As I’ve said before, I’ve been a big fan of just about all the games that Origin produced (Ultima series, Ultima Underworld series, System Shock, Wing Commander series, etc.), and Ultima in particular has been a favorite. Ultima I was the first game that I really loved* on my old Apple ][+, and I think the first game I actually ever paid for was Ultima VI: The False Prophet for my PC. I even followed the series all the way through to the very bitter end of Ultima VIII: Pagan and Ultima IX: Ascension. So it’s really cool to see the Ultima V: Lazarus project finally come to fruition. Now that the holidays are winding down, I’m hoping to get to spend some quality time back in Britania!

I haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet, but I’m already very hopeful to see what the marriage of the Dungeon Siege engine and the Ultima V story might produce. I found Dungeon Siege the game to be very impressive technically in producing a seamless world feel (much better than something like Neverwinter Nights), but the game was underwhelming in the extreme — hack and slash, hack and slash. Now that we’ve got a real story line to put in the engine, I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s really capable of.

And, of course, the most amazing part is that it was entirely fan-produced. Entirely free. Just amazing.

(* Well, actually, the first game that I really loved might have been Deathmaze 2000, but I’m not sure…)

(We now interrupt the PDC drumbeat for this random message.)

Since we’re just biding our time ‘til Serenity comes out in theaters, Andrea and I have continued to watch Battlestar Galactica even though we still think it’s only so-so. (Something that I’m sure YAG is going to bug me about when I get to the PDC.) Some episodes are pretty decent, but I still find myself annoyed by many of the characters (never a good sign) and bored in long stretches of some of the episodes. The core problem, to my mind, is that the writers are not particularly good at parcelling out the ongoing mystery very effectively. The X-Files did a superb job of this, in my mind, until about the sixth season when it became clear that Chris Carter was making up the mythology as he went along and had no clear idea where it was all going. I’m beginning to suspect this about BG as well — do the writers really know what the Cylon’s plans are, or are they throwing elements in as they go along? (Contrast this also with Harry Potter, where J.K. Rowling seems to have a very strong idea of how the whole story is going to play out. Much better.)

A while ago I mentioned that the first computer I programmed was an IBM 5100. It was not, however, what got me into computing in the first place. For that I can thank the Coco:

I can still remember seeing one of these in Radio Shack in a mall on the edge of Chapel Hill. I was 10 and was shopping with my mom and my grandmother. I wandered into Radio Shack and they had a Coco set up playing whatever crappy game it was that came with the system. Although I don’t remember this, I supposedly asked my grandmother, “When you die, could you leave me enough money to buy a computer?” (Gimme a break, I was just 10, after all.)

I guess I must have kept up asking for a computer, because my dad came home one day with two books on computers and gave them to me, saying, “before you can have one, you have to know how to use it.” Looking back now, I think he was completely crazy: one of the books was on BASIC programming and the other was a “how computers work,” and both were, as they might say today, “not age appropriate.” But I slogged through the latter book, working my way through AND and OR gates and microprocessor design and such. I didn’t understand it all, but I have to say that a lot of the information that I got from that book has stood me in good stead over the years.

The BASIC book was more frustrating because I had no computer to type the programs in to. That’s where the 5100 came in — I can still remember going over to the Duke Physics lab and typing in the little slot machine program in the back of the book. I don’t think it actually worked the first couple of times, but the rest is history. And the irony? I never actually owned a Coco. The first computer that I owned was an Apple ][+. I’ve never actually owned a Tandy computer, but I’m indebted to them all the same…

(For reference, here’s a picture of the 5100:)

Almost exactly a year ago, I mourned the loss of Firefly, a great sci-fi show that died way before it’s time. When I saw news that the Sci-Fi Network was going to pick up Firefly, I momentarily hoped that they were going to produce all-new episodes, but they’re just going to rerun the existing episodes (plus the three episodes that never aired but were on the DVDs). Although I doubt Firefly will ever return as a regular series, I’d encourage everyone to check out the show and the upcoming movie – it’s much better than the current sci-fi favorite Battlestar Galactica (which I think is only so-so)! With enough interest, maybe a miniseries or something might be possible to continue beyond the movie…

Updated 7/16/05: Corrected typo.

So Devsource is running another trivia contest, this one to win a Dell LCD monitor. I don’t have any questions in the contest this time, but I thought I’d mention it because of the peculiar result my comment on the previous contest has had. Since the contest, I have gotten a steady stream of comments from people around the world who obviously Googled something like “win a laptop,” found my page, didn’t bother to read it, and just put in a plea for me to please, please, please send them a free laptop. Same goes for the entry that I wrote about an offer for a free VB book (at least that one’s slightly more plausible). So now I want to see how many comments I can collect here from people who want me to send them a free LCD monitor. Or maybe the Google competition’s going to be too fierce. (I’ve noticed my “win a laptop” entry has slowed down comment-wise, so I’m guessing I’m no longer high enough in the results.)

Yes, it’s going to suck. So will this one. It’s just a law of nature: Alan Moore doesn’t translate. This one was OK but didn’t get close to the original material. This one sounded so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to watch it.

Am I missing any? Instead, go buy the books:

No, really, do it. Now. Probably Watchmen is most accessible, but my personal all-time favorite is V for Vendetta. (I’ll tell you a story about that one in a moment.) From Hell is pretty dense reading and is probably left to the end. The League is great fun, especially if you like authors like H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stephenson, Jules Verne, etc.

Also, I suggest that you go buy all the Swamp Thing, Miracleman, Promethea, Top Ten, Tom Strong, etc. books that you can find. You might also really like his short subject books on DC heroes. It’s some of his finest work.

Gosh, do I sound like a fanboy?

(To the degree that I allow myself to hope, I have greater hope for V. Watchmen was a tour-de-force, but V for Vendetta was more emotionally affecting – I thought that Valerie’s letter, in particular, was incredibly powerful. Funny story: I was originally introduced to Alan Moore by the owner of a bookstore that my brother used to buy comics from. One day he said “Oh, yeah, I’ve got this magazine from Britain that’s got some new Alan Moore stuff you might like.” The magazine was called Warrior and it serialized Miracleman (called Marvelman in England before Marvel’s lawyers got to it) and V for Vendetta. I was way deep into V for Vendetta and had just gotten to the cliffhanger at the end of Act II (“Welcome home, Evey.”) when Warrior went under and stopped publishing! I had to wait something like a year and a half for DC to buy the rights to the series and start republishing it. Needless to say, I was very excited when the DC reprints finally caught up to the original story and I could find out what the hell happened.)