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ID:28640
 
Mar 21 2007, 2:38 pm
I've done considerable amounts of work in most of my projects, including staring blankly at them and sitting around uselessly, twiddling my thumbs.

I'm not sure what's really going on lately, but I've lost almost all interest in any project of mine, BYOND or otherwise. I've been playing games for the most part. I've written maybe a thousand lines of code this month -- a lot of that comprising the terminal colours snippet, the rest comprising miscellaneous features in Newtopia -- and that's all.

Even in my games, I'm tending to putter around uselessly and do nothing in particular. For instance, the longest I've played Dwarf Fortress since the earliest part of this month was to dig out an entrance tunnel up to the cave river, abandon the fortress, and delete the region save...

So, I'm thinking I need to find a new diversion... a really good game that I can play for a few days that'll give me oodles of inspiration for anything. Any ideas?
Mar 21 2007, 4:05 pm
World of Warcraft sucks you in. Only play if you don't ever want to leave your house again.
Mar 21 2007, 4:06 pm
No worries there. I don't pay monthly rates to play games.
Mar 21 2007, 5:18 pm
play counter strike 1.6
Mar 21 2007, 6:25 pm
Oki-Doku is free!
Mar 21 2007, 6:43 pm
Aside from the fact that I just hate Sudoku (yes, I've tried Sudoku before), it would also give me absolutely no inspiration. ;-)
Mar 22 2007, 2:48 am
World of Warcraft!

Get the trial.
Mar 22 2007, 4:43 am
Heh... you could always do the free trial of GS... oh my god, the introductory screen for GS says "Although we add pictures here and there, you'll make up your fantasy medieval character using the most powerful 'graphics card' in the world: your imagination." Holy smokes.
Mar 22 2007, 4:55 am
Furcadia is free. I haven't tried it, but it was co-created by one of the co-creators of TWERPS (The World's Easiest Role-Playing System), so I imagine it has to be good.

http://furcadia.com/
Mar 22 2007, 8:12 am
I like BF2. Nothing quite like sniping a Mid East coalition tank gunner or whipping out an AK-74 against American infidels!
Mar 22 2007, 11:02 am
Note that I don't necessarily mean free, but I do necessarily mean I won't ever pay a monthly or yearly rate to play a game. I'm strongly in the camp that once I pay for a game, I own it until I give it to someone else. Having to pay for the privilege of playing the game (yeah, I know, I'm paying to play online, but most of these games don't have single-player modes) just wubs me the wong way. ([sic], HrH quote for the win.)
Mar 22 2007, 5:46 pm
Play fallout again!
You might also find some games that inspired you way back here: http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/
Mar 22 2007, 6:03 pm
I'm a little astonished that this guy is charging $6.95 per month to download games that he has no copyright to. In fact, I'm astonished to the point that I'm tempted to contact the ESA.
Mar 22 2007, 6:15 pm
Well...I dunno.
I didn't get the impression this was anything malicious or black market. I think most of these companies are out of business at this point.

As he puts it, 'As far as we know, all software available for download on this site had been discontinued by their authors and is now available for free, or was published as free since release. We appreciate comments to remove any software that is not of free usage and has accidentaly appeared on this site.'

Assuming the above is true, I'm not sure that 4.99 once for unlimited downloads for a day is all that much to ask for maintaining basically a download/high-bandwidth site.

*Shrug*
Mar 22 2007, 6:19 pm
X-COM Apocalypse is on that site. Apocalypse's rights are owned fully by Atari right now. Many of the games that are discontinued are still copyright of their original or current owners.

I tend to take a particularly stringent stance on abandonware, though... if the company still exists or the rights exist somewhere, I don't touch it. Less scrupulous abandonware people use the "can't be found in retail stores or their redistributors" guideline, whereas the worst people use the "it's been out 5 years" guideline.
Mar 22 2007, 6:34 pm
Fair enough.
I have yet to download anything from there yet and don't look forward to reinstalling dosbox. Several were tempting to me but mainly games from the 80s that I remember fondly.

Just trying to find ya some inspiration, Jt. Sorry if it caused consternation instead. :)
Mar 22 2007, 6:36 pm
Oh, no worries. All said and done, I imagine his motives are good and aren't after profit. I won't tattle, but I'll also choose to set a good example by steering clear... besides, I only download abandonware from free sites. ;-)
Mar 22 2007, 8:07 pm
Well, I know a guy who downloads his stuff from that site to his mirror... for $2.95 a month, you can access all of it. I'm pretty sure it's legal because he's not doing it for profit. :P