My First Foray into iPhone graphics

and it was a painful experience.  It took me 6 hours to decipher how to draw a box on the screen. I know that I could have used predefined helper functions and I could have also used a static image but that would not have been the point.  This allowed me to do two things.  First I learned how to write a function (not fun but I worked it out) and second learned how to create make and close pathes.  I also learned that the draw function that actually does the drawing does it once.  I also learned that it seems like the context once built only does one fill as opposed to draw fill draw fill. Possibly this is an optimization in xCode that is screwing me up as this is not my desired result or,  more likely I am still doing something wrong.  In any case when I sit down to work it out this weekend I am sure that it will devour a good chunck of my time. Once I get the board drawn correctly then I will figure out how to draw x’s and o’s. After that I need to sense a touch so that I can place an x or an o in the correct square.  And then I will need to build actual game logic to at least detect a win. I think at that point I will have enough proof fo concept to work on my next concept which will require the accelerometer.  A lot of work still needs to be done and I need to teach my brother how to do this as well.  Which will be another exciting adventure.

Hiatus Over

 

So after a roughly 6 month MMO Hiatus I have rejoined up with my friends in Crimson Dragons. Storm says that our crew doesn’t need a name but I think he is full of crap. What was “nice” was finding out that no matter how much things change everything stays the same. Within 10 minutes of logging in, Wolfette informed me that I had lost the game. We started raiding again this week and last night I left early since I still work in the early morning and Wolfette sent me a picture message of gear that I want dropping from the named I skipped. It’s good to be umm “needed” I suppose even if it is for comic relief. I am catching up on my AA’s so that I will have 200 by the expansion. I am looking forward to having new content to roam around in and the potential of holding open an instance all to myself of the zone. I have a strange feeling that this expansion will be a lot like a mix of DoF and KoS.  I really hope not though as those two expansions were without a doubt my least favorite.  I am interested though in seeing the kinds of changes that they made to my class.  I also want to use this expansion to develop another max level character on my main account.  I have yet to do this in any game but I think if I focus and work hard I can make it happen. The problem is while I like tanking I have already leveled a guardian to 70 something on my alt account and I don’t want to activate that again yet. I don’t want to make an SK because well everyone has one and paladins are out since I constantly make fun of them.  And no one in their right mind plays a zerker… Brawlers are good for one thing and that is farming shineys… So that’s the tank classes out of the picture.  I have a dirge, clearly, and I have no desire to troub. I also have a Ratonga swashbuckler.  Which is important because its and evil race good class combo and a Froglok assassin which is the opposite.  I really made these toons because well I like betraying and making difficult race/class combos.  But, I don’t really want to play another scout.  All I see in a battle is mob ass. This leaves me with healers and mages; well I have 2 healers already a templar and a defiler.  Both of these classes are terrible soloers and while they never die they also take a year and a half to kill anything.  I suppose I could make a battle Druid but the way Rhyanna complains about Furies getting the shaft from SOE and wardens having giant stinking trees and my dislike of the game whack-a-mole I think not.  Now I am really down to Mages.  I have a conjy if I haven’t deleted him because he pissed me off since that was my first foray into the betrayal system and I really screwed it up a bit and selected a neutral race so I ended with a race class I could have just made from the get go. But I did make a Kerran wizard which is interesting enough at level 10 I suppose. But I think I might actually enjoy a coercer. See it is all very complicated. I am curious though, what is a paragraph?

Aion

Well I have been playing Aion with storm and co and our friends from second string.  I have been have a really good time playing and leveling my Cleric.  I am glad to see that at level 20ish the game has increased in difficulty and I’m fairly certain that Clerics stopbeing the bomb shit easy mode they are once mobs start interupting you and generally being bastards. We made a decent group yesterday and killed some krull.  We still have a lot of Krull to kill though. It should be really fun once we get into some large scale end game things and hopefully hopefully I will have become a good healer at that point.  Anyhow thats my once a few months update.

Well readers of whom I am sure there are none…  You may have noticed that I haven’t been dirging lately…  I know I did think it would ever happen either but with my current work schedule towage of my car and the need for me to leave and get my roommate approximately one hour after we start raiding.  I am effectively useless.  For the record roommate is spelled with two m’s.  Those damned red squigglies make me nutz. Well thats all I have for now.

Yay Successful Raid

We had a very good night on monday and I think cast has passed his curse on to me.  The wrist item I want has dropped againa dn i lost it again. I think the game is rigged. But back to the raid we killed all the bosses we can pretty easily kill except for one so I thought “Hey, lets do the stalker on wednesday and that way we have all of wednesday to work on whatever boss we want and then on friday get 4 or 5 more peices of loot.  But for somereason that was nixed I don’t know why but it was.  We havn’t put in any real work on the next progression mobs we have yet which is bothersome since we can be killing at least 1 more of them regularly thus increaseing the speed at which gear comes into the guild.  This is hugely important for a guild like ours sice we don’t always have the same 24 people on the raid and we often are grabbing others based on sign ups. But, for some reason, those in charge don’t seem to want to do that because they set up a schedul allready. Well whoopity do just change the schedule reset a different instance whatever its not important as long as we are making progess but we alas are not.  We have become very stagnant because of this and there soo many more mobs within our reach. gah

Yeah I knew I wouldn’t blog well

So EQ2 has been pretty fun lately a few minor snags here and there but I think I want to comment on the Some of our latest raids…

For the past week or so our good friend Sinnir went to some place called Florida… This confuses me because try as I might I cannot find this place on any map of Norrath I have looked at but I digress.  Anyway while she has been away we have been done a fantastic healer and this has hurt us a lot but, it really shouldn’t have.  1 person does not make a raid. We have wiped on garbage that we should one shot died in an area that I forgot was possible to die in. So I ask myself, why?  What is it about Sinnir that helps us fend off such nonsense?  And the conclusion I have come to is that in the relaltively short time she and her friends have been with us they have become a staple on our raids. Whether it is the way we all communicate or Just know there is someone there that will at least tell you they have your back or even if it something more subtle the loss of Sinnir was not a loss of player it was a loss of a stable though position. Whether it made people nervous or let them think they can slack off a bit is beyond me but I think that people need to be at their best all the time regardless of who is there. Do your job do it well move on.

That’s my two cp on the situation.

Hello Dirge Curious Community

So, I wanted to try out this concept of blogging about my life as a Drige in Everquest II. Some friends of mine in My guild have thier own blogs and I figured it would be interesting, for me anyhow, to detail some of my excursions in the world of Norath.  A bit of background I belong to the Guild Crimson Dragons. We make a daily effort to progress through content and make sure that we do so while haveing a good time. We have currently cleared VP a few times and are getting ready to clear it agian this week.  Some of us still need out 2 piece VP set bonuses.  Dirges specifically are pretty much set locked to it as it frees up an ever important concentration slot allowing us to cast even more buffs. I run by the name Harbringer Blavek The’Uber Of some suffix I cannot remember at the moment. I have my Mythical Epic which is just fantastic and am regularly trying to upgrade my gear and improve my over all damage. My dirgly cohorts include on of the guild leaders Litta, aboan, and Worknemangel. We have a lounge that we populate and spam eachother with when not in raid and in general congratulate each other for eating our weaties and pulling out big (by dirge standards) parses. Much flexing is done and even though we seem to be the cause of much tomfoolery and “Fight Jump Starters” the raids wouldn’t be quite the same without us.  A lot of work goes into the preparation so that we can excell and be the best there is.

Recently I had been playing less and spending less time in game and as a result I have fallen slightly behind.  I am turning that around and catching up to my brethren and spending more time find groups and in general making them feel bad. See I am pretty well geared all in all and with my mythical its not uncommon for me to top the damage parse in PUG’s. Which is no dis to other players and as soon as I get a guild group they put me right back in my place. One of the trials of being a dirge is sure your needed and hard to come by and even harder to come by a good one you are the butt of all the jokes.  Maybe its because we can’t sit still or maybe its because we surround people in glowing musical notes who knows. And, it’s ok that my numbers on the DPS output aren’t the highest (this by the way is why I think it so hard to find a good dirge.  you must be content with others taking credit for what you actually do for them) but everyone elses around you are that much better. So I will sing my silly dirge songs and be under appreciated but in the end I sleep well knowing that my job is well done and that few others can claim the success I have claimed while performing my dirgely deeds.