Lord of Ultima Free To Play

I stumbled upon a new free to play game the other day:  Lord of Ultima.

If you are interested in checking it out, please use this link:

http://www.lordofultima.com/en/ref/2549221774

It is an online strategy game that requires no download to play.  The game runs entirely in your web browser.  It plays in a similar fashion to other RTS (Real Time Strategy) Games you might be familiar with, like Age of Empires; however, the pace is slower.  This makes the game perfect as an on-going game that you can play casually.

There are "daily rewards" that give you incentives to come back at least once a day, to collect them.  The rewards are good, and get better with each day you play.

While the music is extremely good, especially for a free to play web browser game, you can turn it off in the options panel that can be accessed from the lower right of your screen.  This should better enable you to play the game for a few minutes at work - while you are waiting for that big print job to finish. ;)



The graphics are outstanding for a free to play game.  They are on par with a pay for RTS, imho.

There is a chat window that any player of MMORPGs will be familiar with, including "Alliance Chat".

For those whose cyber-junkie urges don't allow them to lose a moment of city development time - there are pay-for options that you can buy.  You can play the game for free - and if you want to spend some money - you can have the game help you play while you are away.  This and other premium options for increasing training and building rates are the means by which EA will make money on this game.

I have only just started playing, so it is still unclear if this will prove to be a "pay to win" game.  People who pay for the things that are for sale, would seem to have a definite advantage.  Only time will tell if the game proves to be castrated of fun by this business model.

If you join the game - look for me.  My current character's name is Kabbalist, and I'm in the SIG315 guild.

I hope to see you online!

Still searching for the right fit

This is a test for using OpenOffice.org Writer, with a plugin for posting to blogs.

I should be able to use all of the features of this word processing program, to publish to my blogs.

Let's see how it works.

• Metajunkie

PS -

That was pretty fast and painless.

Here is an attempt to edit this posted blog.

Skill Acquisition, Improvement, and Deterioration

At the beginning of the game, the player needs to select some things that will determine how many points they get to allocate, and in how many skills.

  
 

Packages should be available to make this as easy as possible - but for the person who wants to tweak - they should have low level access to make the character they want to play.

  
 

In game - skills should advance as they are used successfully. When a skill is mastered there should be options to combine mastered skills to form new skills - or a trainer or master could be sought out to gain further training.

In game - new skills must be acquired through study and/or a teacher.

  
 

In game - if skills are not practiced, they will deteriorate. Each skill needs a deterioration rate, and a re-train rate. For example - they say you never forget how to ride a bike. But - if you haven't been on one in a while, it will take a few moments before you are pedaling efficiently and with great balance. It may take even longer for you to "ride a wheelie", which could be thought of as an advanced skill of bike riding.

  
 

To that end, such a skill would require a certain percentage of upper body strength, in addition to the prerequisite balance. An old man, who has become fat and out of shape, may never again, in his life, be able to ride a wheelie, even though he once did it as a common activity in youth.

The Blogosphere is a Silicon World

I am testing various tools on linux that allow posting to blogs from the Ubuntu Gnome Desktop.

This is sort of a test post, which was created with "Blog Entry Poster".

Don't Monkey Around; Check Out Chi.mp

You can get your own place to manage your online identity from in a .mp top level domain. Go to http://chi.mp

I recently set one up for myself at http://metajunkie.mp

Why is this cool? Well - the rumor is that I can now use metajunkie.mp to sign into sites that support OpenID. This is an alternative way to manage your login credentials. Rather than create accounts all over the Internet, you can utilize your personal .mp domain to log in.

In a nutshell, when a site which supports OpenID asks you to log in, you provide your OpenID domain name (in my case: metajunkie.mp). You are then redirected to that chi.mp hosted page, and asked to login there. Once you do, your authentication information is forwarded back to the orignial site you went to login to. They get the go ahead from chi.mp that you are who you say you are, and you are granted access to their site.

There are other OpenID sites (such as MyOpenID), but the chi.mp solution is pretty neat, in that you can have your own domain name with them, for free. Also it helps you track and publish things about your online life. It gives you separate profiles for "public", "friends", and "work". So, you can make different levels of information available to different groups of people.

There is a place for an avatar pic of you, and your blogs and websites, as well as helping you manage your twitter, facebook, and other similar sites.

Enjoy!

Metajunkie

URGENT EVOKE

The latest Silicon World to take the stage is a free online game called EVOKE, which is open to anyone, anywhere. It goes live tomorrow, March 3rd, 2010.

EVOKE was produced by the World Bank Institute and is touted as "a ten-week crash course in changing the world".

Players who successfully complete each of the 10 game challenges, will be able to claim the honor: Certified EVOKE Social Innovator – Class of 2010

From the UrgentEvoke Website:

"Top players will also earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, seed funding for new ventures, and travel scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC."

The first challenge appears to have to do with a fictitious future food crisis in Japan, which is based upon real world concerns regarding Japan's dependency upon imports for food.

According to one real-world news article, less than 40% of the average Japanese diet is domestic.

I hope to see you on the Evoke Network!

Metajunkie

Open Simulator - an Alternative to Second Life Grid

I've been a little quiet lately, because I've been looking into the OpenSimulator project, or OpenSim as it it referred to.

You can find more about OpenSim here.

I am currently testing out the latest version of OpenSim on an Ubuntu Virtual Machine. I have it up and running with a MySQL Database back-end. Now I'm looking to integrate something called ModRex, which extends the capabilities of the server when used in conjunction with the RealXtend viewer, which you can find here. The RealXtend viewer only runs on Windows, or via WINE on Linux.

I'll keep you all posted as I learn more and achieve more. If anyone is using this stuff - please let me know.