Welcome to JediMoose
Portal to stuff Read more...
Just to give you a little bit on info outright, this site is powered by WordPress and the Scary Little theme. Moo.fx is used for javascript transitions, and it all snuggles up nicely in a MySQL bed.
Edgy will be experiencing this for the first time as currently Ruthy and I are wandering about the land with him, smiting foes.
Hopefully Enzo will have bought the game by the weekend so there should be plenty of gaming done by the end of the year.
“Multiplayer online gaming - you never have to see your friends face to face ever again…”
Recently I bought the Guild Wars expansion, Eye of the North, for both myself and Ruthy. And, as you’d expect, many hours have been blissfully wasted spent on it.
But there’s a problem.
Neither myself or Ruthy have actually finished any of the three existing games (Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall) and now we have a full expansions worth of gameplay to entertain/frustrate us.
At this rate I’ll be playing this game well in to the next decade.
That is, until they release Guild Wars 2…
BigAl
Or, if you’re not expecting much, it’s exactly as good as you think.
(This isn’t an in depth review of the game and you’d do better looking elsewhere for that. This is just a personal grump about it.)
I had a 14-day trial key for the Star Wars online experience from another SW game I had. The key had been unused since I bought that other game as I’m already playing Guild Wars and that nicely fills my online gaming needs. That, and there’s no monthly fee to GW which cheers me up no end.
But last week I had some free time and I decided to fire up SW: Galaxies and give it a go.
And after faffing around with the account setup on Sony’s website (which seemed to take an age), I finally got the client downloaded and everything setup.
Once I was in the character setup I reviewed the choices, all the ususal Star Wars fare, and settled on Jedi. A no-brainer really.
I then spent the rest of that afternoon idly hacking at bad guys and doing the usual quest/experience point gathering that you’d expect from any good role-playing game. And that’s all I’ve done with it.
It’s an alright game but despite its Star Wars link, it doesn’t really seem to have anything really exceptional going for it. The player experience was, well… blah. After playing Star Wars RPGs like Knights Of The Old Republic (and Cheezy, I’d like it back please) you can’t help but get the impression that they could have tried harder.
BigAl
Thought it was probably time that I laid out some of my initial thoughts of the Nokia N800 that I won at LugRadio Live. I don’t have any pictures / screenshots at the moment, but I promise I’ll get some up soon.
It’s possible that I get some of these technical details a bit wrong - apologies in advance
The Nokia N800 is an “internet tablet” - it’s not a mobile phone, or a PDA. If anything, it’s more like a very small laptop. It runs on Linux, using the Hildon desktop, based on Gtk. It has built in wifi and bluetooth, and a beautiful screen. It even has stereo speakers. It has 2 SD Card slots, now compatible with SD cards up to 8GB in size. I believe both of these are hot-swappable. It comes with a web browser, googletalk for IM, and video conferencing with the built-in webcam, plus a media player, and a few other apps. It supports input via a stylus, or using your finger. It connects to your PC via USB, but doesn’t have any syncing software, nor does it charge over USB. There is a stereo headphone jack that also supports a headphone+microphone set on a single jack.
The screen is beautiful. It really is. It’s really crisp and bright. The wifi is good quality, and it has become my tool of choice for small bits of web surfing while at home. The clever bit of software that detects if you’re using the stylus or your thumb and displays different menus/keyboard is an inspired piece of work, although if I was doing a lot of typing I’d probably need to get some sort of bluetooth keyboard.
Being basically a Linux PC makes this a massively versatile device. There is tonnes of software available, and most of it is free. I have a few good tidbits installed:
There are, however, 3 big things I dislike about the device:
The other thing that I need to get sorted out is Bluetooth networking - the N800 doesn’t support the wireless setup at work, so I’d like to be able to connect through the bluetooth on my laptop, but this is not part of the default setup, which is a shame.
All-in-all, this is an amazing little device. I have lots of things I still want to try on it (installing Django, play with GPS, install a calendar and syncing, etc), but I think it will be a faithful friend for a long while.
mrBen
A while ago, I used to play Enemy Territory a lot. It’s a great game, and I miss it at times. Me and some of the guys on the #lugradio IRC even setup a server to run every Sunday and Wednesday night for us to play on.
Well - Heather is going away this weekend to get some R&R at her parents, along with the beautiful Mira, and to sooth the pain of absence, I thought it might be nice if some of the old crew (and any new crew, of course) could get together for a good old shootout.
Server details at http://clan.lugradio.org (if you didn’t know already). The server kicks in at 7.30pm. Let me know if you’re coming!
mrBen
I recently picked up Myst: The Collection for Ruthy and being a bit bored of Guild Wars the other night, I decided to indulge in some classic point-and-click.
Sure, the graphics are dated and the gameplay is as straight-forward as it comes, but to re-immersed in the Myst universe from the beginning again is a feeling that I can’t really describe.
I’ll put this in a personal perspective for a moment. When I first saw Myst, I was transfixed. The graphics were, for the time, breathtaking. The audio effects, both background sounds and the soundtrack, had an incredible attention to detail. All in all, it was one of the most beautiful gaming experiences I ever had.
I still remember thinking that this was a bright future for the adventure gaming genre.
Of course, having been a fan of the entire series (Riven, Myst III: Exile, Myst IV: Revelation, Myst V: End Of Ages, the ill-fated Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and the brand new Myst Online: Uru Live) it’s a real blessing to go back to the start and remember why the series has meant so much.
I feel like going to start rambling here, so I’ll quickly sum up…
If you have Myst go back and play it.
If you don’t have Myst, go and find a copy and play it.
And when you play it, play it with an innocence you no longer have.
And when it takes your breath away with it’s simplicity and beauty come back and tell me you’re looking to play Riven… 
BigAl
Gaming under Linux has always been an interesting challenge. There are some really decent games out there (Quake4, Doom3, Unreal Tournament 2004, Enemy Territory), but many games don’t get released for Linux.
Open Source Gaming is even trickier - all the games I mentioned above are proprietary, although id software do release their older engines under the GPL when they’re out of date. For instance, the Quake 3 source was released about 12 months ago, which has led to a number of free standing FPS games for Linux (Tremulous is one of my favourites, but Urban Terror has just been released, and looks pretty good too.)
However, the other day a new game came on my radar. A game that had previously been released commercially by Eidos, but which was open sourced under the GPL a few years ago, and is now available on all platforms, and with some upgraded graphics now. The game is called WarZone2100, and it’s a top quality RTS (real-time strategy) game. Unlike many of this type of game, there isn’t an overabundance of resource management - it’s mostly about fighting the enemy, and battle strategy, but there is a goodly amount of researching artifacts, and designing new vehicles, and the suchlike.
The documentation is a bit lacking on the website - it took me a bit of hunting to find the keyboard shortcuts, but the game is still great fun. Plus, and this is often what separates commercial games from open source, there is a single-player campaign mode, which I’m playing at the moment.
One thing to note - the only thing they couldn’t open source was the video codec library, meaning that there are none of the cut-scene videos, which have been replaced with text transcripts instead. But you really don’t miss anything
Go and try it out, and maybe we’ll have a fight on-line sometime
mrBen
Quake 4 rocks. It really does. Best FPS I’ve played since Half-Life (and I haven’t played HL2 yet). The graphics are wonderful, there’s an actual story, there are other marines you can interact with, the bosses are in places you don’t always expect and it works under Linux which keeps mrBen happy.
Doom 3 sucked. It really did. It was a big advert for the engine. And other than looking pretty it sucked. Oh look, the lights are dimming / have gone out. Time to break out the big guns as there’s a monster ahead. And there are hours of this stuff. Which sucks.
GuildWars. Oh yes. one of the best games I’ve ever played. One of those online only, massively-multiplayer jobs. Buy the game and no additional monthly fees. You can currently pick up the first game in the series for £10-15. There are currently three: GuildWars, GuildWars Factions, GuildWars Nightfall. They are all standalone. Ruth and I both play it. It is excellent. And apparently it works comfortably under Linux (through the wonders of Transgaming).
Also, while I’m in the mood to share, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War is the bog’s dollocks. You can pick the up on the cheap at the moment and a collectors box with the main game, the expansion (Winter Assault) and Dark Crusade (which doesn’t require the original game) is doing the rounds.
It should be noted that I’m not getting paid for this big advert…
BigAl
A long time ago I bought myself a copy of the (sadly extinct) Loki Games Linux port of Heavy Gear 2, Activision’s version of Mechwarrior. It was great fun to play, except that there was a known problem with the game segfaulting at the end of any mission because of an nVidia driver issue. Which made the campaign section impossible to play. 
The other day, I though I’d give it another try, and with a bit of help from t’intarweb it now all works.
If you follow the instructions here and here, then all should be joyful for you.
mrBen
I wasn’t originally planning on writing another ‘review’ of Tremulous after my first post about it, but I’ve been playing a bit over the last couple of weeks, and wanted to put some thoughts down on paper.
The Good
Tremulous is great fun. I love being an alien - it’s such a different way of doing things, although it takes some getting used to. Plus, I think they’ve done a fantastic job of not giving either species an overall advantage, without falling into the trap of giving exact opposites to each side.
The graphics are great, and the movement is cool - the aliens move _so_ quickly it’s unbelievable. The weapons for the humans are cool, but the aliens have some funky moves too Oh, and the alien defensive buildings are pretty cool, I reckon.
It’s so much easier to get a game online with T too; lots of servers, not so many players. Which is great. Oh, and did I mention that it’s 100% Free?
The Bad
There are a few annoyances I’ve found:
The Ugly
Man - those aliens are scary buggers. If they catch you unawares they scare the life out of you!
Conclusion
Tremulous is still a great game. I’ll still be playing it for a while. The learning curve, particularly for aliens, is quite steep, but worth it. If you haven’t given it a go, then you should…..
mrBen
One of the guys over in #lugradio pointed me towards a new (kinda) game called Tremulous. It was originally a mod of Quake3, requiring the Quake3 game to run. But since id software open source their older game engines, and have just open sourced the Quake3 engine, they can make the whole thing into a nice package for you and me to download (Windows and Linux only - no Mac that I can see)
Tremulous is a weird cross between a first person shooter, and a strategy game. You have to strategically build your ‘base’, and you can upgrade your weapons (or ‘evolve’ if you’re an alien). But upgrading requires your team to get kills.
Another twist is that it’s humans vs aliens, and the two have very different skills/abilities. Humans have weapons, mostly long range, whereas the aliens have to get up close. But the aliens are _really_ fast, can (mostly) walk on the walls, and automaticaly regenerate their health over time. Which makes for interesting battles.
Anyway - it’s a free (as in beer, and as in freedom) game, so go check it out! (Oh, and there’s a reasonable list of servers, many of which stay empty a lot of the time )
mrBen
(Demo video: Low quality High Quality
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been replaying the game ‘Driver’ on my laptop (AFAIK Driver won’t install/play under WINE, so I am running it on the works WinXP install, I confess). Driver bears a lot of similarities to the GTA series, although you never get out of your car. You play an undercover cop acting as a driver for the mob, carrying out various missions.
The graphics look dated, the sound leaves a bit to be desired in places. But this game is better than a lot of much more recent games I’ve played, because it has something special - gameplay. It’s brilliant fun to play. The physics are exaggerated so that your car acts like a car in a 70s cop show - even simple corners have you squealing round, hub caps flying. In San Francisco, your car will detach itself from terra firma at the slightest bump.
Alongside the main ‘mission’, there are a host of side games, or you can just ‘Take a Ride’ around the city - which in itself can be a great laugh. Even better - everything you do can be played back as a video, and even edited in the ‘Film Director’ mode, so you can make your own car chase sequence.
You can probably pick up Driver for a couple of quid from Ebay. The system requirements are minimal (it is 5 years old), and, according to the reviews I’ve read, it’s better than either Driver 2 or Driv3r. Go forth and do dougnuts!
mrBen
Try it now!
It’s one of those MMORPG thingys which usually I wouldn’t even touch with yours.
But out of curiosity, and with the urging of my mate Fruity, I downloaded the client and fired it up. And I have to say that on a first glance it rocks.
I’ve often been sceptical of this kind of thing. I’m not happy with the standard “buy the game (which you can only play online) and buy the time online to play the damn thing” scenario.
But this seems to be different. There are no monthly fees (no extra fees at all actually) and it just costs the price of the game. I know that there are similar games which are free to download and use (KnightOnline and Planeshift spring to mind) but there are nowhere near the quality of GuildWars.
I’ll keep playing this over the weekend, but as far as first impressions go I’m already hooked.
Payday is this Thursday. I know what I’ll be buying.
BigAl
No, this is not a post about the lastest in a string of Premiership disappointments for Liverpool, but rather about Doom3.
Over the weekend I completed the Doom3 demo - I’ve had the demo for a while, but my overly darkened monitor (now replaced) and the fan-related problems with my box conspired against me. But now, with a new gfx card to boot, I was ready to rock.
You may remember me saying that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was my favourite FPS of all time. So I was particularly interested to see how Doom3 would fare, in particular because one of my bugbears about RtCW was the zombies, and Doom3 is, well, chocked full of the beasties.
I managed to get the full game cheap on ebay the other day, and it should arrive this week, so I’ll reserve some judgement for when I play (and hopefully complete) that, but for now, here are some first impressions from the demo level.
It feels a lot like a cross between Half-Life and RtCW in gameplay - the plot is similar to HalfLife, but it’s been kept pretty linear in terms of getting through the levels. There were one or two little puzzles and bonuses hidden about too, just to keep things interesting. Being able to talk to characters, and the slightly more interactive feel gave it a Half-Life aura too. As I’ve said before - I _like_ something to be relatively linear. It gives me a feeling that I’m actually getting somewhere, something that I really struggled with in HL.
The graphics and sound are excellent - extremely atmospheric, making it very scary in places. I expect that to get worse in later levels. Let’s hope my heart can cope with the pressure….. Did I mention that it looks fantastic especially with all the textures turned up on my new kit
The weapons on the demo are fairly standard - a wimpy pistol that’s not up to much, and where headshots are the order of the day, a shotgun that kicks ass, and a machine gun that has annoyingly small clips, but useful at times (usually just _after_ you pick up the weapon ). Getting shot is a trial too - lots of movement particularly when being hit by a machine gun makes it hard to aim. But that’s a good thing.
A lot has been said about the use of darkness in the game. Generally, I think it’s been done very well. Using the flashlight is great, although frustrating. I personally think that you should be able to hold a flashlight and your pistol (but none of the two-handed weapons), rather than just the flashlight. (Hark at me! flashlight by which I mean “torch” )
As I mentioned in my earlier writings, I like the use of the PDA. It’s a great way of holding information, but also progressing the story, and providing some backfill to the plot.
So - what of the downsides. Well, there are a couple that I can think of at this point. Firstly, you do get used to the signs that a baddie is just round the corner - lights flickering off, and things like that. You do, however, get scared by an extra one every now and then. Probably the most frustrating thing for me came from a combination of 2 things: good textures and no “use” key.
There are a lot of textures in the game, but it’s not always obvious what is interactive and what isn’t. I kept trying to open panels, and shoot ventilation grills. Worse still, I am used to use the ‘Use’ key from other games (normally F for me) to open panels, which brings out my flashlight - that could get old quickly
More on this once the real thing arrives.
mrBen
While I was off last week I had a loan of Doom 3. What a load of old pants.
While it’s a joy to look at, and the graphics are DAMN good, the gameplay is disappointing.
Sorry. Did I just say disappointing? It’s piss poor. Or somewhere between disappointing and piss poor. I don’t know.
First off, the story is really linear. And I mean REALLY linear. I know the same can be said of similar games, Halflife is a good example, but at least Halflife gave you the impression that you were going somewhere or achieving something.
And scary? Not really. Well, there was this one bit…
I’d just wandered in to a room and handily dispatched a couple of big and nasties when I say aloud to the darling wife, “I don’t really see what all the fuss is”, and a corpse leaps off a console as I walk past. The under garments were an unfortunate shade of brown then, let me tell you.
But after that, when you realise that the corpses can’t be trusted, all you have to do is be wary of the shadows and realise that when the lights go off and you’re scrambling for the trusty flashlight, there’s some of those pesky undead creeping towards you…
I got bored with it pretty quickly and resorted to cheating to finish the last few levels. I know it’s not the done thing but I was so fed up with the same-ness of it that I just wanted to get it finished and get on with my life.
I’m hoping that Halflife 2 is better.
BigAl
OK - here is the idea that is going to make me millions. Or rather, it would if I could get the credit for it. But remember - you heard it here first. Unless you heard it elsewhere.
We’ve all seen MMORPGs - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, and we’ve all seen FPSs - First Person Shooters. My plan is to combine the two into a massive MMORPFPSG!! Basically the idea is this: you have a first person shooter, much like Enemy Territory or Counter-Strike, which is basically objectives-based: capture this town, defuse this bomb, defend this thing, however, and here is the clever bit, the objectives for each place are defined at the wide-view level of the MMORPG. Thus if you like MMORPGs you can play this side of the game, but the squads that you are commanding may consist all or part of real people who are playing an FPS.
Of course - there are a lot of details to fill out, but that’s the basic concept. I think it’d be cool. The other half of the concept is to basically create a single world online, rather than multiple maps ‘n’ stuff, whereby a server may host a particular FPS set of maps, but they relate to the world as a whole. Thus all the servers work in collaboration with each other to run the game, and everyone is actually playing together.
I think it’d be cool.
mrBen
Doom 3 demo. Got it installed at the weekend. Got the graphics working last night after our video night. Had the piss scared out of me.
Really.
Now I’ve seen some scary films and read some scary books and played some scary games and been in cars involved with some really scary driving. And none of these things have really freaked me out, apart from the driving where I may have been squealing like a little girl… But generally I like the scare factor. I’ve always prefered the psychological horror to the slasher variety because there’s something a lot more appealing (?) about a creeping terror than some idiot with a big knife.
I’m not sure which category Doom 3 falls into but it’s easily far scarier than anything I’ve seen or read… ever. So much that, after 20 mins of playing the game, it was switched off and uninstalled.
However, as a challenge, Chris at work has offered to lend me the full game… I’m tempted but it might tear me away from Morrowind and in the short term I’m going to spend as much time on that to get the most from it.
Later on, when I’m out of excuses, I’ll play it again. Maybe.
BigAl
Stuff I want - but you don’t have to buy from Amazon if you don’t want to……
A look into alternative browsers, and the reasons for chaning
The ‘unstable’ distribution of Debian - rocks my world :)
The best browser on the market at the moment, and all for free
Funny Linux radio show
Archives of everything before August 2004
The free office suite that does all that the non-free one does ;)
Stuff I want - but you don’t have to buy from Amazon if you don’t want to…… A look into alternative browsers, and the reasons for chaning The ‘unstable’ distribution of Debian - rocks my world :) The best browser on the market at the moment, and all for free Funny Linux radio show Archives of everything before August 2004 The free office suite that does all that the non-free one does ;) Stuff I want - but you don’t have to buy from Amazon if you don’t want to…… A look into alternative browsers, and the reasons for chaning The ‘unstable’ distribution of Debian - rocks my world :) The best browser on the market at the moment, and all for free Funny Linux radio show Archives of everything before August 2004 The free office suite that does all that the non-free one does ;)
