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Well, I’ve finished playing through the Hellgate: London Demo a couple times (1 for each allowed class) have some good stuff and bad stuff. But not in that order.

First off, I mean, you can’t read a review of the game without Diablo II being mentioned. And yeah, the people who started Flagship, who made Hellgate, were Diablo II’s main designers. So you kinda knew it was gonna be similar. But seriously, now. Like D2, Hellgate’s characters have multiple skill trees, but they’re displayed all on one page instead of three. You get new skill options every 5 levels instead of every 6. The blademaster (one of the two swordsman “templar” characters) has skills like “Charge,” “Zeal,” “Aura of Thorns,” and the high-level spinning-spell “Whirlwind”. Nice. Your character has a “Stash” kept at the base. You have to “analyze” “unidentified” items before you can use them. There are Accuracy, Strength, Stamina, and Willpower instead of Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Magic. And yeah, they all do the same thing. There are special unique versions of monsters with funny names that display in gold print (although I’ll admit a thumbs up for “Sumatran Rat Monkey“). For poop’s sake, there’s even “Wart’s”-Motherfucking-Leg. I’d be surprised if the basic mechanics of Diablo III have this much in common with DII. And, yeah, I appreciate humor in video games (see Portal) but pop culture references are a little too much for me, here. Imagine running into a Britney Spears quote in Diablo II. Wouldn’t work, right? Here either.

However. It was really, really fun to play… and I kinda have to force myself to admit this. There were some graphical glitches (at one point my character was invisible except for weapons until I rebooted the game) but on the whole, flying monsters, explosions, dynamic deaths, and 3 dimensions can do a surprising amount for a tired formula. The “world” was pretty cool, generally. The “dynamic” level building is perhaps even more effective than DII, since that game’s top-down overview made it too easy to compare schematics from above. Left-click left-hand and right-click right-hand is fantastic; when you get two guns or two swords you really don’t wanna go back to one. I enjoyed the Marksman a bit more than the Blademaster; and no-ammo gameplay keeps things moving fast, though being able to see farther ahead of you (instead of the size of your screen) leads to slightly more tactical play. On the other hand, it highlights some AI weaknesses; some creatures are purposely stupid, but at least in Diablo you couldn’t see the smarter creatures waiting for you just out of your range. They do tend to have personalities when they fight you though.

Overall, granting I was only able to play the demo, it looks like a very-very-high quality DII clone. It’s enough to hold one over, but I don’t think it’ll be a “classic” kind of game that will make a mark on its own like Diablo. The single-player was cool, but I have a suspicion multiplayer will be insanely fun. You can… you can just tell. Which would be great if I had many friends who could run it. Sigh.

A friend and burgeoning Speech Therapist, intrigued by the fact that she had no idea what was going on anatomically when us metalheads do death metal voices, took it upon herself to ask a professor. And here’s what she got:
—
Ah yes, the “Cookie Monster” voice. The defining feature of this is constriction of the false vocal folds, which introduces noise into the sound wave which we perceive as roughness. We also hear this to lesser degrees with singers like Bruce Springsteen.

Some skilled performers are able to use the epiglottis as a noise source. Low laryngeal height as you mentioned is also a component of the death metal voice; that lengthens the vocal tract, helping to lower the formants and “darken” the sound.

Singing with constriction of the false vocal folds can be very damaging to the true vocal folds, and can result in swelling, nodules, granuloma, or even acute hemorrhage of the VFs (bad news). In order to “safely” sing with constriction of the false vocal folds, a singer needs impeccable breath control (which many don’t have) to avoid excessive impact stress on the VFs. Conversely, if you sing with false vocal folds in the retracted position, which sounds happy or bright, it is much
harder to do any damage.

Constricted FVFs and retracted FVFs are each an appropriate stylistic choice in certain kinds of singing, so don’t buy into anyone’s aesthetic bias against the death metal voice. Because it is risky, I do have a bit of a vocal health bias against this type of singing. As a guideline, if any speaking or singing task leaves you with a feeling of itch, tickle, or scratch at the level of the true vocal folds, it is probably traumatic to the tissue.
—
He was also so kind as to link to a magazine article on the subject, and a more scholarly article on the use of the technique in ethnic and pop musics.

Pneumonia might have knocked me out of the official 24-Hour Comics Day, but I bounced back and began this year’s comic at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and finished at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday (which, with Daylight Savings Time, came to an even 20 hours). This year’s comic, “Mr. Scraps,” is available in several formats, and weighs in at 26 pages.

The above thumbnail links to the online version of the comic, though you may have to scroll a lot, depending on your resolution. The full-size pdf version (7.1MB) is of the same quality, and may be easier to read at the expense of a larger download. Lastly, the microscopic worthless pdf version (192KB) is completely unreadable and utterly useless, though is a very small download.

All in all, I had a lot of fun making the comic, though it was much different doing it from home with no other participants (though Stephanie checked in on me a few times). I hope you enjoy the comic and please let me know if any of the files/pages are broken or if there are quality (of the scans) issues.

You can also download “The Baby,” (pdf, 12.7MB) which was last year’s 24-Hour Comic.

update:: Boingboing has an article about the event and invited contributors to post their comics. I’ve read a few (and posted my own) and I thought I would past my favorite: Nicholas Fredland’s comic is hilarious, minimalist, and just plain great. Check it out.

This week’s Saturday Art Spectacular is “Newton Explains The Second Coming,” a lovely pen and ink piece colored in Photoshop.

Interesting story: I spilled water all over my macbook while inking the original piece a few weeks back. Thankfully some quick reactions and a painful day of waiting for the laptop to dry out left me with an almost perfect computer. Nevertheless, I did some tracing and re-drew this piece a few days ago.

HALO2, or High ALtitude Object: Helium Balloon Mission to Near-Space, was a project to launch “a payload with GPS, camera, sensors and communications to an altitude of 30km” with a helium balloon. The pictures are pretty fantastic and the video has its moments despite a dire need for some editing. One of the highlights is when they calculate that they payload landed at over 60km/hr. Anyhow, awesome project, at least in my book.

Saul Williams, following the likely influences of Radiohead and Trent Reznor, is releasing his newest album online for either $5 or free, depending on your level of support for his work. Unlike Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Williams gives a choice for download quality, ranging from the standard 192 kbps to 320 kbps as well as an option for FLAC. You can preorder the The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust from site. My pre-order says something about an email on November 1st for a direct download.
Either way, it will be an interesting experiment to see how Williams, a far less recognizable figure than Radiohead, fares. I do know that I’ve bought two albums (this and In Rainbows) in less than a month’s time, which I can’t remember doing since I bought another Radiohead CD and a Cradle of Filth CD back in undergrad.

update: I completely forgot to mention that Reznor produced this album.

::unoriginal::

So: updates. A while ago I quit my job at Computershare through a temp agency because, despite promises to the contrary, they clearly had no intention whatsoever of promoting me or paying the finders fee to the temp agency. After some interviews and a lot of waiting, I am now employed at Medical Information Technology (Meditech), though I do not actually start the training until November 19th. I will be working at their Canton offices, as a programmer. For those who don’t want to read the website, the long and short of it is that they produce software for all aspects of hospitals—patient care, administrative, payroll, supply ordering, scheduling, etc.—and I will be assisting coding their programs, on the team that specializes in programs for physicians.

Overall I’m pretty psyched about it… the benefits are ridiculous, pay is good, location is near Boston, job is interesting, and the company is one of the largest privately owned companies in something-or-other, which seems to free it from most horrifying corporate Office-Space-esque trappings. Anyhoo, that’s about it for now. Everything else continues in such fashion as it tends to.

Cartoon Brew was kind enough to link to a collection of Bill Waterson’s early student art from Kenyon College. Most of the images are from 1979, 80, and 81 and are definitely worth a look. His cartoons are, for the most part, timeless and have a nice way of demonstrating his later style and artistic competency.

::Pictures Here::

So Portal is tons of fun, and HL2 is just awesome. But Portal is lacking in the violence category, and HL2 could really use one of those portal guns. So someone decided to combine them in what looks to be one of the greatest ideas ever. I want to give this thing a shot.

The new feature-length Futurama DVD is going to be out in November. Trailer follows.

Edit: Video removed until I can again find a working one.