You know the game, I’m sure. Someone writes the name of some famous celebrity/character/serial killer on a Rizla and sticks it to your forehead. You then have to work out who “you” are by asking questions that have yes/no answers. Sort of like Akinator, but for people who have friends.

Pete’s version has the name come up on the iPhone screen, along with a timer. As iPhones and iPods generally don’t come pre-gummed, unlike Rizlas, you’ll need to affix it to your face somehow. Blu-Tack works fine for at least the minute and a half that you need, unless you have super slimy skin in which case you’ll probably need Gaffer Tape.

Either way, you’ll look a bit of a knob…

So, if you want to look like a dickhead, here is the link to the App: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hoozat/id492001248?mt=8

Q: Player housing? Please?
A: We’d love to, we talk about it all the time. But they are massive and will take forever. So if you still want classes and dungeons and more, it’s just a dream.

But how difficult would it be to achieve?

Well, not that hard,  really. If you ignore the possibility of huge tracts of player housing and adopt the Puzzle Pirates method of  “one exterior, multiple interior”, it would work.

eg. Here is my character on Puzzle Pirates trying to get in to my Cottage. Nobody else was home.

Basically, in my method, an unused building could be changed to have a “door action” which allowed the player to either enter their own home, or knock of the door of anyone who had a home there and was currently “in”.

An example building would be this desirable canalside property in Stormwind.

On the map, its here (where the silver arrow points to):

The interior would need to be designed, of course, but using the layout of The Gilded Rose Inn would be an easy shortcut if all the furniture was removed.

Of course, we’d want armour stands, wardrobes, trinket cases, portrait galleries, custom wallpaper, carpets, ornaments, and (to be honest) the ability to re-skin the whole place. Still, it should be possible.

It does look, however, as if the night elf is about to shoot the worgen in the back of the head.

The Duelist

This turd is the online equivalent to the six and a half foot tall, shaven headed, tattooed nutjob who asks people in the pub for a fight for no reason. In this case, the nutjob is probably 14, has arms like pipe-cleaners (but oddly massive hands), and would probably pass out if ever asked to venture in to a pub.

The Recruiter

All the seem to do is spam people with requests to join their Guild. I’m sorry, mate, but if I’m busy kickin the snot out of something and your Guild Request box pops up and messes me about, I’m never going to help you with anything EVER AGAIN. If, however, you talk to me first and ask nicely, then I may join you group of splitters and quitters (see below).

Death Knights

Okay, so they look cool and are really hard from the outset. But, once you start upgrading the equipment, they start looking like some bastard colourblind harlequin. Imagine the Witch-King of Angmar attacking Meriadoc and Eowyn on the Pelennor. The War of the Ring would have taken a different turn had Merry and the bint from Rohan died laughing as the undead lord strode up to them wearing a lime green breastplate, crimson gauntlets, sky blue leggings, a purple helmet, and a turquoise cloak. Whatever a Death Knight chooses to wear should become black. Blacker than a Spinal Tap album cover. If not blacker.

Stormwind Loiterers

Okay mate, you’re Level 85 and have some stupid winged pet. I understand that you want to show off. But could you and your 27 mates kindly not do it in the Trade District of Stormwind City? Your mum might have spent a couple of grand buying you a PC for your “homework”, but I’m using a PC that was found in a skip. when I drop down to 3 frames per second it makes me want to stab you in the eye socket. With your own shin.

Whitesnake Quests

Oh, I’m sure you know what I mean. You’ve just gone deep into some mine or other, had the shit kicked out of you, got back, handed the quest in and… guess what… there’s  a boss to kill in the mine. Never mind that you’ve just killed him. And so, “Here I Go Again”… (hence the title)

Quitters

Those people who spend months convincing you to upgrade your PC and start playing. And within three weeks they’ve fucked off and either found another game, retired from the whole MMORPG thing, or can’t afford to play anymore.

Me

As a six and a half foot tall tattooed balding nutjob with arms like pipe-cleaners, I really have to hate myself for continuing to play the game.

It disappears down into the bottomless pit…

Back in 1990, that could have summed up my computing degree, but it was the response you got when dropping items into the sacrificial pit on AberMUD.

AberMUD was a Multi User Dungeon written (mainly) by Alan Cox, long before he started doing bits with Linux.

If you don’t remember AberMUD, then you won’t want to bother reading any further. But if you do recall it, then prepare to rejoice.

I’ve located a copy of the sources that will compile under Linux, and got it running.

If you want to play it, SSH or TELNET to recondite.dyndns-free.com and login with the username mud and password mud

I’ve had to take Telnet access off, so now you’ll need some form of SSH client such as Putty, or use the web-based ConsoleFish.

First though, here are the adverts from times past:

Classy stuff, i’m sure you’ll agree, and cock all to do with the game which is a poor Civilisation clone with no queen to save, and thus no norks.

And so on to the new advert…

Christ, you’d hardly know it it was for Evony if it wasn’t for the “My Lord” catchphrase, and the the familiar looking button.

Still, it seems to work for them. Gullible idiots seem to be playing the game and even paying for it.

So. If it works for them, it might work for me. If you want to volunteer to show a lot of cleavage to advertise a website of mine, don’t hesitate to contact me. Jon, this does NOT apply to you!

Rob has used this to load in the levels to his “Psycho Fireman” game, a variation (blatant rip-off) of Sokoban.

Sadly, he suffered a terminal hard-drive crash shortly afterwards, so the game was never finished.
All the game progress was documented here.

Part IV: Some Hope

A text adventure game for the
Amstrad CPC & PCW Computers

A long long time ago….
back in the mid eighties, long before Spaceballs appeared, I came upwith the idea of writing a text adventure game based loosely on the Star Wars films, Queen videos, tedious adverts and old computer jokes.The first version was written for the Sinclair Spectrum, using the Quill adventure creating package from Gilsoft. That was in 1984. By 1988 the project had moved to the Professional Adventure Writer package on the Amstrad CPC6128 and was eventually completed. By this time it included more awful jokes donated by Jason Denton, Brian Frost, David Oldcorn and a few others at WR Tuson College.

In 1989 I moved to Stafford to start university. I sold copies to other people who had been misguided enough to purchase Amstrads. Over FIVE copies of Star Bores were sold. I lost interest after then.

After sixteen years (and twenty eight years since the Star Wars films were made), I got hold of an Amstrad PCW and could read 3″ disks again. It was time to unleash it on the world again.

In 2006 I finally found a permanent resting place for this pile of crap.

Star Bores has the these amazing features:

• Rooms, Objects, Other characters,
• No graphics whatsoever,
• Jokes that were possibly funny about 20 years ago,
• No mention of the Crazy Frog,
• A plot that even a moron can follow.
• 
• The CPM 2.2 version (suitable for use with the 22nice CPM emulator) can be downloaded from here.
  The 22nice emulator can be obtained from somewhere on t’internet I assume.These people were involved the original in project: Tony Blews, Jason Denton, Brian Frost, David Oldcorn (of Starball Pinball fame), Mark Slater, Stephen Jewel, David Capstick, Darren Winterbottom, Steven Shaw, Anil Patel, Jawed Shamsuddin, Paul Webster.
  Any feedback on this thing should be sent to starbores@tonyblews.co.uk.