Dragon Age Origins

Having played Dragon Age Origins for a good amount of time now, I actually think I am beginning to like it a lot. The game presents itself well, and the storyline definitely draws you in. The animation is superb, the sound effects excellent, and the gameplay well structured and enjoyable. That said, it is quite a gory game to play, so much so I actually turned off the persistent gore in the options menu, which made the game a lot more enjoyable, so I'm glad they kept that in the options.

The game itself has you play as a Grey Warden, a Jedi Knight of olden times if you will, peacekeepers and defenders against this horde of evil creatures called the Blight. After the initial intro section, you end up travelling the lands to try and gather everyone together in order to stave off this Blight while being seen as an outlaw and outcast by those ruling.

Before I go on, the intro section is most interesting. Depending on the race, class and sex you pick to play as, your storyline changes to reflect that, so much so that it gives you a unique entrance into the game compared to other characters people might pick. There are six locations, with a possiblity of twelve different intros, compared to what race and class you choose, and with minor changes depending on sex. And as I said, the choices you pick at the beginning influence how people react and see you along your quest.

So, you travel the land with your companions to gather people together to stave off evil. And along the way you pick up companions to join you and help you complete your quest. You can have a total of three companions travelling with you at any time, so you need to swap your party in and out to get the best out of them. The decisions you make during gameplay also influence the game heavily, and influence your characters. The game provides a way for characters to indicate their approval of your actions, and of course different characters will approve and disapprove of different things. I've had situations where one character highly approves, and another highly disapproves. There is also the option of romance along the way for some companions, if they approve high enough...

The game's camera angle is also quite fun, as it supports both top-down and behind-the-character views. Top-down gives you a very much Neverwinter Nights feel, eerily so, so much that when in that mode you could have someone look over your shoulder and say 'you playing Neverwinter?' The behind-the-character view allows you to play similar to Star Wars KotOR, and really shows off the superb graphics and feel of the game, and is where I play personally. But it supports both, with very quick transition between them.

Overall, Dragon Age Origins is an awesome game, and if you are an RPG fan over the age of 18, a must get...

UCL Second Term

Woo! I've managed to get more then one blog post posted in a single month, and in the space of just under three days too! Amazing!

Anyway, onto the topic. As you may have guessed by the new ticker on the right-hand side of the blog, my second term at UCL University is well under way. So I thought I might give you an update on what is going on...

As you may know, I'm currently studying an MSc in Networked Computer Systems since September last year. The first term was definitely a lot of fun and was very interesting, but was extremely hard work to complete. The courses involved learning about the underlying structure of networks and, in particular, the Internet; learning about distributed systems used in the world and the procedures involved in keeping them secure; a look into operating systems and how they influence networking; and a final course in Network Performance.

Network Performance was probably the hardest course I have ever taken anywhere, even over Physics, due to it's high use of extremely difficult mathematics. I am so not a mathematician, so I really struggled with this course.

Another thing that really brought me down last term was 9am lectures, every single day. For those of you for which this is the norm, do understand that this was coming from an extra-long four month summer vacation with late mornings and equally late evenings, so I was completely unprepared for what was involved.

This term, it's a little different. While 9am lectures happen 2/3 times a week, I do get slightly longer lay-ins. I also get a completely free day on Monday, which I am using for work. But my afternoons that I used to have are now turning into evenings, so it's a trade-off from the previous term.

Of greatest interest this term, for me personally, is Network and Applications Programming, which is a purely programming course in C in which we program on TMote Sky's, shown on the right hand side. These small devices contain various sensors, buttons and LEDs, and a small radio chipset; and use an OS called Contiki that is specifically designed to work on memory-constrained devices such as these. We will be working to program a multi-hop routing algorithm between the devices which will eventually allow for a button to be pressed on one side of the room and an LED to flash on the other side, with each of the devices routing between each other to get things to the other side. This is what I came to Uni to do!

So yeah, all in all my course is definitely coming along nicely, I'm enjoying my time and learning a lot at the same time.

Into 2010: The Next Decade

Heya all! It's been some time, yet again, since I posted. In fact, here's a fact for you; last year I posted just 5 blog posts. That's abysmal!

This year, I intend to do better. A lot better. In fact, I intend to once again get into regular posting of blog articles, but this time, I'm taking a slightly different approach to my blog writing. Instead of posting regular fortnightly posts, I'm going to keep 'running drafts' going. With this approach, I might have various different drafts around different topics running alongside each other, side by side. As I develop each blog post, others might get posted and/or created, until eventually I deem the post ready and it gets sent out.

This way, I will always have something I'm working on. It might be a weekly update, or perhaps it's information on a particular interest, or perhaps I'm reviewing a particular TV show/movie/software/website/etc.

I'm also planning on organising my labels better, although I'm not entirely sure the way to do that. Do you think I should be general about my labels (ie type of post, general area of where I'm posting) or specific (like I have now, individual topics)? I'm more leaning towards the former, but it means going through all my existing posts and updating their labels. Which I guess I need to do anyway...

To show my interest in blogging full-time again, I've gone and got myself a copy of Blogo for Mac, which I will be using to organise my blog posts without even having to be online. Which is awesome!

Right! That's all for now. Hopefully you'll see another new blog post in a future near you!