barely fatal

Woot! Got an apartment, right between city centre and workplace! Perfect size, I can take over some sweet furniture for half the price … and a really nice balcony! You know what that means? BBQ! That’s worth the slightly above average rent …
Now I only need to stress my luck for one last hurdle … I need to find someone to take over my old apartment, or I have to pay for it ’til the contract ends in two months.

Seed www.seedthegame.com is a different kind of online game. Different in that there’s no combat to speak of. 

Up until yesterday I’ve been interested to see what such a game would feel like to play, now that I got into the beta and had a chance to test it somewhat  I cant help but feel disappointed. 

First off its still in beta, but considering how close the launch date is, even if developers like to push it back one month at a time, the one thing that springs to mind is that this game is nowhere near ready for release. In fact I’m not even sure its ready for beta. Lag is down right horrible, not to mention constant, regardless if your alone or not. The game is generally unresponsive, most likely due to the heavy lag. The graphics are ok if you’re into the cartoon look. 

Game play is… well its different that much is certain. From what I can gather training works essentially like it does in Eve Online. Its time based, pick your skill and set it going. You don’t need to buy the skills though, once one completes it unlocks further skills, which can be trained, or branch out into other areas. Nothing you do while playing seems to influence skills, so regardless how much stuff you fix you wont get better at doing it unless you spend time “training” the skill. A rather ass backwards approach to skill development in my view but it was probably easier to code this way. 

Production seems very detailed; items are made of components, which in turn are made of parts that are made of materials that are made of minerals (or other base items). It’s a fairly lengthy process or at least that’s how it seems. 

There are several paths characters may take; Repair, administration, science and production are the baseline choices from which the skills then branch out as you train them. As far as I can tell there’s no restriction on what you can train. 

At this stage of the games development I cant really see the game being any fun to be honest. Any repairs I attempted to carry out in game (which is the basic game play I’ve seen so far) worked for about 5 to 10 min after which time the thing would seem to break again. Which is nothing if not slightly frustrating. 

So you cant kill anything, nothing ever stays fixed for long, repairing stuff means standing there watching the toon wave his hands around for however long it takes to finish the job and skill training takes ”real time” to complete (dumbest skill training system idea ever invented imho). All in all a fairly mind numbing experience. Although I must admit the lag in the game atm isn’t helping my view of the game play in any way. 

 

After getting me a new job, I have now entered the second phase, finding a new apartment. Usually I’m quite frugal. I really don’t need 200m², a whirl pool, underfloor heating or a private secretary. What I do need is a small kitchen (oven, fridge, shelves), ’cause I don’t want to buy a completely new one. I’d also like to have separate rooms for cooking, living and sleeping, although I’m not so picky there. Ah yes, and if it was in bike-range of my new workplace, that would be a big plus.

I visited five apartments so far. They all were either:

1. too small (can’t fit my stuff in – and I really don’t have much!)
2. too … well … “old school” (kitchen more or less “hot place with rusty stains”)
3. too far out (no supermarkets nearby, no post office or anything)

I have no car and I don’t plan on getting one. It’s expensive and I don’t really need it. Unlike in the U.S., Germany is quite do-able by bike or public transportation, at least in cities. Plus, I’m a total n00b at parking and you go try finding a free lot on workdays at six in the evening in any major german city!

My new job starts in three weeks, I’ll spend Easter with my family in my home city, and then I’ll have two weeks left to get the move done. I need to find a place! At least, this is the last week I have to work at my old place – awkward feeling by the way. People don’t know if they should pity or congratulate me (I’d go for the latter). On top of that I am host to a work mate who is in a similar situation – her work contract was extended by half a year, surprisingly – and she had already terminated her apartment. She’s nice and even washes the dishes, so I won’t complain there *smiles warmly*.

I am getting sick of all the travelling back and forth to the other city just to tour another flat that doesn’t even suit my low-standard needs. But I promised not to take the first best thing this time, even if it means to pay more or commuting for a month or so. And promises, well, I’ve always had it with promises. No bending, no breaking, you gotta have some things in life you can count on. Like my promises.

*Sigh*

We all know what spam is and we all hate it… so…

Any way we can block it ? im getting tired of deleting the infomercials