Musings of a Teenager

Empire of Sports Website
So, here it is, my first ever review. It's of a game that's yet to come out, but still... It's called Empire of Sports and it advertises itself as the world's first true multi-sports MMORPG.
After getting beta access the first thing I had to do was download the client. All of it. Even on my speed of around 2400 kbps, it still took almost half an hour.
When you actually get to play the game it's not that bad. The graphics are brilliant and the sports mechanisms are simple and engrossing. It relies quite heavily on reactions so this could lead to severe differences at the start, and you also need fast, accurate touch typing for some activities. But, with practise, it is really fun. There is great variety, but with similar systems making it simple to pick up. A lot of the missions (their name for quests), tutorials, guides, etc. Still need programming but what there is at the moment looks highly promising. There is skiing, bobsleigh, tennis, shooting, dancing, track and field and gym available at the moment with football and basketball coming soon. With tennis you need someone to play against which can be a bit of a problem, I haven't played yet! You only earn money for skiing, but you need it so much that this can also be problematic.
Bug wise I have only found one, but I have reported it and it wasn't too big anyway. The problems I listed earlier are all going to be sorted out before launch, or so I believe, so rest assured that you will be able to go to the medical centre, visit other cities and shop!
To conclude, this could be a brilliant game which I feel has been launched to beta too early. I like the theme of 2028, but would prefer it to be set in todays society and there to be more sports. I am giving it 8/10 at the moment but expect it to reach 10/10 upon launch.

Next week - Runescape!

A simple list of what I consider to be the most interesting events, births and deaths on this day in history. If you feel I have missed out anything spectactularly important please tell me in a comment on this post.

Events:
98 - Trajan becomes Roman emperor.
1343 - Pope Clement VI issues the Bull Unigenitus.
1606 - The trial of Guy Fawkes and the other surviving Gunpowder plotters begins.
1785 - The first public university in the United States, the University of Georgia, is founded.
1939 - The first flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
1944 - The two year siege of Leningrad is lifted.
1945 - The first troops from the Red Army arrive at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp - Today is International Holocaust Rememberance Day.
1967 - Spacecraft Apollo 1 catches fire during pre-launch tests. The three astronauts, Virgil 'Gus' Grisson, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are all killed before they can open the command module hatch.
1967 - Over 60 nations sign the Outer Space Treaty, which bans the use of nuclear weapons in space.
1973 - The Vietnam War officially ends and the last recorded American casualty of that war, Colonel William Nolde, dies.

Births:
1756 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - composer.
1832 - Lewis Carroll - writer.
1850 - Edward Smith - Captain of the Titanic upon sinking. He shares his name with another Edward Smith who was the youngest VC recipient of WWI. He also got the DCM during that conflict and died in action (possibly friendly fire) in 1940.
1859 - Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany - Kaiser who led Germany during the First World War.
1933 - Mohammd Al-Fayed - Businessman, whose son died in the infamous car crash with Diana, Princess of Wales in Paris, 1997.
1980 - Marat Safin - tennis player.

Deaths:
1901 - Giuseppi Verdi - composer.
1967 - Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee - astronauts (see above).
1973 - William Nolde - last American casualty of Vietnam War (see above).

It's a question we've all been asked. Sometimes it's just continuing in the humour in a self-deprecating manner. At others it is honest, an expression of confusion. But what really is funny? Why do we laugh?
I'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This week in my French class the teacher asked me what book I was reading. Quite honestly, I answered a book about the role of a branch of the British Secret Service dealing with Prisoners of War, Escapers and Evaders during World War Two. A slight ripple of laughter went round the class. Then, one person said 'I've read that too, it's a good book'. I hadn't even said the title and everyone knew it was taking the mick out of me, but everyone laughed. I, obviously, did not find it funny, but neither did it annoy me too much. The teacher, however, asked for who had said it. When they owned up, he gave us a five minute, highly enjoyable lecture about why it is not 'funny' to laugh at another persons expense, sentiments which I had held long before the incident. How can it be funny to laugh at someone? What is funny about racism, or sexism, yet this makes the backbone of many modern jokes. It is never acceptable to be racist say many people, so why tell jokes about Jews, or the French, or whoever. Because it is cheap and easy humour? That's pretty pathetic. If the only way you can attract girls is by making them laugh and the only way you can do that is by being racist, then you're not clever or witty, you're racist. I draw the line between racist jokes and innuendo. Strong innuendo is, again, stupid I feel. But mild innuendo is okay. But being racist is not. Why, oh why, do so many shows these days deal only in that sort of humour. I also see the difference between the extreme (and pretty pointless) violence of the Young Ones and Bottom and racist jokes. But, then again, if the only way you can make the audience laugh is by sticking an axe through someones head, what does that say about humanity?
So, to conclude, why does modern humour have to revolve around slacking someone off? Can people just grow up and write some decent comedy. You may say I just want Morecambe and Wise, Dad's Army, The Goodies and the Muppets back and you'd almost certainly be right. Well, are you all going to learn and mature, or will I have to learn to write for myself?

Here it is, another year, and another project for me. What am I doing this time? Programming a game. Online. Multiple users. Ah. That sounds like a lot of hard work. And if there's one thing I hate it's hard work. On the other side of the spoon the one thing I love is work, so it's not all bad. But, I am not going to reveal the intricacies of the game yet. I'm not giving you lot all my ideas. No way. Instead I am going to discuss the technologies I am using to make it. In particular, a specific set I am using, which I am calling WGP.
WGP:
It stands for Web Game Programming. And it refers to a simple, quick and easy way to create online, multi-user games, using standard technologies that most website coders know already. It is a combination of XHTML, JavaScript, CSS and PHP. I will explain each technology in turn and how it is used in the game.
XHTML:
eXtensible Hyper-Text Markkup Language is the newest version of the standard HTML language which has been used for years to code web pages. It is simply HTML, written in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) which is becoming the new standard. But as XML isn't fully supported yet, I will use the older technolgy. This is simply to produce the pages and to markup the text.
JavaScript:
This is used to produce the functionality and the interactivity. It is how we go from room to room (yes, they won't be seperate XHTML pages, they will be individual divides within an overall XHTML page). This will also control interacting with NPCs (Non Player Characters) and objects, quests, etc.
CSS:
Cascading Style Sheets will be used to style the pages, and in a more innovative way. It will be used in conjunction with JavaScript. The code I am using creates a toggleDisplay function, but without a certain bit of CSS, all the content would be displayed at the start. We need a 'display: none;' line in the CSS for certain 'div' elements to get around this problem.
PHP
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is the final technology used. It is utilised to store user data and statistics for their characters. This means that there is less time spent communicating with an external computer, thus speeding the game up.

Useful Links:
I am going to be writing my own introduction to each language in due course, in the meantime these links will be of use:
XHTML: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/
JavaScript: www.javascript.com ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/js/
CSS: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/css/
PHP: http://www.php.net ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/php/

http://www.hotscripts.com/ - good general programming site.
http://www.csszengarden.com/ - another good css website.

Note: I am not responsible for the content of external sites, or any damage they might do to your computer.

Okay, so I will start the new year with an apology (great, already!). I have not been very active blog wise recently and I am sorry. My RS lessons turned into tests so my main material source dried up and homework stepped up a gear in the new GCSE year, so I haven't had much time. That and grandparents deaths, etc, have made me become very lapse. This will, hopefully change.
This year I am not going to cover RS and philosophy every week, but once every four. The other weeks will be taken up by reviews, history and my life and times respectively, hopefully this will give me more material and mean that you get more to read!
So, sorry again and a happy new year, I look forward to sharing it with you all.