Torchlight 2

I've played Diablo 2 for a long time. I would even still be playing it, if it hadn't such an old engine and mechanics intended to make the player linger on playing just for the items - a kind of a BS system for me now that I got older and started questioning things - but at any rate that game was a special one among so many other games I've played.

It's not surprising then that I liked the idea of a sequel as it was announced by Blizzard a good while ago. At that time, though, I had not yet played their gold mine called WoW, so I had no idea they were going to go backwards and undo what the excellent patch 1.10 of Diablo II did to that game.

Thing is, Diablo III has no customization. None. Zero. Nich. The only things that you can customize are the armor and sex. Boo, look how good Demon Hunter I am on black lycra and heels!

Luckily, this post is not about Diablo III's mistakes - it's about another game who stayed true to D2 virtues - and it was no surprise for me when I discovered that many developers of D2 were responsible into this.

To sum what I loved in Torchlight 2, it is a game that makes you think. Makes you plan. It is almost Diablo 2 with a few minor but needed tweaks: where in Diablo 2 you would need some skills as prerequisites for the higher level ones, on Torchlight 2 you get them as autogranted at specific levels. While on Diablo 2 the skill point system was irreversible, ie a point spent is lost forever, here you have the option to undo the last 3 ones used. It's still restrictive, but I think that was meant for the player to "feel" the skill into their playstyle. Increasing it to 5 wouldn't be bad, though.

The same 5 points for any attribute you wish is used, but then again an interesting change was made: almost all points are useful for all classes. Strength, for example, increases all critical damage bonus - inclusing spells - and dexterity all critical chance, again, including spells. So, even as the Embermage, the game's flavored mage class, you would still need to consider these 2 factors before dumping all points into focus, which increases all elemental damage, and vitality, which would be a classical choice made by players on their Sorceress on Diablo 2.

The battles are fun. Really. The game is action-full, fast paced, and you have to analyse carefully what you're doing and facing on the same level as you click.  Even playing as an Embermage on Veteran that killed stuff fast, I found myself dying over casual mistakes like getting hit by a slow but strong Troll - my favorite part was reading at status that the biggest damage I had taken was 2.6k when I had 2.3k hp.

To sum it up, this is a game that delivered everything that I was expecting. Granted, as I had read on a game reviewer, the story doesn't inspire much emotion. Maybe it was the fact that there wasn't no voiceover.

But, again, T2>>>D3.

... and it shone as bright as the sky ...

Browsing a little through the web, I remember on of my favorites parts of The Silmarillion, from the Master JRR Tolkien:

As an exercise to those who read the book, try to remember where it came from.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Just started playing this game. Seems promising and honors the dungeon crawling spirit of the first games back in the 90's, but so far it has tremendous flaws.

First, I know that my reflexes are s*** and I'm a bad action game player, but is it that hard to jump back on feet quicker when you fall down, like, before beeing ganged by four minions and a boss? It's not like 5 seconds is a long time to do so.

Also, what a horrible camera. The zooming sometimes put your view facing walls that you can't change unless you switch to another camera mode (which also don't help you overcome your puzzle) and switch back. The panoramic view also hardly helps you see the totality of the area for it does not allow zooming or direction changes.

And really, the story makes you laugh sometimes. When you finally find the (hot busty with minimal clothes) princess she demands that you give back the Dagger you stole to reverse the havoc, to which you reply "Sorry, after what I saw now I'll trust no one". Then when you both get attacked by gigantic bugs, you readly and valiantly cry for her to run and hide while screamming "I'LL FIND YOU FARRAH!!!". Really? Find someone you just said you don't trust?

Above: Indian princess

But the old Prince of Persia spirit is still there. I'll just need a helluva patience to go through all those cameras. Might be worth some posts later.

SVN old file/directory

Right, I forgot: since some stuff I'll post here will probably be useful for some unsuspecting people who may end up here, I'll write my "memoirs of a work" in a language more suitable for universal use. In other worlds, if can read this, congratulations!

Now, to the first topic: I work as a developer of a library, and I use SVN for the version controlling. So, obladi, oblada, life goes blah blah blah, something incredibly irritating while using that tool is having to delete and add files/directories manually using the tool, not the OS infrastructure. Sometimes you forget to do that, and thing go "yuck", and you discover that only when commiting the work.

The message that appears is something like:

svn: [message] is old. Or something like that. I'll update later.

I found that what worked for me is using the next command:

• svn update -- force /path/to/file/or/dir

Followed by a manual resolve:

• svn resolve /path/to/same/file

--Memory written--

Back again...

Quantos "John Doe" devem haver pelo mundo, não?

Thing is, se eu for criar um blog para cada vez que ficar "maluco beleza", os drives do Google vão acabar. Enfim, long story short, quando se é bipolar e se escolhe não se tratar, bad things happen. Or not. Até que meus textos escritos há um ano atrás não foram tão ruins.

Anyway, um ano de medicação espero que seja suficiente para que consiga utilizar este pequeno recanto com mais assiduidade e responsabilidade, o que me leva a explicar alguns motivos pelos quais decidi voltar a escrever:  

1) Vou ter que escrever em breve. É bom começar a treinar.

2) Já pesquisei e perdi e pesquisei de novo para novamente esquecer e pesquisar para... sim, acho que isso seria um bom local para colocar pequenas descobertas do meu trabalho, uma espécie de disco secundário onde colocarei respostas para pequenas perguntas que toda hora faço.

3) Escrever.