Rihards Unplugged

Just updated my online portfolio with a new project. And yes, I do work, even though the Portfolio doesn’t really reflect that (one project in 2007? That’s crazy). Well it’s not quite like that, I could rant to no end why I don’t add most of my projects to my portfolio, but I’ll make that a separate post.

SGN Inc. is an Eve Online corporation, as the name already implies, it’s the official SGN corporation. For those of you who don’t know what SGN is, it’s a scifi and gaming community. And Eve Online is a massive multiplayer game set in a scifi setting.

Not much to say about the design and coding process really. Pretty much all of it happened just like it happens with other websites. Right from the start I knew that the site would be something very light, and simple. But with some shiny thrown in as well.

Code wise it’s pretty much standard as well. You have your HTML and CSS for the frontend, and PHP and mod_rewrite for the backend. All together forming, hopefully, a well made website that is easy to navigate and pleasing to look at.

Link: Live version

There’s a new preview, with some new Spore pictures that I haven’t seen before (they are actually quite old, but still hadn’t seen all of them before), up on 1UP’s site.

Sadly, even though the game is finished content wise, it will still take a while for EA/Maxis to make it shipping ready. The date of release is still sometime next spring.

Spent quite a sizable chunk of my weekend playing Fable and CoD2, mostly Fable though. Don’t know why I really started playing it again, as there are quite a few things that annoy me to no end, but somehow I just keep going back to it. Always just saying, one more quest, to myself and then playing about five or six through.

Mind you, most of the quests aren’t that exciting and offer very little in variations, or ground breaking things. Quite the contrary, a lot of them are either go from point A to point B, and/or rescue someone from somewhere. But there have been some really cool quests, like gathering books for the local school (it’s actually a lot better than it sounds like), or the chicken kicking competition quest.

One of the really cool things about Fable though as I have already mentioned in previous posts is the character customization. Lots of choices for various things, each armor piece looks differently on your character, and you can combine various armors. Then there’s of course hair styles, beard and mustache styles, and of course tattoos. So you can basically play with a completely differently looking character each time. Especially considering that the scars that your character gets from fighting are unique each time as well.

Overall a top notch game that could have done with some better storyline, storytelling and some more varied quests.

For someone who has expressed his dislike for Halo 2, and quite a sizable chunk of the Halo community, I sure do seem to post quite a lot of Halo related things. Especially lately, but I do have my reasons. It’s not so much because of Halo, or Bungie (who are really good game developers, even if they did produce Halo 2), it’s because of WETA Workshop.

WETA Workshop, who are they? They are a physical effects company from New Zealand, famous for their work on Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as other movies that have had really great sets, costumes and props. And yes, they are once more working together with Peter Jackson, this time though on the Halo movie. Which doesn’t look all that bad.