SlyCat's Journal

This year, I hadn't been outside the country. I had planned to attend MFF but when I moved house, I cancelled my plans to allow me to afford things I needed for the new place. So to make up for missing out on both EF and MFF, I decided that I wanted to attend timduru's "Meerkat Manor" house party and Halloween at Disneyland Paris. I had never been to France before so it was appealing to finally visit. It was also going to be my birthday on the 1st, the day after the Halloween event so I figured it'd be a good opportunity to make it more special.

( Day 1 - Getting to France & Timduru's Meerkat Manor Dance )

( Day 2 - Paris )

( Day 3 - Disneyland Paris Halloween )

( Day 4 - Disneyland Paris )

( Day 5 - Journey Home )

In summary, I had a great time, met some great people and would like to go back again. However as always, the language barrier can be a problem at times. Photos of my time in France can be found in my new gallery. djemloup also did a short video which can be seen on YouTube. BBF took plenty of video so I imagine he'll have one out soon enough too :)

This was the third year I attended the Eurogamer Expo in London and it's got larger every year. It went from a small hall on the waterfront to Earl's Court 2 to Earl's Court's main exhibition hall this year. As a result it's become quite a monster of an event. I guess the main reason for this is that it's pretty much the only event of it's type in the UK other than the MCM Expos which aren't specifically focused on gaming. However it does now seem to be a victim of it's own success as the queues were just immense.

I arrived shortly after opening time with arakinuk and leinir and had to join a queue which almost literally looped round the entire builting (Earl's Court isn't exactly small). However as it had opened the queue was relatively fast moving. By the time we got in and issued our wrist bands, they said they were all out of event guides and only had mini-maps left. We knew that OnLive were giving away their £70 mini-consoles at the event so we went to queue up for that. However we were told we couldn't join the queue because it was too long and was posing a health and safety risk! It wasn't all a great loss as we got some free OnLive t-shirts they were handing out. However we needed something else to do. I noticed they had the PS Vita (the new Sony PSP) on show which I hadn't been aware was going to be there, but again it had a massive queue. We joined it but the id Software Developer Session was starting soon which I wanted to attend and it didn't look like the queue was moving fast enough.

So we left the Vita queue and joined the id session queue and whilst waiting, they handed out some rather nice id t-shirts. The session itself was actually rather good. It was a presentation about 20 years of id hosted by their creative director, Tim Willits. It began with a video of the games they've done starting with Commander Keen and ending with Rage and the audience was invited to cheer for their favourite games. The presentation did convince me to get Rage as I hadn't known much about it before hand. Also, it was interesting to learn that the name id isn't pronounced I.D., it's the word id which I never knew until then!

After the session we had a bit of a wonder via the indie arcade where we played a few random games and then moved on to World of Tanks because there wasn't much of a queue and Arakin was keen on it. I had a go as there was a promise of a free t-shirt for people who played, which I did get but it turned out to be a large size which was no good for me :P We did a bit more loitering before leaving the venue to go to Nando's as we did last year. It was fairly quick to get a table but an absolute age to order the food. We must have spent at least one and a half hours in there, maybe two hours which was precious gaming time lost! When we got back, the queue for OnLive was still too long to join and so we had another look round the venue but never actually played on any of the games other than a quick go on Super Mario 3D which was very similar to the Wii games.

We finally got into the OnLive queue which took at least another hour to get through, only they had run out of physical consoles for the day but were handing out coupons to get the consoles for £1 plus postage from their site. Was still a good deal but it still seemed very odd that they didn't just hand out the coupons to people queueing rather than making everyone wait. By the time we got our coupons, time was dragging on.

I really wanted to have a go on the PS Vita and so I spent at least an hour queueing for a go. The queues moved very slowly because they were only taking 6 people on at a time from each queue (of which there were two) but when you finally got to play on the console, you had a Sony representative who went over the details of the console and answered any questions you may have. The inevitable price question came up and it's going to cost €250 for the wifi version or €300 for the 3G version. Would seem silly to get the 3G version because most modern phones can tether to a device via wifi if you really need internet access but still, €250 is ~£220 in today's money plus the inevitable 20% VAT meaning it'll be on the shelves for at least £250 which is more than the 3DS was which had stunted sales partly due to it's high retail price. To be fair though, the Vita has a LOT of tech crammed in it. I'm not sure what the battery life is as that's a question I forgot to ask but it's got sensors coming out of it's metaphorical ears including touch screen, touch back panel, dual analogue sticks, front and rear camera, motion sensors, etc. The game I played was the Vita version of Super Stardust which is a good game on other platforms and was more of the same but even shinier on the Vita. To be fair, it didn't really show off what the tech could do, but there were limited numbers of the consoles running Uncharted on offer.

After I had finally got through the queue and had my time on the Vita, the exhibition was starting to close up. I had a go on Rage and considered it to be a fairly straight forward first person shooter affair but it will be interesting to see how the full game plays out. After Rage, I had a quick go on Uncharted 3 multiplayer which was surprisingly fun despite having never played an Uncharted game and ultimately not being very good. However after that, it was home time.

So in summary, from the event, I attended one developer session, acquired 3 t-shirts, got a coupon for a £1 console and played 4 games. In previous years, it was easy to wander round, see a game you wanted to play, hang around for about 20 minutes and then you'd be able to have a go. This year however, you really needed to have decided what you wanted to play and go for it if you wanted a chance to play it. While the freebies were awesome this year, I felt like I barely played anything. I mostly blame my indecisiveness, however it would have been easier to decide what to go for had we got the guides which detailed the games on show when we arrived there.

I'm undecided about attending next year. I expect I will but I'll need to ensure I get there early enough to be able to get in sooner and also ensure I decide on which games I absolutely had to go for. Potentially, I might even need to attend for more than one day to get the most out of the event. Each day offered their own unique developer sessions which have always been interesting (last year, I saw a playthrough of Deus Ex 3 which blew me away). Hopefully they make some organisational changes to make it easier and fairer to get on the more popular games however.

Had a great time at the Londonfurs Summer Party on Saturday. I hadn't been able to get to the previous "party" events but I made an extra effort to get to this one as it seemed everyone I knew was going. Fortunately, andysquirrel was going so it made travelling to the event rather easy.

The venue was rather impressive in it's size as were the numbers of people there. When I arrived, I was immediately invited to go to Bodean's by bungle_bear and bluue_dragon so I didn't really get to see people until after that. I was glad to have gone to Bodean's though as I had the alcoholic root beer float made from bourbon, vanilla liquor, Goose Island root beer and topped with ice cream. I have to say without a doubt it was the tastiest root beer float I've ever had :D I'll have to try to replicate the recipe at home once I have the ingredients (can get Goose Island root beer at a shop in Southampton. May even be better with IBC).

The drink I had at Bodean's was £6.95 which cost more than the meal I had there. However, this was nothing in comparison to the prices of the drinks at the meet bar. When I arrived, I bought dojocasino (Hawx), kytheraen and myself a drink and I got about 50p change from £15! Turns out the pints of beer cost £4.50 and the price of spirits were insane... They had half price drinks between 5 and 7pm which helped bring the prices down to a more reasonable level but it was still on the pricey side. I know it's a pub/club in the middle of London, it's normal prices for that kind of venue but it still hurt my wallet!

Comments about the prices aside, I had a great time meeting up with people of old and new. It was certainly the best Londonfur meet I've been to in some time. I did regret not taking my camera with me but I did get some snaps on my phone which were posted to Twitter. Mostly they were pictures of various people in hats & fursuit hugging. However there was also some random bariki licking going on.

I was kinda taken back by how far Londonfurs have gone. When I went to my first meet 12 years ago, it was considered a big meet when 30 people attended. There must have been 200ish at this one. True it was probably because it was a special event but still impressive all the same. Many conventions can't even manage those kind of figures! Many thanks to the Londonfurs Committee who helped make it happen, I had an awesome day :)

I hope to get to another Londonfur meet sometime soon, however what makes a meet good for me is the people who go and if I end up going to a meet with few people I know, I generally have a bad time. Will need to work out which will be the best to get to next :)

I suppose I was kinda asking for it. I have two Google+ accounts, one for my real self that I have work colleagues and the like on, and one for my furry self. There's been much chatter about Google removing accounts which did not have a real name associated with them as detailed in their Community Standards but I chose to ignore it assuming they'd never bother with my account and the countless other furry pseudonyms on there.

Now everyone and his mother who has a furry account seemed to be adding me to their circles on Google+ and so I mostly ignore the people I don't know. However I saw two instances of people who were acting as companies who were just advertising their services so I rather naively reported them to Google. It seems this was enough to make Google aware of my profile and as of this evening, my account has been suspended due to violation of their aforementioned Community Standards.

So you have the option to appeal just by clicking a link which resubmits the profile for review assuming you've changed whatever was in violation, but they don't explicitly state what is in violation. I considered changing my name to a more real sounding name and changing my profile picture to a real picture but I figured what's the point? If I did that then it would negate the whole point of having a furry account.

I could add furs to my real account but I spend a lot of time ensuring my work/family life does not blend with my furry life. It's something I've done for 14 years now and I'm not going to change just because Google says I should.

Had an unexpectedly good day today. Saw a good offer on a Sony Blu-Ray player on Richer Sound's site so went into town to pick one up. Never owned a Blu-ray player before as I've relied on downloading to get HD films but I had always intended to get a Blu-ray player at some point when the price was right. I wondered around some of the shops for some films to watch on the new player but ended up not bothering as online prices are probably better. Instead, I did pick up some drinks from the local American import shop including Coke Zero Vanilla, Grape NOS, Pitch Black Mtn Dew and some IBC Root Beer and also some Pepsi Max Cherry from Asda as I hadn't had a chance to try it yet.

As I was in town, I joined the furs at the local Southampton Hantsfur meet. There were around 12 people there, but I knew literally 4 of them (Laz, DeeJay, Stokes and Wrath). Coincidentally, one of the people I didn't know there was Scribe, who I had noticed the day before getting the same train as me who I had identified as a fur due to them wearing an RBW t-shirt but I didn't say anything as I was with work colleagues. What's weirder is that she's been getting the same train from the same station I have for about the past 2 years and have never known! Kinda ironic that we only find this out when I'm moving away from the area in a few weeks!

Shortly after meeting up and much loitering, we went off to The Hobbit which is a pub quite near me which is a more geeky kinda pub as the name suggests. I got completely drenched on the walk there due to a surprise downpour so went home to drop off the shopping and change clothes before going back to the pub. Got nicely wobbly whilst there having had 2 pints of lager and a pint of "Gollum" (one of the themed house cocktails). Some people left, others joined us like Jowgenetsu and AndySquirrel and the remainder of us went to KFC for food before ending up at my place to watch How To Train Your Dragon.

All in all, it was a rather nice day where I hadn't really expected to do much. Was nice to have some people over to my place as despite having my own place for almost 3 years, I've rarely had anyone over. Hopefully that'll change when I move to my new place which is happening rather soon now!

For the benefit of those who don't follow my Twitter or Fur Affinity accounts, here's proof I fursuited at Confuzzled 2011:


And for those who aren't regular readers of LJ, I did a full report of my time at ConFuzzled yesterday :)

So I got my 3DS today a day early. I pre-ordered it as I'm a gadget fan and was curious about the new features the 3DS brings to the portable gaming market. Not just the 3D screen, but other funky features such as the Streetpass which just seems like a fantastic idea. How it'll work in real life, I'll find out when I get some games which support it (though I imagine the Mii sharing will happen regardless).

Anyway, I got the console with Pilotwings Resort and Super Monkeyball 3D. Out of the launch lineup, they were the ones which held the most interest for me, and also would make good use of the 3D screen. I was tempted to get Street Fighter IV 3D for it's Streetpass features, but I'm done with fighting games for the time being. They're OK but I never get good enough to want to keep at it.

Monkeyball's been done to death but I loved it on Gamecube and haven't played it in ages. I figured it'd look good in 3D too. In playing it, it's certainly the Monkeyball I remember. You can either tilt the console or use the analogue pad to control the game, the latter is probably easier but the former is a bit more immersive. Just like with it's predecessors, it's not content with just being Monkey Ball and so it's got 2 other game modes, Monkey Race and Monkey Fight. Monkey Race is a direct rip off of Mario Kart, to such a degree, I'm surprised Nintendo didn't intervene. However they possibly didn't because it's nowhere near as fun to play as Mario Kart. I've not played Monkey Fight but that's because I didn't get a Monkeyball game to have a beat-em-up :P I've not had time to play the game exhaustively but it's certainly everything I expected from a Monkeyball game but in 3D. No real innovations here and was slightly disappointed the mode where you launch, glide and land monkeys from one of the Gamecube games wasn't in it but I guess that's covered by Pilotwings.

I fondly remember seeing Pilotwings on Games World back in the 90's where they had to land a parachutist on a target but I had never played a Pilotwings game before so I didn't know about the rest of the game. I've only played the game for an hour or so but it looks like that mode I recall isn't in the game. Instead it seems you can fly, shoot stuff and land a plane, pilot your Mii around in a jetpack and land him and finally control and land a glider. Despite that rather simple description, it's a lot of fun to play and the 3D effect is superb. As I've said, I've not played it much and it seems as the game progresses, the modes become more complex but I do wonder about the long term appeal.

Elsewhere, the console has 2 built in games to show off what the unit can do. The first is "AR Games" which is the augmented reality games. Basically you put a card the system recognises on a table and the console rather impressively substitutes this with targets to shoot and other stuff. You also get character cards but these serve little purpose other than showing 3D characters on a table in the photo mode. Certainly an impressive display of the technology but it's just a tech demo. I imagine they may do more with this in the future. The other built in game is "Face Raiders" which allows you to take a photo of yourself and other people and the game maps the face onto 3D objects and allows you to shoot them by moving the console to find the objects in 3D space. Again, amusing to show off to others who haven't seen it before but it's not much more than that.

There's also some games in the Streetpass Mii Plaza but these rely on you collecting other Miis from being out and about so I can't say much about them. There's a "game" where you collect pieces of a picture and eventually build up a whole picture and the other is seemingly an RPG of sorts but can't do anything with it yet. I think there's supposed to be some kind of marketplace and web browser too but seems they're not in the current firmware (there was already an update to download after turning on for the first time today).

In summary however, I'm very surprised as to how well the 3D effect works and the social functions are pretty neat. I imagine there'll be plenty people at Confuzzled to share Miis with :) The games I've got certainly aren't killer games for the platform but are decent enough launch titles. I'm sure there'll be plenty of innovation and interesting games to come once the developers get stuck into the full potential of the console. However despite being an early adopter, I'm happy with my purchase so far, though I've yet to see how poor the battery life is due to not being close to a power socket.

Been pondering the idea of if I were to get a new fursuit, what would it be? My first ever fursuit was a replica of Dale Chipmunk which I got back in 1999 (since sold to Daktalis). Since then I've had various versions of my character, first a copy of Sylvester by Atalon, since sold on to colifox and more recently my current SlyCat suit by Jax. While SlyCat is my character, I'm neither specifically attached to the character or even the species like perhaps most furs are.

Fursuiting is how I got into furry in the first place and it'd be nice to give it another go. While my current suit has a cute appearance, wearing it isn't so fun as the bodysuit feels like it was made in a hurry and there's very poor ventilation in the head and the eyes steam up due to the fine mesh making it very hard to see, especially in the dark.

So, I've since been mulling over the options for a new suit. I think I'd like something that suits my build and isn't something weird and so I thought a bear of some kind could be nice. I had also pondered the idea of a skunk but unsure if large skunks look right and then there's the bother of the massive tail! This wouldn't be one of those mid-life crisis type things where I'd be changing character and name, it'd just be nice to try out something else :)

It was arakinuk's birthday on the 19th Jan and as he always manages to get me thoughtful gifts, I wanted to get him something special. However, I really couldn't think of what to get as there's not much time to think about it between Xmas and his birthday. I came up with the idea of commissioning some art for him as that would be a unique gift but time was running out as his birthday was only about a week away. I asked bluue_dragon (artist of my current default LJ icon) if he could do anything and while he said he was busy, he would see if he could squeeze me in.

Two days before Arakin's birthday, Blue messaged me to ask for details for the pic. As I'm lacking in creativity, I couldn't come up with anything better than a vague idea of my character presenting Arakin with a birthday cake and later suggested the cake be in the shape of Arakin too. However, come the next day, Blue had done a fantastic sketch in such a short time which I approved and on the day of Arakin's birthday, at around 11pm, Blue had finished the pic below:


I was worried about Arakin disappearing off to bed before I could have the opportunity to show him but I managed to keep him online :)

I'm really happy with how it turned out. Arakin's got such a perfect expression and the whole pic's really cute! I was rather amazed at how fast Blue was able to get it done so it was in time for Arakin's birthday. It may have been a little late but it still counted :P

Note: arakinuk is not a bat, he's a Dracoon-wolf thing. This is a bat.

While new games keep on coming out, I've now a massive stack of games I've not ever completed. Many purchased due to awesome sale prices but then no time put into playing them. Some games like Fallout: New Vegas have really held my attention so much that I've actually completed it with 2 different main endings (NCR winning and Yes Man winning) and am on my way to complete it again. Meanwhile I've got other games I've barely played and some I've not played at all!

So, here's a list of games I've bought on various platforms which can be completed but I have yet to do so. I've had some of these for years and others for days. I've left off other games where I've completed the single player campaign but they still have a great multiplayer mode which I should play more of, like Left For Dead 1 & 2 and Halo: Reach.

Android

• Dungeon Defenders: First Wave
• Hero of Sparta

PC

• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Bioshock
• Bioshock 2
• Borderlands (with no addons)
• Dead Space
• Just Cause 2
• Mass Effect
• Starcraft 2
• Super Meat Boy
• Supreme Commander
• Torchlight

Xbox 360

• Alan Wake
• Assassin's Creed (never played)
• Blur
• Brutal Legend
• Dead Rising 2 (still unopened)
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Gears of War 2
• Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
• Saint's Row 2
• Split/Second