told - and you're the one to tell them	41.28%
Psychodrama Quotient	2.41% Warning: Can Flame When Necessary	16.79%
Attention Whoring	27.27% You do a little dance whenever someone friends you	22.44%
Take The Ultimate LiveJournal Obsession Test and see how you match up!

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I Am A: Chaotic Neutral Elf Mage Bard

Alignment:
Chaotic Neutral characters are unstable, and frequently insane. They believe in disorder first and foremost, and will thus strive for that disorder in everything they do. This means that they will do whatever seems 'fun' or 'novel' at any given time.

Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class:
Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.

Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Deity:
Azuth is the Lawful Neutral god of wizards and mages. He is also known as the High One, and is the Patron of Wizards. His followers believe that a systematic approach to magic is the best, and they strive for calm and caution in order to avoid accidents. They wear shimmering robes, and are well-versed in magic, as well as typical priest spells. Azuth's symbol is a hand with a raised, glowing index finger.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

Comments

Yah

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

I'll give you a full ramble soonish on the hows and whys and tweaks... and I can also "fix" things, for ya :)

Re: Yah

[seedy-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that at some point when you hit town again I'm going to temporarily "lose" my boyfriend whilst you geek at each other. Colour me not surprised in the slightest. :)

Re: Yah

[thorfinn]

We should invite Morgs and Kate over for dinner. :)

Re: Yah

[thorfinn]

Oo, fixes! And yeah, I think we need to hold a 3l337 g4m3rz night once you're back, so you can show us the error of our ways and beat the pants off us. Also, as I replied in drwally's journal, I really didn't have that much trouble with M04. Scraped it through first time through, then got creamed in M05 due to having a severely understrength fleet. So I went back and did it all again... I must admit, I was hoping for a series of Vaygr missions. I was expecting about 100+ hours of SP, and only got 50 or so. Might just have to play it again with your fixes and try out some different fleet-plans.

Total War

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

"Total War" sucked my life away for a long, long time :)

Though I quickly gave up playing the battles out myself because my PC simply couldn't deal with rendering all the little men. Which was a bit of a shame because playing out the smaller battles was quite fun.

Seiges with cannons are rather amusing :)

Yes.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Yes to Hot Multiplayer Action. This weekend?

Yes also, double yes and a topping of absofuckinglutely to Template::Toolkit. Those of us more in the webcontent/XML->HTML space Already Know This (tm). Template Toolkit ownz you, all your girlfriends and your little Toto, too. For happy fun goodness combine with XML::LibXML/LibXSLT, HTML::Mason, and never have to do any actual work ever again.

And goof me your mobile number. I have happy fun gateways to set up.

sol.
.