In a city of 10,000 people, with two other major supermarkets and three minor ones, you can easily sell 4,000 bottles of cream in four days.

No, seriously. The second I filled that damn cream bay, it was stripped instantly. And there's still two more days of this!

All that aside, I have pointless dribble to discuss, resolving around games, programming and all those fun little things I used to blog about here near-daily.

First let's discuss games. A little mini-rant if you will:

When it comes to games, I much prefer Multiplayer as opposed to single player. What I especially look for in Multiplayer is a Cooperative mode. I really enjoy my Co-Op, I think it's the single most fun game mode in any game ever. (Coming second would be Capture the Flag.)

And the other thing I look for is LAN. Seeing as internet connections in my country suck, cost a lot of money and cap bandwidth, I naturally have a very poor internet connection. Therefore, if a game doesn't have easy LAN capability, I'm really not interested.

I recently purchased a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops at the typical Australian store price of $100.00. Exactly. Buying it on Steam would have been possible, but it would have taken a month of Sundays before it downloaded. So hard-copy is generally the way I go. I wasn't impressed with the fact I had to update steam to install a game that I bought a DVD of. I miss the age old days of gaming, back when a CD/DVD was all you needed to install and play a game.

Now onto the main topic, DRMs and LAN. I understand the need for DRMs. People pay for the games they enjoy so those poor programmer saps that worked exceptionally hard on them can get paid, feed their families and gamble a few grand in Vegas once in a while. And I'll admit, Steam is an exceptional DRM. It's useful, practical and despite the fact you need an internet connection to play the games (unless you use offline mode, which is frustrating at times), it's still good. Unfortunately, it sucks the life out of LAN.

I don't fancy the idea of buying the same game twice at the prices I do (or even just twice), just so I can shoot a few Zombies with my brother once or twice a month. Steam makes this rather difficult.

What I would prefer, and it's not a difficult concept to work with, is all games that are multiplayer come with a lovely little LAN client (not server, client). Then, that client can play LAN multiplayer (provided a registered full copy is hosting if you're desperate) without the need to buy the game. They are locked out of Single Player and online play, but can still play LAN. It's not hurting the sales of the game (well, non-seemingly-rotten sales of the game, anyway), and encourages more people to buy it. I would certainly support any games I enjoyed that had this kind of feature.

If I ever manage to get into really serious game design and programming. I would certainly make sure this kind of feature was implemented. But I'm a genuinely nice guy and know that I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

And now we circle to another game discussion, that being why Treyarch decided to create the single best cooperative experience I've ever had, ever, in Call of Duty: World at War and them completely disregard it in Call of Duty: Black Ops. What the hell Treyarch!? I had way more respect for you then that!

Seriously, World at War has the best Co-Op I've ever experienced, with the most fantastic cut scenes and missions I've ever had in a game. The way it all worked together was beautiful. Which I suppose was because it was the actual game campaign, anyway; Competitive Co-Op was fantastic! So why, oh Windu why, would you then scrap that beautiful work of art, for something that sums up to be Team Free For All Multiplayer with players against bots? That's cold! Not cool! Very unimpressed! =( -- Sad Face!

Game conversation exit, stage left. Hello programming.

Oh programming, I remember you so much. I held you in my heart so tight no woman could ever replace you. I'm so sorry I've been ignoring you. Please forgive me, please. Don't hide from me, let me access that jumble of confused basic concepts and abnormal logical view of problems. I'm sorry I've been ignoring you so long. I never meant to forget about you. I promise, I'll actually get around to doing something with you in the future. Even if it is unimportant.

That aside, no, I haven't really done any programming in the last three or so months. Which is a shame, I wanted to be so much better at the conclusion of 2010. Oh well. I guess I'll have to carry on my years resolution to next year and start learning C++. Although I suppose the fact I can actually buy books on the subject now does help.

I don't think I've got much left to say now. My weekend was cancelled so I don't get a day off until Christmas day. But that's fine, I get three public holidays in the coming weeks, which is worth the pain and suffering. Oh! I was also taught how to use an electric pallet jack! It's sure does make moving heavy pallets easier, but it sucks for manoeuvrability. It's turning circle is larger than the sun.