Comments

The only comments I get are spam, so I keep wondering if there was something I wasn't doing to encourage comments. I finally moved the add comment form to the bottom of the "read more" pages (and highlighted the read more links), but the reason I didn't do it earlier was I'm a stickler for good CSS and nice looking printed output (go ahead, try Print Preview on one of my articles or stories). The problem is that Drupal 4.4's comment module produces some nasty, un-semantic HTML. I finally got it so that the form and its header won't print, but it's an ugly CSS 2/3 hack that works in Firefox but not IE. (For the curious, the needed selectors, with the comment options bar below the comments, were form[action="comment"] + form[action="comment"] for the comment options, form[action="comment"] + h2 for the "Post new comment" header, and form[action^="comment/reply"] for the post comment form itself.)

First Thoughts on Matrix Online

Well, instead of doing the homework I needed to do tonight I decided to try the Matrix Online Stress Test (the second one for those keeping count). Actually, I did get the homework done, thanks to the 2+ hour patch (downloaded the 1GB installer while in class, which installs to nearly 7 GB; the patch was 140 MBs and touched 1700+ files). My biggest complaint, other than the sheer size and reliance on patching techniques from the last decade (of course, GuildWars has spoiled me in the realm of patching), was the latency issues, but I can't complain too much because, after all, it is a Stress Test. (If you care, the patcher was more nicely themed than the last MMO* I played using a special patcher/launcher.)

I predicted when I heard Monolith was in charge of development, that if anyone could, they could do a good job at pushing the story elements. That was why I was even more tempted to try the game this Stress Test because they announced that some of the story elements were being pushed into the beta this time. The character creation and tutorial was well put together (with the Operator "Link" from the films voicing). I discovered that all the Greek and Roman god/hero names I tried where reserved by the game, which was interesting and fitting within the mythos of the Matrix.

I met several such named characters in the few missions I got through. Missions were interesting, but the mission map layouts were repeating after only two missions. I realize that that is the curse of the graphical MMO*, but I guess it was all the more grating because the map layouts so reminded me of City of Heroes'. In fact, without the Matrix green tint and Matrix ...