Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Arcanum’s a delectable little RPG gem. It was developed by Troika Games before they made the awesome Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and then had to drop dead because they didn’t get any funds.

It’s probably the last major D&D-style 2D RPG in the vein of Fallout, Planescape or Baldur’s Gate, and I personally think it plays out better than any of these (it could be the age, and besides, I’m playing a patched version, I hear the original is very buggy). The interface is slick, gameplay is stylish and while I’m no fan of combat of this very genre, Arcanum handles it suitably.

What I like best about the game is its Steampunk art style, despite being set in a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves etc., we see the marvels of the Victorian age – blimps, lanterns, flintlock guns and dapper suits. The UI has a very Victorian aesthetic, wood and polished metal, the dialogue is lovely with its 19th Century trappings.

I think this is largely the handiwork of Leonard Boyarsky, who also worked on creating the story, setting, aesthetic and dialogue of Fallout (the story, setting, aesthetic and dialogue happen to be Fallout’s shining points, the rest of the game was fairly passable).

The character-creation is reminiscent of D&D, but fairly different. Using character points and such, I’ve created a spiffy Half-Orc, skilled in Charm and Stun and Spike Traps as well as some prowess in prowling and pickpocketing.

Wikipedia

Die Resident Shield Die

Disabling AVG’s Resident Shield made my PC so much faster, I almost want to cry. I was fiddling around in AVG settings today after getting a License error and reinstalling AVG to eliminate it.

Something strange crawled up to the back of my skull as I read that Resident Shield was checking every file I used. Every single file, that’s must be like 20 files per second or something, assuming standard usage. Could this be what was crippling my system?

I disabled it, but Windows gave me a nasty message telling me that my Anti-Virus has been turned off. Despite my best efforts to convince it otherwise, it didn’t budge. I disabled its monitoring instead, which is good riddance as it sometimes lied that AVG wasn’t running when the AVG icon was right next to the goddamn Security Alert in the System Tray.

So things feel very fast now, it’s great! Not sure if this is temporary or what, repeated usage speeds things up as always, but really, things are much faster with the resident shield off. And while checking every file I use is a nice offer, I think I’ll rely on the old-fashioned firewall-and-scan approach, in addition to the classic internet-common-sense technique.

Epic Opening Sentence

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.

must… get… out… of… bed…

‘Runway’ Poster Rips Off ‘xXx’ Poster

Found the trailer in a Marathi paper. I don't even know what the movie is or about (it doesn't even have an IMDB listing, which is very weird), but all I could think of when I saw the poster was xXx. Jeez, if you have to plagiarise a poster, you could at least steal it off of a movie that doesn't play on HBO every other month.

Edit: Saw this in the papers a couple days after posting this. Pretty sweet if whoever wrote that up saw this post, I’m doing pretty good at coming up on top in Google these days. >_>

KEEP RECORDING THIS, PABLO! a.k.a. [REC]

Despite being a zombie myself, I have only a passing interest in zombie movies and zombie media in general, largely because modern zombie media is unscary and also, very often, stupid.

But not this, not [REC]. I didn’t even know it was a zombie movie at first really, because it isn’t advertised as so. No, it’s advertised and appreciated as a horror movie because that’s what it is: a horror movie.

I got this film from 4chan’s /x/ board, where it’s very popular as the scariest film evar and stuff, and they ain’t kidding. [REC] is a very scary movie, and it achieves this effect via intensity. You don’t have Hollywood special effects and other fancy shiznit, it just grabs you by the eyeballs (or bites you by the eyeballs, as one scene would have it) and doesn’t let go.

This is how horror movies are made, Hollywood, sheez. I’m not going to watch the less-scary Hollywood remake of this, called “Quarantine” because I don’t want to see it bastardized like that. [REC] is a horror masterpiece, you don’t remake it.

Goddamn, two scenes near the end: absolutely incredible. Insane.

Eden of the East

This Production IG anime has my attention. It’s one of the few anime with a completely original plot, and it’s pretty cool. What’s important I guess, is that it stays cool and doesn’t fall from promise like Xam’d did.

Set in modern day (without, surprisingly, any bizarre changes), Eden of East follows a girl sight-seeing in America who comes across a completely naked guy without any memories of himself, and only an unusually high-tech cellphone and a pistol in hand.

After a couple episodes in the US, the action shifts to Japan as Akira Takizawa (the former naked dude) tries to find out who he was, how he ended up where he did, and pretty much what the hell’s up. This wouldn’t sound so intimidating a concept in itself until you bring into the picture the possibility that Akira is a terrorist, and having committed mass murder, and that the situation he is in, is all a game.

A pretty screwy plot that’s still being unfolded (only 4 episodes so far, and I’ve finished 3). I love the visuals: Production IG means that the animation quality is top-notch and the OP and ED, while not particularly memorable tracks are the most visually beautiful I’ve ever seen (okay, the OP still only matches Ergo Proxy).

I see some Ghost in the Shell themes (the project is written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, director of GitS), like heavy use of imagery and references. Probably the biggest reference to GitS is the Falling Man-style logo of what I think is the Seleçao System (which is, I believe, the game.

The quote on it reads “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoints remorse from power“. Google tells me that’s Shakespeare, said by Brutus in Julius Caeser, to be precise. I’ve spotted a number of other literary references in the OP, most likely Shakespeare again (the only one I care to remember is “The King has come!” and something more).

Chaos to Order

I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Why is the Hiragana ‘mi’ so similar to the Devanagri ‘ma’?

Devanagri ma

Hiragana mi

I’ve always been bothered with that question. The similarity is unmistakable, but I fail to see any connection. The katakana mi isn’t similar to the hiragana mi, why should the hiragana mi develop such an unusually strong resemblance to the devanagri ma?

A look at the history of Hiragana shows that the alphabet originated from the Chinese man’yōgana. Here’s a table showing the evolution of the man’yōgana to the hiragana, sourced from Wikipedia:

For mi, check second row, fifth slot

This appears to hint that there is no connection between the devanagri ma and the hiragana mi, as the man’yōgana mi looks vastly different from either of the two letters.

I suppose the only answer left is coincidence.

Year of Lassitude

I checked the History of my blog and learned that I barely posted at all for the last one year. Perhaps it was something of a gap year for my blog.

Wicked Sick

I had a dream last night where I played two entire games of Unreal Tournament 2004. I think the second map was HyperSpace, and I was doing really well.

I wish I have more dreams like this.