Dom Davis (The Blog)

I’ve been waiting for the release of Skyrim for about a year now. It’s the fifth in a series of computer role play games that I’ve been playing for years now and is panning out to be the best by quite a long way. Sadly my usual gaming machine is at the office and my laptop just isn’t up to the task of a big modern game like that so I’ve got the PS3 version. Playing on the console has the upside of not having to by new kit to play it but does have the downside that I need to share the television that the console is plugged into with The Zozo which means I can’t play the desired 18-20 hours per day that I’d otherwise aim for. That said, The Zozo is being good about letting me play so I’ve got a few hours game play under my belt. I can see it keeping me happy for a good many months, if not years.

I actually have two copies of Skyrim as I made the mistake of pre-ordering it from play.com. I had figured that it would get dispatched early (it was) and arrive on Friday ready for me to play (it didn’t). Since I didn’t know if it was going to arrive late, or just not at all, I also reserved a copy at Argos. This means I knew there was a copy of the game waiting for me without me having to actually by two copies unless I really had to. Sadly I really had to and I ended up walking to Argos to get my reserved copy. When the play.com copy comes (still not here) I’ll simply send it straight back for my money back.

It’s interesting to see the effect that popular culture has on vocabulary. For instance, last night The Zozo was out visiting a friend so I was home alone¹. Me being me I grabbed some instance food and went to play Oblivion.

Now, depending on who you are and your exposure to gaming that last sentence could be perfectly understandable or utterly meaningless. You’ve probably worked out that Oblivion is some form of computer game, and you’d be right. The term ‘instance food’ might take some explaining though.

The term ‘instance’ in this context comes from games like World of Warcraft. You, and many other players, share a game world so as you’re running about you can see lots of other players running about. There are, however, special areas in the game where it’s just you and your group. A new instance of the dungeon is created for each group that goes in. Because of this they’re referred to as instances.

Still with me? Good. Now, an instance generally contains the hardest monsters and the best loot in the game. To beat them you need groups of 5 to 40 people with some instances taking several hours to complete. Being an online game there is no pause button. You can’t just quickly pause and nip off to the loo (well, you can but you run the risk of your character dying and, depending on their role in the group, making it much harder, if not impossible for everyone else). To get round this lack of pausing groups generally take a small break (sometimes referred to as a bio break) after clearing each area. The breaks are normally no longer than 5 minutes and let people go pee, smoke or whatever it is they need to do before pressing on.

Obviously 5 minutes isn’t the longest time so if you’re wanting food it needs to be prepared fast and be something that can be eaten at the computer while playing without really impacting on your ability to play². This can be a little limiting, but you can get creative. Said food is referred to as ‘instance food’. Unsurprisingly toast, crisps and microwavable ready meals are the mainstay of instance food.

While primarily used in the context of online gaming, ‘instance food’ can refer to any quick snack prepared to be eaten while doing something on the computer. So there you go. You’ve possibly learned something new today, and I’ve managed to spin “I ate shit and played games all night” into an entire post

¹Eventually. There was the tiny issue of her leaving before I got home and me forgetting my keys. Again. Thankfully there’s a spare set at the Zoo.
² If you’re struggling to understand why you might want to consider that both World of Warcraft and Everquest (another online game) are referred to as World of Warcrack and Evercrack respectively. There is a reason for that.

I’ve always been an avid computer gamer, from Elite and Repton on old 8bit home computers (BBC Micro in my case) to X3 and Starcraft 2 on modern 64bit multi core behemoths. It was actually gaming that got me into programming. Back in the days of yore games would often come as printed listings you entered by hand. In those days the game descriptions were works of art that would raise expectations far beyond what a few hours entering code could achieve. One particular listing which was supposed to be for a lunar lander type game took me a week to enter and when I’d finished it didn’t work. 2 years later I finally fixed it and taught myself to program while I was at it.

Fast forward 15 years and I was at the peak of my gaming. I had a rabid World of Warcraft addiction (that stuff is digital crack!) and would think nothing of dropping 5 grand a year on hardware to keep ahead of the curve. Thankfully the fact I could program had landed me a job that could fund that level of expenditure. During that time there was never any doubt if a game would run on my computer. It was a given that I’d get a rock solid 60fps with all the settings to maximum. I even had the hole in my wallet to prove it.

These days I’m slightly less cutting edge with my gaming. My iPhone gets used as a gaming platform more than my big computer, laptop, ps3 and wii combined. I just lack the time (and, in part the inclination) to play as many computer games as I used to and lack the cash to throw at staying on the bleeding edge. That said I still enjoy a few hours a week on my big games machine at weekends when Zo is at work (and many hours on the iPhone when she’s not :S ) and I’m beginning to find myself in a quandary.

When I say big machine I mean big. My budget when buying it was astronomical, not least because of the monitors. These beasties are both a blessing and a curse. They were bought for photo and video editing and, for that, they’re fantastic. Unfortunately in the machines secondary role as a games platform they’re a pain. It all boils down to frame rates. A nice 1080P widescreen 19″ monitor runs at 1920×1080 so at 60 frames per second you’re moving roughly 124.5 million pixels about per second. On my monitors it’s closer to 246 million. I need double the processing power just to match the smaller screen. Add a graphics card that, despite being the best Apple offered at the time, was a generation out of date compared to what I’d be putting in a custom PC gaming rig and you end up with a machine that struggles with modern games unless I turn the settings down.

Recently Apple announced the new shiny i7 MacPros which came with, among other things, current generation graphics cards. Even better these cards will run in my machine. For £300 I could breath another couple of years of quality gaming life into the machine, and when you consider In the past I’ve paid over double that for a single card, and put two of them in a machine, its quite a reasonable price. Once again, though, my monitors are being a pain.

With the number of pixels that need to be driven I need a special type of output on the card. Two in fact, one for each monitor. Driving two monitors is quite hard work for the card, very few people actually need two of these outputs and newer outputs are being pushed by Apple so, for whatever reason, Apple and/or the card manufacturers have stopped putting two of the outputs I need on the cards, replacing the second with something that is useless to me. Now, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to buy a shiny new card and plug one monitor into it and leave the second monitor plugged into the old card. But this might not work. And I may need to by 2 cards. All of a sudden my £300 cost, which I could probably sell stuff to raise, might become £600. Not so easy to cover.

I guess I’d better start ebaying stuff

So the school holidays are over and the trains are fuller in the mornings. Getting a table seat is no longer guaranteed and I run the risk of not being able to easily use my laptop in the mornings which reduces my already limited time to do things. There really isn’t enough time in the day.

Work could easily eat up 12 hours a day just keeping up with stuff if I let it (I don’t, I view it as a failure of the project planning rather than a failure on my part as the deadlines zoom past and recede into the distance).

There’s a further 8 hours per day worth of stuff that I’d like to get done to improve things at work which gets crammed into my morning commute, but really requires a table and takes 3 weeks to do a single days work due to the time and setup constraints.

I’m also editing a book for a friend which would only take a week, if that, full time, which I’m also doing during my commute and evenings while The Zozo watches her soaps.

My home time commute is reserved for a few games or watching a little telly. Blogging gets crammed into the walk to and from the station.

Realistically it’s 7:30 by the time I’ve got home and eaten leaving about 2 hours to spend with The Zozo on weekdays otherwise it eats into sleepy times and leaves me tired.

Weekends I quite often get a day to myself which is good for a bit of downtime but means I don’t get to see The Zozo as much as is like. While she is at work I try to go to the gym, play games, sort the house, shop, sort out my websites, go out and take photographs, organise my existing photographs, edit a load of video, work on some personal projects and catch up on my TV. Many of these tasks fall by the wayside, usually starting with sorting the house :S

When we both have a day off The Zozo and I like to go out, do something, see a film, have a meal out and relax at home. We’ve also got lots of places further afield we’d like to visit that require 2 contiguous days off.

I, therefore, propose a plan involving 100 hour long days and 10 days to a week with 5 day long weekends. I’ll still miss my deadlines but I’ll get to see The Zozo more and get my own stuff done