I'm ready to throw in the towel with this blog. The spacing between paragraphs (or lack of it - see my previous post) is counter-intuitive. What I see I do not get. What I want to see I can't make happen. Fudge.

Why does it work sometimes, and botch on all others? I checked the HTML code, and there is a lot of formatting tags enclosing... nothing. It's all with no text inside. It confounds me. I'm pretty sure I didn't want that to happen.

So much for WYSIWYG, I guess. It's back to Edit HTML for me. Boy, this sure brings back high school sophomore days.

Back to Basics. I hope the bold and italic tags are up to par with the message boards I'm a part of.

This will be my workbook post. Here, I'll try to play around with the text controls. Notice that the fonts here are of different sizes. The rule, I think, is to put down all the text first before performing doodads.

If anyone has noticed, I've deleted my previous post - it's got too much endemic errors to make me let it live longer. The presentation of the topic is also botched - I was explaining the features of a particular side of an RTS game to a reader who probably hasn't played it yet.

I shall rectify that error now.

Dawn of War Basics

Controls and Gameplay

Dawn of War is a real-time strategy (RTS) game. Unlike chess, where each side takes turns, one after the other, in RTS games the sides perform their actions simultaneously, thus creating a sense of excitement as to who can outsmart who faster.

DoW is a point and click game - you select units and structures with your mouse, and click on some buttons on the game screen to give them commands, or on the map to give them orders. No keyboard-pounding action here, I'm afraid. :)

It's a war simulation - you gather resources, build up the necessary production facilities, gather an army, and try to conquer your opponent with it. All in all, a regular RTS pattern - gather, build, and attack.

Distinguishing Features

There are two resources involved in creating an army - Requisition points and Power. Requisition points are gathered by capturing Strategic Points, Critical Points and Relics. Power can be obtained from Generators. Capturing key areas and building Generators increase the rate at which these resources trickle into your reserves.

DoW offers a twist in army management - squads. Infantry are requisitioned in squads of 1-5 units to start with, and can be commanded to recruit more members to increase a squad's capability. This recruitment can be done even in the middle of combat! Squads need not be monotonous - some members of a squad may be assigned different weapons from their comrades (as in a real-life army), and squad leaders may be assigned to them to improve their performance. Lastly, there are some infantry units that do not come in squads when they are created, but may join a squad, increasing their survival chances.

This is because squads take damage as a whole - the damage is distributed evenly to all members, as opposed to direct damage when attacking a unit that is acting alone, i.e., a vehicle. In the crudest terms, a squad is a meat shield for special infantry units, who more often than not are support units like medics or powerful attack units. The more members the meat shield has, the better.

Vehicles also can be tweaked - a Predator tank, for example, may exchange its main artillery gun for a laser cannon, in the same manner that a squad may be assigned weapons to deal with various situations. This customization to the point of twinkiness is a direct translation of the War Hammer 40,000 tabletop miniature game into the PC-RTS format (The minis game is turn-based.). The point-value limit of the tabletop game has been replaced with a Squad and Vehicle cap, which prevents massive rushes of generic troops to drown the enemy. Quantity is good, but quality is too. A 16-Ork attack force equipped only with axes and pistols is going to flounder when faced with an Eldar hovertank. An 8-strong Space Marine Squad, half of which are carrying Missile Launchers, with an Apothecary to heal wounds and a Sergeant with a Plasma Gun will take said hovertank down with only minor casualties.

It seems that researching upgrades for your units is a must for any strategy game that wishes to score in the market. It stands to reason - it is easier to maintain a small body of well-armed troops than a horde of spear-wielding peasants. DoW is not without this requisite, which is a trend that Blizzard's games started - if you don't research and upgrade, you die. Upgrades come in the form of extra weapons, special abilities, or in passive bonuses (say, to each unit's health).

My task here is done. Hopefully, I can move on to the wonderfully biased unit descriptions in my next posts.

I didn't mean to allow so many days to pass after my last post, but I got sidetracked by Dawn of War. Dawn of War is a/an RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game taking its elements from Games Workshop's WarHammer universe. The game has a campaign, skirmish mode (where you fight against AI), and multiplayer is supported (though I haven't tried it yet).

The WarHammer universe is big, and its different races are always at war with each other. The campaign puts you behind the reins of the Space Marines, Blood Ravens Chapter. They're pretty much your run-of-the-mill people in power suits that have high-tech weapons and gear, except that they have cybernetic implants. Space Marines have no sense of humor - you might get bored of hearing the same old "For the Emperor!" "The enemies of the Emperor will be crushed!" lines. I was wondering idly if there's a chapter (kinda like monks, their organization is) that has white power armor, and only its commanders wear black. The Space Marines have the nasty habits of hardwiring their crippled/maimed/disabled soldiers into humanoid weapons platforms (read: SUPAA ROBOTTO!), binding a protective spirit in each one of their super tanks, and dropping firepower, troopers, and aforementioned robots from their orbiting battleships. Crazy humans.

The first race you meet and massacre in the campaign are the Orks. Yes folks, that's Orks, not orcs, due to some wish to not be identified with Tolkien perhaps. Green-skinned people with a love of battle, no I'm not talking about the Hulk. Orks do not possess high levels of technology, preferring weapons that go bang, chop, boom, or burn. Only the smartest of them get the stuff that go zap and blink. Still, when it comes to close combat, they are a match with Space Marines and their strength-increasing armor. Their accuracy has a lot to be improved on, but when a full gang of Orks outnumbers a Space Marine squad 2:1, well, now... Their nasty habits include equipping every gang in the field with explosives of all sorts, strapping some huge guns on a big, BIG lizard, and using goblins as spies and workers. The Ork side is full of laughs - one of their heroes says "Where's my trukk? Why am I WALKING?!!!" The other hero says upon entering the field "I'ze the biggest, so I'ze DA BOSS!"

Next up on your plate are the fast yet frail Eldar. For those not in the know, 'Eldar' is WarHammer-speak for 'Elves.' They look tame and lame compared to Orks - none of them have siege capable infantry, i.e. soldiers that can deal significant damage to structures oustside of hand-to-hand combat. They make up for it with their vehicles - three are highly maneuverable hovertanks, and the other one is a humanoid weapon similar to what the Space Marines use. What Eldar infantry are best at is appearing suddenly and disappearing quickly - they run really fast, and they have teleportation gates. Did I mention that some Eldar structures also teleport? Talk about cheating. In fact, they so need to cheat badly, they can summon their war god to fight on the ground with them.

The last race / faction included in the game are the Chaos Marines. They're basically D3V1L W0RSH1PP1NG Space Marines, and its reflected in their structures' and units' look. Their version of the Space Marines' SUPAA ROBOTTO has four legs, two arms ending in pincers, and a horned helemet complete with glowing eyes perched on top of its hull. They can also summon daemons - in fact, one of their big plays is to sneak a squad in, undetected, to your HQ, then transform the squad leader into a Bloodthirster, one of Baphomet's meaner cousins. Oh yeah, summoning the big horned, winged guy doesn't kill the other members of the squad, so they can stick around and provide fire support for the big, strong and ugly guy. They're funny that way.

There is a 5th group, the Imperial Guard, who are in the campaign - you can't play as them in the skirmish and multiplayer modes. They're plot devices, literally. All they have going for them are their 15-man squads armed with grenade launchers, laser rifles, and plasma guns, and their cute tanks.

Graphics-wise and game-wise, Dawm of War has been described as a Warcraft killer. It's so easy to learn - the Space Marines that is, as the in-game tutorial puts you in command once again of a Space Marine force. It has camera controls that allow a player to zoom in and pan the view as they wish to really get up close to the action.

I'll discuss units in-depth on my next post.

Mahou Senshi Louie

Fun crazy sh!t. Arguably one of a local channel's better moves, but then again, it has this penchant for showing magical, fantasy anime - heck, it's biggest primetime draw is a soap opera about bird-men with human problems.

My friend says that we're slowly retrograding back into the '80s. I can't say I don't like it, but if it means coming up with more soaps, I'll just go back to my old-school Japanese robots, thank you very much. But I digress.

This is supposed to be a Mahou Senshi, or Rune Soldier post. So it shall be. My expectations for this show were met, and more. After all, the commercial teasers promised one guy, and at least two girls (one for teenagers to gawk at, and the other one's lolicon bait) in a fantasy setting - reminiscent of Bakuretsu / Sorceror Hunters.

Louie is the adopted son of a mage academy's Head Wizard or somesuch (I didn't catch his title). You'd expect him to be a regular wimpy Merlin-wannabe, but no: he's got a lot of brawn, height, hair, and ignorance. Not "I'm-gonna-fireball-that-pile-of-orcs-pinning-down-my-buddy" but "I'm-gonna-skip-magic-school-and-just-booze-and-brawl-and-babe-around " ignorant. Reminds me a lot of myself, which is maybe why I love the show already. Or it could be the fact that he gets to travel with a lolicon bait thief, a sin-inspiring nun, and an Amazon swordswoman who prefers to fight in swim suits.

It's great to see anime that offers pantyshots during the opening to middle minutes of the first episode. I mean, big, hulking novice mage trips drunkenly on his feet, and snags thief-girl's skirt, exposing white cotton unmentionables? I bow. As far as first episodes go, Mahou Senshi's is a masterpiece - you get fanservice AND a lot of explanations without a feeling a lecture is going on.

Quick and dirty ep 1 summary -

SCENE 1: Merril (thief), Genie (fighter), and Melissa (cleric) find a trapdoor in some ruins. Thief skills won't open it though - they need a mage's magic! (A Knock spell, in Dungeons and Dragons parlance. Note that the character classes are old D&D as well.) They decide to call it a day and head back to town - the sudden appearance of regenerating monsters spurs them on.

SCENE 2: Merril wanders around town, looking for mage hangouts. She is suddenly ambushed by a bunch of women who demand if she has seen a tall, muscular guy with long hair. She tells them "he went that way" and points to where she came from, and the mob heads off. She sighs, and hears a man's voice thanking her for getting rid of those women. She turns around, and out of a fruit crate a tall, muscular guy with long hair stands up. He tries to buy her dinner in gratitude; refuses and turns away, he tries to stop her, trips drunkenly on his feet, and snags thief-girl's skirt - well, you pretty much know what happens after that. For those who can't tell, no they did not DO IT , she beat him silly and stalked off, muttering "Pervert" or something like it.

SCENE 3: Genie is confronting 3 punks with swords. Punks announce the extortion attempt; she says she'll just whip their asses. Suddenly, a new voice is heard (oh, really?) and says that if there's a fight going to happen, he wants in. A few seconds later the fight ensues, and the seemingly drunk brawler with long hair wipes the floor with the punks. One of them draws a sword, and is immediately dispatched by Genie. (She reminds me a lot of Kanna from Sakura Taisen - tall, buff, tanned, sexy in a scary way.) She harangues the brawler for fighting fist to sword, and the participants in the brief spat scatter as a watchman runs over to investigate the ruckus.

SCENE 4: Bar scene. Genie and Merill meet up in another bar with Melissa, a traveling cleric for the god of War. Talk of a divination ritual, ditzy nun jokes, then Merill says she heard that there's a tavern in the northern part of the city where the mages chill out at the end of the day, and the three decide to head there to recruit a female magic-user for their party.

SCENE 5: Another tavern. The three approach a woman drinking alone - yes, she's a mage, no, I don't do adventures, but a friend of mine might be able to help you. Said friend walks in - it's the drunk, long-haired pervert brawler from before! Ila introduces her friend Louie to the three adventurers. Melissa asks dazedly where they knew the guy from. Louie is brought up to speed, and says he'll gladly join the three. BZZZZT!!! Sorry, no men allowed. Tempers flare, Genie draws her sword, and Louie shows her a glowing red pearl (it's a delayed blast fireball) and tells her he's been ready for this fight, and not to come closer or the red gem will paralyze her. As he gloats about how good he is, he notices Ila and the other tavern patrons have taken cover.

Louie: Hey, Ila...
Ila: Louie, don't you pay attention to class? Red isn't paralysis, it's blue!
Louie: Ok, so what's this for?
Ila: Explosive....

Louie tries to get rid of the gem ASAP, but he trips again and drops the sucker. BOOOOMM!!!!

FAST FORWARD: Louie is bailed out of jail by the faithfuk Ila. They talk, and Louie tells her he's joining the three - their talk of not wanting to take him means that they think they are not fit company for one as him. He decides to sell his pitch to the cleric girl, who is preparing for a divination ritual. She wants to see the hero she will dedicate her life to, as adventuring members of her order are wont to do, becoming heroines in the process. Louie tries repeatedly to enter the cloister, but is defeated by staff-wielding nuns at each turn. He does get beyond the gate, and onto the roof of the cloister - only to be met by Genie and Merill, who are still pissed off at him and aren't willing to give him a chance to talk to Melissa. As they battle on the domed roof, Melissa is underneath, oblivious, as she stands naked in hip-deep water praying - nay, communing with her deity. Her deity tells her that the next person she lays eyes on will be the one whom she must dedicate herself to. On the roof, Louie pulls of a powerful desperation spell, meaning to finish the fight then and there. The spell looks good, there's a circle of light on the roof centered on him - when suddenly the spell goes haywire and the circle explodes, sending Louie up into the air and down the hole - yep. Straight into Melissa's prayer pool. Remember what the deity said? Yep. Mr. Tall, Brawny, and Bumbling. Her reaction? "NOOOOOOOO!!!"
There goes her dreams of offering herself to a brave and noble paladin. She gets stuck with a mage initiate who's better with his fists than with his spells.

The second episode makes his description worse - a perverted novice mage whose sword skills are on par with his magic skills, who nonetheless is still very deadly with his fists, especially if he flies into a white-eyed rage. Seriously. His irises go white, and he can take out those regenerating monsters from episode 1 with just his bare hands. Focusing mana in his fists? Maybe this guy should have been a monk. Or a martial artist. But perhaps they've already an overload of those in the Aniverse, which is why they used a guy like Louie instead.