2008 - The best year for gaming, ever.
Sunday, July 20, 2008, 11:01 PM - General
I've written a rundown of why 2008 has been the best year for gaming ever. So I could do a bit more formatting than my blog will allow, I've uploaded it here.
2008 - The best year for gaming, ever
Patching
Sunday, July 13, 2008, 04:45 AM - General
I've just been attempting to play a game I've had sitting in my stack of disks for a while now - Heroes of Might and Magic V.
Heres the thing... Ubisoft have not made this easy. At all. People constantly whine that PC gaming is so much more of a hassle than console gaming, and after an experience like this, I totally agree...
Ok, so here is my experience of patching and playing Heroes of Might and Magic V.
1. Inserted disk and installed the game.
2. Aware that there have been several patches with balance and crash fixes etc, I was eager to get these applied asap.
3. Go to official Might and Magic website
4. Download latest 1.5 EU patch (why do you we need a Direct Download, EU collectors retail and EU retail patch for each version?)
5. Attempt to install patch, it tells me I need to install 1.41 first. *sigh*
6. So I attempt to download the correct '1.4' patch out of the EIGHT possible 1.4 patches.
7. The official download link gives me a server error.
8. I bring out google, gamespot obliges with the patch.
9. I download it and attempt to install it. It tells me the game is not installed.
10. Oh look, how foolish of me, I've downloaded the US version of the patch - gamespot didn't label the file as being region specific.
11. Another quick google search and 3 different sites later I'm downloading the 1.41 patch
12. Attempt to install 1.41 patch, and it tells me I can't do this because 1.4 is not installed
13. Google for 1.4 EU patch (I'm not falling for that again)
14. 2 sites later I'm downloading the significantly larger 1.4 patch. 15 minutes later I have the file.
15. Install 1.4
16. Install 1.41
17. Install 1.5. Incidentally, all the patches are badly named. 1.5 actually has the filename 1.05, 1.4 -> 1.04 etc. CONFUSING!
18. Wait about 20s for the games copy protection to verify my disk (silently of course...)
19. Launch the game.
20. Create a new custom game (I've played some of the missions before), setting the difficulty to Easy (I'm a little rusty)
21. Notice that the game is taking several seconds on a turn based game per AI. I launched task manager just to check - no its not using my 4 cores, it's using one. Come on guys. Single threaded apps are /so/ last week.
22. Die within 4 turns.
23. Try again on a smaller map, doing better this time.
24. Vista BSODs.
25. I'm bored. Off to do something else.
There are two ways they could have made patching easier (in order of preference)
1. An auto patcher. Simply have an option on one of the menus to check for updates. The tool goes online, grabs the patches required and installs them, no user interaction required. Oh and at a decent speed please... It should also be noted that an auto patcher could also inform the user of new patches when you launch the game, if I was your typical gamer I would not be aware I even needed to patch it, and therefore miss out on all the extra hard work put in by the games developer.
2. Combined patches not just incremental patches. Incremental patches are all well and good if you are on top of them, but if you are new to the game, downloading 3-4 patches and installing them in a particular order is a nightmare, especially when the official site does not work properly.
While we are at it, the game has been out for about 2 years now, isn't it about time you patch the game to make it not need the CD to play. Come on, all the cool kids are doing it. CDs are ANNOYING, especially when it adds a long delay to start playing!
Anyway. Yes, who made 'Easy' 'Hard' all of a sudden. Easy is supposed to be Easy. As in Hard to die. Or does 'Easy' suddenly mean Easy to die? I must have missed that memo.
Something a little different
Sunday, April 8, 2007, 01:47 AM - General
So... long time no post.
Normally when I post nothing for a very long time it means I've had nothing to moan about. Isn't it customary for peoples' blogs to just be big rant fests, with no real aim but to get something off their chests? Well today I thought I'd try something a little different. I'm going to blog about what’s RIGHT with my life at the moment.
So.. as you all know, I started a job a few months ago, and to report back, its going a-ok! I must say that so far I'm absolutely loving it. Interesting projects, interesting and friendly people, and a lot of good fun.
Yes folks, working can be fun. Once I get over the 'ugh, its 8am, got to get out of bed' phase, I normally bounce into work without the aid of caffeine or other stimulants. I'm sure over time it will wear off and I'll become as old and cynical as my coworkers, but until then I'll bounce away.
Working at a games company is a lot like I expected in many ways, but not in others. So far I've not been required to put in any over time, despite getting to several deadlines since my arrival. This really surprised me. I had braced myself for long hours and unrealistic deadlines, but so far that has not been the case. I am aware that by writing this I have pretty much doomed myself and the rest of the team, but meh. The work
I've been doing has been varied and interesting, I am always up for a challenge and there have been plenty of them. I look forward to what our future projects may have in store for me. My first published title is due for release in May, so stay tuned!
In other news I've had a girlfriend since January! Rachael is a med student at Warwick and we are getting along great! Things seem to be getting pretty serious but we will see where things take us. She likes House, CSI, South Park, computer games and Chinese food, so we are pretty much sorted!
I've been learning to drive! I started learning before uni, but uni work got too much for me so I put it off, and have now been attempting to learn in the evenings after work and at weekends. It seems to be going pretty well, and I recently passed my theory test.
I apologise to those of you are waiting on me to complete some secondary projects - in particular icBell my windows bell ringing client. As you can probably tell from the above I've been pretty busy with the above, and that doesn't include the stuff below! Other projects include the as yet unnamed robot strategy game which needs the multiplayer bugs ironing out, and icLogic - which needs, well, a lot. There is also another one which I am keeping the lid on until I know what I plan to do with it, but rest assured its going to be cool! The good news though is that hopefully I will come up with some sort of strategy for getting all this stuff done over the next few months, hopefully without loosing any sleep or hair!
In gaming news, I managed to acquire a Wii before Christmas and have been quite enjoying the odd game of Wii Sports and Super Monkey Ball with friends. I've also got Zelda as well, but finding the time to get through it with everything else going on around me is tough. I've also got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to work my way through - which, after a tiff with its really really sh*te anti-'copy' protection, I've managed to actually play
and get into. The game is a bit rough around the edges but its proving to be quite fun so far. Potentially more on this later! I've also been getting into Evil Genius again. This relatively old strategy game kept me occupied a few years ago and has made a return because its relatively simple to play in short bursts, requires no real energy to play and is quite light-hearted fun.
I also treated myself to a new camera around Christmas time, a Canon EOS 400D. This has so far proved to be an absolute delight to use and I am seriously considering a set of lenses to go with it. Taking pictures of my baby cousin Zak is a lot of fun as he is turning out to be quite a little poser and seems to really enjoy being in front of a camera. I'll post some pictures at some point, but at the moment I'm far too busy trying to get them ready for printing.
Given I can't think of anything else to write about, I'll call it a day. Happy Easter to you all and I should hopefully post again in the next few months (Hey, I'm being realistic!).
Job!
Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 05:39 AM - General
I have a job!
On Monday I start work as a games programmer at FreeStyleGames in Leamington Spa.
I will be moving to Leam on Saturday, flat sharing with a jolly nice chap I met on a flat sharing website.
Gothic 3 Review
Monday, October 16, 2006, 06:46 PM - General
The new RPG game from Piranha Bytes, is it an instant classic or an instant flop?Gothic 3 is like all new RPG games, big open-space worlds, tons of quests and dozens of enemies. It has some interesting new features, very nice graphics and plenty of things for you to do. It does however have a few nasty bugs to watch out for that detracts from the game play quite a bit...
The game could be considered an Oblivion wannabe, boasting big open spaces to explore and no load times, being able to walk anywhere in the game without having to watch a load bar is certainly a nice feature, but unfortunately it isn’t quite as nicely implemented as that - when moving between some areas there is a noticeable period of lag where the game caches its new data. The game also takes a very long time to load and save, which would not normally be a problem if it were not for the other bugs.
I don’t know what Piranha Bytes did to test the game, or if they did at all, but it certainly doesn’t show. This game suffers from a MAJOR memory leak causing the game to crash out while saving after a few hours of game play. I have observed the game using over 1.6 GB of RAM, considering it started with about 800 MB, this is unacceptable. So to prevent you from losing considerable progress I find the best method is save very regularly and avoid using the quick save (which overwrites the existing save file BEFORE it finishes writing the new one, hence if it crashes you lose your previous quick save as well).
Again, I don’t know if anyone ever actually play tested this game. It is extremely unbalanced. When I began exploring the world a bit I bumped into a Troll. This beast, twice my size I thought would make absolute mince meat out of me. It didn’t. I managed to kill 3 of these giant beasts in a row without dying. This is fair enough; I was level 14 at the time. The problem is that there are other beasts in the game which are significantly more lethal that shouldn’t be so. The Wild Boar for example is an absolute killing machine. It has an extremely fast attack speed, so much so that if you get hit once it can keep you on the ground without you able to get up and even hit it once and be dead in seconds. The same can be said for wolves, blood flies and other things. Surely the wildlife that you bump into at the beginning of the game should not be this lethal, especially when you can take on much harder things. My best advice here is save often and if you see a wild boar, RUN!
My next gripe is the quest system. The game essentially gives you two maps, world maps which you acquire throughout your travels, and a world overview map. The overview map does not show your current position, which is annoying, but it would also be nice if there was a way to get map indicators for quest destinations. Yes it may be unrealistic, but having no clue where to go next is just frustrating.
Another interesting issue is the update system. A box pops up when you start the game with a link to a patch. I only just installed the patch and it wants me to download a patch file with the same name again. Is this a new patch that is badly named, or does the updater not have a clue what version I am running?
I’ve also noticed quite a few other UI bugs, just little things, but annoying enough. There are also a few bad design decisions in my opinion too. Take for example the experience system. It took me a very long time to work out I could visit the shrines to ask the gods to put experience into health, Mana, spells etc. There are no markers over some objects such as camp fires, shrines and other objects that indicate that you can interact with them. So you often only discover these things completely by accident. They need some kind of way of showing you can interact with them (although I later found out it is mentioned in the manual – who honestly reads these things?).
So enough talk about the bugs, what is the game actually like? Overall I like it. Having the ability to choose 3 different paths in the game is a nice touch, certainly better than a single rigid main quest line. It makes it feel like you are actually in control rather than being led through the game.
The game world is huge. Not quite as big as Oblivion’s, nor are there as many dungeons etc to explore, but it is certainly big enough. The quests are varied and interesting; they are not all killing things, which is nice. The respect system is good, although is a little unrealistic in that you don’t lose respect for killing the characters who gave you the respect after you finish the quest (or at least I haven’t observed this yet).
The combat system is ‘interesting’. It is a little complex, having 6 different ways to attack or block using a combination of left and right mouse buttons. Some people seem to dislike it, others like it. I would prefer a simpler system, but I don’t hate it so I won’t complain.
There is a very wide range of skills for you to learn, this can mean that you can go off and make a lot of money by making potions and forging swords, but unfortunately you do not get experience from this, you have to pay to have it taught to you. I would much prefer it if you learned from the things you did as well. Also on the note of potion making, I don’t know if I’m missing something, but finding ‘water’ you need to make potions is hard to come across. If you see a water barrel and have an empty bottle can you not fill and reuse it again?
The user interface is quite nice, the quick bar is quite a nice feature, although it keeps disappearing on me and I’m not sure why.
Verdict? It’s good. Not as good as Oblivion in my honest opinion, but with a possible 3 endings there is certainly a lot of replay ability here which Oblivion lacks. Once they fix the bugs it will definitely be worth your time if you enjoy RPGs.
I’ll give it 9 out of 10 assuming they fix the bugs.
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