aNew iPod

It would seem that my non-mainstream, semi-generic, quasi-immortal music player, called by other people a Creative Zen Micro finally is laid to rest. It led an exciting life, surviving three devastating blows, and kept on chugging until now. And now, an iReplacement will take its place, since they seem to work so well.

So, the life story: First, I dropped it. It would probably have broken it, except it shipped with a protective case that did its job. At least that time; the thing is slippery. I’m not even kidding, a Zen Micro is pretty hard to keep a hold of, especially once your hand starts sweating in the summer, and you’re trying to walk the dog… etc. etc. Anyway, the second time, the battery became fidgety. If it wasn’t in the right position, there was, in effect, no battery connected. This made running while listening impossible, and charging wasn’t just another passive activity. I had to sit there and hold the battery in place to get it to full charge. And then my band went to Hershey Park. Every year for at least the past 5, it has rained at the park the band goes to (King’s Dominion, Busch Gardens, doesn’t matter). So, of course, we all got soaked by the sudden downpour, including all of our stuff. Like my backpack with my Zen in it. Miraculously, it seemed to short out the right points: my battery was only an issue if it was bumped an abnormally large amount. Downside: the audio jack also started to degrade. I think that I read somewhere that this is actually pretty common, due to Creative’s lack of reinforcement at the solder points. It is repairable in your own garage, if you have a soldering iron. But I don’t own one, nor did I want to mess with my finicky Zen any more, so I just dealt with a randomly-appearing low-pass filter. It survived until now, and then the battery just… fell through. There is a metal plate behind the battery, which can, it seems, come loose with enough time and/or force. Now it refuses to turn on. End of story; it’s just plain dead.

What next? An iPod Nano, of course. They seem to be at least a little more reliable, and my dad seems to have no trouble with his 3^rd-generation Nano. I’ll post my thoughts about it, too, but so far, it seems a far better alternative. There are truckloads of accessories (as opposed to the 3.5 offered by Radioshack and the like), and plenty of support. Plus my friends will stop bugging me about my “knockoff.”

DvorakMUSH

Another stumble-upon discovery. Some of you may have heard of the Dvorak card game. It’s similar to the game 1000 blank white cards. Both involve nomic/semi-nomic gameplay, meaning that you can create, modify, and destroy cards at any time. However, Dvorak is special. It has a MUSH. It doesn’t really stand for anything specifically, though there are many backronyms for it, including Multi-user Shared Hallucination. Strange as it is, it’s the one that I see most often, reading over random MUSHcode articles. But what it lets you do is play Dvorak over the internet using a modified (source MUSHcode to do the same for yourself is here) TinyMUSH engine.

The commands are pretty simple: drawcard to draw a card, newcard to try to make a new card (requires approveal from other players…). playcard (followed by a card number) plays the card, automatically to the table (for Things) or to the discard pile (for Actions). It’s pretty free-form, allowing other player’s hands to be looked at (viewhand [player]), cards to be taken from the deck (or anywhere, with givecard [card number] to [player]).

Kevan Davis has done a very good job of “hacking” the TinyMUSH engine to the Dvorak game’s complex play. It’s a very effective and versatile system, and if you are interesting at all in the game, I suggest you check it out. A friend and I play pretty regularly, every few days, tuning our own card game to our needs and whims. The MUSH’s built-in chat feature helps, though is always better… >_>

A Brawl to Die For

In case you didn’t hear yet, Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii) has confirmed online play (WiFi, technically…). The site has more information than you’ll find here, but anyway…

There are two ways to play. Both ways, you can fight a sandbag while you’re waiting.

First off, just against friends: you register your friend’s Wii with the Wii Nubmer, and then you can check their status, play, etc. Don’t know if you have to re-do this, or it comes from the directory in the Wii Message Board.

You can also play against random people on the internet. No names/Wii numbers/anything are shown; you might as well be playing AI, except they are real people.

Among other things, they have also confirmed the final control schemes. Yes, schemes. There are 4. Along with the usual “names” system (You know, from Melee?), each name also has personalized button configurations.

Everybody Dies

I finally got around to actually buying Defcon. No, you didn’t misread that link… the website is indeed everybody-dies.com. This game is for two kinds of people: the ones who enjoy strategy games (me), and the ones who like to blow up things (me).

It’s not very straightforward. Defcon is not a game that you try to win. You try to lose less than everybody else playing (up to 6 players online, full AI supported). This will all become clear in a second.

The game takes about 30-40 minutes on the average x5 speed (you have x1, x5, x10, and x20). It progresses through 5 DEFCON levels. There is Defcon 5, where it’s nonviolent chess; this is where the game starts. Everybody places their buildings and fleets and whatnot. At Defcon 4 (6 minutes in), Radars take effect and you can see what they reveal of your enemies’ territory and units. Defcon 3 (12 minutes) really takes off. Nothing more can be added to the world; units and buildings left over are lost now. Naval and air combat is available, and the fun begins. Defcon 2 (20 minutes) is simple: one away from 1. Nothing different from Defcon 3, gameplay-wise, however. And at Defcon 1 (30 minutes into the game), nuclear war is declared. Bombers, submarines, silos, everything. Half of the world is often a white radiation splotch.

Here’s the breakdown of winning: kill everybody else (+1 points per million kills for you, -2/mil for them), defend your homeland (-2/mil for you, +1/mil for them). In the final Tutorial mission, you play a quick 1v1… I ended up winning 100+ to 6, even though the AI knocked me down to single digits early on. A great game.

Now, the download is very convenient. Just get the “demo” client from the website. Try it, if you want. (Restrictions in a second). If you want to buy it, cool. Just do it from the Introversion store (like I did), or buy it at another place (AAFES has it in some PXs…). Enter the key into your installation… poof. Full game. Yeah, this did spring up keygens. But support Introversion and get their great game! (I also suggest looking into Uplink or Darwinia…)

Here are the restrictions on the unregistered client; there aren’t many. No special modes (Big World, Diplomacy, etc.). Only 1 AI player in a game that you make. You can’t join a game using a mod, or with another demo player already in it. That’s about it. You can still do the tutorials, play with 5 full players, and get a good taste for the game.