Distracted again… GNU/Linux Gaming… and School
June 16th, 2008The past two weeks went by like a rollercoaster ride. Just when I thought I had settled down and figured out my Ultimate Productivity Plan(TM), I got sidetracked by one of my strongest and most dangerous addictions: MMORPG’s. While that in itself deserves a post of its own (and indeed, I’ve been contemplating on writing one), I really like the RPG genre, specially fantasy ones (sword and magic stuff). So if the opportunity comes for a good, open-ended RPG that I can play online with my friends, I grab it. The bad thing about it (aside from being distracted and addicted) is that these Asian MMORPG’s popular in the Philippines (where I am) run only on Windows. Technically they can run in Wine as well if and only if they didn’t use the “anti-hacking” utility called GameGuard, which all of them do. So basically playing them on GNU/Linux is in itself just a fantasy. Sucks, really. I’ve been looking for good (MMO)RPG’s on GNU/Linux. Though I have seen a few recommended ones,they still seem a bit distant from the style that I’m used to. And I don’t know how I’ll be able to convince my friends to join me in such games. But like I said, this topic deserves a space of its own.
Fortunately for me, that short phase seems to be over. Or rather, will seem to take on a slightly lessened and more regulated pace. For the simple reason that summer vacation’s over and my friends and online buddies are mostly back to school. This means that I should also be getting back to what I’m supposed to be doing: learning Qt and KDE programming. My list of dream apps to start is getting longer and longer. So I better start hacking. I hope to produce something really soon. Though I’m not too confident in releasing them immediately for public consumption since I haven’t envisioned on them actually being popular in the first place. And then there’s still some conceptual/theoretical Qt/KDE issues I have to resolve (such as to go cross-platform or not).
Speaking of school, my classes formally started last June 7. Unfortunately, I have no idea on what we’re supposed to be really doing and how. The course guide (sort of like a syllabus) was supposed to have been distributed last month, but I still have to see even a shadow of it. We do have our textbooks already (custom made lessons and activities) so I’ll probably just go through them. For this semester (June - October 2008), I only have two courses: Discrete Structures in Computer Science and Principles of Programming. So far, the first subject is mostly about logic, a subject I’m quite familiar with from my Philosophy degree. What’s interesting is that both these books are more than a decade old, just reprinted. While the principles of logic haven’t probably changed for the past centuries, I’m not sure how accurate a very old book on principles of programming would be. Being principles, I suspect they haven’t really changed that much, but I still have that uneasy feeling. Only one way to find out, I guess.
Time to dig in and be, erm… “productive”! 
Just some small updates, while I'm trying to get off my ass and migrate the site completely to Textpattern.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Guild Wars has no Gameguard
June 16th, 2008 at 11:37 am
which makes it possible for me to run it via Cedega
June 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
You might want check out Savage2. Though not free software, there are both 32- and 64-bit binaries available.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
You don’t even need Cedega to run Guild Wars, it runs perfectly under Wine. It is in the Top10 Platinum list of Wine supported Apps. You’ll just need to have 3d drivers.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Ahhh great to know! Then I don’t have to renew this subscription anymore!
June 17th, 2008 at 2:16 am
[...] Jucato wrote an interesting post today on Distracted again… GNU/Linux Gaming… and School. Here’s a quick excerpt: [...]
June 18th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Dude, I will make you an offer you cannot resist. Check the Disconnected Life for dannybuntu’s comments.