uppercase numbers

Things I Hate:

Invisible walls.  This is supposed to be a wide open game so why can’t I jump over certain walls or get close to others?

World layout bugs.  Objects through walls, trees floating several inches too high, etc.  These are all things that take away from being totally engrossed in the game.

Incredibly bad car physics.  You do A LOT of driving on this game but it feels so stiff and completely unfun.

Everyone is an enemy.  Surely this isn’t realistic.  Where are all the innocent people to kill?

Enemy respawns.  If you clear an area and go back to it a few minutes later it’s completely rebuilt and full of enemies.  Why not have a much slower respawn rate?

Repetitive audio.  The music is interesting but surely they could have more variety.  Enemy voice acting seems out of place with too many ‘white’ actors and repetitive.  Might as well use the Wilhelm scream.

Audio ESP.  I hate games that change the audio to indicate an enemy is near before I see them.  It’s like cheating.

Can only track one mission at a time.  This wouldn’t be so bad except that missions will randomly take you to opposite ends of the map.  This means a lot of boring driving or re-killing countless guard posts.

Enemy AI.  It’s passable but there are some real problems.  Enemies *always* go far cars it seems.  Kill the driver and the gunner goes to the driver seat.  Enemies are given amazing accuracy.  Shot gun headshot from a mile away.  Right.  They run around a lot which is good but if you fire a gun they’ll STOP and LET YOU shoot them.  Bleh.

Bugs. Game isn’t crashy which is GREAT.  EA could learn something from Ubisoft.  But certain missions don’t work correctly.

Saving.  On the PC after many full saves it now takes the game well over 4 minutes to actually pop open the save dialog.  And the Save Boxes in the game world which make sense on the console versions of this game don’t fit at all on the PC.

Things I Like:

Fire physics.

Gun unreliability and break downs.

Main character voice acting.

Weapon choices.  There is a lot of strategy in this game.

Varied terrain.

Diamond hunting.

I currently own an original Nintendo DS along with a DS Lite.  The problem with the DS you see is that it’s horribly uncomfortable for me to play.  I don’t know if its carpal tunnel or the design of the thing.  It and the GBA before it are awful devices to play RPGs on.

The GBA was kind enough to have the GameBoy Player for the GameCube however.  I don’t know if there will ever be such a thing for DS games.  It’s a question of input and dual screens.  It’s not something that’s so easily emulated on a single TV.  But I could certainly be done.

The DS has the third largest collection of JRPGs of any system.  It’s very close to the PS2 and PSX collections.  So if you’re a JRPG collector, you really want to buy many of these DS titles.  There are some especially good old school ones.  Many remakes and ports.  And it seems a shame really that these awesome games are stuck on a device I can hardly see and that gives me cramps after 30 minutes of playtime.

The PSP isn’t as problematic.  It’s comfortable, the screen is large, and it’s ultimately meant for people of an age greater than 12.  The PSP itself follows the PSX/PS2 lineage of having some great JRPGs but sadly doesn’t have the same level of market.  Sony’s close minded tactics with locking the device down has really limited the takeoff of the device.  I’m sure the head haunchos are blaming market segmentation or something else to that effect.  But no, it was simple old man bureaucracy and greed that made it a closed system and stunted it’s ‘cool factor’ potential.

The DS itself has about two dozen different devices that allow the thing to be hacked in all sorts of clever ways.  Heck, a friend gave me a broken M3 Simply.  If I ever bothered to try and make it work, I could easily go download any ROM I wanted and stick it on this flash cartridge and play it on the DS.  So instead of spending the $150/mo on DS games I probably won’t ever play because I can’t stand the DS, I could just save all the ROMs and emulate them on my PC.

But, I have a problem.  I have an addiction to collecting certain kinds of video games even if I can’t play them.  I’m cutting back little by little.  But I really needed that copy of Dragon Quest V and The Y’s I & II I swear!

One of the most popular projects I’ve ever done was building Star Fox 2 cartridges for the Super Nintendo.  As a kid I had seen the game in all sorts of magazines and even pre-ordered it.  It was never released though.  So 10 years later I decided to take matters in to my own hands and make my own cartridge.

Several versions of the Star Fox 2 ROMs do exist and people more knowledgable than I have done some minor bug fixes to the prerelease code and translated it in to English.  You can certainly play Star Fox 2 on most SNES emulators these days but the holy grail seems to be playing the ROM on actual hardware.

I wasn’t the first to do this so there is some information out there already.  I won’t go in to the details here but you basically need to burn the SF2 code to an EPROM and solder that ROM on to another donor cartridge such as Yoshi’s Island or Doom.  Something with a Super FX GSU-2 and some SRAM on it.

The soldering isn’t easy.  My first attempt was a total failure.  My second attempt worked but I pulled a trace while trying to overclock the cartridge.  The third cartridge I built works great and I’ve been a lot more gentle with it.  Third time is a charm I guess.

It was a neat little project that needed only a little research and a good 20w soldering iron.  I still get asked, several years later, about the project and if I can build carts for people.  I’m not really interested in doing this because it’s very time consuming and I would have to charge a lot.  But also the cartridges are fragile.

You’ll also notice that my carts, unlike the carts made by others, are built with a 40p socket and are generally bulky and unweildy.  Certainly not like the finished products of others.  This is because I wanted to maintain the ability to change ROMs out.  I may want a debugging ROM one day or a Japanese ROM the next.  Or I may just want to use the cart for any other 1Mbit ROM of my choosing.  So epoxying a permanent cart together isn’t my thing.  I don’t even have a pretty label.  There are better people to ask for this :)

I encourage you to try it yourself if you’re really interested in the hardware anyway.  Honestly, the game runs much faster on SNES9x than it does on real SNES hardware.  The best gameplay you can get is to get a USB to SNES controller adapter for $10 somewhere and play this on your PC.  Many attempts have been made at overclocking SF2 so that it runs better on the SNES.  I haven’t been very successful myself.

Ribbon cable is your friend when trying to deal with surface mount ICs.

Of course it works!  It’s just not very fun… StarFox 64 did it much better.  The open ended concept was way ahead of what the SNES could actually do with it’s pathetic CPU.

I’m still fighting my way through Fallout 3.  I’m plodding through the main story line with minimal interest.  The story is meh.  I find it more interesting to explode the area and fight gansters.  I’m happy to finally have power armor but it’s made the game MUCH too easy.  I wiped out the citadel with a mingun with only a moderate application of stimpaks.  This game suffers in the same way Oblivion did: it levels up much to fast.  There doesn’t seem to be a limit on how many heals you can use per fight.  This is different from Oblivion.  Also, they don’t count towards weight.  This means that if you use stimpaks you’ll never die even in the hardest fights with the hardest or most numerous enemies.  This is slightly more frustrating than your typical enemies hear through walls and floors crud.

A lot of stuff is stuck in there that just doesn’t make sense.  Rads are never an issue.  Why have them?  You never need to eat food so why have it?  I try to not use stimpaks to try and make things more difficult.  By waiting to use a bed or my home base to heal it’s a little more challenging.  The more I play this game, the more I realize that the game engine itself is just poorly balanced.  The perks idea is quite good but there doesn’t seem to be forced specialization.  Even at level 15 most of the critical stats in the game are leveled up.  You can nearly get 10s in every base stat I guess.

I’ve always wanted to get a gieger counter.  I’d probably never get to hear it click except for in self test mode.

I kind of want this game to be over with.  I’m kinda getting tired of playing it.  It’s taking up so much time.  Which is a good thing.  I just have many other things I want to do right now too.

Going from the Netgear PCMCIA 802.11N adapter to the DLink USB 802.11N adapter solved all my dropping issues.  I think the real issue might have been the Dell 600m doing something weird the the PCMCIA power during periods of slight inactivity.  I’m happier now though.

Fallout 3 continues to be awesome.

Wrath of the Lich King is interesting.  I haven’t seen any of the new level content.  But the 3.x patch changes a lot of little things in nice ways.  The Druid Feral spec gets some neat little improvements.  It’s interesting to have to learn some things over again.

Been playing Mirror’s Edge demo on the PS3.  This is because I still can’t get my Xbox360 to connect to my wireless network with WPA2.  They’re supposedly doing this major front end overhaul to the 360 but I haven’t heard if it will enable WPA2 support.  If they spend all that time bothering to overhaul things, but they can’t enable something as manditory as that well, then there is no hope.

But yeah, Mirror’s Edge.  What a wonderful new kind of game.  It sort of makes me think it’s some sort of love child between Prince of Persia and Portal.  The controls are pretty easy to master and the perspective movement can definitely induce some vomiting.  But against all odds I sort of like it.  I’m not sure I like it enough to pay for it.

I’m annoyed by the lack of a LittleBigPlanet demo on the PS3.  I might have bought that one if I could give it a shot first.  Xplay sure busts a chubby about it.  I did finally purchase Fallout 3 tonight over Steam.  It’s still cooking but I should get some weekend play out of it.  I’m sort of still itching to play Oblivion.  Hell.  I’d still like more GTA4.

I will most likely invest in some more WoW though.  Lich King will be out next week so I’ll definitely be playing WoW.  No harm in starting early since I’ll likely be bored otherwise this week.

Managed to make it to the local GameStop to pick up a copy of Warcraft Online.  Except they didn’t carry PC games.  They didn’t annoy me about pre-ordering or trade-ins or any other hyphenated aggrevation so I picked up a couple DS games and a PS3 DVD remote.  Circuit City had it in stock though.

I got a good handful of levels in to it and so far I’m really liking the game.  I feel compelled to at least keep playing it which is always a good thing.  Usually when I don’t like a game it’s subconscious.  It feels like a cross between WoW and EQ2.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  They stole the best ideas and they added their own unique ideas.

Game play aside I just wish it didn’t have all the same characters as WoW.  Perhaps WoW originally ripped off Warhammer.  Maybe they all just ripped off Tolkien.  Anyway, to pump several hundred hours in to something I’d really like to see a different environment than what I’ve already done.  If I’m disappointed by anything it’s the lack of atmosphere.  I found the WoW music enthralling when I first started playing it.  I’m just not connecting with WAR the same way.

Technically the game is sound.  It’s not plagued with bugs like Conan.  The graphics are good though a bit less than I was expecting.  At least I get super framerates at the highest settings.  Gameplay seems fun and the public quests are really interesting.  It’s nice to get the feeling of ‘epic battle’ right from the start.  PvP is great too.   I think a little more strategy heavy than in WoW which is good.  The level balancing is nice as well but at low levels it doesn’t account for the serious lack of spells.  Still a lowbie can hold his own and contribute.

I’d like to see more options in the GUI.  I really want an option to increase brightness. If there’s a concept of cities in this game I haven’t seen it yet.  I’m really excited to see what’s next.  But I’m only level 6 after today.  The first 6 levels went a lot slower than WoW but they were a lot less grindy as well.

More WiFI drama.  I kept getting drops, though I had moved the Router out of the ‘ideal’ spot since I had to reset it and reprogram it.  I had been setting MAC addresses but didn’t realize that by blocking MACs it blocked INTERNAL MACs.  Thought just the wireless ones.  So there was no administrating it after that.  Anyway, it’s back in the ideal spot now after a week of drops.  I also picked up the DLink Dual Band USB adapter at Circuit City.  The price was decent.  No drops so far, knock on plastic.

Still playing with my Vista install although I haven’t put as much time yet in to it as I would have liked.  There are some definite issues with this install.  First off, I’m having major sound issues.  Any 3d spatial sound seems REAL flakey.  My moving the camera I can hear or stop hearing certain sounds.  It sounds very obviously wrong and is a huge drawback to games.  This affects Crysis.  It also affected Bioshock until I enabled it’s EAX compliance.  Alchemy does nothing.  You can see here that I’ve been trying DX10 games.  The other issue is that the machine is a memory hog.  Vista sucks down memory like there’s no tomorrow and it makes 4G look very reasonable.

The list of supported DX10 games is very small.  Smaller than I thought really.  I have been able to notice some DX10 features.  Yeah, it looks a little better.  But the reduced framerates sorta mean I have to run with a bit less resolution.  Especially in STALKER Clear Sky.  I have 7 DX10 capable games as it stands.

The biggest frustration I’m feeling right now though is not being able to download Warhammer Online which means I need to run to the store tomorrow to get it.  Sure, you can download it from Direct2Drive but I hate IGN as a company after the billing nightmare I had with them a couple years ago.  They will not get my business.  The other issue with D2D is the inability to install the game as often as you want.  Steam is great.  It provides patches and updates.  It also allows you to install the game as often as you need on machines if you blow away the OS as I just did.  D2D makes you call their customer service department to reactivate a game after 1-2 installs.  This is retarded.  It can take over 24h for the reset to even happen.

Or, I’ll buy it at the store tomorrow for the same price and I can install it as many times as I want.  I suspect I won’t even need the DVD to play the game.

Also FYI, today I installed brake pads for the first time.  Big step for me :D

One of my biggest HATE right now goes to the PC gaming industry.  The whole EA thing about a limited number of installs on Spore made me not even consider buying Spore.  That, and well, the game just isn’t all that much fun to play apparently.

That’s not why I’m here.  I’m here because I actually purchase PC games.  I have valid keys.  I have original media.  And it is absolutely mind bogglingly STUPID that I have to insert my CD every time I want to play a game.

My desk is littered with game discs and although I have a massive set of binders to hold them all together, discs still get wear and scratches and I have several games that no longer work.

There is Alcohol 120% which is good but overpriced (that is, it costs money).  But Daemon Tools, this thing rocks.  I can make ISOs of my legit game CDs, store them on my HD, and then mount them with Daemon Tools so I can play the game without needing a CD.

Yes yes, this has been around for a long time.  So has GameCopyWorld.  Which is good in a pinch but hacked excecutables always make me a bit nervous.

This works moderately well and should save my brutalized Oblivion disc from making the Bethesda game even less stable.

So I did this ISO copy rigamaroll for TimeShift.  I’ve owned the game for a while now but finally had some time this weekend to play it.  Daemon Tools worked fine and I had an ISO that worked.  Then I patched TimeShift.

AND THE FUCKING ISO DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE ARRRGGHHH!!!!

Are you kidding me??  Sierra actually had the BALLS to PATCH the COPY PROTECTION???

Sure enough, it comes with an updated version of SecuRom which blacklists Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120% and I just can’t make it work.

See.  The reason this pisses me off so bad is that 5 seconds later I went to GameCopyWorld and downloaded a small patch that makes the game work.  In less than 30 minutes I could have downloaded the game from some BitTorrent site.  In no time at all I could have gotten this game illegitimately and would ultimately have a better experience with it. But since I’m a moron and I gave these cockholes my money, well, they get to make my life a little more miserable.

I could see the point of making your customers suffer if it really did a darn thing to deter people from stealing the game.  But it doesn’t work.  It just doesn’t.

So fuck you PC game distrubutors.  I’m sick of paying a lot of money for game media that is easily scratched and ruined and cd-keys that manage to get lost here and there.  I have a router that doesn’t crash on heavy BitTorrent traffic and I’m not afraid to use it.

Online authentication is the way to go.  The small percentage of people without internet connections are used to suffering and can probably do authentication once over the phone.  It’s not perfect, but you’re really only trying to stop the casual theifs.  Yanno, the highschool kids trading media.  Stoping piracy by crippling the media is a bad idea.  And don’t forget that optical media is DESIGNED to have a limited shelf life.  The music industry wants you to rebuy the same thing over and over again so they can make more money.  That’s why CDs are thinner and use softer polymers now than they used to.

End rant.

I am inspired.  I downloaded a copy of Breaking The Tower the other day and it’s great.  It’s very simple and strangely addictive in a cerebral kind of way.  The balance of different resources really drew me in.  Oh, I’m out of trees, why didn’t I plant some.  Now I’m out of food, etc.  The game is far from being full fledged.  This game could be fun with different objectives.  Building a big city isn’t necessary for the objective of breaking the tower but it’s fun trying to build a sustainable little village.  It’s fun to see how big the population can actually get.

So then an idea smashes me in the face.  A game idea.  And I rush to get my ideas down on scrabbly bits of paper.  And the idea I have is brilliant.  Definitely not Half Life or Spore or Katamari brilliant.  But maybe Populous brilliant.

It is, however, not simple.  It should be quite do able by a single person or a small group in a relatively short period of time.  However doing it *well* would make or break this game.  And I don’t know if I have the abilities.  I’ve never actually finished a game engine.  Ever.  I’ve had a lot of good starts.  Also, I’m barely a novice in Java, my language of choice.  And Java may not be the best software to use for this though it offers some libraries I’m very interested in.

My only hope is to get some of it done and then bring on some help.  But I have been meaning to find a java project to cut my teeth on.  So here’s hoping!

Now that I own all three current gen gaming systems I’ve been trying to decide which one is the best.  I’ve decided to break it down in to categories.

Games:  Wii

Really the most important category and also the easiest one to debate.  I have two dozen Wii games now and one and a half dozen Xbox360 games.  The Wii has far delivered by far the most on it’s franchise.  There’s a mario game, a metroid game, a smash bro’s, a mario party, a zelda, several RPGs, a paper mario, a sonic and a wario game.  And all of these are quite good.  Wii games also cost significantly less than most games around.  However, they also look significantly worse.

Backports: Wii

I would have given this to the PS3 except that the PS3 has pulled all PS2 support out of it’s newest models.  The Wii has a significant Gamecube library.  It’s not huge but it’s got some gems.  The Xbox360 has poor backwards compatibility.  Too bad PS3, the PS1 and PS2 libraries are not only huge, they’re also the best games.

Price: Wii

You really can’t beat the price of this thing.  The games are cheaper too.  I just wish the wii controllers were rechargeable.  The PS3 price problems were always over hyped and ultimately mine was a lot cheaper than the Xbox360.  Mine doesn’t have HD, HDMI, wireless, or a large HD like the PS3 has.  And I had to spend $100 on a wireless adapter.  I’d like to see the Xbox360 and PS3 in the $300 range but you do get a lot for your money here.

Availability: Xbox360

Your mileage may vary but there seems to always be plenty of these around in whatever flavor you’d like.  The Wii is still a little hard to find and with PS3 models changing all the time it can be very tough to find the one you want.

Graphics: Xbox360

The PS3 should be more powerful but games really seem to look better on the Xbox360.  It’s hard to say for exclusive titles though.  And this might come down to personal preference.  The games on either system are gorgeous.  The Wii on the other hand will be forced to LOOSE points for having such crappy graphics.  I know, I know, it’s supposed to be about the game play.  But all the games look the same, and look like they did on the Gamecube 5 years ago.  I think it will hurt the Wii longevity and the novelty of the wii controller may certainly wear off.

Network Play: PS3

The Wii looses points here for really, really bad user experience.  MarioKart and SmashBros had great internet play potential and both fail miserably in practice.  Live has been the long touted champion of online gaming.  And I like it, maybe even better than PC network play sometimes.  But having to pay for that?  Instant turn off.  Especially for MMORPGs where you need to pay for Live *and* the MMO service.  PS3 is free, it works seemlessly, it wins.

Multitasking: PS3

The Xbox360 can do streaming media but it excels on the PS3.  The interface is much easier to navigate.  Having the large storage available and full USB device support is also perfect.  My version has many different media slots and then there’s Blu-Ray.  If I haven’t been playing Soul Calibur I’ve been watching movies on this thing.  I’m really getting my moneys worth out of it.  For icing on the cake, using Remote Play on my PSP allows me to have most of this functionality while laying in bed or sitting at Starbucks.

Controllers: All

Everyone is paying attention.  I can’t pick a winner because each controller is quite good.  The Wiimote lacks a rechargable system which really hurts it but the novely makes up for it.  The system also takes Gamecube controllers still.  The Xbox360 controller fits my hands well, the triggers are excellent and it just feels great.  The PS3 controller keeps its classic design which is great.  The rumble is back.  The best thing though is that every controller is wireless and every controller can turn on and off the system.  This makes life so much better for me.

Games a la carte: N/A

This isn’t a feature I care about.  I don’t want to spend $10 to buy an old game for a new system.  Especially since I probably already have it.  You can get cute little third party games though but these can be very hit or miss.  Being able to demo these before buying would make a lot more sense.

Overall Winner: Meh

If you want a gaming machine, get a PC.  The Wii, the current market leader, has some nice games but mine has been off for a while now.  The library is still a little small and many of the games are starting to feel, or at least look, pretty similar.  Why isn’t there a good bowling game or sword fighting game for it?  The Xbox360 has a disgustingly small library even though it stole some 3rd party love from Sony.  GTA4 might be the killer app for either big system.  Next gen titles seem to be very short or very unfun.  But they look great!  There are some good ones here or there but nothing worth the hefty pricetag.

After being on the market this long I’d expect a much better fleshed out library and a lot more exclusive or original titles for all of the systems.  They all seem to be doing the same thing the Gamecube library did.  An okay game once in a while isn’t really okay.

If you’re going to buy a system though it should be the Wii.  It’s the only system without inflated prices.

How I have spent my long weekend:

1.) Playing with the PS3 that did, in fact, show up from the Ebay seller.  I got a TVersity server to stream movies, pictures, mp3s, etc to my PS3 and it works quite well.  Remote Play on the PSP is also amazing.  I can watch movies stored on my file server from anywhere in the house on my PSP.  I can even play my PSX games over the network.  That’s hawtness.

2.) The video card, a shitty GeForce 5200 AGP, blew in the above mentioned file server.  I was planning on eventually putting the spare GeFroce 6200 PCI card I had laying around in to the cube anyway so this sort of spurred me on.

3.) Cleaning the computer room.  Even though I just moved it managed to get horribly disorganized again very quickily.  I’m going to need to organize some of the storage a little better.  My new room is quite large but I still moved too much in to it so now it seems very cramped.  Same with the bedroom so I installed some shelves in there.

4.) FF3 :3

Folding@Home has gotten more interesting lately with PS3 and GPU clients.  DCSig continues to be vastly ignored by me due to lack of time.  That’s unfortunate because interest has picked up lately.  At this time I’m still unaware of anyone doing anything as complete in terms of dynamic signature image generation for F@H but I can’t imagine why.  It doesn’t take much effort at all.

I noticed today that Stanford offers data in a few new flat text file formats (more info here).  This provides me a beautiful way to do team threat/overtake without parsing data for every team.  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do that feature.  It may also replace my need to parse the dynamic pages.

But Stanford continues to haunt me in the following way.  Why, oh why, can’t they generate static stat files every few hours for *every* team with *every* bit of information they have on the dynamic pages?  The team text files only work for the top 1500 teams and even then there may be text pages with ancient data.  I have to reflect on the dynamic pages just to ensure the data is current.

Work on the next version of DCSig has been at a standstill for a while in the midst of my moving and gaming lust.  However, my $151 monthly server bill continues to inspire me to release the next version so I can operate with much less hardware.  Not to mention that it should be a better system overall.

I guess honestly though my heart just isn’t in it right now.  I code PHP and JS all day at work and I come home and I just don’t have the energy for it.  Also my free time is so precious it’s hard to put effort in to something for which I get very little thanks.  It’s not the kind of site that looks very interesting on my resume and there’s no real future for it financially or career wise.  It was a project I cut my PHP/MySQL teeth on but now I’m thinking Java is where I should be focused.  Or Python.  Or something else.

Perhaps releasing an entirely new version is too ambitious.  Perhaps I should backport some of my recent work in to the old code and just stabilize it so it can continue to run on smaller servers with less problems but just as is.  I don’t want to see it die altogether, I just don’t think I want to put a lot of extra time in to it.  My thoughts on this change from day to day.

Still no sign of my PS3.  Or the deposit check return from my old landlord.  Been playing plenty of FF6 lately, the PS Anthology version.  It really runs so much better on the SNES.  Unfortunately the SNES model 2 I ordered fails to work as I tested it tonight.  I should have plugged the damn thing in the day I got it in the mail.  Now I’m stuck with a dead SNESv2 and maybe I’ll be able to fix it myself and maybe I won’t.  If I’m lucky it just doesn’t like my universal A/V cable.  Why on earth doesn’t it have a power LED?

A certain someone who shall remain nameless dropped one of my Xbox360 controllers on the ground the other day. This caused the Y and B buttons to sink in to the controller so that they were really problematic to use. What a shitty controller design.

Anyway. I went to take the thing apart tonight and noticed that the Torx TH8 bits are the security version! Torx bits (the star shaped ones) aren’t all that uncommon and I happen to have a couple sets of tools for them. Only one set has the smaller TH8 size. Unfortunately the darn Xbox360 versions have a small stud in the center of the screw head which prevents a normal Torx bit from working.

Checking prices online reveals that one can get a special ‘Xbox360 screwdriver bit’ for something like $15. I’m poor and impatient. So I whipped out the cordless drill and a 5/64 titanium drill bit. Turns out that little tiny stud is very fragile and just by drilling it a little it will usually snap off. Yes you do damage the threads a little this way BUT you don’t need a lot of the drill. I got 5 of the 7 screws out of the controller this way.

Unfortunately the two screws on the very bottom are in recesses deeper than my Torx bit will go. I could have done the Bic pen lighter melted plastic trick to form my own longer bit. But the drill was handy so I just drilled the darn screws right out. Popped the casing off, pushed the circuit board holding the buttons back in to position, and screwed it back together minus two.

I think it’s fine missing the two bottom screws. It’s plenty solid. I could always glue it in a pinch, or better yet, go to the store and get 7 Phillips head screws to replace the Torx. I’m kind of lazy though. I wish I had a better selection of machine screws available at home though.

I went ahead and ordered a PS3 as a little post-moving treat for myself. They were sort of hard to come by online. I guess some older models are getting cleared out. I ended up ordering from Sony’s own site. Their cart doesn’t work with FireFox which is just appalling. But they had an 80G PS3 for $399 with a $15 discount when purchased with Soul Caliber IV and a second controller. That’s not bad at all.

I was excited and happy up until a couple minutes ago when I found out that the new PS3s have *no* PS2 backwards compatibility. The slightly older ones have software emulation.

SO! I can canceled my order and checked out Ebay. After checking out Wikipedia I learned that the old 20g and 60g models have hardware PS2 support. The 60g, apart from having a larger HD, also has built in 802.11g wifi and extra media card support. Oh and a chrome package which makes it look like an old Atari 7800. And the cost? Same as the new 80g I would have gotten. Sure it’s a little used but what can you do.

The reason I wanted to buy the PS3 in the first place was to play PS2 games. I have a huge PS2 library and a PS2 which is a bit past it’s prime. It died on me once but it started mysteriously working after I took it apart. Still it’s days may be numbered. I wouldn’t mind a BluRay player now that it won the format war. I have a PSP and there are some interconnectivity benefits. I don’t have an HDTV yet but that’s easily remedied in the future. And of course there are a few games I want that are PS3 exclusive. Ratchet & Clank, Disgaea 3, several JRPGs, etc.

My first computer was the Atari 800XL.  My dad brought it home sometime in 83-84 with a couple generic carts.  I still have the 800XL but I usually run the 130XE these days for no apparent reason.  The 130XE is essentially the same 8-bit wonder as the 800XL with double the RAM and the custom Freddie chip to do memory bank swapping.  I’m not sure I know anything that uses the extra features but it is the best Atari 8-bit ever made so why not give it some love too?

The 800XL was the best selling Atari 8-bit computer.  But I could easily argue that they’re also the greatest Atari gaming machines ever made.  The game processing power of the 800XL was only overshadowed by the Atari 7800.  But Atari was dead as a gaming giant by the time the 7800 was ever released so there are few games that took advantage of the extra power.  The Atari 5200 was closer to the 800XL (like the Colecovision) but was plagued by bad design and terrible joysticks (unlike the Colecovision).  I’m still looking to purchase my own 5200 to finish out my Atari collection so I don’t have first hand experience with it.  As for the Atari 2600/VCS?  Sure it’s the most loved best selling Atari but I always went back to the 800XL.  Many of the 2600 games made it to the 8-bit line anyway.  Also arcade ports to the 800XL such a Pac Man were great on the Atari.  And of course there were plenty of custom 8-bit apps as well as ports from other systems on this line.  Everything just seemed to culminate around these 8-bit computers.

Star Raiders was the Atari 8-bit killer app. Yeah, I have it for the 2600 as well and it even came with a custom controller since you really need some extra buttons.  But the experience on the 800XL is 100x better.  Which is why I had to order a copy on Ebay today.  While I had something like 12-16 carts back 20 years ago they’ve all vanished on me.  I guess I have to buy back my childhood as usual.  Star Raiders holds up pretty well on the retro gaming scene.  It’s no Elite but considering it came out in 1979, five years earlier, it’s a technical masterpiece of 6502 engineering.

Apart from cartridge gaming you could also hook an Atari 1050 disk drive up or two and load up a ton of, well, ripped off games.  I have a collection of a couple hundred floppies with 4-8 games/apps each which I picked up from somewhere.  It was an awesome experience to get to play with all these different games while your typical 2600 owner had a few dozen carts max.

That was then.  This is now.  I have the SIO2PC and the Atari Ape software which pretty much lets my little Dell laptop work as a native Atari peripheral.  The games load 100x faster than they ever did from the 1050 drives.  Also I probably have the entire Atari library of stuff downloaded from the internet so I get to try things I never had access to as a kid.  The reason I actually got this thing though is so I could download some of my old programs and work from the Atari to my PC so I can keep them.  Those old Atari floppies are rotting and degrading and fairly difficult to replace.   Not that the hardware is going to last forever either.

I wish I had one of their 128-in-1 ROM carts though.  They’re a bit costly but I’ll grab one someday.  It’d save a lot of wiring and just let me keep the Atari hooked up to the TV instead of having all the drives and their power bricks and the SIO2PC and the Dell all working together to play a darn game.  Sometimes I think it might just be easier to hook up an Atari joystick or two to a PC.  Emulation is near perfect for these old machines.

I did buy an upgrade chip for one of my 1050 drives anyway.  My original drive has a double-density chip in it already but the other drive is stock.  So I got a chip for it that does the double-density as well as enhance the IO speed.  An interesting thing I learned today is that MS-DOS floppies are sort of based on the Atari DOS format.  Wiggy.

I can’t end this post without discussing the C64.  The Commodore won the 8-bit computing war back in the day and went on to become the Amiga.  I daresay it had more games than the Atari 8-bit.  I still have a C64/128 on my wish list and I really only got to play with them in grade school.  The 800XL came out after the C64 and is technically superior in the graphics department.  It’s got a faster 6502 under the hood and runs a bunch of C64 ports better than Commodore ever could.   I said the Atari 8-bits were the best Atari gaming machine but it’s possible that the C64 is the best 8-bit gaming machine of all time.  I must find out.

I’m still digging Mabinogi.

My time has been eaten up with Mabinogi these past few days.  It’s a free online MMORPG and you can’t beat the price.  I guess this game has been a big hit in Asia for a while but was released in the states as an open-beta on 3/6/2008.  These are the same guys who do Mapletown though I never got in to it.

The game is clearly a work in progress.  Very little of the cool things you see in the Asian versions have been activated here yet.   But there’s more than enough to keep you busy in the mean time.  I guess technically you need to compare this game more to something like Ragnarok online rather than WoW.  Warcraft does set the bar quite high.

I’m level 18 tonight and I’m feeling a bit frustrated with it honestly.  I seem to be out of any major quests to do.  At least any that I’m supposed to start before level 20.  I may just be missing something.  Going from 18 to 20 with part time jobs is going to be a huge grind.  I suppose I can run Ciar dungeon again but that gets expensive with the potions for me.

Overall impressions are that this game is worth trying.  It has serious potential especially given the videos I’ve seen in Asia.  I’m not sure I know how much is missing from the beta version right now.  It would be nice to see some more varied races and areas.  Oh and enemies.  This game is never going to be a WoW just due to the sheer size of WoW.  But it’s a cute little respite.

For a beta the technical problems are few and far between.  There are some lag issues especially when trying to use the Bash attack.  Starting the game up gives me a non-descriptive blank white screen for several minutes.  Connecting USB devices, or in my case using a USB KVM, while in this game causes the USB devices to not respond at all.  In fact the game loves to completely eradicate kb/mouse on a whim while trying to start up or shut down the game.  Windowed mode works okay while in the game.

Fighting is interesting and strategic in a nice sort of way.  Movement is a nightmare.  They really need WASD support because this mouse click to move stuff is aggravating on these tight complex maps especially when you need to run from town to town.  The auto-walk checkpoints-in-map system gizmo is handy though and I wish WoW had that.

Give it a shot.  It’s free.  Or at least check it out in 3-6 months when it’s got more to offer.

I have been collecting various games here and there on the internet that end up in this Games folder I have.  Things that always looked interesting yet I never got around to installing.  I tried a couple tonight to pass the time.  Narbacular Drop is the precursor to Portal.  It’s mostly a great idea wrapped inside of an amateur game designers and coders tangle of code.  I didn’t bother getting past the first level.  Not because it’s bad but because they don’t give me an option to invert the mouse.  I must be one of the few fools who needs an inverse mouse.  I don’t know.  It’s very well done for what essentially boils down to a game made by students.  I’m jealous.  i suppose Gabe Newell was a little as well which is why he bought it.  This idea wouldn’t have gone very far without Valve to perfect it.

Mythos beta is very beta.  They utterly ripped off World of Warcraft.  Only it’s not that nice.  I’ll hold judgment until they release and I suspect they could do good things with this.  It feels very much like Diablo and WoW made a pretty baby.  I didn’t play very much of it because, again, the interface annoyed me.  I guess GUI stuff is always left until last, and in some cases isn’t dealt with at all *cough* UT3 *cough*.

This also made me think about PC software, and how every piece of software I install forces me to go through and change 50-80% of all the default settings.  Am I just stubborn?  Do I use everything that differently?  Windows is the worst and I can generally get by just toggling every single option they have to the inverse value.  It’s things like this which make me question my very soul from time to time.

I picked up the new Crystal Chronicles today.  It seems to get rid of a lot of the stupid things that plagued the original Cube title.  Most importantly the cost of buying between 1-4 Gameboys to use as controllers (but hey you could always use them for Four Swords as well right?).  It’s a DS game which means I’ll barely be able to play it until they come out with a damn DS player attachment for the Cube or DS.  What I’m really waiting for is Crisis Core.  Also a complete shame it’s stuck on the PSP although RPGs on the PSP are much easier to read and deal with in general.  AND!  I do have the PSP to TV cable.  Now if I only had a progressive scan TV that the cable worked with, I’d be set.  It turns out that this dumb $30 cable is only good for displaying UMD videos and memory stick photos on your standard non-HD television.  To play games you need progressive scan.  This seems like the biggest dumb thing ever to me but I suppose that interlacing hardware costs extra money or something?  I can’t afford a new TV (or can I hmm…) but perhaps there’s some device around that can convert a progressive scan signal in to an interlaced signal.

0.) Check to see if your brand of *nix has an RPM or DEB that you can just run and install. If you can do something as simple as yum install or apt-get then this tutorial isn’t for you.

1.) Download UT Dedicated Server from some webserver to your Linux box of choice. I recommend finding one with the latest patch. Note that you will likely have problems finding a download link that works well with wget but lynx worked for me in a pinch. Expect it to be about 900M.

1a.) You may need to install compat-libstdc++ if your server doesn’t already have it. When you go to run Unreal, it will certainly complain about any missing dependencies.
2.) Create a new user to run unreal under with adduser and passwd, or just install it as yourself if you’d like assuming you’re not root. You’ll probably want to make an unreal/ directory somewhere as well.

3.) Move your UT server zip file to your unreal folder and unzip it.

4.) Now is an excellent time to create an unreal.sh script. It should cd in to the System path for Unreal and call the ucc-bin file with the options of your choice. Here’s mine:

cd ut2k4/System
./ucc-bin server DM-Antalus?game=XGame.xDeathMatch ini=UT2004-ln.ini log=UT2004.log -nohomedir &

This starts the server off on the Antalus map in DeathMatch mode. It’s using my custom UT2004 script. I find that the start up settings aren’t too important as you’ll do most of the configuration through the webadmin or map voting.

Be sure to chmod u+x your unreal.sh file!

5.) Try to start your Unreal server by running ./unreal.sh. Hopefully you won’t have any dependency problems.  This script will run the Unreal server in the background.  I’m not sure how to have it start as an actual service at this time.

6.) Once you have a working server it’s time to start messing with the UT2004.ini file, or whatever .ini file you’re calling from your unreal.sh. This is a link to a handy ini file generator. It’s not perfect and I did a diff between the original and the generated one to find any new things that were missing. Don’t worry too much about editing map entries and such from in here. You can do that with the web admin.

7.) Make sure you open port 7777 UDP and port 8080 TCP, or whatever port numbers you prefer, in your firewall. If you need to figure out iptables, don’t ask me. I just used Fedora’s handy little ’setup’ program to add some firewall entries.

8.) You can connect to your Unreal webserver, assuming you left it enabled in your .ini file, by going to http://ip-or-host-of-unrealserver:8080/and logging in with Admin / Admin. Case is important here. Be sure to change your Admin password later from the webadmin interface.

You can edit nearly all of the UT settings you’d ever need here, just be sure to look around in here before resorting to an .ini change. You will certainly want to add all the maps you want for gametype rotations. You can adjust bot settings here as well as mutators.

9.) I highly recommend you enable map voting. This doesn’t seem to be a default so here is what you’ll need to add to your .ini file. Remember to restart your server to make sure these changes take effect.

[xVoting.xVotingHandler]
VoteTimeLimit=70
ScoreBoardDelay=5
bAutoOpen=True
MidGameVotePercent=50
bScoreMode=False
bAccumulationMode=False
bEliminationMode=False
MinMapCount=2
MapVoteHistoryType=xVoting.MapVoteHistory_INI
RepeatLimit=4
DefaultGameConfig=0
bDefaultToCurrentGameType=True
bMapVote=False
bKickVote=False
bMatchSetup=False
KickPercent=51
bAnonymousKicking=True
MapListLoaderType=xVoting.DefaultMapListLoader
ServerNumber=1
CurrentGameConfig=0
VoteTimeLimit=60
ScoreBoardDelay=3
bAutoOpen=True
MidGameVotePercent=50
bScoreMode=False
bAccumulationMode=False
bEliminationMode=False
MinMapCount=2
MapVoteHistoryType=xVoting.MapVoteHistory_INI
RepeatLimit=4
DefaultGameConfig=0
bDefaultToCurrentGameType=True
bMapVote=True
bKickVote=False
bMatchSetup=False
KickPercent=51
bAnonymousKicking=True
MapListLoaderType=xVoting.DefaultMapListLoader
ServerNumber=1
CurrentGameConfig=3
GameConfig=(GameClass="Onslaught.ONSOnslaughtGame",Prefix="ONS",Acronym="ONS",GameName="Onslaught",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass=,Prefix=,Acronym=,GameName=,Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="XGame.xDeathMatch",Prefix="DM",Acronym="DM",GameName="DeathMatch",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="XGame.xCTFGame",Prefix="CTF",Acronym="CTF",GameName="Capture the Flag",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="XGame.xTeamGame",Prefix="TDM",Acronym="TDM",GameName="Team DeathMatch",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="Onslaught.ONSOnslaughtGame",Prefix="ONS",Acronym="ONS",GameName="Onslaught",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="UT2k4Assault.ASGameInfo",Prefix="AS",Acronym="AS",GameName="Assault",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="XGame.xBombingRun",Prefix="BR",Acronym="BR",GameName="Bombing Run",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="XGame.xDoubleDom",Prefix="DD",Acronym="DD",GameName="Double Domination",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="XGame.InstagibCTF",Prefix="iCTF",Acronym="iCTF",GameName="Instagib CTF",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="SkaarjPack.Invasion",Prefix="INV",Acronym="INV",GameName="Invasion",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="BonusPack.xLastManStandingGame",Prefix="LMS",Acronym="LMS",GameName="Last Man Standing",Mutators=,Options=)
GameConfig=(GameClass="BonusPack.xMutantGame",Prefix="MU",Acronym="MU",GameName="Mutant",Mutators=,Options=)

10.) Adding maps, mutators, and other game play elements is as easy as just copying the appropriate files over to the unreal server directories, just like you would for your Unreal client.

I’ve been behind in blogging. I do have some new toys to review. Even a couple games. But alas time is always against me. So I will summarize.

Sennheiser PC166 gaming headset:

Well padded on-the-ear model. Sub $100 and worth every penny. Quite linear sound response for lightweight headphones. They’re good enough that any headsets I buy in the future will be Sennheiser and not Koss. Bass response is quite terrible but really tense and dramatic mids and highs. No distortion at any volume levels. I haven’t bothered trying the USB soundcard, opting instead to use my X-Fi directly. Extra long cable and the inline volume control is great. On/Off button for the mic is also a necessity. Push to talk would have been even better but the mic functions extremely directionally and has been good to not pick up keyboard noises or my screaming child. The only thing I regret about these is the lack of any sound canceling.

Western Digital 1TB Caviar GP:

Still plugging away in RAID5 with no issues. As I mentioned before I’m really impressed with how quiet and cool these drives run. Only a 3 year warranty and still that looming RAID failure issue. Slow drives at 5400RPM and small cache. I’d never recommend these for an OS drive but throw some data on here for sure. They’ll also make great USB caddy drives. I have three and might go to a fourth before summer especially at their low low price.

Highpoint RocketRaid 1740:

A ‘cheap’ ‘hardware’ SATA RAID5 solution. Highpoint has come a long way since their cheap on-board days. I haven’t had any issues with it and performance is good. It seems to be okay with the Caviars. The time will tell on this purchase since recovering/rebuilding arrays, or keeping them intact in the first place, is the true virtue of any controller. Got my fingers crossed. Anyway the software is robust and supports all sorts of advanced features like online capacity expansion.

Thermaltake Silver River DUO External HDD Enclosure:

I ordered four of these to house my old 250GB drives that got swapped out of the file server. Why talk about something as mundane as a USB enclosure? I spent a lot of time trying to decide on the right enclosures. I looked for decent heat handling, reliable power bricks, drive compatibility, overall stability and price. There are a lot of enclosures to be had under $30 or even $25. I decided to spend $35 on these because they seem to have the best reputation. They support PATA and SATA drives and seem to have no capacity limits that I can tell. They worked with all the various drives I plugged in. The cases are solid and transfer heat extremely well. The cables and power switch feel sturdy and safe. I think they look not bad either. I think these cases will last me a long time to come.

Linksys NSLU2:

What else to plug USB hard drives in to than a little USB drive capable NAS! At sub-$100 it’s a steal I think. There’s even an underground Linux/Hacking community for it. Sort of reminds me of the WRT54G. I haven’t hacked mine yet. I haven’t torn off the little resistor that ‘overclocks’ it’s brain. From what I hear, new units come with that little resistor missing anyway. I’m using it as a backup solution for my file server. With my four old 250GB drives I can now backup up to 1TB of important data. The speed of this thing is not great. Linux could fix this from what I hear. The speed is not as bad as some people report. I think I can move about 5-10G per hour to it. Not bad for a backup which from that point on will be incremental. I wouldn’t want to use it as a main file server though. My biggest complaint about this thing is that it only supports two USB drives at once unless you install Linux (and even then picking the right USB2.0 hub can be tricky). This isn’t a huge let down since I can simply swap USB cables to access the other two 250GB drives. Once my weekly backups are done I just turn everything off so no wasted power or fear of power spikes destroying family photos. And maybe if theres some disaster that strikes this house, knocking on wood so this doesn’t happen, I can run to the living room and grab the drives to save some data. I wouldn’t dare try to carry my file server out to safety in an emergency. This is a DIRT cheap solution if you look at other NAS solutions which cost 2-3x as much and don’t perform much better. I still recommend a dedicated old PC for this kind of work.

But wait, there’s more! I did LCD monitor research this weekend. The wife wanted an LCD so it seemed like a good idea to give her my Samsung 204B and pick up a little birthday gift for myself. There are a lot of choices out there. I finally decided on the NEC 2470WNX. It’s a 24″ S-PVA panel, all the inputs you could want and rave reviews for the most part.

I didn’t actually buy it. Not for $700+ I didn’t. As much as I would like 1920×120, brilliat contrast, well balanced color saturation, and decent viewing angles I settled for the well weathered Samsung 226BW. This may be the defacto standard gaming LCD of 2007. It’s a 22″ TN panel. This means really fast refresh rates (2ms GTG) and poor color rendering. It should be a slight upgrade over the 204B for me.

Why am I so eager to part with the Samsung 204B anyway? It’s not that I think it has a bad picture at all. After dealing with the 30″ Dell at work and my 15″ Dell notebook at home I’m used to crummy TN panels. The 204B was an upgrade from the Sony E400 19″ CRT so it made my life instantly better. It’s a 20″ 5ms GTG panel. Never have any ghosting issues in games. I’ve had two problems with it. The first is a ’stuck’ pixel in the lower right of the monitor. It’s bright cyan in color and only visible in fast moving scenes or on any dark static screen. I can’t see it right now on this white colored window. It hardly bothers me. The bigger issue is the DVI bugs with my Nvidia video cards. Apparently this is a known issue with certain makes of 204B panels. The video will completely blank out, come back, blank out, etc at random intervals while gaming. Maybe every 5-10 minutes it will power cycle a few times. HORRIBLE. It’s apparently a serviceable issue and I will send it to Samsung for warranty work as soon as my replacement gets here. VGA mode works fine, but blurry. The blurry can actually be GOOD for helping to make game edges look less harsh but it’s horrible for plain old text rendering. The wife will be upgrading from the 19″ Sony and will be thrilled with ANY LCD since she doesn’t seem to be picky with anything visual.