Matts Blog

That may seem like an odd post title, but it has its reasons – I have had the joy of playing two very different games, and this is just an opinion/pondering rather than any kind of review. The games of this discussion happen to be Borderlands, of which I have now spent over 50 hours with – and Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood, of which I have probably spent about 3 hours with. This is no reflection on quality of game, I should point out… but more in their design choices.

Also what I mean by the topic title is Borderlands traditional “Point+Click” way of playing, you point at a foe, and click to shoot – that is the most basic mechanic. BiB though takes a different tact, it applies gestures in some situations (as well as the P+C as above); so for example you can hit a semi sort of bullet time, and depending on your character you make gestures to target/do certain things.

I’m just not sure which one I prefer, on one hand you get the satisfaction of killing multiple foes with only a few gestures – it also adds more movement to the mouse than aiming, but in the process this can get in the way of actual player skill. Borderlands on the other hand actually requires the player to aim in the traditional sense, theoretically making your skill as a player stand out above all else, although of course there are more factors than just skill, such as weapon damage, damage type, accuracy, etc.

I wouldn’t want to say I actually like one over the other, its a design choice – but really ought to be one considered very carefully… even Max Payne’s “Bullet Time” still had an element of player skill – it just slowed the enemies down and gave you a very Matrix feel (some mods took this element even further).

Anyway, you can expect a review of Borderlands soon – imagery is my main hold-up. Expect one of Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood, Wolfenstein and Dragon Age: Origins in eventual time.

For those who weren’t aware, the TeamSpeak 3 beta has started – infact there has been so much interest the TeamSpeak site ended up using a placeholder page with download links (and just the forum) because there was so much interest (according to their twitter feed, 70 million visitors).

I’ve already struggled and grappled with the server, it never helps matters that I often have to deal with the memory of setting up the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars server – which needed both your local IP (NIC IP) and your external IP (from your ISP). But I have done it now, and feel quit pleased about that. So I’ll provide a quick run through of setting it up at the basic level for those who might still be having trouble (including wading through the forums).

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Incase you were confused, its about Colin McRae’s DiRT2 – released for the PC only yesterday [4/12/09] over here in the EU and UK. Unfortunately the US have to wait until the 8th forum posts suggest.

While I could write most of what I have said on in that thread on here, I won’t – I spent quite a while in the early hours (somewhat sleep deprived I should note) writing a post over on the EGC site. It goes into a fair bit of depth, and really I only want to expand on a few key notes which I didn’t go into this morning – but please, read the post first.

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Ever had that strange feeling that if you could just mash two or three games together they’d be perfect? I know I have, and a number of other people I have had the pleasure of gaming with online. Regardless of technical limitations there is no harm in dreaming, perhaps someone will be inspired to do it – perhaps not. It seems a damn shame that no one is willing to take a gamble on an ambitious project, probably because the likes of STALKER, or what it was initially promised to be – it ended up cut back and not what it was when initially announced.

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Wow – that was a hectic two weeks, and two especially hectic days. I have installed Windows 7 nearly two weeks ago now, pretty much got it to the state I want it in now, using RocketDock as a sort-of sidebar – hiding when I do not need it, appearing when I do – wonderful little application. I have realised one memory gobbler happens to be SpyBot S&D’s TeaTimer (the resident shield protecting my system) – shame really.

Only yesterday did I want to start getting into PHP but needed a local development environment – while I could have easily used XAMPP or WAMP servers, I wanted… if not insisted on getting my hands dirty and going with the full Apache, PHP and MySQL install each one being separate. Certainly an interesting experience – would have helped if I had read the PHP website instructions much earlier, that caused some tiny headaches. But all is well and it works wonderfully!

Then this morning I take a quick glance at my room (I normally avoid doing so), noticing piles of clothes, a rather dusty and crumb-scattered desk – plus paper which has been on my floor far too long. I end up cleaning the whole lot, not quite done but now its just an issue of putting stuff where it belongs.

I forgot to mention my wonderful new keyboard, the Saitek Eclipse II – being one of the cheaper and basic options for the Eclipse range, my z-board had broken (one key had stopped functioning, the connection on the membrane had broken). There are a few issues with it, such as the right-arrow key not working mid-press… I hardly use it anyway, and I just have to tap it harder if it doesn’t work.

So all-in-all a pretty busy time – looking forward to Left 4 Dead 2 later this month (I have been sceptical about it, but the preview demo has given me some assurances about characters and quality (and fun)). New computer case for Christmas, rearranging my desk for that and for a slight change – fun times!

I’m currently working on my own personal little library for PHP, I haven’t touched it in far too long amount of time – I’ve also had project ideas so going to be quite busy if gaming doesn’t have anything to say about that (and it probably will to some degree).

Credit to my father for this, if you have any additional questions ask in the comments and I shall forward them to him for you!

A little help for people who may be using a ZOOM PCI Modem (3025-72-00CF) in Windows 7 64bit – it is possible to use the Windows Vista 64bit drivers for Caller ID (UK). Follow the instructions below:

Vista 64 bit drivers work on windows 7 64 bit for UK caller ID with the following mod:

To get UK Caller ID to work before (or after) installing drivers.

1) Download from zoom.com the driver package V92PCI_VISTAv173047-64bit.exe

2) Unpack this package. (See Additional Resources for tool)

3) In the unpacked folder go into the Vista64 folder & edit Cxt10b46.inf.

In the [CID] section replace

HKR, Responses, “<cr><lf>DATE = “,        1, 93, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00

with:
HKR, Responses, “<cr><lf>TYPE = “,        1, 93, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, “DATE = “,                1, 93, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00

To Give:

[CID]
HKR, EnableCallerID,1,,”at+vcid=1<cr>”
HKR,,CallerIDPrivate,,P
HKR,,CallerIDOutSide,,O
HKR,,VariableTerminator,,    <cr><lf>
HKR, Responses, “<cr><lf>TYPE = “,        1, 93, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, “DATE = “,                1, 93, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, “TIME = “,                1, 94, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, “NMBR = “,                1, 95, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, “NAME = “,                1, 96, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00
HKR, Responses, “MESG = “,                1, 97, 00, 00,00,00,00, 00,00,00,00

4)  Now run the zoom setup64 program in the Vista64 folder & REBOOT.

Caller ID now should work (I Use PhoneTrayFree).

NOTE(S): this should work for 32 bit also, but file name may differ.
Tried only on Windows 7 64 bit but should work on Vista.
(You cannot edit the .inf file directly in the window 7’s driver repository).

Additional Resources:

• uniextract - for unpacking the .exe to modify the files.

It has arrived faster than I was expecting, the release date for Windows 7 is so very close now – although our boxed copies are in the snail-mail now. Its a strange one, I have not been particularly over-hyped for it – and for a year now (thereabouts) I have been using Vista pretty much exclusively. I’ve had and still got the W7 release candidate 1 installed, though that had some problems in it to begin with. Plus I was so entrenched in Vista with various apps, games and settings I really didn’t want to clog my hard-drive up more.

So with W7 I plan to reformat my hard-drive and re-partition it, afterall I won’t need some of the multi-boot Operating Systems anymore. Although I may consider trying out a Linux distribution at some point. Starting pretty much fresh… now I just need to sift through the years-worth of junk and only take what I want I hate moving OS.

I have followed this game for a while, and have been under no disillusion about its namesake and past events. The first Operation Flashpoint (OFP) at the time was developed by Bohemia Interactive (developers of Armed Assault and Armed Assault II (2)), yet it was published by Codemasters (CM). It seems there was a falling out of sorts, and the developer got to keep the engine – but CM got to keep the rights to the name.

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Game piracy, or indeed any other electronic entertainment piracy… I have never really been fond of it – preferring where I can to purchase something legally. The only thing I can hate just as much is extremely intrusive anti-piracy which does not appear to actually change anything. I heard of a pirate-Steam at one point, though I never researched it or looked into it further… and recent trends of using an online database to track installations just frustrates me (though a CD key rarely bothers me on itself).

I was never really sure what kind of numbers you often see on piracy, and what makes developers decide “we won’t produce for the PC much, its full of pirates”… and to that degree I as an honest PC gamer get a little worried, will this series I enjoy now (whatever it be) continue on the PC? I certainly hope so, apart from the deterioration of PC quality thanks to the whole console porting. A recent game to come out trying something different (although it seems standard practice for the company in question) is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (OFPDR), released by Codemasters.

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Have I got your attention? Yep? Good. Recently I have noticed the gaming industry has received a bit of bad press, especially in regards to violence in its games. Its not entirely surprising, except that the media feed off it a lot – a gloom and doom story after all does sell well. Initially ITV have done three case-studies (yep, three) of children and their gaming addiction, how it was taking over their lives; the reporter herself then writes about her son and his “gaming problems”.

I feel like I should point out that games are a form of escapism, and given the right environmental scenario they can become extremely addictive, so-to-speak. Certainly in the case of Ned the reporters son, but alternatively they can give hope to those who have never had a good life… curing depression to some extent. Online communities^[1] (given the right one) can be terribly supportive to the point of gullibility and exploitation.

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