Blue Chamber

Do me a favour.

Make sure you are alone and won't be disturbed. Aim for as much quiet as possible (phones off hook, dogs outside, children gagged, that kind of thing). Turn up the speakers on your PC. If you can, turn them up to a level that fills the room, to the point where it's trying to replace the oxygen.

Then, Click this link, hit play on the media player in the wee window there, sit back, and close your eyes. Yes, I'm serious. Stop reading this and just follow these simple instructions. I promise it's something nice. Go on, I'll be here when you get back...

*waits*

Beautiful, isn't it.

What went through your mind as it was playing? Could you see your thoughts? Where did you go? How did it make you feel?

I listen to a lot of ambient music (go here for masses of free stuff), precisely because of the experience I have while listening to it. As a Loner, as someone with a preference for their inner life over their outer one, I find music like this the most wonderful balm after a tiring day or stressful event.

And this one has been written for a game. Infinity: The Quest for Earth. Here's a quick look:


Possibly the most beautiful game engine I have ever seen in my life. But imagine that music playing while you drop down into the atmosphere of an entirely new world as two of the planet's moons rise above the horizon....

Me Waaaaaant.

Current Mood: Ambient

To say I am terrified of dentists is understatement of the year. Dentists SUCK.

When I finally cross through the pearly gates and see The Big Man sitting benevolently on his throne, I am going to aim a swift punch at his smug, bearded face for ever putting us through the never-ending nightmare of drilling, scraping and other assorted awfulness. The bastard.

Work is getting me down today. Some of my past work has come back to bite me, and is causing some havoc/additional cost getting it sorted. Not entirely my fault but looking back it wasn't the smartest work I've ever done either.

On the plus side, a new site offering older PC games for download, Good Old Games, has emailed me a link to the non-public, invitation-only beta-test of their new service. There is one in particular I'm looking forward to trying, hopefully for the magical price-point of approx £5 (or less), Freespace 2, but I could see myself purchasing a few more if the service proves easy enough to use. Freespace 2, widely regarded as a true classic of the genre, is a space sim[ulation] in the old style, meaning a joystick is the preferred method of flight control*. This gives me a good excuse to pop in past PC World on my way home tonight for a spot of Retail Therapy.

Current Mood: Wanting to go home.

*Newer games switched to a mouse-and-keyboard method of flight, easier for the wider populace to get a grasp of but much less authentic. Predictably, we space-smitten die-hards prefer the innuendo-laden Stick of Joy.

Got my new phone August 26th, decided I needed a bigger memory card to replace the tiny one it came with. Found a 2Gb microSD card on Amazon for a fiver – bought it there and then.

Item came. Was wrong item. I'd been sent an 8Gb card which was no use to me, the phone could only take a maximum of 2Gb. So I parcelled it back up and contacted the seller through his website.

No reply.

Contacted seller again using addresses he'd used to confirm original order. Received a reply which wasn't much of a reply – basically a standard response, listing rules and regs for a bunch of circumstances which didn't relate to me. Probably automatic.

I sent another email, again being very clear and concise about what was wrong and what I wanted. Received another stupid, possibly-automated response, this time about his Returns Policy. There was no indication of a human presence in the mail at all. I decided to give it a day or two and try again.

The next day I received an email saying my return parcel had been received and the correct item had been posted to me again. Mollified, I sat back and waited.

Item arrived the following day (yesterday). Another 8Gb card. So this time I got angry then wrote and sent this lovely little piece, of which I am rather proud:

Digizo/Peter - Please provide RMA number for return of 2nd item you have posted to me as it is also an 8Gb card which is:

a) NOT WHAT I ORDERED - I ordered a 2Gb card which is clearly stated on the invoice I returned to you. The price I paid should also have given you some indication.

b) USELESS TO ME - As I stated in my email correspondence (which you seem to have ignored) the device I need the card for has a max' capacity of 2Gb. Anything above that will not be recognised. Hence the order for a 2Gb card in the first instance.

I now wish to cancel the order and get for my money back: incompetence like this does not deserve be rewarded with sales, and I do not have further weeks to play postal tennis with you until you learn how to recognise basic numerals.

Your item will be returned as soon as I receive the RMA number. I expect my refund to be with me with similar speed.

Grant.

He paid the refund less than an hour later, even though his stated policy is to wait for the item back first.

Current Mood: Proud of myself

It is with considerable smugness that I read the reviews of game developer GSC's latest not-quite-as-good-as-its-forbear addition to the excellent S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise, Clear Sky...followed by the bitter comments beneath the review of people bemoaning the bugs present in the game and settling in for the long, frustrating wait for a patch to arrive that magically restores the game to something like its intended glory.

I went through this with the original game, the stunning Shadow of Chernobyl. It took approximately four months and five or six patches to get the game stabilised and running without technical issues, which for many of us early-buyers were preventing us from enjoying one of the best games we'd seen in years. We knew it was there - we just couldn't get at it. And GSC, at least initially, seemed quite adamant that the fault lay not with their code but with our machines!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
This was not the first time I'd heard this, however.

Egosoft, a german games development unit, also pulled out the excuses (Your PC, not our game) when their hotly anticipated next-gen space empire-building game, X3: Reunion, arrived on PCs around the world in shoddy, early-beta form. Patch 1.4 - after around six months of waiting and testing successive patch releases, was the one that not only polished the game to a smooth and playable state but revealed those words to be utter nonsense.

X3: Reunion
On PC, When games don't work properly the usual result is for the game-player to then begin a long process of troubleshooting, tweaking and diagnostics, looking at the underlying OS, the hardware and any troublesome device drivers that might be acting up. Braver souls will also start fiddling with the games' configuration files. Thus it was particulary insulting to be told that OUR carefully maintained gaming rigs were the problem. And the fact that 99% of the other games we owned worked without the horrendous sound and graphical issues didn't seem to occur to either developer until much later (after many venomous comments left on their forums and message boards).

I bought both games on the day of release. The X3 experience stung in its own right, but when GSC/STALKER did the very same thing to me I decided enough was enough. No longer was I going to support developers/publishers releasing buggy, unfinshed code that we, the paying public, would be forced to test for them at the expense of enjoying our purchases: I would wait until the games significantly dropped in price or had even reached the secondary markets, like eBay or Gamestation's secondhand bins where I could both pick up a bargain and deprive the devs of their direct revenue. By that point in time all the bugs should have been squashed.

It is terrible that it has come to this in modern PC gaming; I'm actually beginning to envy the simplicity of consoles(!), and have learned to despise publishers who shift things out to market too early to make a quick buck. Looking at Clear Sky such hostility and cynicism towards the business end of my favoured pastime feels entirely vindicated.

Hallo, little boy. *hiss* Want to buy an unfinished game...?