The Dumb Decision Theory

I see some explicit irony in the fact that a professor cant decide who to pick to hold a presentation about the decision making processes. So since, I don't have internet right now anyway, I might as well make the post-sketch.

So while he is figuring this small issue out I guess I might just as well take care of the blog. I recently started watching the big bang theory. The plot is cheesy, however it's funny enough too watch, despite the horrible laughing-background-noises. I mean seriously, they should at least take the effort and record some new laughter sounds. As a engineer and geek, I also can relate to the issues and brought up topics quite well. Interesting enough though - I often feel like "nooo this is wrong, physics doesn't work this way!". Also the series causes me to start reading about quantum physics just for the hell of it (also watch Battle star galactica).

Goddammit now they are arguing about the definition of a word that describes decision process classification types. Why did I ask why he calls a photo a descriptive model for decision processes - now I was stuck in a discussion if a photo can be a decision making process model or is a model overall.

Talking about decisions, the series has the mean downside of mocking the engineer for not having a P.H.D. and just being a master, which is sorta offensive towards me (less offensive then the fact that he is a perverted, failing, womanizer due to some reason). I do envy though the friendship that is going on in the series. While, I do have some geeky friends with similar interests, somehow they are either far far away or we never manage to get together, because only some want to hang out with other, know each other or even like each other. Which is sorta sad, the environment shown in the series, is pretty neat.

Aaaand here we go again, "but if we're in Wismar, you cant sell a million of bread chunks, so the formula is a parable". This guy always has to argue during the last minutes of a lecture? Classic, though he's sorta right, the break even point model is overly simplified it cant be ever a linear function and we're not in bachelor anymore to oversimplify things, especially consideri... Oh cool, this guy is playing torchlight 2 in front of me - I really gotta get this game.

I also find it very fitting that the most (IQ-wise) clever character of the series is displayed as a OCDing, crazy something. It seems like sanity is a common price for intelligence, either that or happiness. Crazy enough, this is more of an observation, then a emo-thing, since I can't complain about most things right now. Now I just wish deciding upon a new tablet (I still weep for my old one) would be easier, since I still havnt learned anything about a proper decision making process, since the time was spent on discussions on the decision what criteria is most important for a decision making algorithm...

Oh finally it's over, now I just have to pick where I'm going to eat today...

Competence

Ohai,

so during the last week, i had to choice a multimedia project for this semester.

I decided to stick with doing part of the programming work for a new upcoming educating game. Now I clearly didnt expect anything with the word "education" to be fun to play, especially since its a point and click adventure and it's a state funded project.

Neither did I expect it to be succesful or something.

However, what I heard and saw from people beign responsible for it is outragous and sorta sad. A trio was responsible for the project. Each of them is representing some sorta of data security or police department, but neither of em is a real programm, designer, writer or anything remotely fiting for a game designer. In addition each of them had the great idea, that apparently they have to teach kids of the age category "10-16" (I dont get how 10-16 can be one category by the way), the dangers of internet, privacy theft, the importance of firewalls, routers and how bad cloud computing, facebook and torrents are.

So they came up with some abstract concept of a "point and click adventure" (2 of 3 didnt even udnerstand what that term means), that would get going on a spaceship "protect privacy". Seriously, why dont we just call the nemesis "Book Face" and the protagonist "Cpt. Propaganda"?

 Some collegues and my minority suggested some alternative approaches that seemingly have blown their minds. But seriousy - I still dont get hopw such people just start asuming that they can make some random, not fun game, filled with boring material and asume it will be a hit o.o

Starcraft II - HOTS

Initially I was going to sum up a discussion about arts here, but after rereading it again I noticed, that I can't even properly sum it up, so instead I'm going to talk about the new Starcraft 2 changes, coming with heart of the swarm and complain to my hearts content.

Now I'm a Zerg player. So this whole post might be slightly subjective. The changes coming to starcraft are sorta strange.

The terran and the protos both got their early game and late game enhanced a lot, while the Zerg Swarm really doesn't feel that outstanding.

Terrans recieved a strong new mechanical walker unit, that can be produced early game called the warhound. Now, while I sorta agree that the terrans really lacked some straightforward unit that they can produce from their factory, this one seems overly strong.
It's fairly cheap to produce, while its one of the first units you can build, has formidable defense, high range, high speed and looks like a stronger version a maraudor. I'm not entirely sure what I'm suposed to think about this guy, but he's taking down a stalker with 3 shots.

At the same time terrans are now equiped with spider mines, helion transformers that offer more survivability and higher damage and some new researches.

In all honesty, this sounds like a nightmare for any zerg player. On the bright side however, it'll provide quite a bit of additional challenge and blizzard doesnt tend to balance its strategy games badly (as long as there is no paladin in starcraft 2).

Well at the very least terran mech play is a lot more exciting now.

Protos on the other hand, recieved midgame updates. A mothership core allows quick retreat and quite some gimmicks (for example a strong defensive weapon), to play the early and mid game more risky, the oracle provides a lot new harassing options, like entombing the enemy minerals and denying resourses, while the Tempest gives the protos a nice chance for lategame air superiority, without all the awkwardness of carriers.

To be honest I like the Protos changes most.

Now I'm really not sure what to make out of the zerg changes.... but I'm going to play SC2 for now, I'll finish later :p

Winter Mountain House

Romania

Romania is a strange country.

Strange is being used in all of it's contexts and meanings at once. I've yet to see such scatter of both good and bad madness at once in another place.

You might walk down a street in Bucarest, obeserving the different architectures coming from different times and countries next to each other - because Romania battled in a lot of wars and got invaded frequently afterwards - looking at the rich and nice state of mansions there, being built right next to a completly ruined and overgrown house, next to a electricity lampost, with hundreds of tangled elecricity wires, of which half is broken and riped in pieces.

You could see lifesized replicas of famous houses, done out of marble, that are inhabited by hundreds of gypsies who still refusre to pay for power and water (and obviously get none). Also you could spot the same hundred gipsies chasing eight policemen, while being armed with swords and clubs.

The statistics about Romania are also incredibly strange. The country has a very high percentage of incredibly gifted kids, but also a scary high percentage of uh... "less intelligent kids", even the president itself mentioned: "romanian schools produce idiots".

Talking about presidents. During the last vote, the amount of fake votes and the "techniques" employed would make the russian 140% look poor in comparison. Foreigners were allowed to vote: in each city once or mroe. Dead people were being caught voting. etc. etc. Funny thing is that the last vote about if the suspended president should return or not, was ignored, becuase each size had equal ammounts of invalid votes.

Romanians have a very distinct look, (same as most nations), but they also dress a lot more wilder than I'm used to seeing in Germany and even Ukraine, Ireland or other countries. If you think you've seen short shorts, no you havn't. If you think you saw high heels, no you havn't either. And if you think that red green, is too contrastful and colorful, it for sure aint.

The stores offer a variety of interesting things (interestingly, the shirt i liked most, that was hanging all over the window and store, was a "Promotional item" they were not wanting to sell). The streets have more pharmacies and banks then you would ever expect. (you will never ever find a crossing in bucarest that doesnt have at least 5 different banks in sight).

At the seaside (which was awesome btw, including bars, beach and water, but watch your purse!), you might run into a restaurant selling selfcaught fish (yes, with boats, no they dont catch fish with bare hands), which is delicious and very affordable too. However you might get surprised to see that the fish has actually green bones (as in grass-bright green, not just "slightly green"). It'll still be very delicious and most likely you'll be completly consumed by it, until you discover a log hanging from another log on a string, with the caption "Mobile chair".

There is a lot more one could say and quite some more things I will say, but for now I'd prolly just sum it up, that it's a adventure. A nice one too.

I like em fresh

Been a while since I last wrote here,

mostly because I was lazy, but also because I was not sure what or more like how to write about things that were worth writing about. So here I am now, back from another trip to Romania (actually 2 trips, in between the time I didnt write anything), doing my usual thing:

balancing on a hairstring between doing productive things and falling into the abyss of gaming and "applied" lifestyle - a state where ones activities decide ones plans, instead of plans deciding activites.

So in order to snap myself out a little bit out of the situation, I'm going to try to apply some more advanced planning techniques. Most likely I'll burn the house down in the process of planning, considering how good I am at this, but hey, there is no science without victims (don't believe those who tell otherwise!). And thus it has been officially decided that I write something here on fridays, less I will forget about this place once again.

So what IS worth writing about. A picture says 1000 words they say. Probably it does, however I don't have a picture right now. But after reading multipple digital art books and installing and trying out the new Photoshop CS6, the desire is strong in this one to start doodling again (which I allready did).

There are quite a lot of thoughts on my mind regarding happiness, relatives, foreign relatives (all people are equal, but some are less equal!), relationships, friendship etc, however I feel like I need some more time before geting to the more serious topics. Probably next friday.

I could write a trilogy on Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2, but I still don't have enough gaming toxins in my blood at this point, to waste this ammount of time for such topics.

After deleting the last/current line and rewriting 50 different versions of it (you'll never know what was there mwahaha), I decided that the next writing topic will be Romania - general impressions.

That being sad I'm gonna chicken out and go sleep.
Because sleep is good.

The mighty power of boredom

Ukraine

It sorta feels weird to go back to Ukraine tommorow once again.

I spent at least 8 years of my life there. Afterwards, my parents left with me to Germany. I never regreted their choise, even if it had an obvious tremendous impact on the development of my personal life.

It just feels weird going back. I sorta feel bad that we won't see the place we once lived again.
Despite everything, Miss Nostalgia is invited.

Grom find stone

Investor Infestor

 

A friend of mine allways accidently says "investor" stead of "infestor", figrued I'd make this for him :3

Diablo 3 beta - patch 14

So ye, since Diablo 3 beta, patch 14 was released, ima prioritize a bit and talk about it, instead of working on finishing my thesis on time. So nevermind the typos, I was actually too lazy to read it afterwards...

So ye,

first of all, the general gameplay changed quite a bit. The difficulty level in patch 14 significantly increased, due to an increase of damage on all mobs and decrease of available item possibilities.

Another run

Not that you don't find any magic items anymore, actually you find LOTS of them and I do mean LOTS, in around 3 hours of testing, I got like hundreds of those and over 200 of the essense stashed, while crafting somehting here and there all the time and having close ot zero magic find. Each miniboss drops at least 2 blue's - definitly too much, chests drop them a lot more commonly and the shiny-golden-huge chests drop 4-5 of them. By the way not a single rare droped during this time, which feels wrong alltogether too. Also I wish the items would have colors like in diablo 2, with identification gone, affixed being nearly allways the same, after 30 min you just stop checking and simply sell/break all the blues, because you are geting way too many of them. By the way, talking about drops, the gold drops also were majorly boosted. Mobs now easily drop 3-4 times the gold they did before, same story for quests (also you level noticably slower). So at least you can use all the gold and resources for crafting

Remember this pre-beta 14?

It drops slightly more now

However, the palette of craftable items was changed completely too. Actually it's a step in the right direction from Blizzard, crafting was considerably overpowered before, but they forgot to close the gap they created themself. I  You can now craft blue items only, because all rare crafted items are level 14+ and the blue non-armor items are mostly either level 4 or level 14+ too, leaving a gap around 10 levels big, when crafting is close to useless, except for level 11, when you can craft a bit of new armor.


--- The following paragraph is going to contain some D2<->D3 compare/rant, skip if you want ---

On the bright side, blue items seem to get more less-trashy affixes (like +experience, +health globe radius) and more worthwhile stats like magic find and primary attributes. Actually thats more or less the only worthwhile stats that spawn on armor, which is sorta sad. Things like +armor, +%armor, hit recovery, damage reduction, resistances, absorbtions, combined with identifications, made this nice effect of "Fwoosh, your item suddenly turned blue and now you will sometimes spawn combo lightnings when struck". Sure, it's not exactly a very useful stat, but it's responsive, while stats in Diablo 3 are simply "want" or "do not want", you don't really notice em, except for attack speed maybe. Even the primary stats don't feel very right at this stage, since there are no stat requirements on items and you don't get mana from a resource anymore, so it all feels a bit pale. ANYHOW, enough of my ranting. Back to patch 14.

--- Rant over :x ---

The good side however, is that difficulty and combat got a LOT better in patch 14. Not like it was that bad before, but now you have some feeling of challenge, more runes and skills available and its more fun in general.

The mob groups hit harder, drop less globes (or so i think) and a new boss modifier appears (nightmarish). These folks, sometimes cause you to run for your life, when they hit you. Usually you don't really notice this modifier (about as annoying as knockback and teleport, which is not annoying at all), except we are talking of a group of archers. Suddenly this modifier gets a lot more annoying and can deal severe damage. A nice sideeffect of this however, is the moment when a imp hits you and your might barbarian runs away, while the imp runs away in the opposite direction.

Also the level progression got a lot better for most classes. You unlock some new funny skills early on and also get access different and other runes.

I tested all classes without rings and with patch 14 equip/weapons.

The wizard for example, gets a new arcane orb rune, which makes it's explosion more damaging. It's not exactly very original and not as useful as the old orb rune, that was doubling the radius of it's explosion, but it looks and feels pretty cool. Also the "Tornado" spell is back in, it deals a bit more damage now an actually is fairly usable in large monster groups or tight spots (no pun intended). But the real kicker for me was the new Ray of Frost rune. Actually it's the one that was announced and presented in the video ages ago, it turned the Ray into a storm turning around you as long as you channel it. Back then it looked useless for me, you have to channel it, can't move, it's short ranged and it makes you a target. But truth is, it feels very "dynamic" and responsive. The dead skeletons, fly into the right direction, while geting frozen, the sound is perfect and it feels strong, concentrated and powerful. Awesome stuff.
Overall the Wizzy is a nice play. It's still a crazy glass cannon, but is well balanced and really fun to play.

much more shiny ingame

The demon hunter didn't really learn a lot of new tricks. The smoke screen is a nice new toy (looks awesome by the way) and was handy in quite a few situations, but preparation is something you don't really need or want until higher levels and it really feels like the demon hunters AOE capabilities got toned down a whee too much. Sure she still has the bola shot, but with it's rune removed from beta, it's not effective enough compared to other classes. The burning-shot-rapid-fire (looks nice) and a 4x hiting entangling shot runes are nice things, but they both suffer from the problem of not dealing enough AOE damage, while being amazing skills.
Sure those abilities will be effective later on and more are to come, but the demon hunter now feels underwhelming again.

Kill it with fire

Smoke Screen visual

The barbarian provides a excellent play. One you rarely see, from a meele character in a ARPG. He is mostly balanced, his abilities scale nicely and he is fun to play. Cleave (still) feels too powerful, because of it's "Rupture" (?) rune, that causes enemies to explode upon death. With a single attack cleave is capable of clearing out whole groups of mobs, even if they are lead by mini-boss guys or include champions. The early on available rune for rend makes rend a very effective skill (over 200% damage in 17y around you), but it feels a bit uh, powerless. Maybe because you dont see any response on the enemies. A very minor knockback or some on-hit animation should fix it though. The ground stomp rune looks fine, but the skill isn't exactly required early on. But the 2 really "New" abilities are Ancient Spear and Seismic Slam. Well the ancient spear is another case of "rend". It deals good damage, is useful, but feels very wrong. As for once, it's too shiny. The spear is bigger then the barbarian and it's all silver-blue-whatever.  It should be smaller and feel more "bloody" and have a different sound too actually. Feels like a toy otherwise. Also it does not show any "force". If the opponent it hits, does not die, yes it looks great. However if it dies, the target just "falls apart" in place, instead of it's corpse being dragged to you.
...And then there is the seismic slam. And I love it. It might not even be that crazy effective, since it costs more then Hammer of the ancients with rolling thunder rune and deals less damage (unless enemies are lined up or have ranged support), but the sound, visuals and effect are just great. Very fun to use and also very useful and quite well balanced.
All in all, the barbarian was a great play and except for some minor issues perfectly fine.

Seismic Wave in progress

Ancient Spear sorta looks fancy

The witch doctor. Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah Aah Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang. And I didn't write it just because of the rather obvious pun. It's because that's how the gameplay feels and it's pretty cool actually. The current witch doctor relies on a big palette of different damaging abilities to control the battlefield, instead of just spaming a single skill, like it worked in the earlier versions. The new exploding frogs rune, is a good main weapon, it deals great damage for a fairly low mana price and provides sufficient AOE. The randomness and bad targeting of it balances it out, while giving you motivation to use other abilities. The zombie dog rune, is a nice addition and noticable, even if just a minor bonus. And the sacrifice ability makes me giggle. In the current build it's not exactly that interesting, because of the low ammount of skill slots available, but it's fun to use and is definitly something to consider later on, especially with runes.
Overall, it's a great class to play. Now only if the first witch doctor mask, wouldnt be designed to be so butt-ugly...

Combo-Action

Frog Country

Finaly the monk. There is not much to tell about him. His gameplay feels as fluid as it was before, attacks are really responsive adn well timed, the runed fists of lightning ability (patch 13), feels and looks awesome and it's definitly a cool class. Really new in this patch are 2 runes and 2 abilities. The lashing tail kick rune morphes it into a fierry AOE attack. There is absolutly nothing to not like about it. It still feels like the same ability, just improved. The tempest rush rune is pretty effective, while it's not really damaging, it's one of the utility abilities, that is fun to use. The mobs fly away nicely and give a extra touch of realism and it provides a bit of mobility. The exploding palm rework is a nice addition and while 30% mob health as damage isn't that much, I asume it will be a lot in later difficulties and is also very noticable if used on close-to-dead boss mobs. Last in line is the "Wave of Light". And I'm really so-so about this one. For 3 reasons. First of all, it sorta feels like spoiling the monk. With the exception of "astral ally" you actually get your last offensive ability worth noting at level 17, which makes the progression of the monk class sorta lame, while other classes get new and new offensive abilities until level 30. And yes of course there are runes, still it feels sorta wrong. Then there is the actual ability. While it indeed does deal up to 300% weapon damage, it's not allways very simple to hit with it, because of its fairly thin line AoE and using 100 spirit to kill 3-4 mobs that are lined up for it, feels like a huge waste. And even if you do encounter mobs that are lined up for it, you rarely have 100 spirit. Finaly, the looks. The actual wave should be a bit brighter. It just feels poor in comparison to the monks and other classes abilities.

Anyhow, overall the monk is still awesome to play, but he could use some minor tweaks.

Lashing Tail Kick - Runed

Wave of Light...

In total, it's a nice patch, it needs quite some improvements and yes the skill GUI is still sloppy and the previous GUI was way better, but still the game is way more polished then 99% of other games I can think of at release.

and again

Anyhow, back to work me. Thanks for reading.

Nexus

Dilemma

Unrelated

Started watching House, was doodling stuff meanwhile, somehow everything appeared slowly...

Orbit

Still working on it, but that's how it looks for far

Engineering Thesis in 3 Weeks

Yanno what thesis? 

Intuition

Well, these 3 are more of an accidental outcome to be honest. I was working on a background for a picture called intuition. The background was mainly blue and yellow. Accidently I messed up the middle (yellow) part, while working at it. To fix it, I decided to add some glow and mix some white into it. While listening to music I was mixing the colors and drawing and doodling something, mainly relying on the smudge tool.

Ironically, I soon noticed, that the outcome was a small picture in itself, even if not the intended results. I took down some of it's shinines in the upper 2 versions, using different methods.

Still playing around. Whee.

Desktop rework

Diablo III - Impressions

So now, that I finaly have my hands on Diablo 3, I managed to play it through with every class, which sadly (or luckily, considering how much time I have available atm), didn't take very long.

Most people who check this blog, know what Diablo is about, so I'll just focus on the new aspects and the overall feel, stead of explaining, what a "Action-RPG" is all about.

So here are my impressions so far.

Starting from the Diablo 3 main menu, it all pulses with this "Diablo" feeling. The music, background, dark atmosphere, it all feels familiar. The menu's are simply and straightforward. The graphic options, not very numerous, but as often with Blizzard beta's I'm sure there's more to come.

After typing in your account name and password, you get into the character selection screen. I have to admit, that at this point i had quite some negative impressions. When creating a new hero, you are presented to 10 different (5 classes, 2 genders) character models, of how each of them could look like in later stages of the game and sadly some of those models are butt-ugly, overpixely and the faces make me feel like I'm playing Morrowind. Luckily enough, apparently those are only models, because, both faces and appearance of real characters look way more solid.

count the polygons

On the bright side however, you can create and design your own banner. The process reminds me of the World of Warcraft tabard creation process, but you have way more options and you unlock more of them, by geting achievements. I have to admit, I really like this idea. Speaking of achievements, even the beta has quite a few of them, using the same point system, SC2 and WoW uses. Each achievement grants points and those increase the length of your e-peen. It sounds silly, but I wouldn't complain, I'm sorta bought by the system in starcraft too...

banner creation

After selecting the class and entering the nickname, the game starts. I guess the release version, might have some sort of cinematic or individual class video going on, but it feels good the way it is too. For the sake of this post, I'll focus on the barbarian as a class. Now I never liked him much in Diablo 2. With the exception of his ability to literally yell at the opponents corpse and make it drop more items, which was both hilarious and useful. In diablo 2, the Barbarian was monotone, more or less a buff up and leftclick class, usually using either Frenzy or Whirlwind only, sometimes swaping into Zerk to defeat enemies that were masochistic and didnt care about physical bashing.

Anyhow, I named my mighty barbarian "Rawr". You start out with an axe, that you can use to perform a basic attack, which you mostly won't use at all, since you also have the ability bash with level 1, which as expected bashes away at a nearby baddie on click, sorta stuns, deals bonus damage and also generates fury, instead of costing mana like in Diablo 2. The fury is the new barbarian resourse. Some attacks generate it, others use it.

It all starts with the event of a mysterious "star" falling inside the old tristram cathedral. And you are there to investiage it. You start on a cliff, near a village called New Tristram, the village where people enver learn. There was the apocalypse starting twice there, within 20 years or something and they try it again and again to live there. Obviously the town is under siege by the undead once again. You bash away some zombies and the guards let you in.

zombie siege

 Talking about bashing, the combat is impressive. You can pretty much feel the strength, of the attacks, since both sound and visuals are impressive. Defeated enemies fly away, dragged by the force of the amazing Diablo 3 physics engine and death animations are various. Critical strikes add even more eye candy. Each option: Dual wield, two handed weapons and one weapon/shield, has different animations for every attack for every weapon type. It gets even cooler, when you get new attacks. "Hammer of the Ancients" releases the accumulated fury, to smash down a single poor fellah with a summoned huge blue hammer. Cleave, is a fury generating ability that slices down opponents in front of you, with a pretty red animation. As you progress further, more and more skills get unlocked. Leap attack, allows you to jump huge heights and distances and deal AoE damage in the target area. Great for both mobility and damage, especially considering the fact, that it generates fury.

looks very juicy in motion

The big trouble is, what will you pick. In the beta, you will eventually unlock up to 4 skill slots. And even with the limited options of skills, it's still hard to decide.

A "cleave"+"leap attack"+"ground stomp"+"war cry" combination, will offer you good AoE damage and huge fury generation, but your single target damage is limited, have high cooldowns and you will have a lot of unspent fury, which feels like a waste. The "Frenzy"+"Cleave"+"Rend"+"Revenge", will offer, both single target and AoE damage, but is situational and lacks the mobility and buffs of the first build. And once again, you get to the 2hand VS dualwield VS 1hand+shield question, since 2 handed weapons generate fury slower, but the fury-using skills also deal more damage, since all damaging skills in Diablo III scale of your weapon damage and their speed is weapon speed dependent. This is better then it sounds by the way, since it also makes balancing the game a lot easier and reduces the ammount of all-around-everyone-uses-a-single-skill cookie cutter builds.

approaching

I'm not sure how many players can claim that the hammerdin in Diablo 2 was really fun to play, even if it is very effective...

The final version of the game will (is atm suposed to) offer around double the abilities per class, 2 more ability slots, 2 more passive skill slots (and lots of other new passives) and also runes. For those few who doesn't know what runes do in Diablo III - they modify an ability. Runes come in 5 types and 7 levels each and each ability gains a different or enhanced effect, with different visuals and sound effects.

The ammount of different builds, possibilities and combinations sounds pretty amazing, asuming, it won't be removed or something, like the way they removed (even if possibly accidently) the scroll of companion - a item, that can be used to summon a small critter/minion, that would pick the gold up for you, very useful, considering that gold is fairly important in Diablo 3.

party

You use gold to buy items, craft items, repair items, upgreade your stash, upgrade your artisan to craft items, auction house .... I actually hope that there will be some sort of a gambler like in Diablo 2.

Talking of items and gambling by the way, I'm slightly confused and disapointed here. There seem to be a lot of things missing or just wrong here, at least in my eyes. First of all, at least in the current version, I really don't like the way the merchants work. Browsing their items, isn't really as fun as it was in Diablo 2, I really miss this "item cluster". Also the items sold by the merchants are nearly allways: 1) the same 2) useless garbage 3) lack variety, even in the begining. I'm yet to see one of those guys selling a 2-handed sword.

Also maybe I'm the only one, but I also don't like the item management system. Especially with the bigger inventory and the fact that we should NOT pick up white and grey items, after the last patch, since they are nearly not worth any gold and are not needed for crafting any more, I really want bigger items icons back. You rarely get so many magic items and all of them use 1x1 or 1x2 slots (in D2, there were 1x1, 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, 2x3, 1x4, 2x4), making the inventory look like a huge mess and the items look to similar and silly ( i need the same space for a dagger and my plate armor ). Besides there was some charm in the old item system, which the current one sadly lacks, at least in my oppinion, also you had to think if you want to pick up the item, considering inventory space, price, usefullness etc. Atm you just gather every blue thing you see up.

random encounter

 Another thing, which is disturbing, is that you find every blue item identified allready. Identifying the items, was some sort of an "present unpacking" with "attention giving" thing, at the moment, blue items rarely gain your attention, even if sometimes they are better then your current one.

I'm also a bit scared, that the current build is lacking affixes. Compared to Diablo huge list of affixes, including +skills, +/level +on-hit spells, +% damage, +% chance to hit, +% defense, +recovery etc etc, the current system appears a bit simple. On the other hand, it might not be the fact, but I it's just the way it feels, especially considering the fact that some of the current affixes are not too useful, like "+2 range on health globes pickup" and "+2 experience/kill", considering how rarely you need the health globes and how fast you level up. Also I sorta miss jewels,  (old) sockets and etheral items, but I'm pretty sure those will be back ingame after a while.

However, I'm not complaining about the difficulty to be honest. Sure, it's pretty pretty simple at the moment. But thats not the point. You can die in the beta, if you play for the first time, with an untwinked character, if you are uncareful and potions have a cooldown. Meaning that in the later game and difficulty, dying should be VERY simple, since potion spamming is out now and you will have to run through all the dungeons to get to the boss you want to farm, instead of waiting in Act 5 town for some random maphacking player or bot with Enigma to tell you, "throne is cleared". I really hope that the Diablo 3 anti-cheat protection will stop me from programming, the game from becoming a huge spam, dupe and cheat fest once again.

About coop by the way: It's great. The inability to steal other players items, encourages to work together and even with random parties the fun factor goes 1UP. The allready amazingly randomized maps, with a lot of random neat events are even more fun, when in a party. And I'm actually not a fan of random parties (pubs...).  I just sorta wish that you could see what other players find (at least yellow/rares), at least for bragging rights. Also the chat is a bit annoying, since it gets constantly spammed by NPC's, so you cant actually see the lines written by the player.

next level

By the way the physic engine mentioned in the begining also really impresses, with the environment. Pretty much half of whatever, you see in a dungeon or cellar or graveyard, with the exception of the floor and huge walls, can be destroyed, also often instantly killing NPC's. The much more important aspect of it, is that it looks great. It really adds to the battlefield feeling (not talking about the game), enemies flying away, projectiles beign fired from both sides, explosions and objects being destroyed everywhere. Awesome.

 

 

 

before

 

 

 

after

Will write reviews on the other classes and more aspects in a few days or weeks, gonna go to the gym now.

ceremony

interupted

Clarity

(Btw posting via android, this is typo land)

Im a awkward person i guess.

As a gamer i played a lot of games un my life. While quantitatively notn on top, i guess Diablo 2 is the game i could identify myself with most. I played it singleplayer, multiplayer, hardcore, mods, traded, i programmed for it, joined communities, wrote my own bots....

And then there is Diablo 3. A long awaited sequel to D2. Withnew classes, new options, content, more story etc etc. I was obsessed with it. I browsed wikis, followed tweets and websites nad drooledover every new screenshot daily.when the beta finalyarrived neiter me nor anyof my friendsgot intot.

And it was drivng me crazy. I wasted more time recherching and checking websites daily then a stupid teenage girl drooling over justinbieber. Ww talk ofweeks of realtime i exepect.

And now i finaly haveit n my hand,evenif iHands and partielly temporerilly. I played it for 4 hours i think and itwas damn much fun, even if it is veryshort and easy. One would suspect id pull an allnighter and would spend all of my next days playing, even i thouht so. But the truth is sorta the reversd story.

Ifeel like my mind is finaly at peace. I know pretty much everytihng about the beta and the atmosphere was nice and relaxing (the familiar atmosphere of gore, blood and dying demons)--and after testing it i have  this sort of completition sensation, i feel more reinforced to actually take care ofthe more important things, like thesis and scheduling.

Talking of which, its sleeptime

Crystal

Timewaste ftw!

The red one is the initial version, but after a while started liking the blue one more and imporving it atm, it's sorta work in progress. The colorful one is just wheeeeee, I like changing layer options!

Fat Cat Mountain

done because promissed

Cubes

Brr, still work in progress, after messing up the picture (twice), also gotta work at the outlines and bla

 

Green Version

Blog update