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The PalinDrome: Palin's Thoughts for November 1, 2007:
The First Patch
This one's going to
be a little short, but I wanted to cover the patch for Chaotic Pad today. I'm
happy that they're going to be updating the game every Wednesday. It means that
there's a chance that they'll get rid of everything I didn't like about the
software.
After running the Chaotic Patcher (which ran a lot faster this time than it
did when I first used it), the first thing I noticed was that Chaotic Pad now
had a help function, which allows new players to figure out the game much
faster. That's not to say experienced players couldn't learn a thing or two, as
well: just today I learned that you can right-click and drag to rotate the
battleboard, and you can scroll with the mouse wheel to zoom in and out on the
battleboard. Other than the help button, though, I didn't notice any other
improvements to the game (there could, however, be improvements "under the hood"
that I can't see).
Before I sign off for the night, I want to present you with a theory I have.
After snooping around in the folder where Chaotic Pad is located on my system, I
noticed that Chaotic Pad appears to be written using the
Microsoft XNA framework, which is used to make the development of Windows
games faster and easier. This leads me to believe that perhaps they originally
planned to do it in Flash, but something went wrong (perhaps it didn't work, or
the data was corrupted, or something like that), and with the release date
coming up quickly they decided it'd be better to throw something together using
the Microsoft XNA framework than to push the game back yet again. That's my
guess, and I'm going to stick with it until some official word is released (IF
it's ever released).
Today's Card of the Day is the infamous Allmageddon. We all know it's
spectacularly powerful if you have access to every element, but that usually
only happens if you have a Heptadd or you're fighting at Stronghold Morn, which
isn't always going to happen. But don't be mistaken into thinking that
Allmageddon is only useful in certain rare circumstances; due to the way it
works, it's actually one of the most flexible cards you could have in your
Attack Deck. Consider this situation that happens to me more than I would like:
I'm up against an Underworlder who is Intimidating my Courage down so low that
cards like Shadow Strike and Spirit Gust are useless. I hate being stuck with
attacks I can't use! However, no matter what, I can always use Allmageddon in
any situation (barring anything that disrupts attacks, but that's not limited to
Allmageddon). If my creature doesn't have any elements, I still do 10 damage, no
questions asked. However, I usually plan on using creatures with at least one
element (because elemental attacks do damage more consistently than stat-based
attacks), so that means I'll being doing 20 damage. And for me, dealing 20
damage is a rare occurrence, and is enough to take out some Danians and
Mipedians in one shot (not that I'd waste an Allmageddon on a small fry like
that). It gets better though; creatures like Laarina and Slurhk that have 2
elements (and tend to have few other redeeming traits) will do a whopping 30
damage. That's 2 Viperlashes worth of damage, my friend, in just one attack! Is
Allmageddon risky? I suppose, but it can fit into just about any army build,
assuming you have at least a few elemental creatures (and you're bound to), and
can be used by any creature in any situation to varying degrees of
effectiveness.
--Palin
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