Delta
First day back from winter break today. Some class mixing up (people moving around and such). On the whole I must say I'm rather pleased with the results. Though, upon further reflection, I realized I shouldn't at all be happy with the placement of my lunch period or just my classes in general: my latest opportunity to return to my locker is between fourth and fifth period, if I want to even have a shot of getting to lunch in good time to avoid the crowd that inevitably swarms the lines. Anyway, I'll skip AP Chem through Spanish and go right on to philosophy. As a class, this looks very, very nice though I didn't quite get the batch of people I wanted; having two whole philosophy classes will do that, I suppose. Anyway, now I get a more-than-valid excuse to run to the bookstore to buy such works as Aristotle in 90 Minutes and so forth, and while I typically don't endorse (and in fact abhor) shortcuts analogous to Cliff's Notes in any way, shape, or form, when the teacher even has to read it, I suppose I must acquiese. Anyway, today was just a little lecture on general terminology of philosophy, so now we won't be lost when we're reading something with a term that we might not understand.
Lunch. See, this is where I get slightly (only slightly, mind you) miffed. It was entirely possible that I could've gotten sixth period philosophy and fifth period lunch, keeping my former period and landing with a handful of people I was already familiar with (and whom I know to be still in that period this semester). Furthermore, I believe the batch of kids in sixth philosophy to be...more desirable to me. Now, while I understand that some kids have to be forced to one or the other, that perhaps sixth-period philosophy is full or something, if none of those conditions apply and it could've gone either way, then I have only the pseudo-random generator within the computers that do the scheduling to blame. It cannot be changed, under any circumstances.
So, I get to the lunchroom with absolutely no idea where to go, and Kevin finds me. He leads me to a table, and I get in line for food. I come back, and Kevin's gone, so I'm stuck with a band of complete strangers, save for one kid who, to be delicate, could probably fit in two chairs without a problem. Anyway, the kid next to him has a DS with Super Mario 64 DS, and we talk about Warcraft, consoles, and a bunch of other things. Not too bad.
Which reminds me...reminds me of how I stayed up 'til 3 AM on Saturday (after Saturday, actually, so it would've been 3 AM Sunday) playing KOTOR II. Was thinking about it yesterday, and I realized that I am, in a minor yet significant way, a gamer of sorts. When I have a good game on me, it's pretty much all I do, for hours on end.
The first game was a Mario Kart rip-off for DOS called Whacky Wheels. That's about as far as I can remember.
The next major one was Pokemon. Yes, you read correctly. Might as well take a magnifying glass and snap a picture while you're at it. For that matter, I bet half the guys who say, "Oh, that always sucked," hide in a closet every once in a while and plug a Pokemon game into their GBs, GBCs, GBAs, DSs, or whatnot. Anyway, it was simple; the battles were pretty much cake once you had type matchups figured and you got a diverse-enough team to cover all the types you'd face. Boom: one hit and done. That was pretty much how all my battles went. The rest was just figuring out moves to keep, party members to find early, etc. And yet I was still invested in the story. I still wanted to see evil defeated. I still wanted to accomplish everything I could.
But then it stopped. I decided I was done. The simple system that made it easy for little kids to get into the game also bored them as they got older. It just took me a little longer to get shaken, I suppose. I quickly figured out what the problem was; the combat system was too easy to beat. It was just turn, enemy turn, turn, enemy turn. I knew well enough that what they needed was real-time battle and give it a few complexities. I even devised something of a system, where the Speed characteristic would determine how long it took to attack. This had its share of problems, but at least it made some sense, and with the addition of some basic dodging, some tweaking of attacks to better suit this real-time system, and some other changes, I could make it work. Yeah, I realize I'm no programmer at Nintendo. I just think about it for the challenge. More recently, I thought about another addition, one to better reflect how combatants are likely to tire in battle, their attacks slowed and weakened as they stand more and more rounds of battle. I'd call it Power, for lack of a better term, and it would be a measure of combat readiness. Basically, launching an attack, dodging--anything that requires more than standing still--would lower power by a certain amount, and the ratio of available power would act as a multiplier to the chance of hitting the damage of the attack if it does hit. In addition, as power goes down, defensive capabilities decrease as well, so power would be divided out (or the inverse of power, fatigue, you might say, would be a multiplier) for defensive evasion (chance of dodging) or damage taken.
But that's something of a pipe dream, and unless I decide to implement my own RPG, it'll probably never see the light of day beyond here.
The third game was Super Smash Bros., and as the "hardcore" (by foolish principle more than anything) Nintendo gamer, I had to get it when I was saw my cousins with it. Good game, novel concept. It held for when I got the sequel. I was still playing it a whole year later.
The next must be Halo. My other cousin had bought an Xbox, and since his house was new, it was the meeting place for the family, so my cousins and I played Halo a lot then, and I instantly loved it, the mastery of quick reactions. Still, I had other things on my mind, but I would usually look forward to going to my cousin's house after that. His interest waned, of course, and I soon forgot, at least until I went to GHP, where my roommate had an Xbox and...you know the game. I beat it, and I loved it enough to fork over $20 for the PC version and beat it again (though not entirely on Legendary, since I just vowed I'd never go into "The Library" again; even on Normal I just hated that level, being surrounded by Flood all day, but I beat all the other missions [even "Keyes," which was right up there] on that difficulty).
And then of course, there came Halo 2, and I, of course, was still fresh off my conquering of "The Maw" on Legendary, so I was hungry for it. If it hadn't been for the money I made tutoring, I probably would never had the opportunity to play it.
At least I can assure myself that my new obsessions are no different from the old. They're just different in form, different in expression. It's all the same. Nothing changes.
Lunch. See, this is where I get slightly (only slightly, mind you) miffed. It was entirely possible that I could've gotten sixth period philosophy and fifth period lunch, keeping my former period and landing with a handful of people I was already familiar with (and whom I know to be still in that period this semester). Furthermore, I believe the batch of kids in sixth philosophy to be...more desirable to me. Now, while I understand that some kids have to be forced to one or the other, that perhaps sixth-period philosophy is full or something, if none of those conditions apply and it could've gone either way, then I have only the pseudo-random generator within the computers that do the scheduling to blame. It cannot be changed, under any circumstances.
So, I get to the lunchroom with absolutely no idea where to go, and Kevin finds me. He leads me to a table, and I get in line for food. I come back, and Kevin's gone, so I'm stuck with a band of complete strangers, save for one kid who, to be delicate, could probably fit in two chairs without a problem. Anyway, the kid next to him has a DS with Super Mario 64 DS, and we talk about Warcraft, consoles, and a bunch of other things. Not too bad.
Which reminds me...reminds me of how I stayed up 'til 3 AM on Saturday (after Saturday, actually, so it would've been 3 AM Sunday) playing KOTOR II. Was thinking about it yesterday, and I realized that I am, in a minor yet significant way, a gamer of sorts. When I have a good game on me, it's pretty much all I do, for hours on end.
The first game was a Mario Kart rip-off for DOS called Whacky Wheels. That's about as far as I can remember.
The next major one was Pokemon. Yes, you read correctly. Might as well take a magnifying glass and snap a picture while you're at it. For that matter, I bet half the guys who say, "Oh, that always sucked," hide in a closet every once in a while and plug a Pokemon game into their GBs, GBCs, GBAs, DSs, or whatnot. Anyway, it was simple; the battles were pretty much cake once you had type matchups figured and you got a diverse-enough team to cover all the types you'd face. Boom: one hit and done. That was pretty much how all my battles went. The rest was just figuring out moves to keep, party members to find early, etc. And yet I was still invested in the story. I still wanted to see evil defeated. I still wanted to accomplish everything I could.
But then it stopped. I decided I was done. The simple system that made it easy for little kids to get into the game also bored them as they got older. It just took me a little longer to get shaken, I suppose. I quickly figured out what the problem was; the combat system was too easy to beat. It was just turn, enemy turn, turn, enemy turn. I knew well enough that what they needed was real-time battle and give it a few complexities. I even devised something of a system, where the Speed characteristic would determine how long it took to attack. This had its share of problems, but at least it made some sense, and with the addition of some basic dodging, some tweaking of attacks to better suit this real-time system, and some other changes, I could make it work. Yeah, I realize I'm no programmer at Nintendo. I just think about it for the challenge. More recently, I thought about another addition, one to better reflect how combatants are likely to tire in battle, their attacks slowed and weakened as they stand more and more rounds of battle. I'd call it Power, for lack of a better term, and it would be a measure of combat readiness. Basically, launching an attack, dodging--anything that requires more than standing still--would lower power by a certain amount, and the ratio of available power would act as a multiplier to the chance of hitting the damage of the attack if it does hit. In addition, as power goes down, defensive capabilities decrease as well, so power would be divided out (or the inverse of power, fatigue, you might say, would be a multiplier) for defensive evasion (chance of dodging) or damage taken.
But that's something of a pipe dream, and unless I decide to implement my own RPG, it'll probably never see the light of day beyond here.
The third game was Super Smash Bros., and as the "hardcore" (by foolish principle more than anything) Nintendo gamer, I had to get it when I was saw my cousins with it. Good game, novel concept. It held for when I got the sequel. I was still playing it a whole year later.
The next must be Halo. My other cousin had bought an Xbox, and since his house was new, it was the meeting place for the family, so my cousins and I played Halo a lot then, and I instantly loved it, the mastery of quick reactions. Still, I had other things on my mind, but I would usually look forward to going to my cousin's house after that. His interest waned, of course, and I soon forgot, at least until I went to GHP, where my roommate had an Xbox and...you know the game. I beat it, and I loved it enough to fork over $20 for the PC version and beat it again (though not entirely on Legendary, since I just vowed I'd never go into "The Library" again; even on Normal I just hated that level, being surrounded by Flood all day, but I beat all the other missions [even "Keyes," which was right up there] on that difficulty).
And then of course, there came Halo 2, and I, of course, was still fresh off my conquering of "The Maw" on Legendary, so I was hungry for it. If it hadn't been for the money I made tutoring, I probably would never had the opportunity to play it.
At least I can assure myself that my new obsessions are no different from the old. They're just different in form, different in expression. It's all the same. Nothing changes.