If you don't feel like reading that it's basically a former mod talking about how the game is a scam. Which worked on me because asshole X convinced me to pay 50 fucking dollars for. Fuck.
As much as I want to rage about this there are plenty of other things to talk about. So why not League.
I've been playing a fuckton of League (of Legends) lately. Like an unhealthy amount. I went from level like 10 back in September to 30 at the beginning of November. Now I play ranked games and am at about 1300 ELO and I didn't even know the names of half the fucking champs 2 months ago.
My grades have dropped, I am in a sad state of living, but I cannot stop playing this goddamn game. I got a bunch of my friends hooked too so we might have enough to start our own ranked team.
I've logged at least 200 hours over the past 2 months. I metagame all day when I'm not playing. I watch streams, I test my own builds, I've watched all the champion spotlights. I don't even play like any other game anymore (although I just bought Terraria and that's a lot of fun).
My life is in shambles.
Maybe I'll start recording videos or something of my games. That's like the only thing I could do. I want to start streaming but it would be hard to find a viewer base without anyone knowing of the stream. Also I can't really see myself casting anything because I'll never pretend that I know more than other people about anything. So who knows, maybe YouTube is the goto.
Hmm.. Other than that... well in some recent news the latest Humble Bundle features a bunch of THQ games. Which is far from indie but I'm not gonna complain about getting Saint's Row 3, Darksiders, and Company of Heroes for under 6 bucks. Plus you can set it so that THQ doesn't get any of the money! BECAUSE FUCK YOU THQ, THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR MAKING A 50 CENT GAME.
But yeah, definitely check that out it's an amazing deal.
So I've started playing XCom, if you didn't already guess that.
I was a bit skeptical at first, in fact, I played through the tutorial when I first installed it a few weeks ago and then just stopped. Mainly because I started playing a lot of League of Legends because a bunch of my friends started playing it, but I cannot justify putting this game down for so long.
Ok, so, it starts out. And you're pretty much just thrown into battle after a short cutscene. That's when I learned this game was a turn-based strategy game. See I had never played the original XCom so I had no idea what I was getting into. ARCH3R told me it looked like an amazing game, and he's usually right about stuff like that, so I got it.
So after a few tutorial-esque introductory bullshit you get complete control of your base, and your soldiers, and your research projects.
Man. I was expecting some sort of futuristic Fire Emblem after the first battle, but this game is much more in depth than that. One thing I know a lot of people love about this game is the character creation, but I'll get to that in a sec.
First of all, I would like to say, I hate games that try to let you micro-manage too hard. Have you ever played Age of Empires 3? You know that "Home City" bullshit? Yeah that was fun for like 2 minutes. If I wanted to skill build I'd play a goddamn RPG for fucks sake.
But XCom... Oh god.. it's just not comparable to anything I've played.
Honestly, I know the game mechanics are nothing revolutionary, but just the game feel and everything is so well done. This is the first game where I've cared about my characters, whether or not I succeeded at missions, how my base looked. All this bullshit that doesn't even really make a difference to the actual gameplay. I was confused and aroused. It was magical
Ok, so I've got my base, I'm researching only weapons (because everything else is pointless amirite) and killing aliens. That's a pretty sweet combination if you ask me. It's like Civ5 meets Fire Emblem meets Gears of War. And they had a long discussion about starting a business together and what key business elements they could each bring to the business table.
Business.
Ok, character creation.
By far the best part of the game in my opinion. Not just because you can customize each individual member of you squad, and change their loadouts, and armour colour, and race (yeah you can actually change their race, it's hilarious), but because it makes you care about what happens to your team after you've created them. You've given them all defining features and names, and nicknames! You don't want to make these motherfuckers die! Then you'd have to make more!
So naturally, when I got a hold of this I created the dream team:
Biggie Smalls, Bubba Sparxxx, Daft Punk, and Michele Obama.
What could possibly go wrong?
I'll fucking tell you what, Bubba Sparxxx got ambushed and took a plasma shot to the face. And Dumbass Michele Obama missed a shot at pointblank range and got poisoned by a slenderman.
Slenderman is legit in this game, look at this shit.
Look at that lanky-ass motherfucker.
They refer to him in the game as "Thin Men". Are you kidding me? You could at least try to conceal the fact you're ripping the character off.
They actually freak the shit out of me though so well done.
So like I said, it's hard losing squadmates. I was actually upset when members of my main team died. I mean, I expected it, and I was careless, but still. There's even a little memorial page in the barracks of your base with the names of all the dead soldiers from your campaign. It's beautiful. I'm not very far in the game, but I can imagine they'll be a cutscene at the end where it'll show all those names. That would be hilarious.
I do have to say though, as enjoyable as it is, creating new soldiers is pretty tedious. I'll usually have like 2-3 custom ones on my team and then just fill up with randoms because I want to get back to playing the game.
Also I would like to say how the mission system is kind of bullshit. Once the story progresses the missions get harder and harder, makes sense right? But if a large chunk of your team dies, which has happened to me several times, it makes it near impossible to get through the missions with low level casuals named "Feng Seng". Seriously, who created the naming database for this shit?
Good game overall though, 2 thumbs up, probably like an 8.5/10 just because of the mission system and there were quite a few graphical flaws. Speaking of which, the graphics are nothing spectacular. I mean they're nice but I honestly expected a little better.
In other news. I hit summoner level 21 in League the other day. Almost ranked! Yay!
Also WarZ is getting better everyday, like they're actually patching it daily it's awesome. And it makes it easy to laugh at the people on reddit who said it was a scam.
The WarZ alpha launch was pretty interesting, I found out that streaming/recording anything from the alpha breaks the NDA for the game. So I didn't do any of those things, even though no one would have seen it. Once beta is up though you better believe we'll be posting some content.. I promise..
Let's start off with my absence from this blog. I haven't really been feeling in a blogging mood for quite some time, but I figured why not, I have things to complain about to the internet! While I never thought that something like the state of my internet could make me legitimately sad sometimes, it actually does. I think it's because basically my whole life I haven't really had a good stable fast internet connection, and when I was going to college last year I did, and it made me feel really good and then POOF moved to make money in a shitty place that uses satellite internet. Okay I'm done. Maybe I'll post later. Maybe. -A
So, haven't posted anything real.. I guess ever, this blog has just been bullshit since the beginning. However, something is actually happening now!
So this new game is coming out (well in alpha stage) on Monday October 15th called The WarZ
It's basically DayZ, but it's a standalone game, not a mod. And it's supposedly been in the works since before DayZ was a thing. I actually have no idea but that's what I was told. Go check out the forums there's a bunch of cool shit on there.
But anyway, A and I (huh, A and I.. AI.. that's kinda neat) both preordered this game with legend status. That means we get to play right when the alpha becomes live. So on Monday night, we will be streaming.
I've already set up a twitch account: twitch.tv/tikatee, and we tested it out a few days ago and it appeared to be working fine.
So be sure to tune in, let's say around 8PM Atlantic time for some zombie killing fun.
Of course no one reads this so I won't expect m(any) viewers.
As promised I'm making a little posty-post as a little bit better of an update.
Here are a couple pics of my parts and build, pre and post-op:
Other than a few minor hiccoughs, the build went pretty smoothly and is running great! I still can't get over how fast shit loads from my SSD!
In terms of gaming, like I said before playing a lot of different games just because I can, and spending too much money for games online...
Started playing League of Legends like I said, and I really want to get good at this game. I'm still very low level so not even close to getting ranked or anything like that. Hell I haven't even done any meta-gaming so I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing. I've mainly been playing Mid Twisted Fate which is hilariously fun because most of the people I play with/against have no idea what he can do. I've got a couple friends who are higher up who have been giving me League tips so hopefully once my school schedule calms down a bit I'll be able to get decent.
I should be playing more SC2, actually I haven't played it once on this computer yet. Maybe I've just got heavy ladder anxiety or something, I dunno. I guess we'll see how that goes.
My main priority currently is school unfortunately so I can't commit as much time to gaming as I'd like, but what can you do?
I can't remember if I mentioned this on here yet but I'm currently in my 2nd year of a Computer Science degree. So that's what I do... Maybe I'll start blogging about coding or shit that I do in that aspect...
Speaking of school I better get back to my assignments.
Okay so yeah, It's been like five-ever since I toasted so I thought I send out an update.
I'm tired as fuck right now and just remembered about this blog so I'm not actually doing a real post now, just a quick update.
My gaming computer is built (I named it Azazel <3) and I've been gaming like a motherfucker ever since, and spending more money than I actually have. I should not own a credit card.
But yeah, just finished my first play through of Borderlands 2. A ordered it but he's a nigger and is still up in Iqaluit so he hasn't gotten it yet, once he gets it I think we're gonna start playing together, I might even record it. Ain't that some shit.
Other than that... Playin some Diblow tree, Canter Stroke GO, I don't fuckin know, bought the latest humble bundle a few cool games in there. Started playing League of Legends and am starting to get decent with a few characters, probably gonna start playing SC2 again soon now that I can take a break from Bjordernalds.
But yeah, that's about it.
I'll post more later, like later in the week probably.
Yeah so, I'm still in Iqaluit, and I said I wasn't going to post until actual things started happening, but you know what? You fucking know what internet? Fuck you. I'm blogging anyway. Deal.
The main reason I wanted to write is because it's beginning to look like it's going to take a bit longer than I imagined to get my gaming rig set up. Mainly because of online stores being retarded.
Ok.
I'm going to tell you a story.
Here we go:
So, on Monday August 20th, 2012 I ordered my computer parts. I did this via 4 different sites for better pricing options, free shipping, etc. These sites were:
Amazon,
DirectCanada,
Newegg, and
NCIX
Now, since I'm living in Iqaluit, and I only actually got my credit card a few months ago (while in Iqaluit), I neglected to change my billing address on my credit card to my address down south. Unfortunately I submitted my downsouth address when ordering the parts because I wasn't thinking about it. I got a couple notifications about payment failure and realized my error, so I called up my bank and got my billing address changed. Then the fun begins.
Here's what happened with each site:
Amazon:
I don't know why, but for some reason Amazon accepted my incorrect billing information... This might be because I have successfully made purchases from Amazon using my credit card but it still seems a bit off to me.
Also, when I was ordering the part (I only ordered my processor via Amazon) it said something along the lines of "Ships within 1-3 business days" or something similar. When I checked my order status after putting it through though, it said, "Shipping soon, expected shipping date September 17th, expected arrival date September 20th".
The shit Amazon?
I'd say that's a bit longer than 1-4 business days.
Now, I love Amazon, and I'm pretty sure it's going to ship earlier than posted, it's just a bit annoying I guess. But if it does take until the end of September to get here I'm going to be a little pissed, even though there really isn't much I can do.
DirectCanada & Newegg:
I love Newegg, and I've never ordered from DirectCanada before, but my experience with them as of my current order is so far positive. I'm really bad at forming sentences, that just sounds retarded when I read it back to myself Jesus..
But yeah, after changing all my banking information I basically just resubmitted my orders and they went through fine, I'm expecting delivery from both of these sites early next week.
NCIX:
Fuck.
Ok so, same deal with DC and Newegg, they didn't accept my credit information, which is totally my fault and I can't be upset about. What I am upset about is how long it took to deal with this. Here's how it went:
I didn't have time to call them, and there is no way to manually resubmit your order so I put in a ticket with them with a little message basically saying, Hey I fucked up can you try it again now?
I got a reply the next day (because I sent in the request at night) saying they would try to revalidate my order
I got an oh so familiar email from them saying my credit information was incorrect.
Now, at this point I know for sure that my billing address was changed because I had already made successful transactions from 2 other sites. So I submitted another message in my ticket telling them this and to please try it again.
They tried again and failed (it's about 4 days after my other orders have gone through) and they told me "When we contact your bank they tell us the information is incorrect".
I called up my bank again and verified my billing address is exactly what I told them, and of course it is, with the exception of the rural route number (which is can be found from someone's street address, you don't even need this when you're mailing something to someone, and I never told my bank my rural route number, they found out what it was based on my street because you can fucking do that).
I asked my banking rep if the rural route number would affect an information verification and he said no (no shit). He asked who was trying to verify information with them, I said NCIX, and he said that they have no record of NCIX attempting to retreive my credit info...
A little pissed, I message back to NCIX telling them the rural route number, and they resubmitted my order.
The next day, it finally went through! My billing information was verified! Must have been the rural route number or some shit.
That night I received an email saying I required "Order verification". What does that even mean?
Basically they wanted to call my house and give me a PIN (they wrote it as pin number which almost killed me) which could be put into their site for verification. Only problem is I put my Mom's home phone number, down in Nova Scotia, because that's where I thought I would be if any problems came up.
So I emailed my Mom and ended up having her write down the PIN and email it to me, which I then submitted, and then the next day it was verified! (Still hasn't shipped yet)
As big of a hassle that this was, NCIX has pretty great customer service (online, I kept going in circles with the robot on the phone), the guy I submitted my ticket to also answered me same day unless I sent a message outside of business hours.
Other than that, not a very interesting post. I leave tomorrow and will be travelling for like a day and a bit so that will be fun.
I found this cool site: www.snesbox.com. It's a web based SNES emulated that runs on flash. You can create save states that you save to an account on their site so you can continue anywhere you find a browser. Also you can save and share walkthroughs which is pretty neat.
Also, something I wanted to bring up in the previous post but forgot to...
I am leaving this arctic desert on Saturday, which means I'll be back to civilization in less than a week!
I'm probably going to order my computer now so everything will be waiting for me when I get down there.
I'm moving into a house with some friends of mine and I they just moved in themselves so I think electricity and internet is already set up, although I can also picture myself walking into a dark and empty house with my friends huddled around a fire cooking meat on sticks and watching standard definition TV like animals.
Hopefully though, I'll be able to start gaming almost immediately when I get down there. This blog is about to get much more exciting folks!
Until then sit tight, I probably won't be posting anymore until I'm actually down there and set up.
Oh shit, look who's back. Well it's not fucking ARCH3R because he never posts. So welcome back to another episode of T ranting into a series of tubes (Part Φ)
So in theme with my previous post, I wanted to make note a small little update Blizzard announced for Diablo 3. I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative because I haven't really played the game enough to form an "End-Gamers Oppinion", but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna try.
So the "Paragon System" was announced earlier today, which isn't exciting as the word paragon should be, but I guess it's kinda cool? I dunno, it's kinda like prestige mode from COD, but then again it's not at all like prestige mode from COD.
Ok so, I loved the idea of prestige mode. What better way to make a player enjoy a game more than to send him back to the beginning of the game and tell him he's advancing?
Yknow, the more I think about it, Paragon System isn't at all like prestige mode.
It's meant to add endgame replay value I guess is the point I was trying to make (Now there's a fucked up sentence).
Ok I'm going to actually talk about what the Paragon System IS now so shut your dick.
In essence, once you hit level 60, you get to hit level 60 again up to 100 times. And each time you pseudo-ding out another level you get increased gold find and increased magic find.
Things I like about this idea:
Gives players a reason to keep playing the fucking game!
Gives players a sort of ranking system so they can compare their characters to others, which is meta gaming incentive in its own right.
It also does a lot to fix a few annoying ingame habits, like gear swapping, which is mentionned on the patch notes.
Things I DON'T like about this idea:
It makes the rich richer. I'll elaborate: The state of the game is currently, whoever has the best gear can farm the most and can therefore buy more of the best gear. Once this patch launches, those with the best gear will shoot ahead of everyone else just because they can. I'm not saying this lead will be substantial, hell I don't even know what it's like to be level 60, but I can't help but think that some people won't be able to keep up with others.
IT'S JUST MORE LEVEL GRINDING. This is really my only other point, but I feel like it's a big enough deal. If I wanted to find a way to make players want to keep playing my game, it would not be by making them run the game over and over again on the same difficulty, with nothing new, and nothing changing. You know what this is? This is MMORPG grinding, which would be fine... IF THIS WERE AN MMORPG. This is supposed to be an ACTION RPG Blizzard! Make it feel like one! ACTION implies excitement, twists and turns, or at least, something fun! For fuck's sake! The only reason right now to even get items is to sell them on the Auction House. What the actual fuck? I don't even... I can't do this anymore... Until this game gets PvP I just don't see the appeal, and I haven't even fucking finished the campaign yet.
So I'm back from Vancouver, was a blast, seen some shit, not actually gonna talk about it in this post so deal.
Apparently when I was gone I missed a few developments in the gaming community. So in this post I'm just going to put together a few things I thought were pretty cool.
First, obviously, has to be all the fucking Half Life 3 conspiracies. From promotional graphics on shit and that fuckin post from Gamescom about it being announced that was apparently a "mistake". Just like dropping those dev iPhone's in bars was a "mistake" huh? And there was that guy on Reddit who posted a bunch of pictures of possible concept art for HL3. Anyway, I'm not even gonna bother posting links to any of this shit because anyone reading this for whatever reason has undoubtedly heard about this, or can go fucking Google it.
Second! A new Heart of the Swarm Battle Report with Day[9] and that Blizzard Dev who's name I can't remember right now came out. Go youtube that shit. It looks pretty sick to me, I've been a fan of Starcraft for a long time and although I've never been particularily good at the game, the gameplay changes in HOTS looks more substantial than I imagined and should bring some exciting new twists to the game. Also the campaign will hopefully be awesome. Also the Brotoss look awesomely OP with Tempests and Mothership Cores now which is great.
Third, uh what else happened.. I had a whole list of shit in my head but I didn't write it down because this isn't fucking english class.
Uh, well Diablo 3 just became a casual's game. Following in the steps of WoW, D3 is now free to play up to the skeleton king / level 13. IMO, this was a huge mistake by Blizzard. I mean the game has only been out for like 3 months now (wow like 3 months exactly today, that's kinda cool) and it was already tailored to the masses with every mode except inferno. This is the kind of thing you might release with an expansion pack maybe a year down the road to try and bring in those people who skipped the game but might consider giving it a second chance. You don't do that shit 3 months in Blizzard! Everyone knows about the game still, it was pretty hard to miss you even had TV commercials! And you've had nothing but bad press about it! From dupers, and bots, and people losing money, and chinese gold farmers, and all that shit. What you should be focussing on is fixing these problems, listening to your current audience so you can better the game, and NOT trying to bring in more players. Jesus Christ, I never even really got a chance to play the game and I'm still unhappy with what it's becomming.
What else? Well you see that motherfuck at the top of this post? His badass motherfuckin ruby red cape? Those souless unforgiving eyes? You know this kid? So many feels if you do man, so many feels.
For those who don't, that's "The Kid" from the game "I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game"
This game, alongside cat mario (fuck cat mario), is one hard ass game. I spent a month of my life beating this game on fucking normal mode (AKA easy mode because it was the lowest difficulty) with a friend of mine. I still don't know why I did but it happened.
It's basically just a box full of rage that you try hard to impress so you can tell yourself you're good at things so you can sleep at night, also it was designed to rape your 'R' key.
I only found this game because I stumbled onto a TotalBiscuit video of him playing it. Please note I am not a fan of TotalBuscuit... He's not entertaining, he's not good at games, and his accent annoys the shit out of me (He kept pronouncing Gaiden like "Guy-Dan" and I wanted to shoot myself). I only found this in the related videos from a Nerd cubed video (This guy is pretty decent and he just hit 100,000 subs you should go check him out)
Wow this is a long post.
Bunch of other shit gaming related happened that I thought was cool but I don't really feel like writting about them.
Amnesia: China Town Wars showed some development stuff. TF2 Mann vs. Machine looks pretty cool, I feel like everyone is really excited about this but I've never really been into TF2, it just seems too casual. And yeah other stuff, but whatever I'm tired of this topic now.
So I'm leaving next Friday, to Vancouver in fact (if you couldn't fucking guess), the only place where people are extremely surprised when I say I'm half Asian. (Also the home of Hastings street, the sketchiest place in Canada).
I don't believe I've mentionned this to the blagosphere before, but I play badminton because I'm a huge faggot and, as I mentionned, half Asian. I like to believe I've gotten pretty good at it too. I've played competitively since around 2005 and have competed at events like the Arctic Winter Games, Canda Winter Games, and the Western Canada Summer Games. But I don't want this to be just some post about me bragging about my sport, OH WAIT THAT WAS EXACTLY MY INTENTION.
First off, let's clear something up. Badminton is one of the most intense sports a person can play. No shut the fuck up for a second I'm serious.
Badminton is the fastest racquet sport in existance. Period. But.. but what about ping po- NO. Fuck ping pong. Get the fuck out
Badminton is an extremely physically and mentally demanding sport. Let's compare badminton to tennis for a second. Tennis is more of a marathon than anything, and as much respect as I have for tennis players it's basically a waiting game of running back and forth. Badminton on the other hand feels like straight up sprinting for 30-60 minutes at a time. Full on bursts of speed in any direction at the same time you're trying to outsmart your opponent. It's pretty fucking intense
Now I don't know why, but badminton has never really become popular in North America for some reason. It's literally one of the most watched sports in most of Asia and Europe. But for some fucking reason it's not as popular as motherfucking tennis, that's fucking bullshit. Go look up some high level badminton games on the Youtube for a second and tell me that's not better than watching that fucking horse Serena Williams grunt on a field of grass for three hours. I would watch the shit out of badminton if is was on any sports network ever.
So yeah, I'm going to Vancouver to play badminton for about a week. Well actually less playing and more straight up training. I'll be working with one of Canada's best coaches, Calvin Holoboff, whom I actually feel really fucking lucky to have met. He's coached world class players all over the world. He coached Anna Rice the year she went to the Olympics, but no one is going to know who Anna Rice is because no one fucking knows badminton.
Oh and here's a fun fact: The world's fastest badminton smash is logged at 421Km/H, almost double the fastest recorded tennis serve. Fuck you tennis.
-T
Friday 6 July 2012
An android game console? Foolish you say?
I THINK NOT.
Look at it. LOOK AT IT.
A fully hackable and open gaming console being developed for TVs. $99 gets you the console that also comes with a full developers kit that allows you to create and publish your own games. As I've said the console will run a version of android and everything will be completely hackable.
The best part?
"Any developer will be able to publish games, and all games will be free to play."
Interesting indeed. We'll see how the Ouya stacks up to the big name next gen consoles Orbis, Durango, and Wii-U.
If you couldn't tell by my previous post, I'm a fan of PC gaming. Unfortunately, however, I haven't been able to play much, partly broke, partly Iqaluit, but that's all going to change in a few months!
I'm building a brand spankin' new gaming computer, and here's my build:
ASUS Z77 Motherboard
Intel I-7 3770k Ivy Bridge CPU
Zotac GTX 680 GPU
OCZ ModXTreme 700W PS
16Gb of Corsair Vengeance RAM
Standard 1TB HDD and Blu-Ray Drive
Also might throw in a soundcard depending on the type of audio setup I want.
So yeah, there it is. Very excited to actually be able to game, and more updates about games and such will be up on this blog once this beast is put together.
So here I am, lying half naked in my bed illuminated only by the subtle glow of my iPod touch...
I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.
So anyway, I was just playing Fallout New Vegas and I wasnt even done creating my character before the ps3 crashed, which gave me the idea:
WHY CONSOLES ARE FOR CASUALS AND PC GAMERS ARE THE MASTER RACE:
1: Cuztomization - All consoles are the same, you can't upgrade the disc drive, GPU, CPU, anything other than the hard drive.
PCs can not only be customized pre-purchase, but can also be upgraded post sale once new technology becomes available. This doesnt only mean hardware but looks too (which is equally important) This applies to all except those faggots who buy shit like Alienware laptops because laptop parts are balls and should never be given any thought.
(side note; the Razer Blade looks pretty sick)
2: Operating System - This pretty much speaks for itself, even windows crashes less that fucking playstation OS, I'm not even going to bother looking up what the neck beards over at Sony bother to call it
3: Games - I enjoy halo with the boys as much as the next guy. But this isn't a serious game, I don't care how many faggots say Halo 3 is the most competitive sport at MLG. You want a serious game? Go watch some Starcraft replays, you don't even need to play this shit to realize how huge it is. I might be biased towards Starcraft because I'm a bit of a Blizzard fanboy, but look at Counter Strike as an example shooter. I personally believe this is the most advanced shooter created to date, BF3 comes sorta close, the amount of skill and teamwork involved in REAL video games like this truly give gaming credit as a sport (until bots are involved).
4: Community - Whenever I play on Xbox live I'm either harassed by 12 year old obesity study potentials, or no one wants to interact with me in anyway whatsoever. I sometimes wonder why I even bought a headset. PC gaming is different (individual experiences may vary). When I play games on my computer I talk to teammates about strategy and gameplay, not my mothers dimensions. I'll have people compliment me on play style and ask for rematches and whatnot. Just to prove my point, find me one game on consoles where people "GG" after a match.
5: Mods - This could fall under either the "Games" or "Customization", or even "Community" sections, but I think it deserves more. Mods in games, something exclusive to PC gaming, is the beautiful offspring of powerful games and creative minds. Mods can enhance and even redefine gameplay for the right games. Added replayability means more bang for your buck for the games you buy. A perfect example of this is DayZ. I had never even heard of ARMA II before DayZ. Since he had the tools available, this man was able to create an epic zombie survival mod for a war simulation game. Completely different feel and mechanics from ARMA II, DayZ is pretty much it's own game.
Well that's all for today, my iPod is at 3% so I'm signing off.
And the reasons you'll never have to play another game in your LIFE.
A game that has garnered a LOT of attention is 0x10c, a space game imagined and currently being developed by the incredibly successful Minecraft creator and millionaire, Markus Persson, or Notch as he is better known.
A fully fledged imaginative space RPG. 0x10c takes place in a parallel universe to our own where Notch says space travel has become increasingly popular and feasible, if only enough for those with copious amounts of cash.
A bunch of techno mumbo jumbo about a deep sleep cell, big and little endian and a string of numbers like this: 0x0001 0000 0000 0000
It is now the year 281,474,976,712,644 AD. The first people have begun to emerge from deep sleep to find their universe in shambles. Red shift and massive black holes, oh my!
Now if that didn't get your attention then hopefully this will. Programmable computers on your completely customizable ship that lets you do basically whatever you want.
Can I write up a program that turns all lights in the ship into a disco party? Have at 'er!
How about a radar? Sonar? Targeting system?
The answer is yes.
Flavours
According to the picture above from Notch, we'll have three flavours of 0x10c.
Singleplayer, which will be a one time fee like any other video game you buy.
Multiplayer, which will be part of the game you buy for a one time fee. I'm not too sure on this but most sources indicate a LAN game and/or private server. How this will work I am unsure, as Notch has said all in-game ship computers will be emulated on a central server. What I believe will happen is save-states. Like private Minecraft servers, player save-states will be created with inventory, ship, on-board computer, etc all written into it.
Hyperplayer/Hyperverse, which in addition to buying the game will be a monthly fee. I have scoured Notch's IRC logs and I've come to the conclusion that he is undecided but will most likely implement a per generator (Engine, energy field, warp drive? The main source of energy for
your ship.) monthly fee. So if your ship has two of these energy sources you will pay double, is what I'm assuming since larger ships would need more sources of energy or a larger one, no?
Monthly cost: Unknown. I read in IRC logs that Notch was pondering on this, but that it would most likely be under $10.
After the fan-made 0x10c Trailer break you get to read my ramblings about the DCPU-16, Assembly language, Alliances, and other tasty features of 0x10c.
DCPU-16
I don't know shit! Too much Assembly and crazy technical specifications that make absolutely NO sense to me. If you want to understand this: DCPU-16 Specification learn assembly.
This is the boot screen for the (stock, I'm presuming) Nya Elektriska DCPU-16.
Nice, right? I love dat 8-bitness.
That's really all I have to say about that. It will be cool, no doubt, to have completely programmable computers in your ship but right now the task of learning Assembly is overwhelming.
Next!
Assembly language? Nope.
Alliances, Corporations, Gangs, Armadas
0x10c was asking for it so hard. Everyone wants to make a cool group that's better than the rest. Usually a game that is unreleased and yet to have a release date will not gather that many people to create fully fledged groups.
Well, 0x10c did.
With over SEVEN THOUSAND members and counting, a single forum, 0x10cforum.com has erupted into a thriving community for a still undeveloped game. There are already heated debates over territory, alliances, ships, you name it.
Recently, a forum member by the name of jecowa created a graphical overview of current alliances/groups and what organizations are part of each one. So for a quick glance at current Alliances:
A quick note, although Herobrine is comprised of a hundred members or more, it is a Singularity. Much like the Borg are one. Herobrine = Borg (Resistance is futile basically because his prime directive is to destroy anyone that refuses to join his singularity.)
Black Star Alliance comprises currently of 10 organizations, although I've recently found out that they're looking to merge the smaller ones into a single group under one name. The original organizations can continue to operate under their own name, but will be part of a larger group to simplify things and to maximize efficiency.
Independants include any independant organizations, groups, etc that do a myriad of tasks. My favourite is Freelance Runner, who will personally deliver cargo wherever you may need it. (For a fee, of course.)
Concord Alliance is a group of organizations that center around the lawful part of play-style. I also believe some of them support systems of Government, where the Black Star Alliance opposes them.
And PRTA is some Battlefield 2 project reality gay orgy that nobody cares about because they all suck each other's dicks. (Actually have no clue what or who these people are and their name is too boring for me to wonder.)
Tasty Features
For all other questions about 0x10c or features that may or may not be in the game, look no further than 0x10cforum.com
Go to the Discussion part of the forum and fill your boots.
Best game ever? We'll see if Notch includes everything to make it just that.
So since I haven't posted yet I decided I'd show you the speed at home. I have Xplornet which is satellite internet, and about as good as a 50 pound sack of shit rigged with C4 on your front step. Xplornet for the great white North I think is around $170 a month. (Not too sure on that, but around there.)
I'd like you to understand my pain. My deep, agonizing, stab-my-face-with-needles-dipped-in-acidpain.
Slower than 97% of Canada. 97%. And you must understand that 0.68Mb/s is on a good day, a very very good day (but not too sunny...) when you haven't even touched the internet for about 12 hours and it's ready and willing. (Sort of.)
Another thing, touching back on the good day I mentioned to have the highest speed possible. Too sunny? Nope. Sorry. Connection is completely lost. Too foggy? Cloudy? Raining at all, drizzling even? Imminent rain? Snow? And of course with rain and snow, wind, blizzards, etc You know, maybe it's just having an off day. (Every other day..) To give you an idea, it took me about 20 minutes to download a file of about 5mb earlier.
So this pretty much completely fucks our chances of trying any sort of gaming.
T has Northwestel which is equally balls. I don't have a cap, but he does. 15gb I believe. So yeah.
So I'm at work, casually browsing /r/gaming since I do exactly shit all at work, and it's got me thinking about all the new games coming out. X and I have been throwing ideas around about streaming/letsplaying some games and this summer would be a great time to start. Unfortunately were both stuck on motherfucking Iqaluit Northwestel Internet... Here's a preview of living in hell:
...dat upload speed...
Keeping in mind that this is on the government network which means our connections at home are actually worse than this... Not to mention the bandwidth cap.
So yeah, probably not a whole lot of gaming to be had while were here, but luckily were both moving far, far away come the end of the summer.
Until then this blog will probably just be filled with whatever random bullshit we can come up with.
Cheers
-T
