“I think I’m just getting better at knowing my abilities. Like, I don’t know how long it takes to cook a turkey, but I know exactly how long it takes me to set fire to the kitchen.”
— The BloggessHexBash
I had a perfectly good reason for doing it this way…
declare id
function hexhex () {
printf -v id %06X 0x$1
}
SuperMacro, to the rescue!
[no relation to the ancient Borland SuperMacro product, which we once used to automatically navigate the swamp in Leather Goddesses of Phobos. clap, hop, kweepa]
Like most MMOs, Champions Online has some built-in macro support. It’s fairly primitive at the moment, but there are certain key-bindings that I want for all characters.
Hero meets Villain
[What really happens when heroes and villains interact? In Champions Online, we don’t have the opportunity to chat with our adversaries. There’s some random speech bubbles and the occasional monologing cut-scene, but no real dialogue.]
…
“I’m not a super-villain.”
“You have a lair.”
“I have a lab.”
“It’s hidden in a deserted warehouse.”
“The lease was cheap.”
“It has security cameras and electrified doors.”
“In this neighborhood? I should think so.”
“It has multi-level interior defenses, including pit traps, gas bombs, and little flying robots with lasers.”
“I like my privacy.”
Champions Online: That's Just Super!
Lane Carter didn’t think much of Supers. Heroes were chumps; villains were creeps. So what’s a girl to do when an alien death-ray backfires, granting her super-speed and super-strength? She managed to keep the strength a secret for a while, but after the incident with the baby and the tiger cage, her speed gained her fifteen minutes of unwelcome fame.
Okay, so she got a nice writeup in the papers, and a big thank-you from the parents, but she also had to register with the feds, listen to boring speeches about Responsibility, deal with the suck-ups who insisted they’d always been her Best Friends, and learn to cope with the Internet. The bloggers were only a brief annoyance, and the way-too-personal edits to her Superpedia page were quickly reverted by the editors, but the basement-dwelling mouth-breather who called her “Fast Lane” and wrote hardcore lesbian “team-up” stories was too much. She thought his scooter looked much nicer as an ashtray.
Once they found out about her strength, the recruiters showed up:
- "Join your 'team' and fight for justice? How about 'no'?"
- "Become your 'henchman' and help you take over the world? Is your stupidity contagious?"
- "Be your sidekick? Oh, come on, did your Mom make that outfit?"
- "You want to give me 'special training' and a 'unique costume'? Put it back in your pants, creep."
The worst part was that she liked her new powers. She could explore the City any time of the day or night, zipping past terrorists, gangsters, aliens, and creepy middle-aged men without being noticed, and if someone did try to mess with her, well, a girl who can toss an SUV like a softball only gets hassled once.
If only there were some legal, rational way to use them to make a decent living…
The first hit is free...
…this weekend, anyway. Champions Online is offering people a chance to try their game out for free, from 10am Friday through 10am Monday. If I weren’t already playing, I’d start.
Even with the bugs, imbalances, and graphics glitches, even with the inept proofreading and occasionally 7th-grade-level writing skills, they’ve built a game that’s an awful lot of fun to play. With a few months more polish and playtesting, it will be even better, but it’s worth a look today. Honestly, I’d pay the monthly fee just to play with the character designer; the fact that the combat system is dynamic and exciting is a bonus.
Speaking of the character designer…
Dear Page 3,
Is Chloe the only model you’ve never managed to publish a bad picture of? Could you please apply this same high, perky standard to all the other girls?
[NSFW! NSFW!]
Best. Cellphone Ad. Ever.
LG paid two Korean girl groups to record music videos for their latest ad campaign. I don’t know what the other group did, because I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from Girls’ Generation…
[link goes to the cleanest HD version I could find on Youtube, sadly tagged by some clown who thought his handle was so important it needed to be embedded in the video at beginning and end, as if he were the second coming of MTV]
