1-2 – All Letters
Thursday, January 4th, 2007– Commentary –
Craig: This page marks the start of the story proper. It’s a night in late November of 2004. I keep track of the time that passes from page to page so that I can draw the weather in the background correctly.
J.D.: And how scruffy certain characters get over time. 🙂
Craig: I spent a lot of time thinking about the name of the college. Although we don’t get into it too much at this part of the story, the community of Covenant Hill (for which the college is named) lies within the borders of the city of Springfield.
J.D.: I love the fact that the first thing you see on the first page of the first chapter is another reference to a contract of sorts. “Covenant.”
Craig: The computer lab is actually named for a real computer lab at Messiah College, where J.D. and I both attended. As a computer science major, I spent a lot of my time in Room 144. That room was a bit bigger than the one in the comic.
J.D.: Yeah, I had plenty of room to sleep under the tables in there when you were finishing up term projects.
Craig: I remember one in particular where I worked through the night and didn’t finish until 7 in the morning, just before the class where I had to present the project!
J.D.: Yeah. I waited for you to be ready to take me on the date we had planned that night, if you recall. That’s how I fell asleep under the table. Public Safety had to step over me to tell you guys to leave.
Craig: Although gaming was prohibited in the lab, there was nonetheless a lot of Doom played after hours. This was back when Doom I was brand-new and we played it pretty much non-stop. Gads, I’m dating myself. That must have been, oh, 1994.
J.D.: Yep. But we should probably comment on the strip itself. At some point.
Craig: We are! In a roundabout way. Anyway, like in our room 144, this room 144 is also home to much gaming under the signs that say “No Gaming.” 🙂
J.D.: I wanted to introduce Kate and mention how she wasn’t a character we originally planned to have in the story at all.
Craig: That’s right. I remember when I was writing the scripts to these pages I realized that Lucky needed to have someone to talk to. Unlike Leon, who maintains a running monologue even when there’s no one around to hear him. 🙂
J.D.: I love Kate. She’s such a beautiful character, and I don’t just mean physically. She’s such a great friend for Lucky. She has all the things that Lucky doesn’t. She’s very forthright and confident.
Craig: Kate’s comment that she started the game but didn’t know what to do is a common complaint from people who I recommend Angband to. Angband has a very steep learning curve.
J.D.: Anyone want to guess how Mythband got on the lab computer?
January 4th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Was that a rhetorical question? No one else answered, but my guess would be the obvious one of Leon, lol.
January 4th, 2007 at 7:44 am
When you ask the question like that, Leon seems indeed the answer. But when I first read that strip, I thought that it’s the maintainer who installs the program, as a plan to draw more people into it.
I like how you can see the screen in the last panel, and the fact that Open Office is installed there. Do universities really use it as a replacement for MS-Office?
January 4th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
YAY it’s Lucky and Kate! I love Penance!
Why is it that my friends react the same why as Kate when I show them Angband? =p
January 6th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Lackluster: Yes, some universities do use OpenOffice, for some examples see this list: http://marketing.openoffice.org/education/univs/