Way back in high school, I used to sketch a lot. I remember having a big pencil case full of blue HD pencils of different shades of gray. And I’d spend hours drawing my favorite comic book heroes on my sketch pad and feel a sense of accomplishment at a work wherein I put a lot of effort and heart. But when I grew a bit older and a bit busier, I gave up that hobby of mine.

Now that I have some free time again, I decided to try my hand once again at the art of drawing, this time, making use of technology available on the internet. So instead of buying a set of pencils and a sketch pad, I Googled using the words “draw online” and landed on Queeky. You sign up just like any internet site and you can start drawing.

At first, I felt that Queeky was a simplified version of Adobe Photoshop. But I was surprised to see that this site records the whole process of creating a masterpiece – from start to finish. If you wanted to study drawing techniques, you can really learn a lot from watching how others create their work. This concept of recording someone’s drawing process is what I would consider Queeky’s best service offer. There are already many image storing sites on line, and even drawing tools online, but the recording process is what makes Queeky stand out above the rest.

I’ve seen a lot of great works by various artists. Some are very life like and I’m really surprised to see the recording. There was an artist who made a Che Guevara sketch – the face you usually see on shirts, and my friend was guessing that the artist loaded a picture of Che Guevara before adding the other elements of the drawing. Lo and behold, when I showed my friend how the whole sketch was done, she was really impressed, amazed and at the same time envious of how someone could have so much talent.

So for the hobbyist and even the serious artist, I’d recommend Queeky if you want to start creating your online gallery of artworks. Who knows, you could be the next Vincent Van Gohg of the internet age. ^_^

With all the advancement in computer effects and movie making, I cannot believe producers still haven’t come up with a digital masterpiece that depicts the Biblical book of Revelations in the best and truest way possible. Why can’t the story of how this world is going to end not being told properly?

We’ve had movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon that depict what it would be like for a comet or asteroid to hit the Earth in present day times. Several other disaster movies about volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tidal waves have hit the screen. Horror movies have show what it is like to have plagues and other gory stuff happen to people when confronted by the supernatural. We’ve had the Lord of the Rings or the Chronicles of Narnia to show what a battle with other-worldly beings might be like.

There are simply many topics that can be very exciting in the Book of Revelation:

• Depicting the throne of God and the four living creatures
• The seven seals and the four horsemen
  • White horse
  • Red horse
  • Black horse
  • Ashen horse – 1/4 of the world’s population is killed by the sword, famine, pestilence, wild beasts
• The 144,000 sealed
• The sounding of the seven trumpets
  • How 1/3 of the earth will be burned up
  • 1/3 of the sea creatures die and ships destroyed
  • How water sources become “bitter” and cause the deaths of many
  • How 1/3 of the stars / sun / moon will be darkened
  • locusts that probably paralyze men preventing them from killing themselves despite having tremendous pain
  • Abaddon
  • 4 angels bound at the great river Euphrates who will be released to kill 1/3 of mankind
• The two olive trees / lamp stands who will have powers similar to Moses and Elijah
• The woman and the dragon
• The beast – how he deceives many and how he restricts trade only to those with the 666 mark
• Angels proclaiming the gospel and warning people against receiving the mark of the beast
• Jesus Christ harvesting the Earth
• The seven bowls of the wrath of God
  • Sores on those who received the mark of the beast
  • Every living thing in the sea dies
  • All rivers and springs of water turning to blood
  • The sun scorching men with fierce heat
  • Darkness falling upon the kingdom of the beast
  • The Euphrates drying up preparing the way for the kings of the east
  • The three unclean spirits
  • The greatest earthquake ever know to man
  • 100 pound hailstones
• The judgment of the great harlot
• The battle of Armageddon
• Christ’s 1000-year reign
• Satan’s release and deception of Gog and Magog
• Final judgement
• New Heaven and New Earth

I wouldn’t mind a simple narrative of the entire book of Revelation. Or directors can re-tell it from the perspective of someone going through the events. I wouldn’t mind either if the movie were an animated film like the Prince of Egypt or a completely digital movie like Toy Story.  With the number of topics above, they might need to tell the tale in several movies, or perhaps a television miniseries.

So here’s to the hope that I see a good movie version of this book in my lifetime. And to experience the real thing in my lifetime is a scary, perhaps thrilling, faith-stretching proposition.

I hope that others who are searching can find answers to this question here: http://www.ccf.org.ph/gods-way-to-heaven/

You can pray this simple prayer to express your faith in Jesus Christ and to receive Him into your heart as your Lord and Savior. You only have to pray this prayer once, but with sincerity, because when He enters your life, he will never leave you.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, I need You. I confess that I am a sinner. I believe that you died on the cross to pay for all my sins. With your help, I will turn away from all my sins. Please come into my life and be my Lord and Savior. I accept your free gift of eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me eternal life. Amen.

Some of the changes in Ikariam 0.3.2 that I’m trying to adjust to are the new features of the town wall. The introduction of Garrison Rights in 0.3.0 gave attackers too much of an advantage that breaching the walls were almost always certain.  Attackers could also pool an unlimited number of troops in a town and attack from there preventing a player from having any chance of defending well if he didn’t have any friends to immediately back him up. The wall in my opinion has been strengthened once again, shifting the advantage to defenders with high level walls once more.

Why do I say this? One of the key changes in the Town Wall is the Garrison Limit. While I am still unsure if it is related to Ship Capacity in that weight of troops is considered, or simply the number of troops, the point is that there is now a limit to the number of troops that can be pooled in a town. Why is this an advantage to a defender with a high level wall? If attackers will use a mobile colony to infiltrate a defender’s territory, the attacker who planted the mobile colony will still have to develop his town walls so that massive number of troops can be stationed there and attack from there. This is an additional drawback to planting mobile colonies, aside from the limited AP of a small town and the slow process of moving goods and troops out of a low level trading port. I predict that instead of mobiles, players will rely more on garrison rights with highly developed towns in the same island as the target town.

I’ve also noticed that most aggressive attacking players have shifted majority of their entire military force into land units. But the Garrison Limit places some importance on a naval fleet once again. If planting a mobile will take too much setup time for attacking, perhaps blockading a town, then attacking it from an off-island highly developed beach head will be faster and more effective.

The town wall is also tougher to beat in terms of pillaging inactives, especially inactives with high level walls. I’m currently using 210 Phalanx (Hoplites – which I really can’t get used to), 49 Marksmen (Sulphur Carabeneers – really, don’t know why we need such complicated names), and 18 Mortars to pillage the same towns which I used to pillage with only 2 Steam Giants. And I still suffer occasional losses with that many troops when my 2 SGs used to come home safely after every pillage. Wall breaching units essential now in every attack on a town. I feel bad for new players who need such big investments just to pillage inactives – one of the keys to improving your level in the game. The walls are much more tougher even without troops behind them that I’d hate to see what would happen if I was attacking another high level player who knows how to defend well. Guess I’ll find out soon enough if my alliance gets into another war.

But for  now, I actually feel safer with my high level walls ^_^

Correction: Seems that if the Garrison Limit is exceeded, the battle shifts to an open field and the defender actually loses the advantage of having walls. Once the number of defenders can fit inside the Garrison Limit, then the troops enter the town and are protected by the walls.

Then this means that mobiles are still pretty useful since you can still pool an unlimited number of troops and attack from there. I will really need more experience with the new battle system to understand it. For instance, what is the point of pooling more troops and losing the advantage of the walls when both attacker and defender have a fixed number of spaces to fill. If I were the defender, I will always fight below the Garrison Limit even if the attacker has an overwhelming number of troops since those that exceed the spaces end up being reserves. With the length of each battle round being 20 minutes, I might be able to outlast those reserves by building troops in my towns to replenish those dying and still keeping my troops under the Garrison Limit.

Posted in Gaming ]]> http://nathanweisz.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/ikariam-0-3-2-town-wall/feed/ 0 nathanweisz townwall032 http://nathanweisz.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/restaurant-city-vs-cafe-world/ http://nathanweisz.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/restaurant-city-vs-cafe-world/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:32:29 +0000 nathanweisz http://nathanweisz.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/restaurant-city-vs-cafe-world/ ]]>

For me, there is no question that Restaurant City [RC] is the best food game on Facebook but Cafe World [CW] is slowly eating away at RC’s gamer market share despite having ugly graphics and being a copy cat.

Here are some theories I have on why:

• Many gamers on RC have probably reached a plateau wherein the game no longer poses any challenge or discovery. This happens after about a month of devoted game play and when the player is already at around level 20 and above. You can no longer hire additional staff. Your popularity points stays at 50. Your dishes are maxed out at level 10. And it seems that the only thing left to do is to buy stuff and more stuff. But the more expensive the stuff is, the longer you have to wait because the influx of your income is more or less at a steady rate. There is no variable pricing in RC so whether or not your dish is at level 1 or level 10, you only earn 2 dollars for it.
• I don’t know if there are cheats for Cafe World, but I know many articles have been written on how to cheat your way through RC using Cheat Engine. While having a way to accelerate the game pace is convenient for some, it shaves off some interest for gamers who like to play the honest way. What’s the point in investing a month of game play only to be surpassed in the rankings by a friend who has only played for a day. An exaggeration? Perhaps, but I believe the statement drives a point.
• Cafe World appears to be a more challenging game since you really have to invest time for it. One of the challenges for me is trying to serve dishes which I cook for hours. When I get back, the food usually has gone stale. While a challenge, I also find this very annoying. The restaurant is filled with people when I log on and I don’t have any food to serve. So whatever popularity I’ve built up quickly goes down. But other players love challenges and harder difficulty levels so perhaps this is one of the appeals of CW.

RC has released some new updates today – new items, decors and clothes, an overhauled trading system (well not really), and the introduction of Playfish coins but these to me are not enough to inject renewed interest. Playfish money is only a money making engine for the developers and gamers can usually smell this a mile away. I know of very few people who are willing to invest real cash when they have already invested their time. Browser based games are a means to pass the time, but not really worth the money, unlike console games.

If RC wants to regain player interest, they should introduce new concepts. Perhaps a market or grocery to buy meat and non-crop ingredients where you can readily avail of all ingredients and not have to wait for the day when ingredient kid sells the item you need. Variable dish pricing is still on my wish list. A chocolate shake should cost more than lime water. New dishes which sell at a higher price per level would be a welcome addition. And finally, there should be more methods and items for increasing popularity. Perhaps they can add a marketing side to the game or even food delivery services. And why not add ingredient delivery and logistics while you are at it.

Oh well, guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that new bow and tie suit. Still RC will always be my choice over CW. Better graphics, not much maintenance, and plenty of variety really appeals more to my palate.