If only there were a portal between here and the Carlton Arms...

[bugshaw]

I set off to walk to the pub. After five minutes, it started to rain. After ten minutes, I was soaked right through to my socks and able to walk through 3" puddles without noticing any difference in my foot dampness. I thought "If I get to the pub (another 30 minutes) I won't enjoy sitting round in such wet clothes." Then I thought "If I went home I could play Portal." Which I can! Thanks to the kindness of the Friendslist in troubleshooting, of damerell in providing a spare graphics card, and of major_clanger in fitting it, checking it, updating drivers, checking it again and finding it crashes with the new drivers, and reverting to an earlier version.

It is fun! You can point and click, and go through a thing and come out of another thing, and the computer voice has a great line in causing inadvertent terror :-) I've not played a game with fwd/back/l/r + mouse to rotate before, and it's taking a while to get the hang of it (but am up to L10 already). This is why I resist first person shooters, I'm afraid I'll meet the enemy and be too busy accidentally stumbling sideways into walls to shoot them (also, shooting things is Wrong). "Hey, alien guys, mind waiting till I've figured out how to face you before you shoot me? Left, back, left - oops, dropped my gun..."

In another learning/manouevring context, my driving instructor sent me down a dual carriageway and I drove at 70mph and changed lanes without killing anyone :-)

Comments

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Yay for Portal, and yay for driving goodness, and boo for torrential downpours!

And the cake is a lie...

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

There's cake? I shall look forward to that. It's lied about lying to me before.

[angoel.livejournal.com]

There is cake. It's delicious and moist.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Darn. I am now hungry for cake and cannot sleep.

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

I'm making a note here, huge success!

[hnpcc]

I'm afraid I'll meet the enemy and be too busy accidentally stumbling sideways into walls to shoot them

I found that in Doom I frequently didn't notice I was being shot until I died. Too busy trying to work out how to turn around and/or fire anything. Or occasionally see anything - from memory large amounts of that game took place in the dark.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I couldn't figure out one of the earliest levels and gave up.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

I watched major_clanger play through the first few levels, otherwise I'd've been stuck and frustrated learning the very simplest games conventions (as such a novice). It's fascinating watching the brain work out new things that have not been told to it explicitly, such as the way the portal targeting design changes when the gun is pointed at an area that will not accept a portal. Saved me a lot of random shooting, that did!

[damerell.livejournal.com]

The commentary does provide a lot of information on how the first few levels are intended to hold your hand. The other thing I would try to bear in mind is that Portal is not a reflex tester - if you're trying to do something in a way that demands reflexes, you're doing it wrong.

Obviously I should have arranged to give you the graphics card _at the Carlton_. :-)

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

That's my fault. I walked home in a bad mood and dared it to rain on me.