Rufi-Gaming

Affiliation

2008-10-11T16:38:00.002+11:00

Although I have been a Play-Asia affiliate pretty much since I first made my account and my first purchase, I haven't really used it at all. But now I'm going to try =D.

If you've got a keen eye you will have noticed that the fancy things to the right of this page have been reordered and have had some things added. One of those things is my Play-Asia Affiliate link.

What does that mean for you?

Well, if you're interested in importing games, Play-Asia is a good place to do that, and all I'm doing is guiding you there (I also get a commission ;D).

Oh and today I managed to complete all the Burning/Midnight Rides of the Burnout Paradise Bikes Pack. The bikes are so cool xD.

I'm out.

Long Time No Post

2008-10-10T17:15:00.004+11:00

Very long time. Ok so it has been about a month, so it's not that long, but it's still kinda long.

I sat my last exam this morning; Discrete Structures. I am now officially done until University kicks in again next year. This means I get a sweet-as 4-or-so month holiday in which to kick back, chill, and relax. Fuck yeah.

I've made a lot of headway in Guitar Hero. From my initial fumblings when I first picked it up on Wii around a year ago to now having it on 360 and tearing shit up. Although I'm nowhere near being one of the top players (hell, I'm barely in the top TEN THOUSAND (10000) players) I am a whole lot better than I was circa 2007. Now I can actually pull off some of those ridiculous solos which I would normally had to have Star Powered through, and it feels nice being good at it. Which makes sense because I've never been good at a game I didn't like =p.

So now Guitar Hero: World Tour is due out next month, with Rock Band a few days beforehand. If RB pops up for cheap then I might snag the standalone game. My fear is that the GHWT instruments, much like the RB2 instruments, will be less-than-compatible with the original RB. But so what? I don't mind just playing through the guitar, bass, and possibly voice (o_O;;) careers, and if RB2 ever comes down under, well, then I can export all of RB anyway xD.

One of my more recent purchases, however, is MegaMan 9. What do I have to say about it? Fuck you, MegaMan, that's what. I still haven't beat mother fucking Concrete Man's stage. A lot of the bosses from the MegaMan X games are cake. MegaMan ZX, too. But this MegaMan 9. It's ridiculous. So incredibly ridiculous. But I love it. And someday (probably a year from now >_>) I will beat it. But until then...

I also like Beat'n Groovy, which is just a stupidly American version of Konami's Pop'n Music. It's cool, but a bit awkward playing with the controller, and apparently the higher difficulties have been left out, so I've given it a miss for now. BoomBoom Rocket at least gave me a bit of a run for my money, but this new game seems very stripped down. But what can you do? Actually I might try pick it up on PSX (old PlayStation).

Ok that's it for now. I've been up since some time before 6am and it doesn't feel good.

Rufi out.

I, Guitar Hero

2008-09-14T22:30:00.003+10:00

So this weekend has been fairly relaxed. I chilled out. Had way to much cordial. Even burnt some pancakes. But now, after close to a year of playing, I did it.

I beat Guitar Hero III. I beat it on Expert. What the fuck is up?

Know what else? I beat mother fucking Dragonforce, bitches. Through the Fire and Flames. COMPLETE.

Not to mention that I also managed to beat all of the Dragonforce DLC songs.

Guitar Hero II, III, and Aerosmith have got to be my favourite games on the 360. I can't wait for Guitar Hero: World Tour, and if Rockband ever decides to show up on our shores, I'll be getting that as well =D.

I AM OUT!

ps: I rock (at games).

Sweet Child of Mine...

2008-09-14T09:44:00.003+10:00

Well, not really. You see, this blog is more of illegitimate bastard child that I sold to some street vendor so that I might afford some crumpets and tea. I like tea. What can I say?

However I am now thinking of attempting to possibly kind of try and almost revitalise this withered husk of what one might consider my former glory. For almost all of this year I've been in school. And it's not that the work is hard and taxing, but the lifestyle is, and when you're away for the better part of everyday it takes it's toll and you slowly forget to post and all that jazz.

Now I want to start posting again. Or at least try.

I was thinking that once I get my Diploma in a month's time that I could start talking about pretty much whatever I do. Play a game, whatever, and then Blog the experience. I know it sounds obvious, but it's hard to do when you have a bitch of a timetable for school.

I may also attempt to pop up some more YouTube videos of stuff. Especially since I'm in the Beta test for Lich King, and I also just beat Guitar Hero III on Expert (it only took a year).

So let this be my resurrection of this god awful thingy-majiggy and hope that it gets better from here on out! ... OK!

Rufati out!

More on GTA

2008-05-30T11:51:00.004+10:00

It has been a long time since I posted and I will have to keep this brief because I have a pile of University work I need to get done.

But an article over at Gamasutra has really enforced my view that the people that we (the consumers) trust to critically review games aren't even able to do that anymore. And for what? To be the first person out the door screaming "GTA is super"? I don't know when it happened, nor do I really care after having disregarded review scores for a long time now, but something happened to change reviewers. Really change them. From being top notch journalists with the ability to be objective and critical, to something out of a current affairs program.

Funny to think that Yahtzee, of Zero Punctuation fame, might be the only honest voice out there at the moment. As over the top as he might be, he is also more than willing to point out all the faults of a game (and sometimes its strengths), and never pigeonholes any game into a particular rating slot.

Now I've got to get back to work, but I will be back harder, stronger, faster, whatever, in about 2 weeks time when my semester is done, with impressions games that I've had in depth play sessions of.

Cheers.

side note: My attempt at submitting a news article to PALGN was a failed one D:

GTA (Hero) IV

2008-05-10T15:21:00.002+10:00

Yes I'm doing it. I'm going to talk about the oh so ever hyped up ultra game that is, GTA4.

Just to get the main point out of the way:

The game is good. Great, in fact. One of the better games of this generation, and of 2008.

But best game ever? Hell fucking no. Deserving of a perfect score? Yeah, on a cold day in hell.

The only other game I can recall getting a perfect 10 from something like IGN.com would have to be The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and I'd say that game is more deserving of that score.

Why, you say? That game showed how a franchise could evolve from the real of 2D into 3D and do it well. Obscenely well. Other games that, while they may not have gotten perfect scores, also made that change very well. Like the Super Mario franchise, Metal Gear Solid and Ninja Gaiden among others. All these franchises are fairly old, but their re-inventions were superb.

GTA4 doesn't bring anything new to the table. It doesn't even really refine elements that were in past games. Its controls are decent, albeit clunky at times. The AI of NPCs is dodgy, very dodgy, and that's a shame when you consider that this is the first game to utilise the Euphoria engine. Citizens of Liberty City make little to no effort to run away from you as your car hurtles toward them. Compare this to Crackdown, where mowing down pedestrians is hard, and doing the same to enemies is a chore (those mo'fo's know how to duck and weave).

The only things that GTA4 brings that set it apart from other games are its superb voice acting, and cinematic presentation. Mass Effect had a go at doing a similar thing, and whilst it was good, GTA blows it out of the water. From the opening movie, complete with credits, to every bloody cut scene in the game. They're all well animated, scripted and voiced. It is awesome, without a doubt. That isn't to say that there are flaws in the graphics, but for all artistic intents and purposes, GTA is a 5/5 in that department. However with a bunch of graphical flaws that plague most of the game, I feel as though the technical aspect of the graphics is lowly rated in my books. From clipping issues, visibly loading textures, very visible pop-in, and so on. I just can't see how the graphics, rated as a WHOLE, would get a 10/10. A 7 or 8, sure, but 10 is exaggeration at its best.

In short, I now feel as though most review sites are corrupt, with their review scores based on either video game hype, pressure from readers, or pressure from sponsors. I would blame them if they were struggling to make ends meet in their everyday lives. But given their success, no one should have to bow down to any pressure.

This is why I haven't cared about review scores in such a long time.

YouTube?

2008-04-23T07:21:00.002+10:00

More like YouAreADickTube.

Seriously, where do all these people come from? America probably.

All of my YouTube video comments are either hateful and insulting, or nice and full of praise. I know I've put up mostly WoW videos, but honestly, is there not a single male out there aged 15-25 with even the slightest bit of intelligence?

When most of your hits are coming from America, probably fucking not.

Xbox LIVE Wishlist

2008-04-13T19:18:00.002+10:00

If I could make any suggestions about ways to improve Xbox LIVE, the following two things would be the biggest and most helpful/effective changes.

You see, as I write this I'm attempting to find a ranked online match in PGR4, and I can tell you that it is an obscenely long process at times. Just now I was able to find a quick match after a few minutes of patience, but honestly, I shouldn't have to be waiting a few minutes for every game I want to join. If each one was a championship length series of races, then yes, waiting a few minutes for something that might take 30-minutes to an hour might be worth it. But for a few laps around one track and then ending it, a few minutes is a lot of overhead.

I've had similar problems in finding ranked matches for Gears Of War, where a friend of mine usually hosts a game, and I try to join it. We normally make Annex-type games (which are kind of rare, so it's easier to find his game) but 100% of the time it doesn't appear in the list. That's right, I've never participated in a ranked match with one of my own friends. The whole thing is impeded by 1) not allowing invites in ranked matches of Gears Of War (I'm not sure what other games follow suit) and 2) what looks like a poor implementation of the matchmaking or server set-up system.

There are two words that can solve the number one problem or having trouble finding games, or people hosting games without a decent connection, or even people hosting games for the sake of host advantage.

Dedicated Servers.

I can not, for the life of me, tell you why LIVE (or 360 games in general) allow for dedicated servers. From the all-powerful World Of Warcraft, to the humble days of StarCraft, Diablo, and the battle.net service. Why, now, is it okay for the user to be their own host? Yes some of us have good connections, but there are people who won't. The only games I ever play in that aren't destroyed by latency are ones hosted by my friend Robio on his adsl2+ with 1Mbit upload, or games hosted by me. Even ping indicators are broken in most games. Having started playing Vegas2, I was greeted into many games with green three-bar'd ping indications, but suffered what felt like pings in excess of 300-500ms -maybe more. Whereas if I want to play a game of TF2, I can hop on Steam and have the choice of hosting my own server, or joining a dedicated server.

Woe is me.

And the next problem is determining who on Earth (literally) is playing what game at any given time. Maybe if I threw a friend invite to every second person I played a game with I wouldn't have any trouble finding someone to play with, but I don't want to do that. Why is it that I can read statistics telling me what the top ten games played on Xbox LIVE are, but I can't go anywhere to see those numbers for myself (if there is such a place, tell me, I want to see it). As a member of MyGamerCard.net, I can see a list that's updated every 5 minutes of who is playing what. This is list is barely a few pages long, and not indicative of the entirety of LIVE players. CoD4 does it with it's list of game-types, letting you know how many players are actually playing CoD4 online games, and how many are playing in the currently highlighted game mode.

Where is this feature for the rest of Xbox LIVE?

Honestly, if I could hop onto LIVE, check out who is playing what, and decide on what I want to play. I might have an hour to play some games, and while I've been writing this entry, PGR4 has been ticking away trying to find me a match. It has probably been 15 or so minutes now if not more, and still no game has been found. So I don't want to spend 25-50% of my game time looking for a match to get into. And when I do get into a game, I want it to be reliable. With dedicated servers, quitting or disconnecting could just be counted as a loss against that player, so that any winning streaks get broken so you can't just hax your way to getting achievements or good ratios. That and you won't get kicked by a bad host.

I know that I praise LIVE for how good it is, however it still has its flaws. They seem to be minor at first, but then they start to add up after a while.

In short: LIVE is good. Great when compared to PSN and Nintendo WFC. The best of the 3, in fact. However that isn't saying much, because Nintendo WFC is fairly crap, and PSN is a less feature packed LIVE. So although it is number one, it didn't have to work hard to get there. I might check later to see if there is some kind of feature suggestion thing, or something similar, so that I can attempt to suggest these things in the same way that I suggested ideas to YouTube.

I'm done for tonight.

Ikaruga? That's what your mum said last night!

2008-04-13T13:28:00.005+10:00

Well I'm glad you had fun with my mother playing some Xbox LVE Arcade games. That sure was nice of you.

If you don't already know, Ikaruga was released onto the Marketplace this past week to the oh-so-wonderful tune of 800 MS points. For the unknowing, that is about $12AUD compared to the grotesque sound of something like $90-100 for it at retail on the beloved Gamecube as can be seen below.

It disgusts me, too.

The reason I'm pointing out the savings of getting this gem on the LIVE that is Xbox is because it is a gem. As far as 2D Shoot 'em Ups (Shmups) go, this is one of the best ever made. I'd say that the reason for this would be that it is a stock standard shooter up to a point, and then tacks on something obscenely cool to mix it all up. Let me explain:

In your standard shooter you pilot some kind of land- or aircraft. Your job is to be a one-an army against a more-than-one-man army which involves dodging any number of bullets, enemy ships, and obstacles on the path to glory. Typically, you'll have either a life-bar of some sort, or a less forgiving one-hit one-kill situation (it's how coin-operated games make their money). Your craft has one or more weapons and to even things out you will generally have at least 1 field leveling (literally) super weapon. In Heavy Weapon it's your nuke, Geometry Wars has that bomb thing and Ikaruga has fancy homing laser things.

One thing changes the way this game does the Shmup genre. That thing is polarity.

Your ship can alternate between light and dark polarities. The enemies in the game are either light or dark and as such they sure bullets of that same polarity. How does this change things, exactly? Well, your ship can actually absorb bullets of the same polarity as you. So if you are dark, and shooting at dark enemies who are shooting back at you then you are practically invincible. Get hit by a light shot, however, and it's R.I.P. for you. The downside to this is that shooting enemies with the same polarity only does normal damage. Dark enemies are weak against light polarity bullets. They do double damage, in fact. So now it's a matter of playing to be an efficient and risky killer, or a slowly but safely kinda thing. Then, for those people looking to get into the high-end of playing the game, there is a combo chaining system.

This system isn't just a matter of pewpew'ing your way through a stage and getting an uber score. It's much harder than that. In order to increase your chain by one you need to kill 3 of the same polarity enemies in a row. You can take as long as you like to get the 3, but your chain won't go up until you pop the third one in a row. Kill two lights then a dark, and your entire chain resets. It may sound easy, but amidst the torrential downpour (at times) of bullets it is difficult to maintain a chain.

If you like 2D shooters at all, then you will love Ikaruga's gameplay. With humble beginnings about 7 years ago on the Dreamcast, then moving on to the Gamecube. That same game is here on Xbox LIVE for a much nicer price and you'd be hard pressed to find anything else as good and cheap.

But now, on to slightly less important things about the game.

The graphics are as good as they were back in the day, maybe even better. From what I understand, the graphics were re-done or optimised or something to that effect for LIVE, but that is inconsequential. The game runs perfectly, and the only slowdown you will ever experience is when the boss of a stage explodes and disappears. But where there are 30 or 40 or more enemies on screen and bullets flying everywhere, the game doesn't even flinch.

I believe my friend Robio best described the music of the game when he said it was "epic," and I agree. The music never intrudes on the game, it's only really overpowering at all the right times. Even if you find yourself failing on a stage over and over, that music will never get old. I should know, Robio and I tried some co-op the night we got it, and fail a lot we did, but the music was always awesome no matter how many times we heard it.

And there is not much more I can say. Given the fact that it is 7 years old and was initially released on a (great) console that would ultimately be doomed to failure, this is a great game. It shows what can be achieved when you take a stock-standard genre, and apply innovative new features to it. That's not to say that every game should feature a polarity system. But that if you have something that you could add to make it more interesting, then go for it (if you can do it well).

I don't really like giving games a score. If you like the genre, then you will most definitely like this game. If you don't, then you may not like it. The only sure way to tell is to go and download the trial version of it, have a go, and see for yourself.

It is 1337.

WTB GH Backward Compat -_-

2008-03-09T20:34:00.002+11:00

If that doesn't make any sense to you then you probably haven't played WoW, Guitar Hero, or used Xbox Live. But what it does mean is that I'd like to buy some Guitar Hero backwards compatibility...

Whilst GH2 is a lot easier than 3, and I really mean a lot. To let you know just how much, I beat every song in it. On Hard. Without ever re-trying. In part 3, well, let's just say it's a lot harder. But I digress.

What I'd like exactly would be to import all of the stuff from GH2 into GH3. To play all those songs on the GH3 engine. This is because the hammer-on/pull-off system in GH2 is very different to 3. You have to tap each fret as if you were going to be strumming along with it - you can't just hold down the fret and wait like you can in 3. After having played the bulk of GH3, and then returning to finish off some GH2, I really felt the difference between the two.

But it'd be so simple to do. Just download the note charts and audio onto the hard drive. Then migrate those into the format that is used in GH3 (if it is any different), and let 'em roll. You could even scrap the lead singer and let the vocals come from nowhere in particular.

I'm just used to the harshness of the GH3 rock-meter and the ease-of-use hammer-ons. So I want to play GH2 songs in GH3!

And done.

FFLD

2008-03-05T22:40:00.003+11:00

As you may have noticed, I like to call my teams or bands or clans or guilds in video games FFLD in honour of my hometown of Fairfield. Sure it's not really an acronym, and not even a proper abbreviation, but maybe it's just the way it'd be spelled if you had like, a limit on the number of letters you could use. And if you've paid any attention to my screenshots, you'll see that FFLD is the name of my band in Guitar Hero 2. It's also my GH3 band.

So I present to you, this:

Yes, I beat the game on Hard.

To put into perspective how decent I am at the game; I played it for months on Wii and struggled to even get up to the last songs on Hard (let alone the last boss) and I didn't get as far on Expert as I have currently. Now, on the almighty Ekbok, I've managed to best the GH2 Hard career in a single day, and GH3 in a little over a week.

I also beat Jordan and TTFAF on Hard in their respective games.

If you don't have Guitar Hero and are living in Australia, I highly recommend picking it up from Big W (for 360) because the bundle is $128 and GH2 is $40. The new Wii bundle (with 2 guitars) is at places like K-Mart and Target for $160-170, which is cheaper than what I spent on my Wii version.

Of Dragonforces and WoW...

2008-03-05T12:09:00.002+11:00

First the big news. I beat Dragonforce on Hard. I finally did it. For a long time I had lost in the first hammer-on section. Then I was eventually capable of getting through 80-90% of it consistently. But now, after getting 98% through then failing, I figured I was super close to actually beating the damned thing. So after a few runs of the whole song on Practice, playing certain sections on their own, and then revving it up for another try...

Well, after 2 attempts on Hard after that - the bitch was done.

Huzzah.

Notice also how I got a much better score on Easy -_-;;

And now to my next topic of topics. World of Warcraft.

I've been keeping my eagle-eye on WorldofRaids.com to get all the news on upcoming WoW changes and so on. A while ago I found out that the attunements for Karazhan, Mount Hyjal, and even Black Temple are being removed. I understand that it sucks to be mediocre in WoW, or part of a mediocre guild that is going nowhere. But this is just getting to be ridiculous. "Oh well, Magetheridon is too hard, let's remove TK attunement," and so on. All they're doing is letting people skip bosses that take some skill and move on. The only people who are going to kill Vashj and Kael'thas now are the ones who have already done it. People might not even bother with the T5 instances now. I have a feeling this is just going to keep happening, and the worst bit is that as you keep giving people freebies, they move up into tougher content with less skill and gear than they should have.

My old guild managed to progress through most of SSC and TK raids. Now I'm guessing that they'd at least be stuck on Vashj and Kael'thas (the last bosses of these 2 instances), and the only way they're getting into the T6 content is by waiting for the patch. Hell, I'm willing to bet that they haven't even got Mag down yet.

Whilst I don't care much for raiding nowadays. I do have respect for the people who are good at it. People who clear all the bosses, not because they need to in order to progress forward, but to show that they have the skill to do it.

Nothing in video games is impossible. All you need are the rudimentary skills, some time spent honing those skills, and a tiny bit of luck.

Xbox (not so) Live(ly)

2008-03-04T17:06:00.004+11:00

Or maybe it's just Activision or RedOctane's fault..

Anyway.

I got Guitar Hero 2 and 3 last week, because they were insanely (or relatively) cheap, and immediately started clocking up some time with the games. I breezed through GH2 on Hard without having to retry anything. I also beat the infamous Jordan song thinger. Again, I beat it first go.

Here's my GH2 majiggy. And I just noticed that it says you've got truckload of pain when it should either be truckloads or a truckload. Silly American Engrish.

And that Dragonforce son of a bitch.

I am now officially putting Guitar Hero up there as one of my all time favourite music rhythm games. It sits comfortably alongside other games like Ouendan (on the DS), DDR (at least all of the DDR's before this shit on 360 came out -_-), and drum games like Donkey Konga and Taiko no Tatsujin.

So while I await GH: Aerosmith, and GH4 later in the year, I can kick back and play these majiggies.

Anddddd done. For now.

Edit: I totally forgot to write about what I was going to whine about in the first place.

The online scoreboards that live @ GuitarHero.com take forever to update. My GH3 stats have sat at around 78% Expert Career completion, but the score didn't update. And the same can be said for all the other careers. With the Wii version, it only took a few hours for things to update, and the 360 scoreboards take a week? Insanity. But they did update today, or at least they partially updated. Well, in time I will conquer all of GH3, and by all I mean Easy, Medium, and then a good chunk of Hard and Expert. So sometime in the future my scores should be all shiny and online.

Now I'm really done.

SD v.s. HD

2008-03-02T20:37:00.002+11:00

No it's not a new video game. It's just a video standard. Or standards, rather.

There's been a big fuss over HD in recent times. Following on from digital TV, we went from getting crystal clear picture (no more snow, woot) to now getting that same picture in a higher resolution. It sounds like a big deal, and to a lot of people it probably is. Although now I've experienced both standard- and high-definition picture, and I'm confused as to why it matters so much.

If you want you can hit up the HDTV article @ Wikipedia. In that article it lists the various SD and HD resolutions. My Xbox360 runs at a mediocre 480p. I was (and am still) puzzled as to why my AU PAL console is running at an NTSC resolution. But oh well.

Your standard TV resolution is about a 0.3 Megapixel quality, and that's running it at 480p. When you bump it up to 720p, you're getting around 0.9 MP. And 1080i/p is at a relatively whopping 2MP. I can see that, for a video game, this just means more pixels in the same space. When you take a photo with a camera, that Megapixel quality determines how much of that analog real life data is captured into a digital form. In a game, it just means things get scaled (or so I think). In a game it's polygons and not pixels that determine quality. The only way you get a better picture is by using better quality models. Better quality effects. And so on. Although there are still people who swear by HD and it's awesomeness, like my good friend Rob.

He's a bit of a graphics whore, and so he's very for the whole HD thing. When I tell him that I don't see a significant difference, he thinks I'm crazy. Normally I wouldn't said anything, I've never played my games in HD, and I don't have the hardware to do it even if I wanted to. But yesterday I was at a mate's place playing his 360, and he had it set up for HD. The game I spent the most time playing was Guitar Hero 3. I've beaten a large chunk of the game on Wii, and when I played it on a 360 at EB, I was stunned at the quality of the graphics in comparison. So when I bought the game (and GH2) the other day for the 360, I was able to experience that quality for a while. Then at my mate's place, I got to play it in HD.

Not impressed.

If HD is this marvelous thing, then why is the difference negligible? I played GH3 in HD for a good while, and I don't see much difference in how it looks on my own monitor at standard def. I also played some Crackdown, CoD4, and RS: Vegas and, after taking these games home with me (borrowed, of course! [Steggles ftw]) I got to see how they look in SD. Again, no difference.

I think the whole thing behind HD is just a placebo. Someone tells you something is in HD, and you kind of nod your head uncertainly and agree. Yeah, of course you know it's HD once you've been told. If I was to take captured images from identical SD and HD footage, and then scaled them to the same size, I don't think there'd be a significant difference. After playing some Halo3 on Steggles' projector, I could see how HD would be a good thing there. Increasing the DPI is very good for lessening the crapness of picture on large displays. I imagine that playing on the projector in SD would've been smeh.

Anyways. For all the people getting horny over HD... It's very nice and all, but unless there are several sets of graphics data stored for every game (one for each resolution) including textures and models, then HD isn't doing much. I can take a screen shot of.. My screen, which is currently at something like 1280*1024, and upscale it. Increase the DPI. And it will be the same thing. I'll try that now before I look silly.

I did it. And it just looks like I've zoomed in on it. Meh.

I think I can safely say that the difference between SD and low-end HD (like 720p) is negligible. The low-end has about 3 times more pixels and, whilst it's a good increase, it isn't much. However, 1080 is over twice the quality of 720, and over 6 times that of 480.

Dam graphics whores. Stop getting horny. Maybe when there are high polygon count options, then maybe it'll be a big deal. For now, it's not so much.

I'm done.

Woot Effect

2008-02-22T02:31:00.003+11:00

Yes, it's the thing that makes me go woot. And if you can't already tell that I bought Mass Effect, I'll tell you that I bought it.

Guys, I bought Mass Effect today.

And because It's so late, I'm going to be very brief and elaborate more on the topic later.

Mass Effect is awesome.

After having seen videos of it, and reading about it, I had a fairly clear picture in my mind of what ME was. I understood that it was merely Gears of War + RPG. I was very wrong. Whilst it does retain that 3rd person shooter style, the RPG bit is not just tacked on like I thought it would be. There is everything you'd find in your stock standard RPG. Running around a central HUB city looking for quests, buying new equipment, or just talking to people. In fact, once I hit the main hub city, I managed to get myself stuck for about an hour because I couldn't find where I was meant to go (damn elusive docking bay). It's like the style of a standard RPG formula mixed in with some open world-ness. Upon receiving your ship you're able to traverse the Milky Way in search of planets to explore and quests/missions to complete.

It's all quite good.

But I have some complaints.

My squad dies almost all the time. I've been playing this practically on my own, and if it wasn't for them waking up after the enemies were all dead, I'd have no squad. When ME2 rolls out some time in the future, squad AI will hopefully be improved. And I'll be damned if they don't show some initiative and throw in some Co-op play. Being able to bring my main character over to someone else's game, and play with them, would be awesome.

Next, elevators are way too fucking slow. It's the future. Technology is elite. Elevators move at lightning speed, if lightning was Egyptian slang for grandma. They absolutely crawllllll and it's terrible. Saving the blue alien chick involved a boss encounter at the top of an elevator. Unfortunately for me I failed it a few times and had to restart that section from the bottom of the elevator. That coupled with the slow load times made for a less than pleasant experience.

Yes load times are bad, but considering that they only happen when you change planets or die (and sometimes but not often during a stage) they're not that bad. Unless you die a lot.

Desipte those bad things, I started playing as soon as I got home, and stopped playing not very long ago. This game is good. I look forward to playing through it, then trying again with a different class.

I also wouldn't mind picking my own damn surname. Rufati Shepard is the weirdest main character name I've ever had.

I'm out.

Look! It's evolving!

2008-02-20T13:10:00.004+11:00

This has nothing to do with Pokemon and everything to do with gaming. Well, gaming franchises, rather.

After having played some older games in a franchise, followed by some newer ones, it's very weird to see how drastically some things can change. Let's look at the beloved Burnout series of games.

The previous 4 games, Burnout 1, 2, Takedown and Revenge are all very similar. Almost the same game each time. Yes they're good, but there isn't much of a difference. Exactly the same mechanics, all the same (or similar) cars. Then come Paradise. It reinvents itself as an open world racer. Not only that, but it doesn't do what the NeedForSpeed series did, and lock out 80% of the area. The entire world of Paradise City is available from the very beginning. As you drive around you'll see various food chains, car dealerships, and so on. There are no menus. No merely going from one event to the next (although you still can, kinda). It's all very open and all very freeform. In fact, when I first started playing, I did a few event and then just drove around the city for an hour or so. Even if you're not in an event, there are things to find and do (not that you have to). Another good things they've done is that once you rank up, all the event wins are cleared, and you can win those same events again. This means you're never stuck with only the types of races that you suck at.

It's all such a drastic change, and so different from previous games. Although I would say that this game is definitely the best in the series and, if anything, the only problem I have is that there is no quick navigation to a race like there was in the NeedForSpeed games. There's not even a GPS to guide you to an event. Even though there may be an event less than 10-20 seconds from where you finish, that's not always the event you want to do. In the case of Burning Routes (time runs specific to each car), it sucks when you fail and want to retry, but you have to go back to the very beginning, because that's where the start for your current car is. The ability to jump to an event, or GPS navigation to it would've been a nice addition.

And for the people who say there aren't any load times. Why do you think that screen pops up whenever you start an event? There's no reason to waste 5-10 seconds every time you start an event, other than load times. It's just like good editing, it's seamless, almost invisible. Just because it doesn't say Loading... doesn't mean it isn't there.

I also found it interesting that between PGR2, 3 and 4 that the changes were quite.. Interesting. In PGR2 you won Kudos by winning races, and that was the currency. In 3 Kudos are a measure of your rank, and Credits are the currency. Now in 4 there is a separate, more realistic, rank system, and Kudos are the currency. Again. Also the career mode of 3 is now the arcade mode of 4, and the career of 4 has been reworked.

Woot for rehashed games and true sequels.

Scammers be silly.

2008-02-16T13:15:00.002+11:00

Upon checking my email this morning I find an email from the team at Xbox, or so it would seem. After more of an inspection, I can see that the tail end of the email is not from Xbox.com, but from another source; email.xbox.com, that's xbox@email.xbox.com who sent me the mail

And the reply-to address is support-b09dqseb3v36h6acbmtmjarmb9kajs@email.xbox.com

No, I did not just violently face mash my keyboard for about 10 seconds. That's just their email.

If that wasn't enough, they often leave links that point to a very long address starting at email.xbox.com, so if you know anything about some things, then it's easy to see that this is not the official Xbox.com we all know and (not really) love. But that's not all.

The final thing I've noticed in the email is the misspelling of the term TrueSkill (a term made up by Microsoft) as TruSkill. There is meant to be an e in there, fools.

I have no idea what they'd be trying to scam off people. Nor am I willing to go to that website. Things like this are ridiculous, and I'll be happy in another 10-20 years when the only people using the internet actually know what they're doing. Also, to illustrate why you can't just omit a letter and expect everyone to be fooled...

It'd be like sending an email to the UN, asking for World Pace. Noobs.

PGR3 Qualifies!

2008-02-16T01:04:00.005+11:00

Or, at least, I do!

Yes, after some domestic disputes with my evil router of unholy doom, I went to the interwebs in search of help topics, help forums, help sites, and so on; all with the goal of getting the damned NAT to let me play in PGR Tournaments.

It finally worked. Here's the result.

The first time I submitted had me at the 99th seed position. That is to say that I was 35 places outside of the quota. Of course this was on a track that I haven't played a million times, a car I've never used, and manual transmission which I'm not that great with (until I learn the track). So a glass of Coke and 20minutes later, I managed to hit 47th seed.

I've qualified for now. I just hope no one knocks me out of the running, because I want my achievement!

Later on I might try and get into a PGR4 Tournament... Yes I have PGR4. I got it because it was 40$ @ BigW. If you don't have it and you remotely like racing games, then get it. The game is good, but since it was released around the time of other, more prominent games (Halo3 for one, I think), many would have overlooked it.

I am winner, hear me roar.

Edit :: As of this writing, I have been pushed back to 48th seed. I'll find you, whoever you are, and when I do you're gonna be sorry. Let's see how you like negative player feedback, fool.

More Edit :: As of this next bit of writing, I was pushed back to 49th. But I've just bettered my time, and hit 44th. Can you dig it, sucker?

WTF Update

2008-02-15T00:07:00.002+11:00

Woot, Team Fortress Update =D

If you're like me and are currently using Valve's Steam software, then you more than likely know of (or own) Team Fortress 2 (TF2). If you actually play the game, then you also know this; there hasn't been a major content update in, like, forever. So it's about damn time that this update goes live, because I'm sick of the same 5 or so maps over, and over, and over...

Yes I can understand that making too many maps can make the game bigger (too big? don't think so), it also puts more pressure on players to learn the maps to play successfully. But when you have a handful of maps that just rotate, one after the other, it gets very.. Grating.

Until the recent addition of Well (CTF),which was a remake of the 'Well' Control Point map into a Capture the Flag affair, there was only one CTF map. Just one. So what I heard on my Ventrilo, and people in game, was "Map change, woot... Oh god not 2Fort," as 2Fort has been the only CTF map available until recently. But even with the introduction of a map that was merely modified, I don't think it's good enough.

In my opinion, we should be seeing at least 1 new map every 1-2 months, to allow for the design of it, and testing. It shouldn't take any longer than that, at least not for a single map. And running on that kind of schedule, you'd be bringing in 6 new maps a year. You might even go smaller than that, I suppose. 5 maps, maybe 4 at the least, but then you're putting them too far apart for the liking of your typical gamer. That probably won't happen, but hey, I (we) can dream.

The other thing I'd really like to see would be 3-way maps. Putting not 2, but 3 teams against each other. 3-way CTF with only one flag in the middle of the 3 bases. 3-way Control Point, where each base has a point, a point in between all 3, and a point between each base (i.e., between red/blu, blue/other colour, other colour/red) so a team needs to capture an adjacent point before being able to assault the base.

But then I don't even know if that could even be done, considering the 2 team style of Valve's games has been this way for a long time. But I can keep dreaming!

Gamerscore What Up.

2008-02-13T04:41:00.000+11:00

What up, indeed.

For those of you who might not know what Gamerscore is, it's just a numerical representation of certain feats that you've achieved in games on your Xbox360. These range from the norm of actually beating the game, or beating certain stages, to performing other, more difficult, tasks. Now these can range from beating the game in its entire entirety of entireness, to playing the game in a way that it probably isn't usually played. One example of the former can be found in Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3). It involves clearing every championship in the game at the platinum (highest difficulty) level. An example of the latter is found in Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. This one involves staying alive for the first 60 seconds of the game without attacking at all. That one was hard to do. And it's very an 'outside the box' way of playing the game. But the achievement is there, and if you want the score, then you try for them!

If I haven't mentioned previously that I've signed up to MyGamerCard, then I'll do it. I have signed up. You can even check out my profile. It lets you see what I play, and how much I've achieved. It's cool. I got it to start with because they generate a signature image for you that showcases your Gamerscore data, and I figured it was a nice way to let people on forums that I go to that I play on 360's Live service, so they can play with me, too! An example of that generated majiggy can be found... Here...

How awesome is that? Kthxbai.

No really, though. I think Live is a service that other Console (and online service) providers should be taking a look at. The only other thing I've used that is this good would have to be Valve's Steam client (although Steam does have its share of problems).

There's no point in reinventing the wheel. You just make it a lot harder for yourself to build something that's good. Take a look at consoles today, not much has changed over the past 10 or 15 years. I mean fundamental changes to the way that they work. There have been practically none. They all have controllers, you pop in the game media, and away you go. No one has challenged that idea, and gone and made a console that defied all the current norms. It'd be silly. It's the same reason that the steering wheel/pedal systems in cars has been the same for so long, cause it's great. Instead of doing odd things (Friend codes, I'm looking at you Nintendo) why not just improve upon good ideas?

Now a rant for some good measure. Friend codes are the most cumbersome, and really just plain silly thing that anyone could come up with. It goes against the whole simplicity of the Wii. People who want to play together have to exchange codes, there is one code for your Wii and one for every code using online-enabled game. So for each of those games, you must input the code of each of your friends - and this is done using the software keyboard styled interface. And you've got to do this for every subsequent game. Not to mention that the only way to get your own code is to boot up that game, and login to the WFC and get it (then take a note of it).

A long time ago, before the Wii was released, this idea sounded good. I already enter people's emails into my MSN and whatnot. However I do this with hardware built for the job (a keyboard). And whilst I do have to enter in more things for every chat program I used, chances are, I'm only ever going to use MSN. That and I only ever need to add a contact, or receive an invite. We don't both have to add eachother, and then wait for the service to recognise that we have, and then play together.

It really is kind of obscene after you think about it for a bit.

Sidenote: I've cleared all the achievements in Boom Boom Rocket. It's like DDR, but with fireworks.

Good night.

Nintendo Obscenitii

2008-02-05T04:09:00.000+11:00

Yes I made fun of the Nintendo Wii in my title. Haha? Not really.

I'm just confused as to why Nintendo would allow the Wii to have such incredibly lackluster online services, when Microsoft's Live service is absolutely astounding. Honestly.

It does the whole Virtual Console thing (although lacking actual old school titles), but to a better degree. Wondering how Street Fighter II will play on your 360? Download the trial version. For free. Right away. Play it. You don't need to look for reviews telling you about the game itself. You don't need someone else to explain the emulation issues, if any. You just get the limited version of the game, play it, and you can decide whether it's worth your money. Simple.

What do I have to do on Wii's Virtual Console? If I so much as want to try it, I have to buy it. Simple. And whilst there may be a lot of good games on there, I'm not about to throw down some cash just to test it. I wish I could get demos for it like I can on Live. Yeah I know some people will say "ROMs," but that's hardly the point. It'd just be nice to try before I buy =| same goes for Wii games!

It just makes me think of, like... In the world of video game speed runs, people usually come up with techniques. Now, the bulk of the time, they will share these techniques with the community, so that other players can learn them, and possibly improve their times and so on. Whilst it is a competition to see who is the best, it's still interesting for them to see if someone can do it faster. Why can't Nintendo take a page out of the book of Microsoft, and upgrade their online.

The service is there for them to see. What it does, and so on. The services of Live could be adapted by Nintendo in an effort to have a more robust online package - because right now it does not. Although I will say one thing, and that is at the moment Nintendo couldn't improve its online even if it wanted to. There are storage concerns to be met, and as the Wii stands currently, it just doesn't have enough. I've gotten quite a lot of content for my 360 in the past few days. Gigs in fact. And the HDD is still more than capable of holding some more stuff. All the Wii has is 512mb =/ so for the moment, the Wii is being shut down big time due to its lack of download-able content.

I guess if Nintendo doesn't have some kind of plan to release a HDD expansion for it soon, I'll be tempted to get Guitar Hero 2+3 on the 360 - if only for all the extra song packs. GH2 alone has something like 7 packs, with 4 or so songs each. It seems crazy that the Wii version of the game is missing out on 20 or 30 possible extra songs. But oh well.

I bought Gears of War today. It was cheap. And man is this game good =D I'll probably talk about it more later. It's very late and I should sleep some time soon ~_~;;

PS: I got a bunch of free map packs for GoW, talk about an awesomely robust service. Live is ridiculously good. As for the Wii store... Sorrii, but it isn't good enough =/

notepad.xbox

2008-02-02T03:04:00.000+11:00

So I'm writing this in good ol' Notepad at the moment. My computer isn't connected to the great interwebs, so I can't do this as usual on the oh so lovable Blogger.com - so here I am.

Why is my compy not connected? It is not connected to our network for the moment, because our new XBOX360 is! Yes, the console that I have been... Less than friendly towards... Is now one that I own. Huzzah.

Why now you ask? Why after all this not caring about fancy graphics? I still don't care about fancy graphics. I'm running the 360 to my computer in 4:3, just because for some reason, the 16:9 just isn't translating to my software properly, so I get this squashed image. I'm also not using any of the HDTV stuff, nor the HDMI. The games look really nice, a lot better than anything on Wii, but that's not what made me want to get it.

Online.

360 has some of the most robust online features I have ever seen in a console. Not that I've seen it in many. The online is spectacular. From multiplayer, the scoreboards, achievements, add-ons, demos, and so on. Even unnecessary things like videos are available. I knew that LIVE was a good online service. Just how good was not apparent until I witnessed it for myself. I've had it for half a day, and already my GamerTag is on my Facebook =D I've also gotten a few demos easily enough. It's all fairly seamless. My only gripe so far would have to be that it doesn't come with a keyboard by default, which is something I could really use for all the text entering involved with certain things. But meh, it's ok for now.

So what does this mean for RufiGaming? More games to review and to talk about in general. Whilst before I might have been able to comment on 360 games based on other articles, now I can speak for myself! The entire Demo thing is breathtaking to say the least. Until now I haven't been able to play before I pay without a) having a friend with the game or b) obtaining the game in fiendish ways. The weirdest thing is that for too many people, all these features are now 2nd nature =/ I'm behind T_T

With that said, I just picked up the demos for Burnout: Paradise, and DefJam: ICON. Burnout is stunning. I've only played it for a tiny bit, but it's great. The last burnout game I played would have to have been 2 or 3 on the original XBOX that my friend Rob owned. And as for DefJam, well, it's a very interestingly done fighter.

When I have more time and it isn't 3am, I will have to see about writing up my own impressions for the demos.

And in other new, I'm about to go job hunting in the areas of beta testing, and QA (quality assurance) in general. Considering my sudden interest in being critical about things where I previously wasn't is kind of the thing I need to be if I end up doing this stuff. I've had lots of ideas for changes in games, and these aren't massive changes, but slight ones that subtley impact certain aspects. Make certain things more friendly or appealing, and so on. Change things up. You get the idea. I think the fact that the idea I submitted to YouTube got implemented was a real boost for me. Maybe that's what started this o_o

Well, my console listing has just hit a +1, and so... I don't know. I now have potentially more games to talk about? Yes.

Night.

EVE: Obscurity

2008-01-28T01:17:00.000+11:00

Should be the name of the new expansion when it hits. Why? Because EVE is a sleeper. It's the sleepiest of all sleepers. So sleepy that hardly anyone knows about it, and those that do end up discovering it will more than likely quit within a few days.

I'm an avid gamer, I'm also very computer savvy. EVE isn't that hard a game for me to grasp. Not everyone who enjoys games is a complete nerd, nor should they have to be. This is one of the things that is holding EVE back in my opinion. It is unintuitive. Even with the help of a spoken tutorial, the game can be difficult to learn. Yes, even with instructions, that tell you what to do, it can be hard to get that job done.

There are fetch quests, kill missions, money making professions, PvP, and so on. Just like any other MMO. The difference? EVE does these things less intuitively than anything I've played. The designer in me cries foul at the way some things have been implemented. But the user reaction to change is so harsh, and so unwelcome. Like the people who play the game don't want any more people to play, which is a sad thing. MMO's are generally about lots of people playing the game. Especially with the single server model, more players could mean great things for EVE.

But it won't happen.

When I spoke up in the in-game chat, saying that EVE wasn't intuitive, the response was "if it was more intuitive, it wouldn't be EVE." Another person said something (I don't remember what exactly) that would describe a job or school, something like "it requires you to work hard, and to learn it in order to get anything out of it." The gamers who partake in EVE, they don't seem to be gamers at all. The best words I can use to describe them now are employees, and students.

It's... Weird.

The majority of EVE players have what I would call the same mentality as the hardcore populous of WoW. That they take the game very seriously, and any changes to the game that would detract from their previous experiences. Things that would, in effect, make the experience for new users different to the previous experience of current users. These things are unwelcome. And like I've said, it's sad.

Given the sheer size of the in-game world, and the unique single server model. This game could more realistically portray the whole space-adventure thing. Having fifty- or a hundred-thousand people over thousands of systems. That instead of the twenty-five thousand people spread over some five thousand systems.

Well, my post about the first change that would help move things along is on their forums, and CCP is quite alright to use it if they wish. But chances are they won't.

From the company's point of view, it is not satisfactory to see customer after customer play your game for free (at your expense) for 14 or 21 days, and then disappear. Not only that, but they are losing out on word-of-mouth advertising. Are you going to recommend a game you don't like? Course not. I tried recommending EVE to one of my mates with whom I played WoW for 3 years, and he has quit before the end of the trial. My girlfriend, who I live and play games with has also not continued with EVE; again, before the end of the trial. In fact, my girlfriend's opinion is that the game is good, but a lot of it is just too hard, and not explained well enough.

If I didn't quit WoW, I wouldn't be playing EVE. If EVE doesn't change for the better, it will only lose more customers. Enough said.

ZOMGH3

2008-01-26T23:02:00.001+11:00

Yes, ZOMG Guitar Hero 3. I've started playing it again after not having really stopped playing it... But I've tried to go a bit further in the game now; more so than before.

You see I read a long time ago about star paths, and how better made ones utilise the star power better, thus ending up with a better score. Since I had played many of the songs so many times, and failed to beat a lot of my scores which I considered very up there I thought "why not," and so I tried some...

So I did the first song in the game. I played on hard because I didn't feel like the laziness of easy, even if it was just a test. So, the first song, Slow Ride (hard), and I beat my record. I beat it by a good amount of points, and with *only* one try. Blasphemy? I thought so. Maybe it was just that my skill had improved, and I wasn't making sloppy mistakes. Or maybe it was just because I hadn't played this particular song enough times to get what I thought for myself would be an uber score. So I tried some more.

So then a Talk Dirty To Me, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, and Story Of My Life later all my records were beat. Story Of My Life especially, because I know I've done that song dozens of times to beat my score, and then I beat it with ease. With ease. This made me think of why this was happening, why I was so easily beating my scores just by counting some numbers in my head. What was different here than elsewhere?

Strategy. Tactics. No other rhythm/music game I can recall utilises strategy. DDR, Donkey Konga, Ouendan, Taiko no Tatsujin, they all simply rely on the combo for better scores. If you can 100% a song then you can get the highest score possible, and each note gives a certain amount of points based on the timing with which you hit it. So 100%'ing a song, and hitting each note/beat with perfect accuracy results in the best score. The game rewards you for skill. The Guitar Hero series changes that.

For starters, the multiplier only goes up to 4. There is no variation in the points given by a note, it is either a hit or miss and nothing in between. Then there is star power, fancy energy that doubles your score gained for a small amount of time after being used. So in addition to playing the notes skillfully, you need to use this start power at the times when it will result in the highest point gain. This is what people spend a lot of their time doing (maybe not so much anymore, but in the 'earlier' days of GH3).

I guess I like the way it's done, but then I don't. I'd actually like to see something like the aforementioned combo points system, alongside the 4x/starpower. And why not? Let people compete in 2 fields. The strategist, and the pure guitarist. Like using the standard score system, and another separate system like a more fleshed out precision mode.

I think it'd be cool =D and HERE is my profile on GuitarHero.com if you wanna see. Later all.

It's EVEning time

2008-01-26T02:27:00.000+11:00

Or maybe just EVE time. EVE Online that is. For those who haven't heard of it before, let me open your eyes.

EVE is a massively multiplayer online game. It's set in space. And it's incredibly freeform.

If I had to describe it using the shortest explanation ever, I would call it an extreme close up of an RTS. You have people who choose to be fighters, killing NPC 'pirates'. Others who want to mine for a living in asteroid belts throughout the universe. People who like to make things. People who like to kill other people. Even people who like to be the boss of people. So from an RTS point of view, you've got fighting units, resource collectors, unit construction, and so on... You even learn skills in a way that is akin to 'researching' things during the course of an RTS match. It's quite a well made game and despite its lower points, I like it.

I am the instigator of a thread for the changing of the skill system as it is. You can find that thread OVER HERE =D I won't go into much more detail, although I may print out the forum page for memories xD But I will just run over the idea of the change, because I intend to use this blog also as a platform to make my ideas for games known.

How the skill system works is that you allocate a skill to be learned, and it learns it. It does this all in real time, and the length of time is dependent on your attributes. This is really good, considering some skills take minutes, hours, days, even months. Having to slug it out manually would be terrible. The one problem with this system is that when a skill levels up - the learning stops. You need to manually get into the game and start on a new skill. Several months into the game you will have accrued millions of these skill points, and after a year or so, forgetting to start training a new skill is not such a big deal. But for the new player, every minute is precious.

I proposed a system where instead of learning skills, you would just accrue the skill points into a kind of 'bank'. You'd then spend them on the skills you wanted to learn. So instead of needing to take a course in time micromanagement, you can just play the game, and tend to your skills whenever you feel like it without having to worry.

If you've taken a look at the thread you'll see that I've refined that idea slightly, taking cues from other games that have taken things in a similar direction. You'll also see that I've gotten little to no positive responses for the idea. Everyone seems to feel as though it is a stupid idea, and fails to give any constructive or critical reasons. All they say is that it's my fault if I don't manage my time right. That it's my responsibility to manage it right. So to them I said.

It's a game. Not a job.

I draw the line when a game becomes work, although right now I have little choice if I want to play EVE. I thought it would be nice to have the 'grind' take a backseat to actual gameplay. I like to mine in peace, it's a relaxing money maker. If I'm there when a skill completes, great, I can start a new one. But then when I go to bed, I quickly start training a skill that will take a lot longer. Why? So that I don't lose time. I'm already at least 3-4 years behind everyone in the game, and that is in real-time. Something I can never catch up to.

Although one response brought up the problem of account selling (which is OK in EVE - unlike in WoW). But that must already be a problem for it to have mattered, which means that this change will do nothing to stop farmers (nothing will in my opinion). But what else is there? Another said that newbies get scared when you say you have 65million skill points. So they should be. That is years of time. It'll be a week or 2 before they crack 1 million (you start the game with about 800k worth of skills). So it is scary to think you'll be behind everyone else indefinitely.

Want to know what the funny thing is though?

Despite the amount of EVE advertising I've seen (I only started playing because I saw an ad for the free trial @ Penny Arcade one day), the amount of players online at any one time, or even the amount of subscribers does not even compare to WoW. The most I've seen online in EVE is 20-25k. And this game is on one server - not like the multiple realms of WoW. The only reason it wins awards is because WoW isn't in the science genre. That's all. What's even funnier? EVE is the better game in most regards. It's just that the beginning is so unintuitive and unfriendly to the new player that most of them won't go beyond the free 14 days.

Their latest expansion featured a complete graphics overhaul. All their next patch needs is some reworking of the interface to be more user friendly, perhaps a simple and advanced version of the interface (so they can go advanced once they've come to grips with most of the game). That and some user friendly changes to skills, and they're one step closer to greatness.

/Me is back

2008-01-22T01:37:00.000+11:00

Kind of.

After a long absence from this, and other blogs, I'm going to try and get back into the whole swing of things. I know it's been especially long since I posted in this blog. Over a year in fact. More like 15 or so months. That, my friends, is a long time.

Looking at my post prior to this, about me saying how WoW does certain things wrong, but is still good. It isn't. Only at the beginning of last year did it kick things into gear. Making it easier to attain better gear, and so forth. Catering slightly more, ever so slightly more, to the casual crowd. Said crowd is made up of people like me, and like my friends. We are people who don't have all the time in the world to play the game, but we played it a lot.

Now we quit, at least for now. Shashi, Rob, and I got fed up with it. The people in the game bring so much real life emotion to the game that it sickens me. That an action in the game is, somehow, a reflection of you as an actual person. It is not. I left my guild, one that I had been co-founder of, and a long standing member. I left because I got bored, because I didn't like a person, because I just couldn't be bothered anymore. All of a sudden I was greedy, evil, and oh so hate-able. It's ridiculous. What's worse is that I felt that I should get back at the person who instigated all this hate against me - but I didn't. I was good. I figured that it was just a game, that he and everyone else were just people in the game. So what if they were mad at my avatar - that's not me. Although, with all my talk of in-game stuff not relating to the real life person, this guy talked to me over Vent like he was 'all that'. So I got tired of the game.

I have no super crazy allegiance to my friends, even to my girlfriend. But if the people I enjoy playing with stop playing. I just don't feel it anymore. As soon as the fun stops, WoW becomes a grind. With the few of us playing together with various other good friends we met online, it was great. But now that's gone. I think when the next patch hits WoW, or maybe the next expansion in a year's time, we might try it out again. But until then, Dealies, Rufias, Vtac, and Rufi, are having nap time.

I may also start transcribing my sort of reviews from my notebook (as in an actual book, and not a laptop) to here, and start trying to do this kind of thing regularly. I play more than enough games to see what's good or bad about them, so why not share my opinion with the interweb?

Anyways, seeing as this is my kind of return to this stuff sort of, I'll end it here, and hopefully I won't disappear for another 15 months xD

Thoughts on WoW

2006-10-12T01:24:00.000+10:00

DKP system is a scam. It's an intangible currency which you can lose at the drop of a hat (or destruction of a guild...).

The thing is, if you play for 5 or 10 or 50 hours worth of time with your guild, and then it falls apart, you're back at square one. Look at it like this, you put in all that time to get to 60, and then all of a sudden you're demoted back to level 1. You'd be pissed right?

After doing all the sums, I don't really care much for end-game anymore. Kegan Has been WoWing for a year or so now, and only now is he fully geared out. A YEAR. I like playing the game, but fact is. I really don't have that much time. And unless DKP is implemented INTO the game, there's really nothing to stop you from getting screwed over. My guilds have currently had a 100% failure rate. And I've earnt so much DKP that I never got to spend.

It's ridiculous, Blizzard, you are screwing over your casual gamer. I can't even handle 60 PvP cause everyone else has T1+, and I get wiped in a few hits. Even if I wanted to, PvP gear would still be fairly hard for me to attain.

Still a great game though. Just wish I could be more pimped out without needing to have no life.

I'm out.

WoW! It's METEOS!

2006-10-10T23:43:00.000+10:00

Yes, maybe you can tell, or maybe not... But I've gone back to WoW'ing a bit, and I also managed to snag myself a copy of Meteos for the DS for $30 (It's $70 everywhere else o_o)!!!

WoW is as awesome as ever, moreso since my loving Fiancee has started playing with me again. There's still no hope for me as a casual gamer though, all I can hope for is getting meager gear, and getting my ass handed to me by less-skilled better-geared players. But the expansion looks to alleviate that problem. With the revamped honour system, there will not be any decay (at the moment, you need to PvP about 6 hours a day for 3 months to acheive top rank - if you stop PvP'ing your rank begins to drop), so you can gradually work your way up to the good gear. A great idea in my opinion. And the arena system offers possibly a similar thing. You compete, get points, and spend them. No competing against other players and the clock.

As a casual gamer, I'm looking forward to the expansion.

Next is Meteos. I always read that it was a good game. A great game, even. But it's hard to understand something you've never seen in action. Why is it so good? You throw blocks into space? That's supposed to be good? Hell-Bloody-Yes. This is one of the most fun games on the DS I have. It uses the touch screen in such a way that, no D-Pad or analog stick can replicate it. You just can't play it as well using the pad. You can't. I'd explain it, but that wouldn't do it much justice. You really need to try it for yourself - or see it in action at the very least. It's awesome. I love it. How much? It's the kind of game you can sit down and play for 5 minutes, or a half hour, or an hour... And having said that, I've clocked 18hours of 'on time', with 12hours of actual 'play time', and I've turned it on 24 times. Great bloody game.

I'm done. I should sleep now. For anyone who cares, it's my Fiancee's and mine 5 months anniversary in 10 minutes. I'm out!

2006-08-29T17:30:00.000+10:00

A long time ago I followed a tutorial for creating a window in C++... A long time ago I also got fed up at it for not working...

The other day I did it, and I made it work. Go me? I sent Shashi the final product =D.

God I really need to get into some hardcore programming when I have more time.

Metroid Prime 3: BETA, and SEGA's Warioware

2006-08-07T17:07:00.000+10:00

Recently I purchased Metroid Prime: HUNTERS and Project Rub for the DS. Great games.

My thoughts will be quick.

Project Rub:
This game is an older title, probably released close to the actual DS launch date. And it kind of shows. It's merely a group of quirky (and perverted o_o) minigames utilising the touch-screen functionality. Quite fun. Especially good for killing-time, or keeping my sister (an avid non-gamer) occupied.

Metroid Prime: HUNTERS:
Another good game, although, when compared with Metroid Prime's 1 and 2, it appears to be incredibly scaled down. I've yet to test Nintendo Wi-Fi or Wireless-LAN, so I can only comment on the single-player. It's an ok game to say the least, and it feels a lot more like an actual shooter, allowing you to do fundamental things such as spinning around to view your surroundings while walking in the same direction. In the end, it really feels as though it's a filler game while development on MP3 ensues. Let me tell you, if MP3 plays like this, and encompasses a size greater than 1 and 2, I will most definitely be getting a Wii.

Haven't updated for a while, and I guess this is kind of a half-assed update... I should do this more regularly...

We'll see.

Rufi out.

Woo, holidays!

2005-12-05T16:04:00.000+11:00

Yes, the holidays have been here for a while, yet, I haven't blogged that much in regards to games. Sure, I mentioned that I have Ads now, but still, I feel as though I need to get back to the roots of what the hell I do here! ... Talking about games...

Although it's likely that THAT will soon change. What with my all-rounded skills in things like photoshop'ing, music composition, lyric writing, website development, software development, game reviews/thoughts, and so on. In keeping with the Studioz theme of our crew (lol), I have opted for the name of RufiSTUDIO(tm)... Dammit, this is MY name! It won't happen right now, I will need to work on a new layout, but then it does change, I'll make sure that these changes are reflected in the various places to which I belong as a member. That ends my little announcement.

WELL THEN!

As I said, I've been holidaying for a few weeks now, and I've already acquired and beaten a new game. EA's Need For Speed: Most Wanted. An awesome combination of the high-end cars we all love from the pre-Underground games, with the aftermarket parts/tuning/whatnot. The game looks stunning, and, again, as opposed to the Underground series, it all happens during daylight (Underground being entirelyat night-time). Things like glare make for interesting races, when the road ahead is practically invisible, and I gotta tell you, stuff like that exists in the real-world, only we have things like sunglasses, or those sun-guard dealies... Yeah... The thing I absolutely love most about this game, is the fact that the Lamborghinis are back! Ahh yes, my favourite make of car... Mmm, Lambo... It's a fairly solid game, whilst it feels arcadey, each car handles differently to every other. And the physics are realistic enough (I've pulled off some insanely weird things though, like wall-riding, and I piggy-backed a cop car... Almost got busted too), however there are times when glitches occur, and awkward things can happen, but QA can only be so thorough. In the end, to test how well a game has been developed, it needs to be played by millions of people of varying skills, systems, and so on. It also includes a little more non-career based arcade action in the form of the Challenge Series, a bunch of races where you have to complete certain objectives. A nice touch, but I still prefer the career mode.

Needless to say, this, like most Need For Speed games is great. I've beaten the game (100% baby!), and when I have the time to get around to it, I'll try putting each car through it's paces ^^.

Moving away from what I've played, let's look at what I want to play.

Nintendo DS. How I want thee... God Dammit! I WANT A DS! xo! And Mario Kart, just because it's... Well, what it is, an awesome game. Having played Mario Kart 64, as well as Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, I must say that the next instalment in the series is more likely than not, going to be incredibly awesome. So, what's stopping me from getting it? I've been temporarily laid off work, so I get no money until I'm called back, which I thought was going to be some 2 weeks ago, however I've gotten no word from work... ... ... *cry*

I've also begun heating up my Gamecube again. Playing things like Donkey Konga, Super Mario Sunshine, and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. I've begun a new game in FF:CC, for the sake of getting better items, cause apparently I chose one of the not-so-good parental backgrounds for my main character. Meh. I'm also trying toget all 120 stars in Sunshine. It's dam hard. I have 21 stars to go, and I really want to get it done, just because I did it in Super Mario 64. As for Donkey Konga... Well, that's just a game I can boot up and play when I only need to be entertained for a few minutes. And I'm still DAM 1337 at the game. Having broken several of my record-setting scores. I love video games.

Last but not least. I've just updated STEAM, and again I've been dabbling in Natural Selection. Awesome mod. Much better than that Counter-Strike rubbish. Honestly, it's no fun playing a game where 90% of the population are cheaters, 5% lag, and the other 5% are at some indeterminable middle-ground. Dammit. But yes, NS is awesome... So's the game : D Aye, if you haven't figured it out after reading my blog all this time (Or if I haven't ever mentioned it before), NS are my girlfriend's initials ^^.

Time to chillax.

zomg ads

2005-12-04T22:39:00.000+11:00

OMG I HAVE ADS!

Yes I've implemented Google's AdSense. Cool eh? Now my blog just needs to get a whole lot more popular...

PS: I read 'ADS' in the first line as 'AIDS', like, OMG I HAVE AIDS! ... Eww...

Hmm...

2005-11-12T22:23:00.000+11:00

Ok, so this blog has become pretty stagnat wouldn't you say? Yeah...

Due to my various new interests, a new job, the school year coming to a close, and other dealies, I've had less time to do the whole gaming/programming thing.

I've been contemplating changing the theme of this blog. What with my runs in music producing, image editing, and various dealies. It makes sense to change this to something like 'RufiARTS' or 'RufiSTUDIO' or something. Anything that deviates from the strictly gaming scene.

First this was all about the games, then it was all about making the games, now it'll be about random things that I do. Of course that is one more reason to shuht this down and re-integrate everything back into one blog... Since as much as I'd like to keep my personal and creative like separate, there's really no doubting that they are in fact the same thing. Notice how I've talked about my music dealies in my personal blog.

I finish with school in 10 days, after that I'll consider my options in regards to my blogs.

For now, they shall all live.

Assignment Status

2005-09-17T16:10:00.000+10:00

It's going good. I've started the actual coding today, and done that for a 5 hours or so... Quite a lot of time to spend programming in one session don't you think? Yeah, me too.

It's going well. Well, actually, I started it yesterday then got side tracked by various dealies I had to do for my parents then I had work and so I though I'd be fucked for today cause the assignment isn't exactly a push-over.

It involves breaking the project down into modules. So I have to link to my procedures in another file, ADT's defined in their own header file. Mainline program logic, again, in it's own file.

Yesterday was spent getting the main code working. I learnt that you must be careful of where you put things in case statements, and not to copy and paste little sections, cause I did that, for a while loop, and forgot to modify the loop condition for this 2nd loop, and absically fuxored my program into an infinite loop until I figured out my mistake.

Today I've done the rest of the main code, which involves reading data from a file, and loading that data into a linked list. I encountered various problems with that, until I spotted all my mistakes. Logic errors? I think they're called... Where your program compiles, runs, doesn't error, but then doesn't give you the output you expected. I also had a large number of exceptions where it was trying to get data from memory which it wasn't supposed to, leading to many crashed programs.

So, now I have the linked list implemented, it reads from the file perfectly. I have the rest of today and tomorrow to implement the following functions:-

Search;
Check-out via call number;
Check-in via call number;
List the most popular movies with the highest rental frequency (I'm going to average the frequencies, and define popular as being greater than average);
Exit the program

Oh... No wait, shit... I've already done the exit part, what it's meant to be is Save & Exit, so that it saves any changes to the data into another file (or maybe the same file? I'm saving to another file to negate any hassles I may encounter) before exiting the program.

I'm gona take a break for a while longer, I hope to finish the program by tonight. I think... I shall start on the save + exit tonight, and get that done, as it's sure to be a bitch.

So... Many... Primes...

2005-09-14T11:36:00.000+10:00

No, this has nothing to do with Transformers (more than meets the eye :o).

A few nights ago, I was watching NUMB3RS, this cop show dealy where they solve problems using math (crazy I know). But in the most recent episode, they talked about internet encryption and whatnot. This is the same kind of stuff we talked about in discrrete mathematics. How the encryption key can be factorised into the prime numbers that were used to create it. This is cause every number can only be factorised in ONE UNIQUE WAY.

So I proceeded to make a program that lists all primes, it did all the primes less than 1000 in a few seconds; pretty good. So I put in a big number, ooh, say, I don't know, 1 billion? That should do it. The program ran while I was asleep, and it wasn't even up to 2 million D: I might do something like make a program to implement the Euclidean algorithm, then again, I'm not entirely sure whether that's useful for breaking a number into it's primes... Although! ... I don't know, I'll think about this some more when I can be bothered.

Kinda makes you think. Simply printing the primes take forever. Imagine breaking down a number, with several hundred digits, in a series of primes. Crazy shit.

I... Am so nerdy at times...

Apologies

2005-09-02T22:50:00.000+10:00

I apologise for my lack of blog postage and update-age... Updateage? Is that even a word? No, according to M$ Word, it is not.

Let me be frank - I've been busy lately. With school, relaxing after school, some study, and now it's about to get worse.

I have an exam later this week - 30 multiple choice questions. How kick ass is that for a mid-term exam? Pretty kick ass ay? I thought so. But I still have 6 weeks of dealies to cover, so I can't really take it lightly. I want to do well this semester, really well. So that means my extra-curricular study has had to suffer. Yeah that's right little man (or woman, as it may be), I've had to stop with Windows and DirectX programming for the moment in favour of University work. Don't hate me.

What little spare time I've had has been spent chatting to my loving girlfriend who starts back at university soon, meaning we'll have less time to talk, meaning I want to talk to her as much as I can now without impacting negatively on my studies. I hate it when people use school as an excuse not to be with someone. It's like "I can't be with you because I have to focus on studies," which should, in turn, become "I can't be with you because of work, " before transforming into "I'm 80 years old and need to tend to the garden, I'm sorry." I will not go any further into this.

Again, I apologise for my lack of updating and keeping you posted on the happenings and goings-on in my programming life. For the moment it can't be helped. I need you to bear with me!

Now for a slight future note :: As I'm going to be working during the summer holidays, I intend to save up for a few things. A DS is a must have, coupled with some games, enough cash to pay for my fees / textbooks next year, and then the rest gets saved for my trip to Canada. ALSO on my list of things to get is a domain thinger, webspace, whatever it's called... A place to have my site on the web, and not having to worry about silly advertising headers, expiry conditions, and small bandwidth limitations. It'll extend to encompass my personal blog (which I shall reveal when I get a new layout done for it), the C.O.P. Studioz blog (and maybe a website), as well as this RufiGAMING blog /note.

I've gone fairly off-topic, covered things slightly out of the area of programming and games, and possibly even bored you. Just a little bit.

Thank you for bearing with me, IF you do in fact bear with me. If you don't then I have no thanks for you. THAT'S RIGHT! NO THANKS! So bear with me if you want thanks.

I'm out.

SAY WHAT?!

2005-08-22T22:49:00.000+10:00

Nigga!

I just found out that I have an assignment for Data Structures and Algorithms. Gay. It's due in a month, but I don't want to slack off. I also have an exam coming up soon. More gay. So I'm slightly busier now then I was, oh, I don't know, a few days ago? Sounds about right...

ANYWAY. This means I'm going to have to slow down on the non-essential things. That is to say, I have to take it easy with the learning of Windows programming. I may get back into it soon, providing I can get my assignment done quickly. I have to go to school earlier on Thursday in order to hand in some forms, so I'll bring my assignment along with me and scribble things down. I estimate I'll have about an hour of working time... That should be more than enough time to draw up a rough plan. I may end up posting my final source code (when and if we get our results - no need to jeopardise my marks by having my code openly available before everything is finalised) so you can get an idea of... I have no idea why you'd want to look at code for an assignment, oh well.

I apologise to my readers who have come to expect a working demo of a game from me soon... It isn't going to happen - not soon anyway. I barely have the knowledge to put a window together, let alone a working interactive (real-time) application. Command line crap is easy, well, easier... *ahem* Know this - I want to get a game done (possibly) more than you want me to get one done. It isn't going to be easy, but I'm going to try, and I am going to get something done even if it kills me! Or hurts my eyes! I AM GOING TO DO IT! NIGGA!

If you find that racially offensive, you are a racist. In this case, it doesn't take one to know one, instead, it takes a racist to find a word racially offensive. That is way, WAY off topic - stfu.

A quick summary of the points made:-

I have slightly more work to do for school; which means

Progress on game related things will slow down; so I want you to

Be patient my niggas.

Thank you.

note :: I think it would be wise of me to include a quick summary in all my posts, so as not to break the (proverbial) balls of my readers when I find that I've typed some large number of words. I sure as hell don't want to re-read a post, so I doubt anyone else would... Actually, if I can take the time to write all this out - you can read it. There will be no more summaries... NIGGA! /note

New layout!

2005-08-21T20:45:00.000+10:00

*d00t*

I spent pretty much all of today working on images for my blog layout. I made a few, and then I was all wanting to incorporate me into it, so I did, and it was crap -_-. Then I made some changes, reworked the other images around, and ta daa! I'm so cool.

In case you're wondering, the characters in the pic are (from left to right) Ryu, Ken, Sean and Akuma (Gouki for the Japanesely inclined) from Street Fighter, and if you didn't know that... Where the hell have you been for the past 15 years?! Jeez. These pics are actually of the characters in Street Fighter III: 3RD STRIKE, an awesome game ^^. I have it on Dreamcast, but I'd like to get it on XBOX (when I get one) and then get an arcade stick controller dealy.

Oh, and yes, that's me on the very left of the image... In case I haven't said so already. Just letting you know ^^. I really like how it's turned out, considering I took the picture of myself with my webcam, so the quality is FAR from amazing.

This post hasn't been as incredibly long as my others, but, then again, I didn't do any programming today. Enjoy yourself.

Does it again

2005-08-20T20:31:00.000+10:00

Again I've jumped the gun and gone and gotten myself some more development tools. This time I've acquired the library tools for the Simple DirectMedia Layer, a neat little thinger that has a bunch of graphics related stuff built into it. It was made in the first place so programmers don't have to re-invent the wheel so to speak. It simplifies window creation, plotting pixels, and I assume everything else graphic related. Of course all I've done is create a window using it -_- and plotted a pixel. I've even animated the pixel, and gone so far as to implement a very, very primitive collision detection system. Basically, a block merely bounces around a window, returning from whence it came if it comes into contact with a wall. Err... The edge of the window... There is no special physics, it's bounces remain at a constant 90degrees (imagine if you will, a beam of light, reflecting around the inside of a square-mirrored pipe - if that makes any sense). It isn't something great, but it's something.

I've also begun to read a book on artificial intelligence. The beginnings of the book deal with most of the same things as other game programming books. The basics of Windows programming and so on. I find it quite interesting to read, as different authors explain things in different ways. I've gone through 4 or 5 texts/reference materials where the author goes through the basics of creating a window, and it's slowly beginning to sink in for me ^_^ go me!

But yes, back to the AI. You may be wondering why I'm also looking at learning to program AI... Well... What use is a game if the computer doesn't do anything (without AI, a computer opponent doesn't technically exist now does it)? Now for a simple game like Noughts & Crosses (tic-tac-toe for those who may not know), and possibly Connect4, the AI programming would be relatively simple... Actually, I don't think it'd be very simple for a game like Connect4... But you can see what I mean. 9 spaces to choose from, aim to get 3 in a row, easy. If I had to do something for that right now I imagine I'd use a large CASE statement, either that or a series of large-ish IF statements, or even a combination of both. I know it'd take up a (relatively) large part of the game's processes, and that alone is a bad thing.

I'm still not too sure of what game I'll make first. It has to be simple, but not too simple. That doesn't make much sense now does it? -_-. Noughts & Crosses, Connect4, Memory, games like these ones are what I should be looking at making first off. No need to go and try build the next Half-Life engine now is there? I didn't think so. It also helps to start of small cause then that way you gain little skills along the way that can be applied to projects down the track ^^. Over the coming week or so, I will define my first project. It won't be a game, more a test to see if I can just do a bunch of things.

Create a window;

Place text in that window;

Plot single pixels

Display graphics (from file, BMP, GIF, whatever... most likely BMP);

Read keyboard / mouse inputs; and

Display those inputs as text in the window.

I may get ahead of myself in terms of my readings, but I can't get ahead of myself in terms of what I practice. Since I was 15 I've been saying I wanted to learn how to program games. Odd... It's taken me this long to actually start... Although, I did attempt to program various games. A text-based Monster Battle game. A random number generator to help me pick EmailCash's Guessing Game's winning number based upon previous winning numbers. Another Monster Battle game, this time with an actual interface (in Visual Basic), some sound effects (I think? Using the WAV module from my SDD assignment), still no images and true gameplay to speak of. I designed SketchPad-PRO, an assignment from my engineering computing unit (the only unit I passed last year mind you) which would plot a series of points based on input from a text file. Not much else comes to mind, I guess I didn't work as hard on anything else as I did those things. Most of them were on my older computer which has recently been wiped ;_; all of them are gone, save for the engineering assignment :o I might post that later...

The cool thing about blogging via MS Word is that I can check out my word count and stuff like that, right now I'm leaning towards 800 words I think. My typing is getting better, and I'm trying to not look at the keyboard as I do it ^^. Well, I haven't exactly memorised all the special symbols above the numerical keys, most of time I actually have to look at 'em when I wanna use one of 'em or something. Oh well. I suppose I can only get better with time.

Heh... I can't play games any more without wondering how it's done. While playing some Bomberman Online today, I was so curious as to how the game worked. The puzzles of Chu Chu Rocket were amazing (at least in the HARD mode, I beat normal in like 10 minutes x_x), I hope that one day I can come up with puzzles as good as those. Playing Street Fighter Alpha 3, I can't help but wonder how the collision detection is implemented, or how the animations are all done so well. In Street Fighter 3: 3RD STRIKE, the microscopic collision detection and timing come together to form the parry-system, amazing. And sure, these games all come from professional developing studios with years of experience, and some of the most talented people in the industry working for them... But... It's interesting to see these things implemented so well, and I really want to be able to do something like this one day...

... One day... When I make a game... I'll look at it... I'll comment on how well the game is implemented... But I won't be curious as to how it works - I'll know exactly how it works...

Arrg! Classes! GRR!

2005-08-19T14:01:00.000+10:00

Ok. So I've looking more and more at how I've arranged my class for the data... And I keep wanting to go back and add/modify things... This, in turn, has brought me to my next conclusion - draw up a friggin' decent plan, get everything sorted, don't touch anything once you're done. Sound good? I thought so.

As of now, I'm scrapping my data setup, and will re-analyse everything when the time comes to do so. I should still be learning all the fundamentals, not going ahead and creating parts of a game when I can't even implement it! That's crazy yo! YO!

I figure that everyday after Monday is time for me to work on programming (yeah I've also got to study everyday x_x), and I'm hoping that I get good enough over the next month or so to actually make something. I know I'll be good enough eventually, but I want things to speed up! Next year I won't have so much free time.

Hmm... What else... I guess that's all.

I'm'a see if my homework is available now, and do that, then study...

Welcome to the student programmer's life...

Data structure :: Complete

2005-08-18T22:24:00.000+10:00

Yes, that's right. My data struture for the checker board is complete AND tested. I can display the board exactly how it should look like.

That's all good and well, but now I have to figure out a way to calculate whether you can take your opponent's piece... At least while using data the way I have structured it...

note :: I have done this using only C++ command line programming, I haven't gone so far in my Windows/DirectX programming skills to have done this there yet. I just... I started doodling ideas, and then I just wanted to test things, and now here I am, a mini-project completed ^^. /note

My theoretical knowledge of programming is increasing. I understand things a lot better now than I did only a few months ago. I feel so much smarter ^_^. Hoshi would be proud. And I think Sari is hoping I am able to get something done. I hope so too.

Tomorrow and on the weekend I have to catch up on school work/study. I can't afford to miss anymore classes. I'll spend an hour on each subject everyday except Thursday, do all my homework on the weekend (or earlier if possible), and work on game programming when I have no homework/study to do.

Expect to see good (if not great) things from me in the future. I might not be very good right now, but I can only get better...

Update

2005-08-18T19:10:00.000+10:00

Little note of progress on my checker board design...

I've gone from an 8*7 array to 8*4. Way to optimise eh? Go me. Optimisation of how you use memory isn't exactly important at this point in my programming life, but I'd rather begin taking notice of things like this right now as opposed to down the track when I have to develop really high end applications.

Technically, the Big-O efficiency for the algorithm would be the same as using a larger array with space not used. Each algorithm is awkward either way; I have to check all the pieces on the board, and test to see if they can make a destroy move, then force those moves, else... Uhm... I'm not gona plan this right this minute.

I actually just noticed something I have to change in my custom data type...

Never before has checkers been so complicated x_x...

Note :: I will figure out how to get things like mouse clicks as input before I attempt to build a game. No point having a non-working engine eh? Dam right there's no point! PUNK!

I'm out.

Taking a break!

2005-08-17T11:35:00.000+10:00

Yeah, that's right. I'm taking a break over my attempt at Windows/DirectX programming. Yesterday I spent about an hour or 2 downloading/setting up/testing various unofficial development kits. About 3-4 hours of actual programming, and about another 4 hours (I did both things simultaneously - multitasking) reading resource material... When it comes to sitting in front of the computer, I could do this shit all day. That's the reason why I'll be looking at getting a job during the summer that involves being in front of a computer. IF I don't go to Canada during my summer break to see the Hoshi that is. I've asked some friends about data entry, and apparently you're required to touch-type some 50 words a minute, which is something I could pull of with MSNese, but using proper English I'm a bit slower, I don't know how slow exactly, but I highly doubt I'm pulling off even 40 words a minute. I'm really hoping that all this blogging I'm going to be doing, as well as programming, and typing up various school dealies will help speed me up and increase my touch-typing ability. I can kind of touch type right now, but I'm not all taht great yO!

Some interesting developments occurred during my day yesterday, After getting my unofficial devkits to work, I tested the compiler function and, it too had worked. Leaving me with various executable files, like the *.gba for Gameboy ADVANCE games... I could create working GBA games, for which all I'd need to play would be like, a Flash Kit dealy from Lik-Sang or where ever, and I'd be good to test my dealies on my own GBA. Cool huh? I'm so getting off topic.

After the past few days of hardcore study/programming, I'm going to be taking a little break (from game programming anyways). I've decided that I'll read up on my Computer Networking textbook, then maybe some stuff on Data Structures (if I don't feel dead after Comp. Net.). Netowrking just involves learning all the concepts and stuff, but I wish it would be teaching me to build networked applications : (. Data structures will really come in handy. I could probably use it in game development ^^ like creating a 'record' to handle character data (stats, name, status, so on) and stuff like that.

One last thing. Last night, I got bored and figured a way I could store the data for a 'Checkers Board' in an 8*7 array, instead of a 8*8 array. My way also requires less calculations to be made (pieces move horizontally/vertically as opposed to diagonals, only thex- or y-coordinate ever has to be modified, as opposed to both coordinates needing to be modified in order to calculate the diagonal move... Go me ^^).

I've type far too much. I'm going to have breakfast, then read. STFU, I'm aware that it's 11:30, but I only woke up an hour ago, so let me eat dam you! Also, I have 4 hours of school tomorrow, during which I will be paying my fees, don't touch me bitches.

Console game development

2005-08-16T13:44:00.000+10:00

Yeah that's right. I've gone WAY TOO FAR AHEAD OF MYSELF and acquired development kits for:

Nintendo Gameboy ADVANCE
Nintendo DS
Nintendo GAMECUBE
Sony PSP

edit :: Acquired from devkitPro, here's their SourceForge and WiKi. If anyone out there is really command-line-savvy and would like to help (with properly setting up MSYS), please feel free to do so ^_^. /edit

edit2 :: Nevermind about the MSYS, I've figured it out. /edit2

I highly, HIGHLY doubt I'll be using them anytime soon. Even setting them up has gotten me slightly confused (how the friggin' hell do I build executables?!). But I've gotten the basics set up (it kind of works...). It doesn't matter too much, I was just very interested to see what these things are like. They may not be official SDK's, but they get the job done I suppose. Not to worry! I won't be using these for a while. Console platforms are harder to develop for, or, at least you need to be more concise about things... Which makes it a better paltform to develop for, as you're not worrying about a bajillion different hardware configurations, conflicting software, and so on. When I do begin programming for consoles in the future, I'll have to set me up with the tools I need to test executables on the platform. Like a card thinger for GBA so I can load my game onto it from the PC, chuck it in the GBA, and away I go.

Admittedly, I have a ways to go before I make anything decent... But I can do this...

When it comes to programming, I get my head around everything - eventually.

... The story so far...

2005-08-16T10:33:00.000+10:00

This is what I've done so far. Aiight, check it.

I've created a program (in C++) that creates a window of size 640*480. Next I'm'a look to see if I can make that resolution changeable WITHOUT hard-coding it. What I mean to say is, I want to let the user be able to define it at runtime. That as well as other variable dealies.

I've copied an error handling class, which is all good for now, but I'm'a try rewrite it again on my own. Most of the stuff I did while looking at reference material, but I actually did type it all out again, I didn't just copy'n'paste (you learn more when you actually have to do stuff).

Now I need to learn to create the game-loop and after that I'll have to work on getting in/outputs, using those to actually do stuff within the window and so on.

This all doesn't sound like much, but let me tell you, it's taken about 100-ish lines of code to just make a freaking window and handle errors... This is not going to be - by any means - an easy thing to do...

... >_>... I made a window bitches...

WINDOWS BIARTCH!

2005-08-15T22:50:00.000+10:00

No I'm not bitching at the OS that we all love to hate. Instead, I am here to tell you that I have made but a single step forward on my journey to create a game... I... Have created a program, that creates a window... AREN'T YOU EXCITED! I KNOW I AM!

But yeah, seriously, as nerdy as this might sound, I am actually psyched up over this. I shit you not. I've just done something I've never, EVER done before, and it means I'm one step closer to accomplishing my goal.

What's my goal exactly? I'm not exactly sure... To make a game I guess. Or a few games. I won't stop at just the one, cause then I'd be done pretty soon... So yeah, I hope to be able to do this for a long time...

HERE my friends is a link to my EXE... Due to my webhost being gay (anyone wanna give me webspace for free? ^_^;;) I've had to change the filename cause it doesn't allow *.rar's, sooo you just have to change it to *.rar, then extract it to whereever, and run it, and TA DAA!

... A window is born...

SDK ahoy!

2005-08-15T17:10:00.000+10:00

WOO!

Ok, so I've just gotten myself Microsoft's DirectX SDK, something that I'm going to need (most of the resources on game programming I've looked at are all concerned with DirectX, so it looks as though I'm going to have to use it) to learn to use. I've set up my VC++ to use the LIB and INCLUDE files from the SDK. Other than that, no real development has started. No it's not cause I'm lazy, it's just that I have other things to do that are of higher priority, and there's a bunch of things I need to do before I can really even get into the programming portion of it all. I don't expect a game from me anytime soon, I'd expect something, just not a fully working awesome-sauce game.

I've also been scrounging around GameDev for various resources, converting things that look useful into PDFs and dumping 'em onto my computer for reference later on. I only have 9 hours of University a week, 5 of those hours are actual classes (all on Monday baby, go me!), so I've really got a lot of spare time on my hands (oh, I forgot to mention self-study didn't I?). I don't need a job to drag me down, and doing all this extra study will be really good for me as a budding (game) programmer.

So now, with 2 C++ textbooks on my desk, 1 game programming PDF (1000 pages long x_x), several HTML resources on various game programming dealies... I am on my way to making a kind-of-a-game type dealy... Hopefully...

PS: Will I ever stop typing the word that as taht? I think not...

PPS: Forgot to mention taht I might be looking to buy at least 1 more textbook concerned with Windows game programming. I might also get stuff on A.I. programming... Maybe... I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

looks around

2005-08-14T15:56:00.000+10:00

<_<... >_>... v_v... o_o...

HELLO!

After a somewhat overly extremely long break, I've come back to this magnificent blog of mine that appeared in a wink of an eye... And was abandoned shortly there after... BUT NOW I'M BACK!

And now the purpose of this blog has also been extended. You see, I don't want to have a zillion different blogs, each one for a specific subject area... I'd rather generalise... And that's what I'm going to do with this. Instead of being just about my views on gaming, games, and the like, it will also extend to my ideas for games, and the development status of any of my programming projects.

I've been thinking about a way to make an MMORPG that isn't farm-able. Farming is basically when some dude makes a ton of accounts for an online game, has bots play for each of those accounts, then sells off all the goods over eBay and what have you. Having played some games where messing with the economy, or strength of new players (getting an uber equip, giving it to a n00b character) isn't exactly flexible... I can think of a way to eliminate farming, but that would of course severely limit trading and such in the game...

Since having started seriously studying game programming, I'm starting to look at things in terms of how they might've been done. How are particular things within a game programmed? How are transitions in the controls or game mode handled? Exactly how do they get things done? ...

I will definitely have to explore these aspects further, but, for now, I have homework to do for tomorrow... I feel sick, and I really don't wanna stay in class for 2 hours doing work I could've done at home.

Rufi out yO!

Generation Next

2005-06-13T15:54:00.000+10:00

... I don't like Pepsi... Or the Spice Girls... Yet I manage to connect both of things to the title of my post... Odd...

ANYWAY! Now for something completely different... Or rather, something that's on topic; the next generation of video game consoles.

Yes folks, it's that time again, 3-5years after a generation is born a new one comes along. Over the 2001/2002 period we saw Sony's PS2, Microsoft's XBOX, and Nintendo's GameCube. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE! ... And by jungle I mean 128-bit era... Now in 2005, we are staring the NEXT generation of consoles in the face.

Sony. With it's somewhat-confusingly powered PS3. Utilising CELL processor, which some have argued would be fairly difficult to program for. Of course, for your average gamer, all those specs mean next-to-nothing.

Then we have Microsoft's XBOX360. A powerhouse among powerhouses, boasting some 9.6 GhZ of processing power (3 cores, each running @ 3.2GhZ), and quick to gloat about how amazing games will look on it's console.

Thirdly (And possibly finally) there is Nintendo's next console; the Revolution. The specs have been kept secret, not much known... Ok, nothing is really known about this console apart from it being Wi-Fi enabled, and having more backwards compatibility than you can poke a stick at.

What does this all mean? It means we have a new generation of gaming on our hands. Better audio/visual quality. More realistic (Or complex) AI. Larger games. Longer games. We can look forward to exactly what we have now (And what we've had for a while), only it'll be a tad more shiny. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited about a new generation of games, but, the thing is that it won't be all that different from what we have now. Games (For me) have never been about graphics, and I'm quite content with the level we're at now. But this post isn't about what we have now! It's about what we're getting!

... Which I've already stated? Yes. But how do I feel about all this... I'm overly excited, and almost wetting myself in anticipation o_o. I do believe I have already managed to show that I am a hypocrit... But aren't we all? Course we are. The fact of the matter is that as much as I'm fine with what we have, I still want more. New gaming concepts, new gaming worlds, new ways of gaming. The Nintendo DS has already done some of these things, what with it's dual touch screens, but will we see the same sort of thing with the new consoles?

I have no idea, and do not wish to speculate. I am disappointed with MS and Sony's displays of their consoles. Showing nothing but pre-rendered CG movies. I've seen Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, and that movie is fairly old now, so I know what kind of quality we can expect from pre-rendered footage. Then there's Microsoft's admission of their 360 consoles only being in their alpha stages, and utilising a third of their full power, this has lead to many jokes about MS releasing the beta version to the public, eh heh heh...

Let me say that the Nintendo Revolution is th only console that has managed to capture me. It might be my curiousity, or Nintendo's track record that draws me to it, I just don't know. Whatever it is, I just feel as though Nintendo will really come through with some high quality games, and a gaming experience of equal quality. Before you call me a fanboy, I want you to know that I never owned a NES/SNES, the N64 was my first Nintendo console, I also have a PS1 with some 150 games. The PC I'm currently using is running MS Windows. I have no brand loyalty. Just because I think I'll like the Revolution best of the 3 consoles doesn't mean much. Sony or MS could pull a few tricks out of their hats and astound me, thus changing my mind about Nintendo, then again, they could do nothing and not change my mind. Whatever.

Sony and MS are all about the power. Nintendo has me wanting Revolution for the sake of NES/SNES/N64/64DD game downloads. I still have my Sega Master System, and MegaDrive (a.k.a. Genesis to you NTSC folk), as well as my GameBoy Color (Yeah I have an Advance and an SP as well - no DS though). What's my point? I'm not sure exactly.

For my first piece, this has been fairly crap I'd say. My thoughts were all over the place, and there was little coherence in my writing - it was terrible. I apologise if this confused you. Let's just hope that I get better as time goes on.

GENERATION NEXT BABY! OH YEAH!

Welcome... To Rufi-Gaming...

2005-06-12T21:15:00.000+10:00

WELCOME! To... Rufi-Gaming? What the...

YES! Where I, Rufi, shall take you on a wonderous journey through the world of games. I shall bitch and whine, praise and gloat, own and/or pwnz0r j00, and many other things? Maybe.

But yes, where was I, OH, introducing this blog ^^. I have contemplated creating a blog strictly for the purpose of expressing my views on games, yet I never actually went through with it -- until now. I hope to get around to talking about most of the games in my VAST collection, spanning 15 years, 9 or so consoles, and some 200-300ish games. I like to believe that, for my age (19 on February 6th, 2005! ^_^), I've played a lot more games than most people. No. Let me rephrase that -- I believe I've spent more time playing games than most people. Of course I could be totally wrong. I probably am, but that doesn't matter, you know why? ... Well? ... Dude, seriously, I wanna know why... Well don't you just suck.

Ignore my somewhat insulting insults, as I don't really mean them (Or maybe I do!). I'm just a guy trying to come up with some kind of a lame intro to his blog (Which - by the way - no one will even read... Probably...). So yeah, I Hope this encourages you to read my blog, and, if it doesn't... Then... It won't? Right.

I believe that is all for my first post. Stay tuned as I will try to get something written up soon, and by soon I mean it might take a while... Or it might not - it all depends. There is actually something that I would really like to write about, and I shall (Try to) do so tomorrow.

The next generation of consoles. How do I feel about it? What do I think of it? We shall see the answers to these questions (And some more, possibly random - and irrelevant - questions) tomorrow! Or... Whenever I get around to it.

PLEASE COMMENT! I want to feel like people out there actually care! Thank you.

EDIT :: Spelling errors... Also note that I won't get my own layout up for a while, unless I'm not lazy about it. Don't get your hopes up. Hooray for standard Blogger dealies! Well, I did add a counter... BUT THAT'S ALL! >_>