Trent Polack's site for cats, games, game development, and undeniably powerful sociological insight all with a healthy dose of narcissism.
mittens's Articles » Page 5
October 2, 2006 by mittens
Jump to: The Introduction :: Total Annihilation :: Starcraft :: Homeworld :: Warcraft III :: Rise of Nations :: The Conclusion The Introduction Rerevisited When I look back upon the last two segments of this series -- here are links to Part 1 and Part 2 for the unenlightened -- I realize just how much of an overly verbose writer I can be at times. For the ADD/ADHD crowd out there who really wishes I was more concise, I do apologize; the unnecessarily lengthy written...
September 8, 2006 by mittens
Jump to: The Introduction :: Real-Time Tactical :: Modability :: Battle.net :: Graphics and Physics :: Conclusion, etc. The Introduction -- House Mix I'm always amazed at the kind of great feedback some of you folks give to these articles; so, for those of you who read the first part and commented in some form (in-site/e-mail) and showed the thing to your friends, I do thank you. I enjoy writing these kinds of things, and hearing all you folk get some form of digitally...
September 3, 2006 by mittens
Jump to: The Introduction :: RTS101 :: A Brief History :: Trent + RTS = :: Conclusion and Preview Back in the day, when I was a strapping young lad on the brink of finally convincing the parents that the household needed a computer as much as it needed gas and electricity, there were two games that I was introduced to through two third-parties that I loved like no man should love software: Wolfenstein 3D and Warcraft: Orcs and Humans . Wolf3D was considered far too gruesom...
August 31, 2006 by mittens
So, some of you may or may not have noticed the positively supertastic absence of rambling entries and gaming editorials that had been written in the recent weeks; all apologies for that. My first move to rectify this content depression was with my review of Titan Quest which was fairly well-received on one of the two locations which I publish material given that I didn't do my normal advertising spree across the realms of the wide, vast, and frightening Intarweb. So, hopefully this review...
August 27, 2006 by mittens
So, I've been a bad, bad bloggertorialist the last few weeks while I finished up my summer terms. I can't say that I've been entirely swamped by classes, presentations, exams, and the like, though. You see, once the latest patch for Titan Quest hit the vast intellectual void known as The Intarweb , my problems with constant and consistent crashing with the game ceased. And with this cease of game-ruining problems, I was allowed to partake in uninterrupted hour upon hour of clicking for phat...
July 24, 2006 by mittens
Jump to: Personalstuffs :: Child Rearing 101 :: Movie Summaries :: The Gaming Front :: Writing and Conclusion Sorry about the complete lack of posts in the recent past. I could give an honest, heartfelt, sympathetic, sincere, redundantly-described apology for the occurrence but the truth of the matter is that I just needed a break from writing these things. Now, here's a biggish "digest entry" which I've ever-so-thoughtfully broken into things that we in the old country call segm...
July 4, 2006 by mittens
Well, it's been about three weeks since my last entry that didn't related to games at all. What better day than the Fourth of July (also known as Indepe ndence Day ) to... Write a nice site entry? I finished up my spring term here at this fine establishment a few of weeks ago, thus bringing an end to intensive second-year Spanish and, at the same time, putting an end to the necessary language requirement. And I even did it with a perfectly acceptable grade -- gasp . And last week I...
July 3, 2006 by mittens
Jump to: A Prologue (Battlefield 2) :: Battlefield 2142 :: The New Standard? :: A Pessimistic Conclusion Alright this editorial is a sizeable one (Surprise!) which I can easily divide into two halves for the readers who are interested. The first two sections cover Battlefield 2 and its bastard child-spawn Battlefield 2142. These two games serve as a specific platform for me to launch into a lengthy discussion on a "State of the Industry" variety where I'll delve into the recent pla...
June 25, 2006 by mittens
I'm sitting here on the last night of my nice little mid-summer vacation from Ann Arbor, classes, and the like. For spring I was technically only taking a single class, but the class was an intensive second-year Spanish course, designed to take thirty weeks of normal-semester classes and shrink it down into seven weeks. It actually didn't end up being nearly as bad as I went in expecting, but that isn't to say it was easy. For the most part, though, I'm very glad I did it; I made a few friends...
June 23, 2006 by mittens
Yesterday I ranted on and on about the downside of the new, overhyped concept of games as "episodes" in a larger series rather than self-contained games which receive expansion packs based on both feedback and popularity. Throughout that article I put a blatant focus on Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and SiN: Emergence ; in other words, I dealt solely with the first-person shooter genre of episodic gameplay. I believe the principles presented there would apply to any kind of action/adventure game, ...
June 21, 2006 by mittens
The gaming industry has this thing where it goes through what are commonly referred to as trends . These trends vary year to year, of course, but in the time that can best be described as their own respective hayday they receive some kind of shout out within a game's press release, back cover of a retail box, or an overzealous PR guy that shouts a particular trend from his podium/marketing soapbox. Back in the day , the big trends were all graphical spiffstuffs like the lens flare , bloom/HD...
June 18, 2006 by mittens
It's currently the middle of June and, right on schedule , sleeping problems rear their ugly little heads again. I have no real cause which I can place blame upon for the situation, but hey, it could be worse. At least this year I have an air-conditioned room and a far higher overall energy level. Though I generally prefer the days where I don't get enough sleep at night to be weekdays, simply due to the fact that my easiest way to stay awake and get energy is to go to the gym (which is closed ...
June 12, 2006 by mittens
Well, unlike my last entry , this is not a post fueled by seething emo . I've had a very awesome (if not incredibly exhausting) week filled with spots of concentrated greatness throughout, and for this I am a happykitty. First, let me just start out detailing the almost unending praises that I have for Veronica Mars . Over the course of the last week I have watched the first two seasons of the show in their entirety and I have rarely been so surprised with just how great a seemingly-simp...
June 7, 2006 by mittens
I'm going to relate a quick tale about the lessons ones learns in the course of writing... Oh, let's say the course of writing a blog. As someone who has been writing some kind of personal stuff on a site of sorts for over four years now, you'd think I would have learned about the dangers of writing about any personal issues. The problem, of course, is that no matter how hard you may try to keep things out of the "standard" viewing area of people you know... There is still that ever-so-reliabl...
May 28, 2006 by mittens
I was actually asked a few times about the writing process in general. I make absolutely no claim that anything I do in terms of writing this book is "correct," or even any semblance of "right," but this is just my personal process. I know my friend, who is probably a far more serious writer than myself, has a completely different way of approaching things. For instance, she likes to seclude herself from anything positive and write in the most depressing environment that she can think of. She ca...