Day: February 19, 2009

WTF Is In A Name at Fusion Fall

So my son really wants to play Cartoon Network’s Fusion Fall. I sign up, create a character and all is going well until it comes time to create a name for the character.

First, like a lot of online games, Fusion Fall has a random name generator, but it is completely useless because all of the random names it generates have already been taken. That in itself is such a stupid “feature” I can’t believe how prevalent it is. Exactly what help do developers think they’re doing by giving me a random name I can’t actually use. Do they think “random name roulette” is a mini-game fun for the whole family?

Anyway, after several rounds of having my random names rejected, I decide to manually enter a name. To save time and frustration, I put in my own name and go on to play for awhile. The next time I login, however, I’m told my name has been rejected and I must choose another. No explanation of what was offensive or objectionable ABOUT MY OWN DAMN NAME. No guidelines on creating an acceptable name. Just, sorry sucker, see if you can guess a name we’ll actually allow.

Right, because what I really want to do is spend the next few hours trying to figure out what name will please the assholes at Fusion Fall.

Hmmm . . . so maybe I can go over to the Fusion Fall site and get some help with this. So I go on over to the Fusion Fall forums, and I’m actually going to wait until I calm down to post a nice, concise explanation of my frustrating experience.

Nope, not going to happen. You can’t Post or Reply at the Fusion Fall forums unless you pay to become a Premium Subscriber to the game. Are you f—ing kidding me? That’s the sort of epic fail I haven’t seen since Flagship Studios (which went further and barred nonpaying customers from even reading their forums, so no one would know just how much Hellgate London sucked).

And I was considering paying for this crap? Not.

OpenGoo 1.2 Released

OpenGoo — the open source alternative to Google Docs, etc. — released its latest iteration, v1.2, the other day. This one looks like it has a few interesting updates, including better import/export functionality, batch uploading of files, automated updates, etc.  (complete release notes are here). Still no spreadsheet module yet, though, and the e-mail module is still beta.

Clockwork Game Webcomic

clockwork-gameClockwork Game is a webcomic posted every Thursday by Jane Irwin centered around The Turk automated chess playing machine. According to Wikipedia,

Publicly promoted as an automaton and given its common name based on its appearance, the Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years until its destruction by fire in 1854, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Although many had suspected the hidden human operator, the hoax was initially revealed only in the 1820’s by the Londoner Robert Willis (see, for instance, his An Attempt to Analyse the Automaton Chess Player, London, 1821).

According to the Clockwork Game’s website, the comic “is a mostly-true story, a dramatization of actual historical events, retold with as little conjecture as possible” and the result is fascinating.