Cav's Place

On January 18, the Internet united to fight against SOPA and PIPA. However, the fact that everyone had their sights on that battle meant that their big brother, ACTA, which is an international treaty that has flown under the radar all along, seeming like a distant threat to all but those who were at the forefront of the struggle against it, could slip through the cracks. And that’s exactly what happened on January 26, when representatives of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom signed the treaty, joining Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States, which had signed it in 2010.
Yes, this signing was largely symbolic, as the actual debates on whether the European Union should approve the treaty or not will only now begin, with the final vote scheduled for this summer, but the period during which any changes could be made has indeed ended. This means that the treaty can now only be approved or rejected in its entirety and that the goal of the fight is very clear: ACTA must be rejected and nothing else like it should ever be allowed to come into existence, whether at the national or international level.

With that goal in mind, several petitions have been started, the most successful one apparently being the one created by Avaaz, which has so far gathered over two million signatures. But perhaps more importantly, this Saturday, on September 11, there will be worldwide protests against ACTA, in which I encourage you all to take part. The powers that be must hear our voices loud and clear and see that we are ready to fight against any and all attempts to take away even more of our freedoms and put our lives at the mercy of corporations and governments. This trend must be stopped and reversed now, while it’s still possible to do so!
I know it’s winter and the weather in most of Europe in particular is especially unsuitable for such protests at this time, but this could be one of the reasons why they chose that date for the signing. So we have to show them that they can’t silence us through such tricks, that we’re willing to fight for ourselves even if the conditions are difficult and even if they try to dishearten us by flooding us with bad news. If even I plan to take part, then all of you who actually get out of your houses more or less daily have no excuse to stay in now!

Before I end this post, I’d like to also make you aware of next month’s protest action: Black March. Let’s hit those responsible for such laws and treaties where it hurts the most and boycott their products completely. For the entire month of March, we shouldn’t buy, rent or otherwise obtain, whether legally or illegally, any movie, music, software or book that’s not made freely available by its creator(s). We’ll hurt their profits and, by also choosing to refrain from “piracy” during this time, we’ll show them that we can actually survive without their products and therefore they couldn’t force us to pay for those we can’t afford or simply don’t think are worth a purchase even if they’d somehow make it completely impossible to obtain them otherwise.

Just realized yesterday that I won’t exactly have enough time for a non-personal post this weekend, so I’ll need to write two of them next week. However, I found myself getting carried away in a comment I posted on Facebook right after I woke up yesterday, where I ended up listing the basics of my idea for how the world’s economy should work. It’s in Romanian and not exactly fit to be a post if simply translated, but it shouldn’t take too much work to turn it into something acceptable, so doing that is the first order of business for next week.
Keep in mind that I kept meaning to write something about this for years, in fact the topic being one of the first I thought to write about back in 2007, when I started writing steadily. The complexity and importance of the issue, coupled with some uncertainties that I still had, meant that I never got around to it, but now at least a rough outline of the concept should finally make its way in here. When will it be followed by more details, I couldn’t say, but seeing even this much posted about it will sure be something for me, after all this time.

Otherwise, I played Battle for Wesnoth a little more, though obviously less than during the previous days. Now that I finally started the Heir to the Throne campaign, I’m noticing that the lower difficulty compared to Liberty, which is the one I completed before this, makes me get a little sloppy, so I had to restart scenarios a few times due to some very stupid decisions, but at least the game is still keeping me interested. Let’s see how long that’ll last and what will happen once it’ll no longer be the case, because I really would like to finish this game in no more than a few months or so.

Two power failures in less than 24 hours, each of them lasting four hours and ten minutes. And this is otherwise a reasonably good area as far as the power grid is concerned, not showing up on any of the maps that highlight the places where such problems are frequent. But, of course, such things are to be expected when there are unusual weather conditions and the grid is as old as it is, though so far it was far more common for it to happen during summer. Then again, it’s been quite a while since we had such cold weather in Bucharest, most of the past decade’s “winters” hardly being worthy of the name.
The strange thing, however, is that the coldest days are behind us for now, with today’s temperatures hardly being unusual, so I’m wondering why did it happen now if the grid somehow held together when it was worse? At the same time, if it did happen now, what should I expect for next week, when I see that the temperatures will again drop to values that were quite common in the dead of winter when I was little but have rarely been seen here for the past decade?

At least I can finally say that I more or less recovered from that cold. No longer feeling so hungry all the time either, which should mean that my body has recovered most of the reserves it used during that time, though now it once again has to make an effort due to the cold, seeing as this place is poorly suited for cold weather and I’m freezing most of the time. But there’s nothing unusual there, because my ideal temperature range is still just as high and when it wasn’t so cold outside there was also less heating, so freezing during the cold part of the year is unfortunately the norm for me. Doesn’t make me like this kind of weather any less, but I sure dread the fact that I can hardly ever get warm enough even while inside…
Still, recovering from that cold means that I should finally be able to poke my nose out a little more. Carefully, since I don’t want to start all over again, but I do want to take a few longer walks while there’s still plenty of snow and it’s cold enough for it not to melt. Plus that there’s a protest scheduled for next week that I’m interested in. Obviously doubt that I’ll actually participate, but I’d like to at least have a look and perhaps stick around the general area for a while, as I have done for a few others in the past.

Otherwise, February has been, for the past few years, the “action month” for the Global Population Speak Out project and I plan to write a post on the topic this month as well, though this time around they have an ongoing call for action that started some time ago and won’t end until April. However, what I can already tell you is that the post won’t be in favor of GPSO in any way, but quite firmly against what it has turned into, as well as against anyone else who claims that purely voluntary measures could be enough or even that stabilizing the population at the current level would be a worthwhile goal.
This movement had a much stronger radical element and some amount of potential when it started out, but now it got watered down to this politically correct but completely useless rhetoric that does more harm than good whenever it rears its ugly head, dissipating energy that could otherwise be put to use in ways which could perhaps have some sort of chance, tiny as it may be, of actually solving the problem before it’ll be way too late… But I think I should stop here for now and leave the rest of the comments for the post in question, as it’ll probably be hard enough to write even without needing to come up with even more things to say because I already posted the first ideas somewhere else.

On a lighter note, I did end up putting Empire Earth aside after all and started going through some of the free games that I was curious about. Unfortunately, the first one was a huge disappointment, but at least that was just a minor curiosity and I’m only now getting to the ones that I have higher expectations from. Or, more exactly, I’m now getting to the first of them, namely Battle for Wesnoth.
I guess there will be a review coming at some point, though that’s not all that certain because I’d want to write it after finishing all the campaigns included in the game and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do that. I just went through the three “novice” campaigns other than Heir to the Throne so far and have already gotten disheartened a few times. Recovered almost right away and kept pushing ahead, so now I started the first “intermediate” campaign and am rather close to finishing it, but I have been shocked a few times by the sharp increase in difficulty, so I’m not sure if I’ll manage to keep it up long enough. There are 16 campaigns, after all, and five of them are listed as being of “expert” difficulty…
Still, what I can say right now is that this game is clearly better than plenty of commercial titles. It can be considered dated by some and certain concepts, such as the amount of luck involved in determining who hits and who misses and the turn limits, bother me quite a lot, but there are lots of games that developers and publishers would want us to pay good money for even though they’re clearly worse than this. That makes the fact that it exists a very good thing and I’m happy that I stumbled into it.

That said, I’ll probably be getting back to playing now, though I should in fact go back to bed. Slept a total of some seven hours over the past two days, but I don’t exactly feel particularly sleepy and I’m thinking that if I do go back to bed the UPS will wake me up yet again when it’ll start beeping because the power failed for a third time, which at this point I’m pretty much expecting to happen. So I guess I’ll try to make the most of this time and nap later, because tomorrow I really should do something about this week’s non-personal post, so I really can’t leave catching up on sleep until then.

While the original game is close to a decade and a half old, it has recently been ported to multiple platforms and a new version, called Dink SmallWood HD, has been released at the end of 2011. From what I see, the only notable difference, from a gameplay perspective, is the fact that you can now save anywhere, which is admittedly extremely useful. With a couple of notable exceptions, I don’t touch games that only allow you to save in certain locations, so this allowed me to finally give this game a try, as I remembered having a vague interest in it a few times in the past.

Unfortunately, the only good thing I can say about it is that it’s free, so you don’t lose anything if you choose to play it. You won’t even lose too much time, as the game itself is short, taking me only two days to finish. That would be a very bad thing if it had any redeeming qualities, but it becomes a good thing when it basically has none, as it at least makes it possible to put up with it all the way to the end, so you’ll be able to say that you finished one more game and then quickly move on.
The editor it comes with and the hundreds of “D-Mods” available should theoretically be another good thing, and it certainly was one of the reasons why I got curious about the game in the first place, but all it does in the end is prove once again that there are many creative people looking for ways to create. A quick look will tell you that some authors have gone to great lengths to make the most out of the available tools and I’m sure that some D-Mods have great stories and nice tricks up their sleeves, but I was too frustrated with the game’s limitations to give them a chance.

When I say limitations, I’m certainly not talking about the things you’d expect simply due to how old the game actually is, considering the hardware constraints of the time. No, I’m talking about the fact that Dink SmallWood doesn’t even offer some very basic RPG elements, which would be required for both the game itself and any D-Mods. No matter how much work the authors put in, no matter how much they try to circumvent these issues, the fact remains that you can’t make a good scenario when you’re not provided with suitable tools.
For example, there’s no equipment! You only have the inventory screen, with one side for spells and one side for items, being allowed to select a single item from each side. That means that you can only equip one item at a time, which has troubling effects when that item’s not a weapon, as pressing the attack key will either use the item or, if the item can’t be used, result in an attack with nothing but your fists. This is particularly dreadful for melee characters, who may need other items the most but will be unable to use them during combat, and also makes the end of the original game even more difficult, as there are fights that more or less require a melee approach.
Past this, the difficult controls also need to be noted. You can’t control the character with the mouse, which isn’t a problem when you move but can be a serious one during fights, particularly when you want to aim a hit with a ranged weapon or spell. Such strikes will only go in the direction the character is currently facing, meaning that you’ll be missing a whole lot, especially when you’re facing fast enemies or large groups that are in the open, requiring you to keep moving in order to stay away from their attacks.
With this in mind, it can be said that “luckily” the enemies have next to no AI. Considering how tough some of them are and how difficult it is to make the main character fight properly, this makes them possible to defeat, but what can be said about a fight when the normal behavior of most enemies is to wander around more or less randomly, sometimes perhaps hitting each other when they meet, until you attack them? And how can combat be interesting once it starts when the lack of an AI is coupled with a lack of pathfinding, enemies trying to go straight for you and usually getting stuck in the first obstacle in their way? There simply can’t be a proper fight when this is what you have to work with!

To leave the generic issues, that also affect D-Mods, aside for a moment and focus only on the game itself, I must also point out that it lacks quantity as well as quality. You’ll see only a small number of character models for NPCs and an even smaller one for enemies. In fact, not counting the final boss, there are just five types of monsters, three of which are split into a few more subtypes by varying colors, sizes and the speed at which they move. And these monsters need to be defeated with an equally small number of weapons, two types of healing items, if you also count the nuts as a healing item, and perhaps a pair of boots, though if you want to use those you should keep in mind what I said above about being able to only equip one item at a time. Plus that the total number of spells is four, only three of which being usable in combat, only two of them actually being useful, and one of those being a secret!
Otherwise, the story’s certainly nothing to remember, not even as a joke or an attempt at a parody, and there are at least a couple of moments when you’ll be left wondering what to do next, because you’re given no real clues. This isn’t even saved by the supposedly humorous dialogues and comments, because those fell completely flat for me. Theoretically, I should respond pretty well to the type of humor used, but I think that “sir, your daughter is eating our God” was the only line from this game that got a laugh out of me…

To conclude, I was thankful that this game was so short, so I could finish it right away and then move on to something else. The lack of such basic elements, such as equipment slots, some sort of enemy AI and pathfinding and the ability to aim with the mouse, meant that I couldn’t stay interested enough to try D-Mods afterwards, giving up and uninstalling everything after spending some 30 minutes in one of the highest rated ones and noticing the same limitations.
From my point of view, this game has next to no redeeming qualities other than being free for so long. In fact, this is why it seems to come out as the third worst game I ever rated, though the other two certainly had more positive elements… Still, I think that even free games should have way better standards.

After a first snow, which melted quickly, it can be said that winter truly started yesterday. Now I’m looking at a wonderful blanket of pure white that covers everything and there’s more where that came from, because it’s still snowing and it should probably continue tomorrow as well. It also is cold enough to be free of any danger of melting, and it seems likely to stay that way next week as well, so it should be pretty nice out there for a while. I just still wish that people would stop fighting the weather and enjoy it instead.
I’m just rather disappointed that I can’t enjoy it myself at the moment, seeing as this is the only kind of weather that I can say that I actually like being outside in, as long as I’m adequately dressed. But it would probably be a bad idea to go out right now, seeing as I’m still recovering from that cold and something like this would be quite likely to take me quite a few steps back. All I can do right now is look out the window and plan to go for a walk next week, even if it probably won’t be snowing anymore.

Otherwise, the writing’s still going quite well in terms of quantity for someone who’s does pretty much anything as slowly as I do, but the problem is that I now got to this part that I really dread and don’t really know what to do with. I keep struggling to just throw something together every day in order to say that at least I wrote something, and the story is advancing somewhat at least, but that only goes for a small slice of it at this time. The rest would require me to wrap my mind around elements that are disturbingly similar to certain “real life” ones, and that’s not working.
Still, I guess I’ll find a way to do something about it, especially when I’m not doing much else these days. Seem to get back to not playing anything as well, since I really don’t feel like tackling the more modern missions from Empire Earth and getting back to any of the other games that I started and abandoned at some point seems even less appealing. But there are three free games that I got slightly curious about recently, so I could add Empire Earth to the list of games started and abandoned and give those a try, at least for a while.

I guess this is pretty much all I have to say at the moment. There’s still that other post planned since last week, for which I now probably have about as much information as I’m likely to get, but I really don’t feel like writing it right now and thinking to just give up on the thought completely. But that’ll leave me needing to find some other issue to write about by the end of the week, so I guess it all depends on whether or not something else will catch my attention enough to break through the fact that I hardly felt like writing anything non-personal here for years.