Updating Firefox

The time has come.  It's technically been "the time" for quite some time now.  I remember hearing about Firefox 4 and all the stuff it was supposed to have, then I ran a few of the betas and the first RC in a VM to try them out, then it was released and the "wait for extensions to be updated" game began.

Except I kind of lost track, and some wise guy at Mozilla decided it'd be a great idea to unveil Firefox 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 shortly thereafter.  Seriously, what are they trying to accomplish by releasing so many major version updates so quickly?  Other than fuck with extension developers, that is.

Anyway.

I went to Mozilla's site to download Firefox and it offered me 8.0.1.  So I set that up in a VM, on a brand new profile, and went about my business checking extensions and trying to find equivalents for things that weren't updated.  I think I've got it all sorted out, because at some point I stopped installing and configuring extensions and started using Stylish to fuck with Fx8's user interface.

The combined title bar/tab bar before I fucked with it...	...and after I fucked with it.

As it turns out, almost everything I use or rely upon on a daily basis has been updated, and there were one or two things that I found acceptable substitutes for.

My four staples: AdBlock Plus, NoScript, GreaseMonkey, and Stylish, all stay on the Firefox bleeding edge anyway.  So no problem there.

In fact, pretty much everything was updated.  I was honestly surprised.

The only thing that wasn't updated was Screengrab!.  The flurry of Firefox updates claimed that.  But sifting through the sea of "oh just change the maxVersion" and "I changed the maxVersion but stuff doesn't quite completely work", I found a comment that recommended a different extension, Abduction!.  Installed that, and it checks up nicely.

Tweaking settings made me realize that disablemenu, which would auto-hide the menubar and statusbar, is no longer necessary.  Ever since Firefox got that mode where the tab bar gets merged with the title bar, basically.  Combine that with Classic Compact and its options extension having the option to have the tab bar always merged with the title bar, and it's available all the time now, even on the rare occasion where I don't have Firefox maximized.

I sifted out a few extensions I wasn't really using anymore and were just eating up space/memory/etc. as well.

Also I derp'd.  I couldn't find Fast Dial in the add-on search built into the addons window, and briefly had another "new tab = bookmarks" extension installed.  But then I investigated the extension's page on addons.mozilla.org and realized it was indeed compatible, I just had to download a different version that wasn't available from the nice big blue install button.

Also, I'll need to hack BetterPrivacy again, as the mass deletion dialog is still horribly ambiguous.

So, yeah.  Updating Firefox to a new major version number for the first time in forever.  Feels kind of weird.

I Miss Melty Blood

Talking with Honya on Twitter about Melty Blood made me realize how long it's been since I've played the game.  There's a few reasons for this.  Other than stating those, I'm just going to cover some of my favorite stuff to do with certain characters.  Note that I'm in no way actually decent at the game, so likely very little will apply to tourneyfags and will probably make me look like a total n00b (or as the fighting game community likes to say, scrub).

Technically I could fire the game up at any time.  I have it, the PS2, a screen, speakers, a controller, and a save with everything unlocked on my memory card.  There's no real physical barrier.

But what's infinitely more fun than playing fighting games by yourself, against the AI?  Playing fighting games against real people.  That's what I haven't had the opportunity to do.

The reason for this is due to something simple yet mind-bogglingly unexpected.  Every Friday I'd get together with friends and we'd play games.  Board games, card games, and since I was bringing my PS2, console games.  This took place with a subset of CAINE, in one of their dorms.  However, this semester, our host and all five of his suitemates somehow forgot to bring a TV.  No TV, no PS2.  Simple as that.

Now, of course, there is a solution, though it takes a lot of effort.  I've done it once, and it was more hassle than it was worth.  Basically, take my screen, PC speakers, and assortment of audio cables necessary to route the audio from the PS2 to my PC speakers.  Due to space limitations it had to be set up a fair distance away from the rest of the gaming action and was sorely underused.  Also, I'd just gotten Guitar Hero 5 at that point and was obsessed, so that's what I was playing, and hadn't brought enough regular controllers for anything else.

With the reasons out of the way, we move on to discussing fun stuff to do in Melty Blood.  I'll start with Kohaku.  I don't really have a "main", but she's the one I have more playtime with than any other character.

I love abusing her molotov cocktails.  They build magic circuit like crazy, she's invulnerable while dropping them, and if they're blocked they offer enough blockstun to be completely safe enough for me to land and try something else.  Since this is stealthily Actress Again we're talking about, whacking bombs around the screen with Half-Moon style Kohaku is also quite fun.  Basically, I play Kohaku as a troll character.

Mech-Hisui has a ton of fun stuff including a wide array of projectiles to spam.  My favorite thing though has to be her 4B flamethrower.  People think they're going to be jumping in, and surprise!  You're on fire!

Back in Act Cadenza I really annoyed the shit out of a friend with Nero Chaos' summons, specifically the deer.  Once you get that shit started it's hard to get knocked out of it.  I haven't really played him much in Actress Again, but they can't have changed him all that much.

Even though I play Kohaku as a troll character, the game has two troll characters built in.  Yes, I'm talking about Neko-arc and Neko-arc Chaos.  They're much smaller than the rest of the cast and have a wide array of moves to cause much annoyance, including screen-wide beams and a teleport move for easy mixups.  Word to the wise, stay away from their air dash, it's slow as balls.  Neko-arc has an aerial move that I use in place of her air dash, I believe it's j.214B.  I don't really feel like firing up the game or looking up a move list just to check, though.

The tag team of Hisui and Kohaku is always fun to play, just because of the combos you can make while using the sisters in tandem.  Couple that with being able to switch which one you're controlling to completely change your available move list and having access to both of their arc drives regardless of who you're controlling and you get a complete experience.  I spend most of my time controlling Kohaku, so I can abuse the Hisui assist where she runs forwards and knocks the opponent into the wall.  Following up on that (or just using it repeatedly for trollolols) is pretty fun.  Sometimes though I'll switch back to controlling Hisui and go in for some beatdown.

There's three versions of Akiha in Actress Again, and they all play slightly differently.  Oddly enough, the settings menu claims that Akiha Vermillion is my best character.  I think that's just based off of Arcade mode, though.  Regardless of which one you choose, she's got options for beatdowns.

I kind of feel like there's someone I'm leaving out that I used to play a fair amount.  Since I can't think of the name I'll just end the post here.  If I remember I may edit it in, but that's unlikely.

Since it's on my mind, can't wait for the last four episodes of Carnival Phantasm.

mmm, hard-boiled eggs

I got some random noodles a while back in my hunt for something similar to ramen but without all the sodium, and the package suggested serving the noodles with a hard-boiled egg.  That got me started on this whole thing.  By the way, the noodles appear to be Korean, as there's Korean all over the package.

Hard-boiled eggs aren't all that hard to make.  You just need a pot, a bowl, some water, a stove, and some spare time.  To make sure I did it right, I Googled the subject and brought up a few different sites.  Curiously enough the directions were all slightly different, so I did what they had in common.

Basically, stick the eggs in the pot and cover them with cold water.  Put the pot on the stove and bring it to a nice rolling boil.  Then cover the pot, turn off the burner, and remove the pot from the heat.  Twelve minutes later, use a slotted spoon (or drain the pot) to get the eggs out.  I recommend the slotted spoon, that way you don't waste water if you decide you want to make more, or are making them in batches.  Stick them in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes, this stops the cooking process and eliminates that grey ring around the yolk.

There, done.  Of course, you'll want to peel them.  Lightly smack both ends of the egg on a plate, then roll the egg on the plate, applying just enough pressure to crack the shell.  Now peel.  The large end of the egg is a good starting point, as there's usually space between the shell and the egg white there.  Dunk the egg in the water periodically to remove bits of shell, make sure you get that film just beneath the shell as well.

Now you've got hard-boiled eggs, ready to be served.  They go great on salads (slice them so you end up with a bunch of reasonably circular slices), or you can slice them in half lengthwise.  Then you can make deviled eggs if you want, though you'll need a small bowl for mixing.

Simply apply gentile pressure around the edge of where the egg white meets the yolk, then turn the egg over the small bowl and apply a small amount of pressure to the underside of the yolk to pop it out into the bowl.  Repeat for all the eggs.  Now mix in some mustard.  There's no real set amount, just do it until the yolk-mustard mixture reaches a consistency you can live with.  You don't need a lot of mustard, though.  And as always, why use yellow mustard when you can use dijon mustard instead?

Now get a spoon and spoon the mixture back into the yolk cavities in the eggs.  Being that you added mustard, you'll have more stuff than you originally did, so it'll heap up.  If you have it, sprinkle some paprika over the top when you're done.  There you go.

Apparently, according to the internet, peeling hard-boiled eggs works best with eggs that aren't brand-new.  I don't know how long the eggs we have have been around, but they were pretty easy to peel once I got a system going.

And there you have it.  Easy food that makes you look like a better cook if you so happen to rely a lot on prepared and instant foods.

Munchkin Quest

A bit of a break from computer game reviews, and showing that there is more to my life than computers (but not much lol).

A few friends and I played Munchkin Quest a couple weeks ago.  I meant to get something up right then since it was still fresh on my memory, but I forgot.  First off, I'll answer the typical first question to answer in any given review: What exactly is Munchkin Quest?

Munchkin Quest expands upon the formula that's worked for years: a satirical card-based tabletop game where you race your fellow players to level 10 by defeating monsters, collecting treasure, and screwing your friends over right as they're about to defeat monsters or win the game.  It expands upon this by defining the dungeon that you've been kicking doors down in all this time.  You have dungeon tiles, door connectors, and a wide array of extra materials including player figures and level counters.

I'd been thinking that something of this formula would be really neat for a while, and then it happened.  The key would be making it work without being too complex, because Munchkin's greatest virtue has been its ease of play.

To be expected, it's more complex.  That's going to be a given.  You and your friends can expect to spend the entire first game with your faces buried in the rulebook.  Each class and/or race now has a d10 ability: where you have to roll the included ten-sided die and have to roll under your level to successfully use the ability.  Each monster in the game now has a card that represents it within the dungeon.  You roll a colored die to determine who owns the monster, it gets that colored base.  The colored die is also used for monster movement between turns, and has six sides.  Being that the game is four players only, what do you do when you roll one of the other two colors for determining monster ownership?

You get to decide.  You can throw the tough stuff at your friends if you want.  Fully in the spirit of Munchkin.

However, you may want to take it for yourself, as there are certain benefits to defeating a monster you own.

You have health tokens as well, that represent your life.  When you lose a battle, you lose one (and flip it over to the side that shows it empty).  When you lose all of them, you die.  There are ways of recovering health as well.

There are three card types this time around: Monster, Treasure, and Deus Ex Munchkin.  Deus Ex Munchkin cards can be races, classes, and extra cards like potions and Super Munchkin, for example.

Winning the game has a new twist.  Just like before, you still have to get to level 10.  But now, once that happens, you have to get back to the dungeon entrance and successfully defeat a boss monster to win.  In a way that makes sense, what kind of a dungeon-crawling experience doesn't end with a boss fight?  Plus, it fits right in with the cooperative-competitive nature of Munchkin: Your friends can still try and screw you over as you're making your way back to the entrance or while trying to fight the boss itself.

I feel it's important to mention that the cards are not compatible with other Munchkin games.  So no Space Munchkin Quest or Munchkin Cthulu Quest yet.  The cards in the game seem to be based primarily off of the original Munchkin, but with changes and updates for the rules brought in by Munchkin Quest.

I don't want to delve too deeply into the game's mechanics in a review of it, but some of the new stuff did warrant some explanation.  There's far more I haven't even mentioned.

What we noticed while playing:

• The level of complexity was startling for a group of first-time players.
• Monster movement can and will result in a clusterfuck that moves together after a while.  We had a group of four or five monsters that everyone avoided because you have to fight all of them at once...
• The dungeon crawling element did have some advantages: different rooms affect you or your combat in different ways.  The dungeon definitely felt like a typical role-playing game dungeon; full of rewards, but with plenty of hazards between you and those rewards.
• A "reasonable amount of time" is still defined in the rules as "about 2.6 seconds".
• You'll need a big table to play the game, since the board expands as you play.

I don't want to judge the game solely on our less than favorable first time experience, because it seems like it's pretty well thought-out.  It's just that the level of complexity really did startle us and make us want the game to end more and more as we were playing.  I could imagine really getting into it if our group had the time to read and fully understand the rules.

Overall, I'm going to say that it's fairly complex, but if you can get into it, it looks like it'd still be incredibly fun, and that it would give some definition to the gameplay style you've enjoyed in previous Munchkin games.

Magicka Challenge Mode

Outside of Magicka: Vietnam, the rest of challenge mode is the same.  Pick an arena and a set of allowable drops (which can be unrestricted...), and battle against 20 waves of enemies.  You can bring up to three allies with you, but so far I've just been going solo.

The format and scoring system is fairly similar to the Last Stand mode of Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2.  Enemies enter the arena from fixed locations.  You have a multiplier that goes up as you kill stuff and goes down as you suffer deaths.  The difference lies in the drops I previously mentioned.  During each wave, one or more chests will spawn.  They then grow legs and proceed to wander about the arena.  They can bite you and deal damage to you as well.  Destroying the chest makes it drop an item or a magick.  Thus, you're at the mercy of Magicka's random number generator concerning what you're going to get.

That said, it's very possible to develop working strategies, that change depending on the drops you get.  My staple for the very beginning when I have nothing is ARSE mines.  They allow me to play a game of control, where the enemy can't kill me because they can't get to me.  As I gain magicks, I'll adapt as necessary.  On several occasions I've gotten both Invisibility and Summon Elemental.  If that happens, anything's possible.

As far as weapon drops go, Invisibility can be rendered less necessary if I'm fortunate enough to receive the Scepter of the Troll King, which makes enemies prefer other targets.  However, that only works if I can summon other targets for them to prefer.  Fortunately, if I don't have that ability yet, its active ability allows me to charm an enemy, which comes in handy even if I have Charm, seeing as how it just takes one click to charm something with the active ability, compared to inputting WED spacebar to use Charm...

My suggestion is to find the stuff you prefer, and then turn off all the categories that don't contain it, so you have a better chance of getting what you like.

I'll give a rundown of spells, magicks, and weapons I've found to be useful.

• Spells
• ARSE regular cast (or area cast if you have Teleport) - I used to use this on weapon cast as well, but...
• QREASR weapon cast - Be very, VERY careful with this one.  As in, come to a complete stop when you swing your weapon to actually cast it.  And then high-tail it in the other direction.  This spell deals massive damage.  Doing any other cast method with this spell is suicide.  Also, it'll get you the achievement for having 5 elements in one spell if you haven't already gotten it some other way (using Steam...).
• QFASA (or QFQFASA...) regular cast - Go-to beam for killing chests.  Also works wonders on anything that's been frozen.
• QFQFQFQFQF area cast - If you have frost elementals around and you don't have Rain, support them by area-casting this.  It will wet down your enemies, which the elementals will then freeze on their next hit.  What's better than an enemy that moves very slowly?  An enemy that can't move at all.
• EQRAF self cast - Inputting the F at the end melts the Ice back into Water, allowing you to have a shield that protects against both Water and Lightning.  Handy for casting Thunderstorm and then being able to conjure Lightning while being immune to the lightning strikes from Thunderstorm at the same time.
• Magicks
• Haste/Teleport - Mobility is king in this mode.  If you can avoid the damage, you'll stay alive.  Simple as that.
• Invisibility - If they can't see you, they can't target you.  It doesn't render you impervious to damage, and doing anything other than movement or conjuring will make you visible again.  Still, it's nice to have around.
• Charm - Temporarily turning one of your enemies into an ally is not to be underestimated.  Especially because you can charm a powerful enemy, then wet them, freeze them, then lightning beam them without having to worry about retaliation...
• Summon Elemental - What's better than killing things yourself?  Summoning magical beings to do it for you so you can sit back and relax for a while.  I prefer frost elementals myself, because of my aversion to playing with a control strategy.  There are a couple waves you have to look out for with frost elementals though, so it's not perfect.  I would advise against summoning more than one type of elemental, because the dominant type will kill the minority type.  Also, if they're all one type, they'll heal each other and you'll only need to worry about them on the waves with the grenade guys (11? and 20).
• Blizzard - If you have Summon Elemental and want to produce a bunch of frost elementals quickly, cast this and then spam Summon Elemental (well, as fast as you can type SEDQFS and hit spacebar...).  Blizzard will automatically turn them into frost elementals for you.  Toss up a quick ER self cast before casting so you won't freeze yourself.
• Rain - Wets enemies, letting frost elementals freeze them in place.  Affects the entire arena, so you don't have to worry about it not hitting something.  Toss up a quick EQ self cast before casting, so you can still conjure lightning.
• Raise Dead - Not as useful as Summon Elemental, but anything that puts targets out there that aren't you is worth having around.  Note that some enemies are immune to poison.  They won't damage those enemies, but they will still surround them and block their movement, which is still useful.
• Conflagration - Spiders absolutely hate fire.  Just so you know.
• Thunderbolt - When it hits what you want it to hit, it works wonders for eliminating a single target.  It can get confused with lots of elementals about though.
• Staves
• Scepter of the Troll King - Active charm ability, plus the passive ability of making enemies prefer other targets, makes this staff precisely what you want if you can summon anything at all.
• Staff of War - Double HP plus physical resistance.  Need I say more?  The active Arcane Bolt ability recharges pretty quickly and shouldn't be forgotten about.
• Daemon Arm - While it's one of the best in Adventure, it's not as useful here, because you'll need to be moving a fair amount of the time.  Still, when you've got it down to that one last enemy, you can pop off a beam and let 'er rip.  Only marginally useful, just mentioned it so I could say that.
• Gnarled Staff - Active ability summons trees to fight for you.  Great if you don't have any magick that summons anything and you're not up against a wave that deals fire damage.  The summon ability has a long recharge though, so you'll have to support them.  Note that you can heal them.  Area cast heals work best, but risk healing your enemies at the same time.
• Weapons
• Knife of Counter-Striking - It took me way too long to figure out what this weapon was referencing.  It's referencing the knife in Counterstrike, where if you're carrying it you can run faster.  Having this weapon essentially gives you a permanent Haste, which is indispensable.  Especially considering that you can still Haste yourself while wielding it, and the effects stack...
• RPG-7 - Don't underestimate the value of 3000 damage in a single spike.  True, some spells can out-spike this, but it's a worthwhile weapon nonetheless.  Just make sure you've got some distance on your target, and don't forget about the manual reloads (and the length thereof...).

I've gotten to wave 20 twice solo, and died on wave 20 twice solo for entirely stupid reasons.  The first time I stepped on one of my own ARSE mines by accident and couldn't thaw, heal, and cast Invisibility fast enough, and the second time I was trying to cast Blizzard and summon more elementals and got hit by stray grenades.

Magicka: Vietnam notes

The Vietnam Rescue Mission DLC for Magicka is a bit of a challenge.  Not only because you play it in challenge mode, but also because it's fairly simple and straightforward up until the very end.  I've got notes about the entire thing though, so here you go.

I mention spells with their default keybindings, if you've changed yours, you're weird.  Also, this is entirely for singleplayer.  I'd imagine it gets easier in multiplayer.  Furthermore, I stick with the firearms theme and use very little magic.
Staple spells/magicks:

• ED self cast - rock armor.  Given how there's lots of them and one of you, and they all have automatic weaponry, without this you'll find your health skyrocketing in the wrong direction quickly.  You'll want to keep this on at all times.
• EDDDD self cast - full rock armor, for the end.  You're waiting for your evac, and whaddayaknow, the Vietcong are after you in full force.
• EDQ self cast - rock armor with water resist thrown in, useful because I always forget that I'm standing in water and can't hit A to cast Haste...
• ARSE weapon cast and/or regular cast - Best. Mines. Ever.  Launches enemies high into the air, deals lots of damage, and freezes them so they take forever to get back up.  If you're trying to outmaneuver and outsmart a large-ish group, these will help tremendously, since you can basically keep an entire group at bay.  I don't recommend area casting mines since you don't get Teleport in this mission.  If you get hit by your own mines, make your first self-cast Fire, not Life.  Either that, or combine them.  You get one cast before you have to go through the slow recovery, you see.
• ASF spacebar - Good old Haste.  With the rock armor reducing your speed, you'll need it.  You don't get it until partway into the first area, head to the left at the first opportunity.
• QFDWFF spacebar - Napalm.  Great for taking out fortified positions, giants, etc.  Use of this is crucial to surviving the holdout at the end.

You might as well use the robes that come with the DLC, these grant you a gun that shoots three round bursts and the Patriot Staff, which has Liberty Grenades as its active ability.  Here's a hint: Liberty Grenades can set off your ARSE mines.

After you're no longer being rushed by enemies, head to the left and up a bit to claim the spellbook for Haste.  This will come in very handy for getting into and out of trouble.

You get Napalm a certain amount of time after the mission begins.  There isn't any other trigger for it other than passage of time.

Napalm always sets fire in a line perpendicular to the direction you're looking when you cast it.  Use this to your advantage.

The fortified position near the Haste spellbook has a heavy armor enemy.  All the heavy armor enemies carry the RPD gun.  Grab that.

There are enemies that become priority targets whenever they're nearby.  The guys with RPGs, the guys with mortars, and the giants.  These guys can kill you with considerably less effort than any of the other enemies you'll come across.  Fortunately, there's very few of each.

The first area contains an ammo building and a radio tower.  RPG guy at the ammo building, and two mortar guys at the radio tower.  Both can be Napalmed if you so desire.

The second area contains an ammo building, a radio tower, and the five prisoners.  Two RPG guys and one giant inside.  Giant near the well, one RPG guy near the exit, and the other near the side entrance.  Watch your fire near the prisoners.  There are barracks buildings dotted about that spawn enemies, destroying them predictably stops the enemies from spawning.  John will attack enemies if they're nearby once you free him, so either be prepared to follow him and heal him, or kill everything first.

The third area contains the military plans.  They're in a fortified area guarded by a giant and two mortar guys, with plenty of regular guys as well.  A well-placed Napalm can take out the giant, since he won't move if you don't fire at him.  When you leave, a group will attack that includes an RPG guy.  Just after that is the spellbook for Time Warp.  Grab it if you want, I've never found it to be all that useful.  It seems to slow me just as much as them...  I guess since it doesn't affect the speed at which you can conjure and cast spells, that alone makes it useful.  I dunno, I beat the mission without using it.

After getting the intelligence and Time Warp, the area opens up to a large clearing with a creek.  As soon as you cross the creek, Vlad will radio in, and the holdout begins.  At first it's just the small fries, but then the cavalry shows up.  Plenty of offscreen mortars, the occasional offscreen RPG, and one giant.  Give yourself breathing space with Napalm, and shoot away at anything that makes it through alive.  Once the giant is dead, it shouldn't be too much longer before the helicopter arrives to get you the hell out of there.

In multiplayer, you can get some diversity in your weapons.  Someone may want to partake in some friendly fire to get the M60 at the beginning, there's AK47s all over the place, and an RPG is fine too.  3000 damage a pop is worth the manual reload and long reload time...  Also, since you have multiple people and the death of a single player doesn't mean the end of the mission like it does in singleplayer, you have a bit more freedom to play around with using spells during the mission.  Especially because you'll need to heal.  A lot.

After you've beaten it, then all that's really left to do is complete it faster.  I'd imagine a group of four people could do it faster than singleplayer.  Though weirdly I did it faster in singleplayer than a two player LP I saw on YouTube...  Speaking of YouTube, searching "magicka vietnam speed run" doesn't actually return any speed runs of this mission...

Voxatron

Technically this game is still in alpha.  I have a copy because I donated for the Humble Voxatron Debut.

Voxatron is an arcade-style shooter where you move from room to room blasting bad guys and collecting powerups.  What sets it apart from its competition is that its graphics are made up of voxels.  Voxels, for the uninitiated, are volume pixels.  Basically, make a pixel a three dimensional object.  There you go.  To emphasize the voxelly goodness of the graphics, the environments are fully destructible.

There are three main modes of gameplay.

• Adventure - Takes around 1-2 hours to complete
• Arcade - Basically just a "hold out as long as you can against wave after wave of enemies" deal
• BBS Levels - Browse through and play user-made levels.  This provides the majority of your gameplay once you've beaten the adventure.  While browsing around, you can favorite levels you like so you can just go to your favorites list to find them later.  Levels can do all sorts of fun things, including changing the player model.

As the BBS Levels would suggest, there's a level editor.  I haven't used it, but from having played the main adventure and then a few user-made levels, it seems like it's powerful enough to be worth doing things in.

Now, we get to discuss the controls, and for this I have a little story.

In the beginning the controls were keyboard-only, and couldn't be configured.  You could face different directions and fire, but while you were holding fire, your aim was locked.  So basically to re-aim, you had to stop firing, look a different direction, and start firing again.  This was extremely unintuitive, and made the game unplayable for me.  However, since the game is still under development, an update was released that added keyboard+mouse controls and gamepad controls, as well as the ability to configure the controls any way you want.

In the control config, you can set buttons (or joystick axes, for the gamepad controls) to both move and fire in different directions.  Doing this basically un-cripples the controls and turns it into a twin stick shooter, and I highly recommend it.  The keyboard+mouse controls offer the same ability, you'll simply fire at wherever you're pointing with the mouse.

So it has mouse and gamepad support now, but one small thing is lacking.  You can't use your mouse or gamepad to navigate the menus.  For gamepads, a quick JoyToKey config solves this, but it really should be implemented into the game directly.  If you're making a JoyToKey config, you'll need to bind the arrow keys, Enter, and Escape to buttons.  For mice, I don't know of a solution unless you have a mouse with tons of extra buttons and a utility that lets you re-bind them per program.

I have no clue when the full game will be released, and I don't really feel like searching the internet to find the website for the game.  Google isn't that hard to use anyway.

In terms of how beefy of a computer you'll need to run the game, it seems like it's fairly light on resources.  I never ran into any lag or anything, and I built this computer in 2004.  If you're having issues, make sure that 2x Antialiasing is off (turning it off doubles the framerate for me), and set shadows to hard.  If all else fails, run it windowed.

Overall, it's a pretty fun and challenging game.  Once you've exhausted the main adventure, the BBS Levels are your friend, and there's a bunch of decent stuff up there.