Eccentric Flower:199902/games and snowdrifts

twenty-six february (by fifteen minutes)

games and snowdrifts

I was not especially productive today, and you know what? I'm going to blame it on the snow.

It snowed all day long today - a real storm, from the wee hours on Thursday morning until a little while ago, and I believe it is supposed to start snowing again later, after I go to sleep.

Snowed In is a pretty meaningless term when one has public transportation that runs underground. (The Green Line, which is actually a trolley for most of its route, does occasionally have snow difficulties, but the only time I ever saw the Red Line closed by snow, it was because they had to shut down the Longfellow Bridge, where it surfaces to cross the Charles.) Nonetheless, it's certainly too miserable to drive in, not pleasant to walk in (snow is fun to walk in after it stops falling) - so I decided to work at home today, and if I see a dreadful mess outside my window, I may work at home tomorrow as well.

I'm not very disciplined, though - while I did do some work today, at about one p.m. I stopped and began playing Alpha Centauri. This is my fourth long session with it, and tonight - at nine o'clock, I finally finished a game. Yes - the same game I started last week when I bought the beast. I didn't play badly or slowly; that's just how long it took. Longer than Civilization games, but not by much. Bear that in mind, if my raving about this game inspires you to buy it - a typical start-to-finish game will eat four long evenings of your life. And your eyes will hurt afterwards.

I've got a whole list of bugs written down, of course. Habit I got into years ago as a tester. When I find a bug, an interface problem, or somewhere the manual doesn't match, I write it down. Then I email the list to the game company. If they're going to release inadequately tested software, I will gripe.

I don't believe you can ever get software 100% bug-free - even little Heliotrope, while she doesn't have "bugs" per se (since I know they're there and have accounted for them), has a few Known Weirdnesses.

But this is blatant stuff. For example: If you don't win/lose the game via other conditions, the game will end anyway (for scorekeeping - you can keep playing) at a certain mandatory "retirement" year. The game warns you twenty years before it's going to retire you. The manual says retirement year is 2500. I won the game (via another means) in the year 2519 and I hadn't heard a peep from it about retirement at that point.

Things like that. Minor? Yes, unless you're trying desperately to finish something before the game retires you and you're waiting for that tap on the shoulder that never comes. Which I was.

For all the glitches, this is an amazing game. Why, in about a month, I may even have the energy to play it again.

(Don't believe me. I'll probably start a fresh game of it within the week.)

Meanwhile - while I was in gameland - I got all sorts of helpful advice about photography, some of which is convincing me that I may be steering in completely the wrong direction - but not in the way you think. I might write about that tomorrow. I was going to write about it tonight, but suddenly this turned into jeuxspiel and now I'm too tired.

You can blame it on the snow if you like.

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