Memories of a battle long gone..

SWG: The Secret Smugglers Hideout

Just a little photo journey of my house back then on SWG, i called it the secret smuglers hideout.

After the NGE my character became a smuggler and of course needed a cool  hideout :)

I was going through my screenshots and saw these and remembered that i really loved the way my house looked, decorating was pretty cool in SWG and i loved spending time finding cool stuff to place in my hideout and spend time decorating.

I loved travelling around to see the work other people did on their homes (and sometimes steal ideas) some people where really creative.

I really tried to give my home a smuggler vibe.

Past and future, looking back almost 7 years..

As another blog anniversary draws closer, i look back, Feb 18th marks the 7th year of this blog, to realise i have not been doing much with my blog.
Gaming has been taking kind of a backseat in the ride of real life, i still play games and enjoy them, but there are just other things in my life that are more important to me than gaming right now.

Since i started this blog i always felt this was my "gaming blog" and stuck to posting about my gaming and nothing else.
As i started to game less, i didn't feel like writing about gaming at all, i just don't have anything left to say, other than maybe the occasional"wow that's a great game" or "that sucked" and i really didn't feel like putting that up here, as i can do that on twitter or my other social media.

I guess social media is also partly to blame for not writing as much, as thoughts go straight to those sources and i no longer take the time (or the effort) to write a post about it.

So what about this blog?...

Well i have been thinking about that for a long time, it's been with me for almost 7 years now and i feel it's part of me and i am not willing to let it go :)
I am however going to change this blog from a pure gaming blog to, probably, a more personal blog and write about whatever keeps me busy or keeps me going, meaning real life stuff :)

Some of the readers of this blog, if there are any left, might not like what i have to say or blog about, so i am sorry in advance, but sinci it is my blog i feel i can write about whatever i like.

I would like to thank everyone who reads, has read, ever followed this blog, i have always said i write for myself, not for my readers, but it was always cool to know people were reading my posts and, heck, might even enjoy them :)

So i will travel on: To worlds unknown.

Afterall, it is all about the journey, not the destination.

Hero of the Little Computer People

I've been trying to piece together my (vintage) collection of computer games with the help of Game Collector by Collectorz.com and i have to say finding back all those games is a lot of fun, pulling them out of storage one by one.

But to me there are two of my games that stand out, that i have some of the best memories of.

First one is one i probably allready talked about :)

That's H.E.R.O. for the Atari 2600. (Wikilink)

Basicly what you do in this game is save people (miners) form mineshafts with the use of explosives a laser and a helicopter backpack, hence the name H.E.R.O. - Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation.

I spend many hours playing this "against" my father beating eachothers score over and over and over again.
I still see it as one of the best games ever made.

The second game that came to me was Little Computer People for the Commodore 64. (Wikilink)

I guess you could call this game the sims of the day, or maybe even what started the (idea of) sims.
Most of the gameplay consists of keeping your littlle computer person happy, fed, entertained and occasionally pet him.
And he just lived there, being happy (if you took good care of him) or died if you didn't pay him any attention.
Back then, the idea of a little person living inside your computer was pretty awesome, nowadays you laugh but back then as a kid, in the 80's on a commodore 64....

Anyways, many hours i spend "playing" this game (or was this game playing me??), let alone the countless hours of sleep lost over taking care of my little computer person.

If you are a big sims fan i really recommend checking this game out.

So yeah, there you have it, these two games are absolutely my two favorites among my old games, of course there are a lot more classics like that and really good games, but you can only have a few favorites :)

Gamer Problems, Gamer Solutions!

Most gamers are probably just like me and get (most of) their games digitally through Steam, Origin or any other service nowadays. However if you've been a gamer for years, you're probably just like me and have lots of DVD's laying around taking up lots of (storage) space. I hate throwing them away, so i started looking around for an easier way to store them that takes up a lot less space and this is what i found:

 

Sleeves :)

Basicly you have a sleeve to hold all the artwork (cover, booklets etc.) and a sleeve for the DVD (can hold 2 DVD's).

Taking everything out of the box and putting it in the sleeves and as you can see it takes up a lot less space.

It also makes it easier to store them away in a box or you can put a lot more of them on shelves.

These sleeves also have binder holes so you can put them in binders if you wanted. Personally i am not a big fan of binders, so i cut of the binder holes part.

I also did this with my DVD (movie) collection and could put around 100 DVD's (in sleeves) in the same space that would normally be taken by 16 DVD's in their normal boxes, so yeah, a huge space saver :)

If you're interrested in where i got them, you can find them at 3kaze, there isn't much information on their website and you can only order through paypal, but i have made several orders from them and have to say they ship fast, they send the stuff from Malaysia but i usually recieved it within a week through DHL and they are pretty cheap.

I had looked at other solutions, there's also some that can be found on Amazon.com, like DiscSox, they do look a lot nicer, but they are also a LOT more expensive.

The weekend in pictures.

Because pictures say more than words, so just a few cool (random) screenshots :)

You're not going anywhere, the game is.

I just had to post this part of a project update from the Kickstarter by Bare Mettle Entertainment about the game they are making with the help of their Kickstarter.
The game is called Sui Generis, you can read more here on Kickstarter.

"We feel that in recent years the focus of most CRPGs has shifted from creating an immersive world to providing a streamlined gameplay experience. Rarely is there room for subtlety or engaging your wits. Games have been evolving into something where anyone can play for a while and feel they've achieved something. Ultimately though, our achievements are purely virtual, and we didn't even have fun. You're not going anywhere, the game is. You're just along for the ride and nothing you do really matters. We don't exactly come out feeling like we've accomplished something, more like we've satisfied some addiction. It's easy to forget, but we know that games can be genuinely fun, worthwhile and stimulating.

The kind of roleplaying experience we dreamed of and hope to create is one that hasn't been possible without a human game master who can intelligently respond to all your actions. We want your actions to have meaningful effects, not as pre-scripted "choice and consequences" over which we have no real insight or control, but as a world that is affected realistically by everything you do. We want you to be able to make mistakes, to fail and to feel that your successes are your own. We even want you to accomplish things that we as designers have never foreseen. We want a world capable of supporting your most creative strategies, where hypothetical scenarios turn out to be real. We're talking about roleplaying, immersion, being master of your own character in a world that can make you believe it is real".

This quote exactly captures how i have been feeling about gaming and games, no matter how great they were and i thought i liked them.
No matter how much i loved games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, i still have to finish a second playthrough, i mean i want to but i just can't, i allready know what's going to happen, what my choices are going to be, so you allready know how the game is going to end.
And to be honest games like Skyrim and Oblivion are much the same when it comes to questing, the only difference (and reason i still play them) is that you can still just roam around in the world and add lots of stuff through mods.

The same thing goes for MMO's, it's all one big scripted adventure with an outcome allready set, the developers have allready made up the story for you and you are just along for the ride, in the end you know you will be the hero of the world, the saviour of the galaxy.
The path has allready been layed out for you, the only choice you get is path A,B or C (Good, Neutral or Bad) but the end result is always the same.

 Quote: You're not going anywhere, the game is.

In the end it should be a choice i made, not a multiple choice answer given to me by the developers.

So, yeah i am kind of excited to see if Bare Mettle can pull this off with Sui Generis and i am glad i backed a game like this.
It would be awesome to blog about my game progress and know that i have a completely different story than anyone else playing the same game.

Until then i'll just keep dreaming...