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Priorities January 12, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Scraps, Society , add a comment

As anyone currently living in Europe knows, we’re having a very cold winter. There’s still a slushy snow on the pavements and less used roads. I’d say it was unheard of but last year saw heavy snowfall in February. I wasn’t around to witness it but it sounded really rather crazy.

I was perusing the wikipedia article on this abnormal winter. It’s pretty interesting. The bit that caught my eye however was down at the bottom. So as it turns out (source: BBC) most shops have been suffering from people not wanting to go outside. No surprise there. The fun part is that sales in contraception have risen. So everyone has definitely gotten their priorities straight. Right on, humanity.

Happy Arbitrary Celebration Day January 1, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Ramble, Scraps, World , add a comment

Yep, we’re finally out of the cool sounding oh-somethings and into just plain old 10. I’m not gonna have fun with my event names for another ten years, that does rather suck, my whole twenties spent not being able to call things “Awesome Event *last two digits of year*” since it just doesn’t sound very good.

As you can guess from my title, I find the celebration of new year a bit puzzling. A good excuse for a party to be sure, but I don’t really understand why everyone gets so happy and hugs and kisses everyone around. Really every day is a new year, a new year from the same day the year before. I call bullshit on new years resolutions too, if you wanna make a change fucking make a change, don’t wait for some arbitrary date to do it.

Anyways, have fun wherever you are.

So much for rebranding December 2, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Gaming, Internets, School, Scraps , add a comment

So after realising that my relaunched durka is practically impossible to actually find due to both it’s rebranding and it being parked on this domain. Also, Godaddy are having a sale on .info and it was hella cheap for me to grab my old domain back. So I did.

Now the un-rebranded durka can be found over at tehdurka.info. This does have the possible bonus of past visitors coming through random searching or something. I can’t imagine anyone will still be hoping that it re-appears and regularly look for it but maybe there’s one guy. And one guy is all it takes! So long as he has friends…

All Ad’d up and ready to go November 28, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Blogs, Entertainment, Fun, Gaming, Internets, Scraps , add a comment

So I’ve now got the google ads back up on the blog and also on Malarky. Before they were under another account rather than my own because I was under 18 but now that I’m legally an adult I’m allowed to earn money on my website. Woop.

My main concern with this little venture is the time it’ll take for traffic to really pick up, it was a long time after starting Durka that others outside of people I knew actually used the site. Word of mouth is a great propogator for something like this but it what it really takes is people searching deep into search engines for a site that they can actually play on. It’s this that really got visitors to it before and eventually caused it to somewhat explode in terms of popularity. Explode relatively that is.

I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to poke this along or whether it simply is a case of watching, waiting and hoping. Of course, please do tell your friends, it’s the caring sharing thing to do. With that I’m going to be over and out.

Bringing Durka Back November 27, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Gaming, Internets, School, Work , add a comment

It’s been my plan for a while to relaunch my old filter avoiding website tehdurka.info. As my most sucessful website ever, it’s demise was quite unfortunate. At the point of taking it down it had received over 400,000 hits during it’s lifespan, not massive on internet scale but certainly something for me. Of course, if it ever did get especially popular I would probably run into trouble anyway due to it appearing on the radar of school and workplace filtering technology. A few thousand hits a day was quite enough for me.

I can’t entirely remember why I shut it down, probably to do with the hassle of juggling free providers to keep my costs down to a minimum. In order not to run up massive bandwidth costs (my host, nearlyfreespeech.net, operates on a pay-what-you-use system with a high level of transparacy in their operation, I would reccomend them for anyone needing a cheap place to host a low bandwidth/storage site) I will be using free web hosting providers wherever I can, a slightly dubious practice but if they’ll let me hotlink then hotlink I shall. Most are very limited in terms of both space and bandwidth so it’s quite a bother juggling it all. But I’ll do it again, to keep myself occupied.

My new incarnation of Durka is named Malarky and is currently hosted as part of this website. Depending on what happens, I may give it it’s own subdomain or possibly get some unlimited bandwidth hosting for it. Of course, that’s a point where it gets worryingly popular and could possibly fail because of it. There’s also issues of copyright on the games I’m hosting, I have a very open takedown policy and I think most game makers are mostly interested in people playing their game rather than making money but I’m sure there are some out there who only want their game on a specific site and I’ll respect that provided that I’m aware. There are of course lots of ways for flash games to make money irrespective of what website is hosting them, mochi ads for one.

Hopefully my good faith will keep me clear of any trouble, and it should improve my programming skills as a by product which is always positive. So, if you’re in need of entertainment at school or work (obviously not during a lesson, wouldn’t want to ruin your education) then head on over to Malarky and get playing. I will be adding lots more games over the coming weeks to get it back up to the level that Durka had when I shut her down.

Toy Commander: The most local multiplayer fun you’ll ever have (that isn’t an FPS) July 22, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Essay, Fun, Gaming , 1 comment so far

The Dreamcast is in many ways considered to be a failed console, and indeed, it did spell the end for Sega in one way or another. Many say it failed due to a huge amount of the market wanting to wait till the PS2 was released. Still, it was the first console to have online multiplayer features and it was the first new console I ever received and therefore will always hold a special place in my heart.

Toy Commander has a similar personal connection. I can’t remember where or when I got it, only that I had liked the idea behind it from when I first heard about it and was willing to pay the above average price for a Dreamcast game to get it. It certainly was worthwhile. As a single player game it held up very well,  the missions were interesting and varied, even if a few could get a bit frustrating. For a game of it’s time though, it was very well done.

But the real strength came in the multiplayer, me and my best friend played that game to death in two player battles. How we managed to remain interested in it for as long as we did is a complete mystery to me but really says something about what a fantastic multiplayer game Toy Commander was and still is.

The reason I’m writing this post is because recently the topic of retro games and old games that had a strong personal connection to us came up in conversation, I remembered Toy Commander and how awesome a game for multiplayer it had been but more I remembered how I had longed for another two controllers as I thought the fun would be multiplied greatly with two more people. So I went on eBay and had a little look around for Dreamcast controllers, they seemed pretty inexpensive and I picked up two of them for just £8.50 with free P&P.

When they arrived we immediately cracked out the old games, Toy Commander at the forefront and experienced the fun it brings.

What is so fantastic about it is that it’s a completely different game to any other of the games we’ve played local multiplayer on in the past. For one, it’s not a first person shooter. Mostly though, it comes from the pretty simple system combined with wonderfully intricate and detailed levels. The thing about normal flight combat in games is it takes place in massive areas which are all pretty much the same, there are no obstacles as you’re out in the open. Toy Commander brings the dog fights inside, into your living room or bedroom. Fights take place dodging behind chairs and curtains, into cupboards and under tables, around ceiling fans and through fire places. It is this aspect that really gives Toy Commander it’s wonderful originality and fun.

As with every great game, it’s easy to pickup and start playing but difficult to master. There is no other game like it. Which is really why I’m now imploring the game industry – someone please pick up the rights for a remake/sequel. This game would work so well on modern consoles and PCs. If it were done well, the levels would be expanded and more fun details added and the missions would retain their fun whilst hopefully losing some of their unclear instructions and frustration. Moreover, the game would work fantastically well online, with either Xbox Live or regular PC online gaming being perfect. I can just imagine the possible fun having a toy commander battle with 8 or even 16 players. The dog fights would be so tense, the battles could be raised to an epic scale. The fun would be multiplied even more.

I know the chances of remake or sequel are minute but it would be truly such a great game. It was a fantastic concept and I have no idea how it possibly dyed with the absolutely awful Toy Racer, what seems to be one of the most rushed games I’ve ever played. Even to just see it appear on the Xbox Live Arcade would be awesome, even in it’s original form. I’d love to see how my skills match up to others around the world.

Really, if you have a Dreamcast and don’t own this game you need to try and get your hands on a copy, it is THE most fun multiplayer experience on that console, if not any console ever made and probably the most original and fun multiplayer game you’ve ever played.