jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2757 Posts

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2k is talking about after release Borderlands 2 support in a new class called the Mecromancer:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-09-mechromancer-class-announced-for-borderlands-2

They made a pretty large point that this wasn't "day one DLC" but something they have been considering and will most likely ship as DLC well after launch. I like the idea of adding characters as DLC and really like the idea of this class. The Necromancer was my fav class of Diablo 2 and its cool to see the Borderlands take on it.

In other news, I was playing "Borderlands Classic" the other day and need to pass on a tip. In RPGs people often power level characters to help get certain characters to the highest level quickly. A few months back I played with a few level 60's online and they power leveled me about 8-10 levels. This was fun but something I want to warn you away from. My character had problems fighting by itself because the Siren didn't have the gear to go at the higher level characters on her own. So I am going at the main campaign again in playthrough 2 to get at better weaponry to take on some of the "Borderlands Classic" DLC that was way too hard otherwise.


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My Town 2 is a simple freemium mobile game I play from time to time. Its kind of like Sim City but since its a freemium Tiny Tower like game, time is a factor and you can purchase in game currency to speed things up.

I wanted to post an recent image of my town "Mos Eisley" above and let you know a secret I found. I don't believe you need to build roads in My Town 2. I mean, you can in fact build roads but I haven't built any roads at all save what came with my town and nothing bad has happened.

I believe roads are simply for looks because none of my citizens or businesses suffer because I don't build roads. One benefit to not building roads is you have more room to build other stuff. Since you need to expand your town and that takes money, you can save money and time by not building a single road.

At least I did it that way and my citizens don't seem to mind it one bit.


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Todays shirt woot is pretty awesome.

http://shirt.woot.com/


Yeah I am pretty crazy excited for this game. Barb looks awesome.

I will use this here site to let yall know when ill be on battle.net and how the games with people I play go. A few people on the site will be playing with me, so very excited.

Talked to one such person today about the lull in great games out now. I agreed, the games that have come out recently haven't been too exciting. Maybe we are missing something awesome?


A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight forward how to get your imagery from your games to upload to the web and share on Cheerful Ghost.

Recently I created a blog post about it, check it out:

http://blog.cheerfulghost.com/post/20503613172/getting-your-own-images-on-cheerful-ghost

Long and short of it, nab your screen-shots, pics, etc and upload them to http://imgur.com/ Its the easiest way to upload your images on the web. Imgur is popular on Reddit and other social sites.

Hope you find this helpful, I used imgur to upload my own personal imagery for quite a few of my posts.


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Often times board games don't translate well to digital. Haven't played a Monopoly game I liked on the computer yet. That said, some games are simple enough to translate really well digitally and on mobile such as Ticket to Ride Pocket.

Ticket to Ride is a board game where you play one of a few railroad barons that are trying to build rail roads across the United States. At the start you pick routes and then compete with other players for completing your routes and getting points. If you are blocked and can not complete a route it counts negatively against your score. There are more rules, but thats it in a simplistic form.

The board game is a favorite amongst my wife and friends and recently there was a iTunes store deal where you could get Ticket to Ride pocket for free so I picked it up. Installed it on my wifes iPod touch as well as my iPhone. That was a good idea because we play it all the time together. Its one of the rare video games we can both agree on playing and its fun. The screenshot above is from one of our games.

The average Ticket to Ride Pocket game seems to last about 15-20 minutes. The average board game seems to last an hour or so.

The game is playable via Game Center, Wifi or Bluetooth. The bluetooth works pretty well and recently we were traveling and played Ticket to Ride on the plane and in the airport waiting around. The mobile version moves much faster than the board game as the bots don't spend much time making moves. Speaking of the bots they are pretty decent. They win if you are doing badly but for the most part we are mostly competing to beat each other. Since my wife is VERY competitive we enjoy beating each other. As we started the game I easily bested her but lately she has been winning each game handily. I am changing my strategy up somewhat but I have a bit to go to catch up with her, she is pretty good already.


Recently watched a video talking about the Diablo 3 beta on Slashdot.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/04/03/2042253/the-state-of-the-diablo-3-beta-two-videos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2FslashdotGames+%28Slashdot%3A+Games%29

Its a bit dry but found the content interesting and afterward was really excited to play it. Originally I wanted to play as a Demon Hunter when I started but the reviewer seemed to think it wasn't quite up topar with the other classes. From his description I may try the Witch Doctor for my first play through.

May 15th can not come soon enough!


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Good Old Games is offering the original Fallout for free for the next 48 hours:

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout

While you are adding that to your account, grab all the other free GoG games:

http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue/?price=free

I picked up Empire Earth free a few months back and this is just as cool. Enjoy!


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/08/magazine/08cover/08cover-sfSpan-v2.jpg
Check out this cool article on The New York Times called "Just One More Game ...
Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games'
."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-and-other-hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html?_r=1

Yeah ok the name isn't great, but its an interesting article. Also interesting is the HTML5 game on the page. Play it. Its a very fun idea.

PS I love silly and addictive games, they are awesome.


I love old Koei games. Three games in particular: Le Emperor, Genghis Khan II and Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2. I only owned one of those games and Genghis Khan was the game.

Genghis Khan II is a turn based strategy game where you can start doing one of two things: conqueror Mongolia then use Mongolia to conqueror the world or just start out as Mongolia and try to conqueror the world. Both were fun but starting as Mongolia was almost always easier. Easier because by the time you conqueror all of Mongolia Genghis might be dead or very old making the world conquest harder. If you started at world conquest you could pick a different country to start as, like India or England.

Koei games are all turn based strategy games set in a particular period of time and you are left to manage your small empire with aspirations to take over all other territories or countries. You have simple controls for managing your territories, army, generals and diplomacy. Genghis Khan II kicked it up a notch by allowing you to marry and have kids. This is awesome because you can name your kids "Darth Vader" and "Jon" but lame because if your current leader lacked in an area the kids were not much better. Also, if you didn't have a male child and you died you lost the game. Women can be leaders of Mongolia too Koei!

All the earlier Koei games simply allowed you to assign up to 100 troops per general and train them and equip them. Genghis Khan II upped that by allowing different kinds of units you could train and assign. The best units in the game were the Mongols as they had all A's in nearly every category. It was fun building other kind of units, like Elephants or Catapults but you never went wrong by simply building Mongols. I guess the game wasn't "Super Knight Quest II" as the Knights Templar were not great.

I played this game for hours but didn't find many people willing to play a two player game with me. I guess an 8 hour session of a turn based strategy game didn't excite many of my high school friends. Too bad too, it was a fun game.