Starcraft II is now complete (bare minimum) with a plethora of achievements still to go, and I think three branched missions to try just for fun.

I was a little disappointed with the final FMV, I was expecting something a little more than that, but the game on the whole was awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed the campaign. Can't wait for Heart of the Swarm!

Sweet toasted zerglings, this game is amazing.

I have to resort to playing at work because we still don't have Internet at home, but hey. A game is a game.

The time has come to write my closing statements sitting from my desk at the Villa. It has been a really good 14 months living here, despite being so far away from everyone and everything. I'll miss the luxuries of a dryer and dishwasher too...ha, I've been spoiled. Anyway, Internet will be gone for [however many days it takes XNet to reconnect me], which means I'll also be missing out on the Starcraft II launch on Tuesday. Sigh.

It's been a tough few weeks for me, there's been so many things to organise in and out of work, so many things to worry about and plan for; however, there is light at the end of the tunnel and lots of events to look forward to in the upcoming weeks.

Work has been going well, I've been very busy with some good old C# and WPF work. Plenty of things to learn and experiment with - totally loving it. Just got back from dinner with some workmates at New Kor as well, so things at Sidhe are pretty sweet at the moment.

Quick list of notable things:
- I took last Monday off on account of sickness. Ironically, there was some news about one day sicknesses.
- Briefly took a gander at the All Whites parade on Wednesday.
- Had yum char last Friday thanks to the continued success of Flick Kick Football at the top of the UK app store. Not so lucky this week though.

While it's not yet officially done, we have announced the latest and hottest game for iPhone hitting the App Store sometime this month. Pik Pok Games proudly presents a thrilling and exciting game that channels the adrenaline and emotion of the Football World Cup 2010: Flick Kick Football!



Yay. It's what I've been working on for the past eight weeks or so, and while the basic principles of the game remain true to Flick Kick's branding, we've included more features that will distinguish it from the previous three Flick Kicks. A must-have for all the football nuts out there.

Also, I cannot for the life of me appear to be able to win a Starcraft match. Sigh. ._.

I've been to two birthday dinners this week, and boy am I stuffed. First was at Cinta with Charlotte, second at the Flying Burrito Bros with Ritu, both with lots of people and food and delicious moist cake. Ritu's cake was from Cha, which surprised me because I heard the Cha cakes were traps, but apparently not. The cream does taste rather artificial though, so as long as it's in moderation, it's okay.

I'll be burning off all that food at the badminton court tomorrow anyway.

Last night at 1am, the couple in the apartment above me decided it would be the opportune moment to have a domestic argument, firing F-Bombs every second word for a good 30 minutes or so. Being in the semi-conscious state I was, my first thought was "oh geez I hope I don't have to call the cops" followed by anxiously waiting for gunshot sounds. Sigh.

My horrendously bad Starcraft II streak continues. FML. I'm pretty sure I'm the worst player at work :(!

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, with bitterly cold wind and rain attacking the city for most of the week. Today was the first day I had to wear my polyprops. I have to say, the awesome jacket and gloves I bought from Hong Kong have definitely come in handy! I don't know how I survived last winter without something as snuggly and warm.

Portal is on Steam for free until May 24th, so I took the opportunity to download all 3.8GB of it. I'm still somewhere in the test chambers, but it's a very interesting (yet creepy) game.

Also on the gaming front, I finally gathered enough courage to play my first placement match in Starcraft II. I did a quick build for a banshee, got one out with a few more on the way, and took out all my opponent's SCVs with my lone banshee. When he realised what was happening, he sent some marines over but I had cloaked it and pretty soon after he quit. Victory was mine!

Yesterday I barely spent any time at home. It was an early start with badminton for an hour with Surya, Tyler and Leighton, a quick lunch at home, then the Wellington Food Show at Westpac Stadium with Mel and John. There was a lot of tasty things to sample, including oils, vinaigrettes, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, pizza, bacon, sausages, smoked chicken, clams, mussels, ice cream, wine, fruit cider, cocktail mixes... We spent around three hours there, tasting and taking pictures, before heading out and going for dinner at this pub on Tinakori Road. Yum!

It has come to my attention that instead of playing "placement" matches, I have been playing "practice" matches.

Epic. Fail.

Sigh. So I have to do all five of my placement matches, which equates to more stress. Aughhh :(

In other news, that damn damage calculator is finally done, with the first iteration going live approximately 1.5 hours ago. The second iteration will include the option to override a Pokemon's type and ability (due to effects from Color Change, Camouflage, Conversion, or Skill Swap, Role Play and Trace), and probably fix whatever bugs people find. It's taken so long, but it looks hot, and the code is pretty damn clean too.

Not many exciting things happening at the moment, but I'll blog anyway for the sake of appearing up-to-date with everything.

Yesterday, at Charlotte's insistence, we went to Animates in Thorndon to admire the adorable animals there. It's weird when she does the baby talk thing to them. They had a few bunny rabbits there, and three kittens. So cute!

On Saturday, I met some workmates for yum char at Majestic Cuisine. I was so thrilled with the food (and uh, the wonderful social aspect, of course) that I forgot to take pictures. But oh well. Seems like everyone enjoyed it, so it might be grounds to organise another one in the future.

I won another Starcraft II game on Saturday night, but I was playing a noob so it wasn't really that satisfying. Playing online is so stressful, especially 1v1. I'm always freaking out over my build orders and what to do and micro-managing everything, I don't know why I keep subjecting myself to such torture everytime I play. Oh well.

Had another round of golf/driving range on Thursday, but I was rather off-form and didn't strike that many good hits this time round. Hopefully this will change for this week.

On the Psypoke front, I'm still trucking away at this damn damage calculator. What used to be three files doing the bulk of the calculation is now just over ten, all in neat classes and database-driven functions. The silhouettes for the three Generation V starters were released today, with the actual pictures suspected to be leaked sometime tomorrow. I'm kind of apathetic to it, but it would be nice to know, I guess.

So I impulsively pre-ordered Starcraft II on Thursday, under much pressure from my workmates, with the justification to myself as "you're going to get it anyway, you might as well get it now and have a free beta key". And yeah, I have a beta key now, so if you're keen for a game, just find me on MSN and I'll let you know my battle account name. Oh yeah, I won my very first game under my own Battle.net account. Kekekeke ^_^

Anyway, we went to the driving range after work on Thursday for some fun and stress-relief. It was good to get back into the swing of things (HAHAHA) but I woke up the next day with a few sore muscles, so hopefully with more practice, it shouldn't happen too often.

And finally, we went to Strawberry Fare last night after I jokingly suggested it at dinner, and I was surprised to see they'd changed their menu again!! They replaced the Lime Tart with a Plum Pie, so I tried that. It was okay, but I would definitely recommend the Lime Tart instead. Such a pity :(

I'm sitting here in front of my computer, making the most of what little time I have left before Friday appears.

Now I'm all for Fridays, Friday is the best day of the working week (apart from Spicy Food Tuesday, but anyway), last Friday we did the weekly Starcraft II Beta Key draw and I won! It means I got a Beta Key to use, for a week, so I could play online with all the gosu Korean people. And while my winning record wasn't too flash, I learned heaps and got a real feel of this Battle.net stuff (It scares me). Friday has just ticked over and it means I have to get up for work in 8 hours.

Anyway, in the past week, there was the Rugby League 3 launch party at the regular Sidhe alcohol establishment, the Red Square, where we had set up three Wii consoles with the greatest game of all on each of them. I'm very proud of it, and I played it a few times...and even taught other people how to play. And yes, I did point out the things I did, and I even got a picture with my RL3 self (I look nothing like me).

Sunday was Surya's birthday dinner, which was a simple meal at Arashi, followed by dessert at Strawberry Fare (sound familiar? deja vu?), where I finally got that Chocolate Bleeding Heart and oh it was so good, the warmth and deliciousness just melted down your oesophagus omnomnomnom.

Busy weekend as well coming up. Crashtopher is visiting from Brisbane, so it'll be good to catch up with him, Pete's alcohol-fuelled birthday extravaganza is on as well, and finally it's only a week before I'm up in Auckland for Easter. Yay!

Should have sent a poet. T_T

(I'm playing the beta if you haven't figured it out)

In anticipation of Starcraft II's release at the end of the year, I decided I should take up Starcraft again, so I began from the very first mission on the original Starcraft and have begun working my way through each chapter in the Terran campaign. I'm currently up to the one where you have to destroy the Ion Cannon, if those Starcrafters can remember how far along in the story that is.

I've also become increasingly addicted to iSketch, an online Pictionary game where you're given a word from a themed word bank, and your friends guess what you draw. I've been playing with my friends at Psypoke, so we've gone for the Pokemon theme, naturally, where we have proceeded to draw the most horrifying and mangled 4-bit coloured Pokemon you could ever see. Observe my Koffing doing a Smog attack:



Yeah.

On Friday, while waiting for our Beta build to finish, I played my game for the first time. And even though it's not really my kind of game, I had fun (gasp). I have to say, I prefer the GameCube button combinations more than the Wiimote movement, simply because the tactile feedback is immediate and you know exactly when you've executed a particular move. Because we support GameCube controllers, up to eight people can play at once, so I do recommend it..but yeah, I still can't tell you what it is.

We had some people over on Friday night just to hang about and play some games. Sunni brought her PS2 over so I got to play a RETAIL COPY of Rugby League 2, World Cup Edition for the first time. I watched the credits (yay) and did the magic unlock all cheat to view the photos we took during production. Overall the game wasn't too bad, of course there were lots of improvements that could have been made (especially that customisation bug, Peter) but Dave and Chris seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Andrew and Mel had their combined farewell dinner at Mac's Brewery on Saturday night, but for some reason I was feeling rather antisocial and didn't really want to talk to anyone. I mean, the atmosphere was good and the food was pretty good too, but I just didn't feel like opening my mouth to converse. I was lucky Chris gave me a ride home, otherwise I would have had to bus through the dark, wet, cold Wellington night to go home early and sleep.

And finally today, Andrew and Sunni got baptised in our apartment pool. I'm really glad for them, but it just seemed weird for Jono and Matt to officiate it and have it in our pool. I guess I'm used to seeing it done in a church pool..haha. Nevertheless, a baptism is a baptism and I support them in their decision to declare Jesus as their Saviour, so congratulations to you both, if you ever get off Facebook and read this.