Monthly Archives: March 2006

My laptop hard drive broke recently, so I had to spend a few days copying files (luckily I could still access the drive after booting into the live Ubuntu CD I had gotten from a friend of mine), buying a new hard drive, installing Windows and Ubuntu Linux on it, and setting things up to work the way I want. That, plus the fact that I’ve been playing Flyff too much, has made it somewhat hard to get myself to do much school work. But I’ve finally gotten started again! So I’ll probably finish by the end of next week, because I’m such an effective worker. Right.

It’s kind of fun to set up Linux and Windows to share the settings, so when I run Opera in Ubuntu or Windows I get all the same settings and can access my mail in both OSes. There’s no MSN Messenger in Linux though, since there’s no way Microsoft would port it, but aMSN works quite well, it even supports custom emoticons and webcam! (Haven’t tried the webcam support yet though.) Hmm, OpenOffice is an OK replacement for Microsoft Office, but it isn’t really a lot more stable than Microsoft’s alternative, I’ve found. But it’s free, which counts for a lot, I guess. I’ve also set up Apache and MySQL to work the same in both Linux and Windows, so I can work on my websites in both OSes.

All in all, it’s neat to be able to share configurations between the two OSes, and it really helps for making the dual-boot work out, otherwise I might quite well end up using Windows all the time anyway. But why do I need Linux anyway? Actually, one of the reasons is that when using Linux, I can’t play as many games on my laptop as when using Windows. More specifically, I can’t play Flyff. So hopefully I will be able to concentrate a bit more on school work… But another reason is that being able to use Linux *could* be useful when searching for a job. Which I probably should do more of soon.

In other news, I’m now the one in charge of the junior camp in the SCCC Summer Conference this summer. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but the fact is undeniable, and I’ve made an application page in urban anime style to try and attract people to help out at the camp. It’s not working that well, I must admit. Maybe adding a picture of me kind of scares people away. Anyhow, if you’re going to the camp, check it out! I need more help! Especially guys!

Ah, my brother Leon has birthday today! I made lemon cake and hamburgers! The lemon cake was a bit too sweet for my taste though, even though I cut down a little on the sugar in the recipe… maybe I should’ve skipped the icing after all.

It seems Kingdom Hearts II is out (or at least, in America… I guess it probably isn’t in Norway yet…?). After listening to the opening song and watching the opening trailer, I’ve decided that I need to buy a PS2 and play through Kingdom Hearts I, and then buy II and play through that one. NOW! Okay, maybe not now, but it’s, like, on my list. It probably sneaked in before Final Fantasy X and X-2 on my list too, hopefully it won’t spoil those two games too much.

For now, I’m strangely satisfied just playing Flyff, which isn’t really that great of a game. I tried Anarchy Online a bit, which is a somewhat old MMORPG, which shows on its graphics. But the story in that game is quite well implemented in the game, unlike in Flyff, where the game story is just a rough background to the task of leveling up your level and skills. The bad English in the game doesn’t really help either.

But even though I don’t really feel absorbed in the story, it’s just satisfying seeing your stats going up as you level up. And seeing your number of quest items going up when you finally get one of them from a defeated enemy. I should get tired of it, but I haven’t yet. Well, I’m sure that if I did get a PS2 and Kingdom Hearts, I’d instantly stop playing this game and play Kingdom Hearts instead, but that is not something that’ll happen quite yet.

Well enough about that. I think I’ll go play Flyff, uh, do my school work now. Hum.

Lately I’ve been playing a free MMORPG called Flyff/Fly for fun. It’s quite good for a free game, even though the Engrish in the game is kind of bad (it’s translated from Korean). I’ve been looking for a decent 3D game that doesn’t lag on my computer, so I was happy when I found this game, which only lags slightly when I’ve set all the graphics options to lowest… Some reviews I’ve read said that the game isn’t that good, mainly because of boring grinding and fetch quests, which I guess is somewhat true, although i haven’t found it too boring yet.

I guess I like this game mainly because of it’s graphics (way better than RuneScape, which is another free MMORPG that I’ve tried), it’s anime style, and the fact that most classes are able to level up by themselves without needing to join a party. One thing is that it seems like I don’t really like to socialize much in games either, which is why I usually don’t like MMORPGs, but another thing is that at least in the newbie zone there are way too many people who “tyeps liek tis lolzor”.

I do sometimes party with my brother Vilhelm though (as in join a party and killing monsters together, sharing experience points and loot), and I’ve tried partying with some other people, but I still prefer playing by myself at least for now. Oh, and of course, flying is kind of fun too! It’s neat to soar over the fields or landing in one of the flying rocks in the sky and and enjoying the view of the people, monsters and surroundings from above. And of course, the game being free also helps a lot!

As for the bad points mentioned in the intro, it is true that the game offers little variation in gameplay. Almost all quests are fetch quests where you have to get a certain number of items from monsters, and in most cases the chance for the items you need to drop when you kill a monster seems to be quite low. The only quests that aren’t like this are the other type of fetch quests, where you have to bring items from one NPC to another. And if you’ve done too much leveling up before taking the quests, you may have to fight weaker enemies for the quests, giving little or no experience, making the quest even more boring. To avoid this I try to always do each quest as soon as they are available though, so I can level up at the same time.

Another thing that was mentioned in a review is that it takes too long before you can change class or be able to fly. For the class change you have to be level 15, and for flying you must be level 20. I didn’t really find this too annoying though, since it made it more fun to level up, as every level brought you closer to these goals. I’ve gotten to level 20, so I’ve reached those goals already, and my choice of class was Acrobat. Once I read about Acrobats being able to fight with Yoyos, I decided that it was the class I wanted! (They can also use bows, but they are just too ordinary in MMORPGs and games in general, so I didn’t want to use that.) So now my goal in the game is to level up my skills, plus leveling up my character to be able to use new skills and/or equipment! There’s also a second class change at level 60, but I’m not worrying about that too much yet…

I guess those of you who have experience with more popular and commercial MMORPGs will probably find this game boring because of these points though. Actually it’s quite possible that I’ll get tired of it too, just like I’ve gotten tired of another game that I wrote about earlier *cough*Animal Crossing*cough*. But for now I’m still quite addicted to it, playing untill late at night! So, if you by any chance play this game, or start playing it, feel free to add me to your contact list in the game. My character name is Mythrix. Oh, I have to be logged into the game for it to work though… Well, message me on MSN beforehand or something, I guess.

…I have been working on my University project too, of course.

Oh, last thing, I made a small game in a one hour++ competition. It’s quite bad, but I’ll link it anyway. It’s a strategy game where you use the mouse. It should be somewhat self-explanatory if you’ve played similar games like Advance Wars. I think.

PS: Some hints for people starting in the game. Your stats are reset when you change class. So even if you want to be a Magician, you don’t need to up your intelligence when you’re a Vagrant, as you can change the stats after changing class. Also, do not keep leveling up if you want to do quests, make sure you’ve done all the quests you can at your level to avoid having to fight weaker enemies if you do the quests later. Of course, I guess you could possibly just skip doing quests, if you like…