I'm overly tired lately. Been trying to play "Rome: Total War" and finding that it doesn't really hold my interest much. I find it hard to get into games like Civilisation which requires you to micromanage everything; the campaign side of ROME is a lot like Civ in my eyes. The main thing is that I want to keep clicking through the screens; as if I don't really feel that much in control. I think though that it's just my inexperience with this game, as I used to play a game called Stars! a hell of a lot and have fun with it. I always wonder what a remake of Stars! would be like, bringing in more elements of RTS to allow you to control the space battles more, rather than just sit and watch them play out.

I've been reading the Moonpod journals a lot recently. They're a great source of information and experience of real game developers doing it on their own - plus their game looks awesome too ;). The same goes for the 0.A.D. guys - man, I wish I had the time and motivation to pull off some of the stuff I want to be able to do.

I've been bidding on a GameGear on ebay; the girlfriend and I are into collecting old consoles and a GameGear would be an excellent addition. I've been playing a few old Atari 2600 games recently - Ms Pacman is a good title for that machine. It's amazing how hard they are in comparison to games these days... like there was no such thing as a learning curve back in the 1980's. I also feel that the people who used to code for those systems must have had a great imagination; there's so many limits on the hardware of the machine it must be difficult to create a playable game that has some hint of originality...

Tonight I think I'll do some more editing on my article so we can get it in the queue to publish. I've been working with SiCrane to get it up to scratch and I must say that he's one of the most talented (and thorough) people I've dealt with. He's a credit to the ERB and to GameDev.net itself.

I've been mulling over preordering a GP2X system. I like the idea of a handheld linux console for some indie development... I wonder if it'll ever take off?