Hour after hour, our work is never over.

Taking a Labor day break to code some more, and thought I’d share the background noise.

(YouTube makes an excellent jukebox, by the way.)

 -N. Noctis

Real Gamers (Running from the Ds and Ls and killing all the Os)

Given the amount of fourm flaming spam that has gone across the ‘net on the subject of the best gamers, and the games they play, I thought I’d weigh in. (And, of course, I need to balance the last post with something far geekier and less serious.)

Real gamers are not those who have beaten Halo, on legendary, using only the DDR pad/Guitar Hero controller, in under two hours. Real gamers are not those who have written their own entire storylines and add-on characters for their game of choice, even with original art. Real gamers are not those who play DDR for hours on end on the highest difficulty in two-pad mode without missing a step. Real gamers are not even those who play Serious Sam on Serious without dying once.

Real gamers have ascended a (pacifist, vegan, atheist, illiterate) Tourist.

For those who have no idea what I meant by that, I suggest you seek enlightenment from the Oracle at http://www.nethack.org/. NetHack is one of, if not the, oldest game under continual development, is the forefather of pretty much every modern RPG, and is the most deviously entertaining game ever written. To give you an idea of the nefarity of this game’s following, consider the following entry on the bug list: “Disintegration breath hitting equipment carried by monsters is not handled properly; if the monster life-saves the situation is worse; saddles are especially troublesome.” The game allows you do do all sort of odd and unusual actions, and will respond uniquely to each. In short, the DevTeam thinks of everything.

NetHack is incredibly addictive, try it and see. At first, you may balk. “But….it’s text!” So was Zork, and every MUD ever to rot a GPA to nothing. ”I’d rather be playing Everquest!” Everquest II wishes it was NetHack Lite. (See http://eq2players.station.sony.com/news_archive_content.vm?month=042007&id=1114) As addiction sets in: “The grid bugs eat me!” Elbereth is your best friend. In no time, you’ll be naming your daggers, cavorting with succubi, and hunting wraith corpses with your new ‘d,’ ‘D‘.

 So go on, try it. And remember, if all else fails, The Oracle knows all.

 -N. Noctis