It’s been quite a while since I wrote up a parody, but this one was stuck in my brain and refused to vacate the premises until I actually put it to paper. Or to a word processor file, at any rate. It’s a song about the final raid instance of World of Warcraft, so, yeah — might not make a lot of sense to many of you, but it’s still fun.

Party in the ICC
(parody of Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA")
By Matt Plotecher

I hopped off my mount in Icecrown's map
Stoked! Close to an aneurysm
Welcome to the land of level cap, (boo)
until "Cataclysm"

Just to be honest,
My last raid was Molten Core
Look to my right and I see Jania Proudmoore
This is all so crazy
Gear is all over 270!

My tummy's turnin' cause all the Scourge kinda smell sick
Too much pressure but I right-click
That's when the Vento chat turned on in my headphones
And the leader called our spots
And we skipped the story plots
And the leader said "More dots!"

So I get my buffs up
They're calling out "tank"
And the thunderclaps are set free
Tauntin' the shades like yeah
Pullin' the wraiths like yeah,
And I got my threat up,
They're focused on moi
The restro shaman's healin' me
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC

Get to The Spire as DPS
Everybody's lookin' at me now
Like "Who's that bro, that's drawin' aggo?
He'll get killed like a Goldshire cow."

So hard with my guild not around me
It's definitely not a Outland party
Cause' all ore drops are saronite
What happened to adamantite?

Bone Storm is spinnin' and I'm bleedin' from that Coldflame
If we wipe now it'll be a shame
That's when Marrowgar dropped 2 Emblems of Frost
Now it's time for Deathwhisper
Then a Gunship Battle tour
Finishing with Deathbringer!

So I get Thottbot up
I'm searching my class
Also hittin' up WoWWiki
Readin' 'bout Rotface, yeah
Checkin' Festergut, yeah
And I got add-ons up
With my cooldown times
Tracking my threat will be easy
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC

Feel like hoppin' in a PuG (like a thug)
Gather lots of loot to lug (bags are snug)
Something tells me it's worthwhile (in style)
As long as we don't get all wiped by Defile!

So I put my heals up
All on Dreamwalker
Here comes a Blistering Zombie
Floatin' through orbs like yeah (Emerald Vigor!)
Stackin' buffs up like yeah (Healin'!)
Now Sindragosa's up
Battle for survival
Damn Blistering Cold, time to flee (that damn icy grip)
Yeah (brr cold), it's a party in the ICC (ouch)
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC

And now there's the Lich King
Just chilling in his throne
But then summons Horrors with glee (and Drudge Ghouls)
Quakin' the floor like yeah (collasping the floor, yeah)
Plaguin' the raid like yeah (stacking us up like yeah)
And I got those DOTs on
of Plague and Infest
I hope we reach Phase 4 quickly (Where the hell is Terenas?)
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC
Yeah, it's a party in the ICC (Party in the ICC!)

For those who don’t already know, the birthday went pretty well. I went in to work, had a basketball game that night (we lost three of four, but at least won the last game), and afterward hit up a little restaurant/bar with the teammates for some nice celebration time. I had 4 shots bought for me, and also drank 6 beers, and hence wowed the crowd with my Plotecher tolerance. I had a slight buzz, but nothing major. I felt fine when I went to bed, and still felt fine when I woke up the next morning. It’s nice to know that I at least still have the “good” genes from Wisconsin….

I also have started the beach volleyball league, which is definitely more causal than the basketball one. Some folks, truth be told, are still a wee bit too serious about it, but overall it’s definitely more relaxed. My v-ball skills aren’t quite up to snuff (the serves were less than graceful), but hopefully it catches up next week. Especially as we lost all three games the first night.

This post shall be short, and to be frank, the main reason for my silence the past couple of weeks has be due in large part to my rediscovering Team Fortress 2! I forgot how fun, well-balanced, and often hilarious it is. There are still people who are just too good to be real, but the flip-side is that since it is a team game, you can actually have those guys on our team as well, and recently it seems like my wins and losses have been a bit more balanced. I’m also looking at getting back into WoW, so it’s probably really good that I’m already signed up for beach volleyball, or I might have some issues getting out of the house.

In the game (so to speak) of WiiFit, there is what’s called a time piggy bank, or a time bank, or whatever. This keeps track of how much time you’ve put into the game, and by extension, your exercise. When you first start out, it begins as this rather bland brownish color, although shiny. But, a while back, I noticed that when I topped 20 total hours, it shifted to a silver — ah! The brown was actually a Bronze!

I guessed that if I topped 40 hours it would turn gold, and last night, I was finally able to confirm it. This was quite spiffy, although I’m wondering if I get to 60 if it shifts into platinum, or diamond, or something. If not, well, then, I guess we might as well give up now, right? Can’t get any better.

The sad part is that 40 hours over the past 325+ days that I’ve had the game is not all that impressive. In fact, it sticks. Basically, it means that I’ve been using it much, much less that the lovely golden piggy bank would have me believe. True, there have often been times when I have not recorded in the WiiFit (via the Activity Log) my exercise for the day, such as the various rec league sports I partake in, but the reality is just that I tend to swing back and forth in spurts of activity. The past week, I have gotten back into it, and hopefully I can keep it up for a while. If nothing else, just doing something outside and then recording it in yonder Activity Book would be good. After all, I have managed that in the past, and it was quite cool to look over my month history and see some work happening every day.

Beach volleyball is supposed to start up, so I’ll be continuing to hammer away at WiiFit, I think, both to stay moving, as well as to try to make a last ditch effort to get myself “beach ready.” Personally, I would need a personal trainer, personal chef, and an act of God to shape up within the week or so that we have, but every little bit helps, right?

So, some of you may remember my reaction to an online game that was going by the name of Empire Craft. Well, I had meaning to try a somewhat dramatic reading of that “intro” blurb that they had on their site for a while (looks like it’s down by now). A quick reading followed by some classic background music, and taa-da!

Sunday night I was burning some major midnight oil as I progressed through “Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.” To be precise, I did not get to bed until around 4 AM. Good thing I had slept in most of the weekend to bank up some sleep time, eh? Some people have a bedside lamp; I should get a bedside DSi. On second thought, that would be a bad idea – I probably would not get any sleep again. Well, aside from while doing dull things, like driving or listening to people.

Also, this late night marathon highlights my complaint against the asynchronous games that populate Facebook: there are times when I just want to play straight for about 30-45 minutes (or more), instead of the “Ding! Sorry, your five minutes are up; please come back again in an hour to play some more, or shell out $5 to keep playing.” Of course, there are some games that make this work, but they are few and far between, alas.

Anyway, in this case of late night playing, it was largely the same thing that keeps a person wrapped up in a good book: “I just want to see how this part resolves before I call it a night.” In my case, it was the Water Temple; 4 levels of tricky access. See, you can control just how much water fills the temple, and thus, which corridors you have access to. One of things that has drawn me in to the game, especially in the temples, is watching how the levels are designed to provide the player with a large space which still has a linear pathway through out. In the current deluge of games that are claiming “sandbox” and “open world” environment, it’s refreshing to be playing a game that often shows why a linear approach to a level is just as much fun (and more, usually) when designed so that a player can only take one path through while making it feel like a completely natural progression.

I also continue to be amazed at how much I enjoy the reactions of Master (the name of my hero) and the other characters in the game, despite the low poly count and non-existent high-res textures.

Oh, and hey, how cool it is, indeed, to be playing a game with true Boss Fights? The boss fight for the Water Temple also had a way wicked intro sequence, showing things from the monster’s point of view as it snuck up on Master from behind.

Also, there was also a very nice touch of psychological weirdness in one room, where you enter what appears to be the outside, in front of a lake with a mirror reflection surface, and stretches off into a opaque, light fog. Turns out you can run across the surface, and it’s eerily quiet, aside from your footsteps across the water echoing about you. Then, without warning, you are attacked by a dark version of yourself. Now, we’ve seen this in many games, but the presentation of it here was really pretty well done. Honestly, I’m not doing the scene justice, either.

Plus, many of the fights are, so far, balanced enough that you can figure out what the weak spot is and how to win without having to get spattered several times beforehand. Navi acting as a mini hint guide is handy, but since she doesn’t always have the answers, you still have to do some thinking on your own.

Mind you, the swinging camera continues to be a great annoyance, the L-targeting can be mind-bendingly picky about when it will lock on, and the collection of subscreens (map, quest, inventory, etc.) is a pretty sad UI design that was clearly made to “show off” the “3D” abilities of the game. Fortunately, all of this continues to remain merely petty annoyances rather than major pitfalls.

I have been moving back into “Zelda: the Ocarina of Time,” and I am continuously getting impressed with it. I’m still fairly early into the game, but man, there a number of things that I’m just really liking — many of which are also little flair elements that aren’t crictical to the gameplay itself, but go miles into drawing me into the experience and deepening my enjoyment.

Again, for those not aware, this particular game is about 10-12 years old, and the 3D graphics are incredibly simplistic. Still, I’m having much more fun with this game than any number of more modern releases. “Ocarina” has often been referred to as one of the very best games to be released, not just for the Zelda series, but also for the Nintendo library as a whole, and it’s not hard to see why.

So far, the game has been moving along fairly quickly; I was momentarily stumped on one puzzle, but there enough clues and hints around that so far it hasn’t been an issue. Navi, of course, makes a nice way to remind players what the next major objective is, so you don’t have to worry about wandering around lost for ages.

But it’s the little things that have really been making this game come alive: the “rockin’” (so to speak) music in the Goron city, the dry humor that (every now and then) bubbles up in the word balloons, and the various idle animations & sounds that the kid (“Link,” we’ll call him, even though you can name him whatever you want) has which always makes it clear that he is just a little boy.

There are also a lot of things that take place which I find myself greatly amused by; last night, I ran across two separate scenes that actually made me laugh:

1. When Link plays a tune and the Goron King, a big, rock like creature with a big frown, starts dancing like a maniac (maniac!) on the floor (dancin’ like he never danced before….), Link actually slowly backs away from him, which is exactly what I think anyone watching would have thought.
2. Later on, the King is impressed with Link’s help and pats him on the shoulder. However, given that Link is a little boy, the King accidentally knocks Link flat to the ground. The timing was worthy of Laural and Hardy.

I will admit, I have been getting a bit frustrated with the camera swinging around, especially during battles. The Lock-in system works, but a number of times I keep screwing it up and wind up losing track of the enemies. there’s also an odd quirk which is that I can kill spiders up on walls, but then am unable to retrieve the “golden skulls” which I need to complete a side quest. I’m hoping that this will be rectified when I get the boomerage, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Regardless, though, still having a lot of fun with the game. And so far, Link (despite being, like, 6 years old) is as much of a Mack expert as Commander Shepard: already it seems that he has three love interests. Talk about getting started early.

First off, the link for my “officially completed” UT3 level:

Engine Room

This was a bit of a relief in that I was finally able to wrap things up. As I mentioned in my previous post, being able to test on a separate machine was, indeed, very handy. And, it’s also one of the biggest pains as a game developer — getting playtesters and ways to beta test your work. In this case, not having a separate computer to test on really slowed me down. Consider: if I was not able to test the game at work, I would have had to wait for either someone from the forums to download and test, or one of my friends. in both cases, that could take weeks, if it happens at all. Being able to “cook” the map last night and upload it to the file site, then come in this morning and really quick test it on my work machine was sooooo much better.

This has also been hanging around my “To Do” list since the summer; I last really worked on it during October of last year. Boy, that feels good to strike it down! Smote the sucker! Boom!

Anyway.

I have ideas for a couple of other maps, but I think I might hold off starting anything until I wrap up a number of other creative projects that are floating around; like, for example, the Madness board game. There’s another thing that needs playtesters to fully complete, and hence, that’s why it’s be so friggin’ slow at moving forward.

Last night, I finally got around to replacing the texture of the lifts in my UT3 level. I had been putting this off for, well, months, mainly because I just didn’t want to go through the process of recooking and republishing everything. The first time through doing that took quite a long time, and I had little interest in revisiting those aspects.

However, the replacement of the texture went easier than I expected — since the lifts are animated, they require separate “rules” in how they interact within the level, but the static meshes that they are built from are treated like any other static mesh: just place the new material on the base mesh and all instances of it are updated properly.

“Oh. That was easy.”

I then cooked the level, knowing it would take around 5-10 minutes due to the size of the level and lighting, and now just have to make some of those less-fun adjustments to the .ini file and readme info, so that everything is properly updated.

Of course, there are still a couple more things beyond that: I need to upload it all in zip file form to a public FTP site, get Mr. 188 to test it on his computer to make sure it runs properly, and then post a link to the file on the EPIC forums. I’m not expected a world-beater reaction, but it will be very nice to finally get this off my plate, and it also gives a little more ammo for the resume.

Hmm, thought: I have Steam installed on my work computer… I bet I can install UT3 here as well, and then do separate testing without having to bug Mr. 188. That’s handy, eh?

I wrote the following up a while ago, and never got around to posting. So, let’s try it now, shall we?

—–

You know you’re a game designer at heart when you make a Staples run from work to get a pad of Graph paper, a set of mechanical pencils, and a calculator that is not scientific, but durable.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

I’ve been reading the book “Mastering Unreal Technology for the Unreal Editor 3;” a friend happened to have a couple of copies and loaned me one. Having used the 2004 Edition back when I was in grad school for my Games, Mods, and Code class, I remembered that, while the book had its faults, it also was a handy reference material for some of the more esoteric aspects of the actual programm.

Reading through the current copy, I’m only up to chapter 4, but already it’s pretty clear that this will be no different than the last. I will admit, however, that it’s a little difficult to read. Not because they use too much dry, technical language; quite the contrary. Rather, they try so hard to make the tone conversational that it’s actually embarrassing. In a lot of ways, it’s like reading a series of blog postings from someone who just discovered the Internet: a lot of exclamation points (never more than after a sentence, though), a lot of bad attempts at humor, and some good ol’ fashioned self-promotion. I half suspect that they wanted to include a bunch of smiley faces, too, but the editors drew the line at that one.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

Having finally gotten my first real paycheck a little while ago, I have since noticed that I have been, in my opinion, burning through cash at a faster rate than normal. A lot of this is just from taking advantage of he extra money and replenishing little things that are nice to have, like hand soap, contact lens fluid, umbrellas, etc.

But this time, I’m actually taking a little bit to enjoying myself, too. After all, after over half a year living off of PBJs and bulk food pasta (as good as that food is), I felt the urge to get a touch more variety in my diet. Additionally, I even had a night out where I decided to just have several drinks and see how weak my tolerance had become. Well, ironically, it had somehow gotten stronger. I was over 10 drinks into the evening before reluctantly admitting that I still was not any closer to the desired state buzzliness.

In lighter news, I’m now finally getting a chance to play video games extensively without guilt. Sure, a number of times during my unemployment I was playing various games because I honestly was researching the different games as a type of market research, but the truth is that, quite honestly, a lot of those games held no interest for me in fact, some of them I just could not stand.

But now, I have not only acquired the time to play, but also a Gamecube controller for my Wii (and a memory card, a somewhat annoying unknown required expenditure), allowing me to finally explore the used Gamecube games I had purchased back about 8 months ago. In addition, I also have been getting into some of the other games that I have yet to complete.

Recently, I finished Prince of Persia (again, the Gamecube edition), and I can easily see why it was such a favorite. I won’t get into the details yet, but suffice to say that it’s very fun, and man, did “God of War” get a vast amount of its ideas from this game. Then again, I can also see a fair amount of Ico in Prince of Persia, so who’s to say which was what inspiration?

Kingdom Hearts II was also wrapped up, finally, and while it was another fun romp through the different worlds of Disney and Final Fantasy, it did suffer from the same ending problem which is clinically known as “Too many f’ing boss fights.” This is something not exclusive to the Kingdom hearts franchise, but man, so far, they hammer on it more than anyone; every time you think you beat the last boss, it’s time for another fight! In particular, there are 2 different bosses that you have to defeat twice.

Currently in the works are Zelda: The Ocerina of Time, Rachet and Clank, and Mass Effect 2. The latter I snatched up on sale at Target — $20 off! Given that used copies at the local Gamestop were only about $5 cheaper than a new copy, I felt justified in the purchase.

All right, the quick-ish catch-up drill:

1) Last Thursday we had our semi-finals in basketball, and lost. The upside, however, is that we also had more fun out there, and overall played better than I suspected we would. Part of this was, I think, the fact that our two best players were missing, so we all had a bit of a more relaxed feel when we played, and also that we tried some different things out there as well. Regardless, it was definitely a good team effort. If we were in the NBA, I’m sure we’d be the group people would be saying, “A good, young team to watch out for in a year or two.”

2) On Saint Patty’s Day, I had a chance to hang out with some of my fellow basketballers and their friends, over at a bar that one of them knows so well that about half the staff knows her by a first name basis. During the evening, I had one really nice “moment” where a cute girl (with the magical combo of dark hair, dark eyes, and a petite frame) was passing me, and glanced at me briefly. I smiled, being the nice fellow I am, and it was good timing, as she then took a second glance, and this time gave a very sweet smile in return. Now, perhaps if I was a “playa” I would have attempted to make a move, but cripes, I was happy just to get a second look.

3) Saturday saw me and about 10 of my fellow Zogsports footballers gather at Central Park in the afternoon for a bit of practice, so everyone had a chance to get accustomed to the rules in Zog. It was warm, sunny, and we played for about 2 hours before people decided to call it quits (not me, of course, as I was ready to play for another 5 hours). It was very much a fun time, and something that I’m hoping we can pull off again. Afterwards, we hit up a Pub that was nice, but turned out to be a massive amount of fail as they were so severely understaffed that 90 minutes after we ordered our food, it not only hadn’t arrived, but we were told that the kitchen “wasn’t even close to getting it started.” Oh well — at least the free appetizers showed up only 60 minutes into the wait.

4) Then, on Sunday, we had our actual game. I headed over early to volunteer ref the game before ours, and really got into the role as I not only called a touchdown catch out of bounds (didn’t have control, alas), but also took a football to the face. It was an accident, of course. When our team took the field, it was basically a complete reversal from the last team I played with — we won 44-0. I didn’t play much on offense, but was basically a ball hawk on defense, snagging 4-5 interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown. Woo! True, it helped that other team had never played before, either, but honestly, I think it was just the practice we had beforehand that really made the team work better. That, and this time we actually had some good quarterbacks (last season it was me, basically the Brady Quinn of Zog, only with less muscle definition).

5) Last night, then, I spent some time on World of Warcraft, first running through an utterly fatal 3-man attempt of the Shadow Labyrinth, and then jumped over to my main warrior guy where I, at long last, received the Loremaster achievement! Woo! For those not in the know, the award is obtained upon completing something like 4000 quests with the character. Now, I’ll just need to see about getting into some more of the raids, especially the older ones, which may be a bit more tricky, given that finding people who do those is rather difficult at times.