Update on Nothing...

Well, what have I been up to?

In short, not a lot, I have been rather busy with work which is very stressful, I've finally been kicked out of my LOTRO trial.

I can't be too unkind about that game, I'd love to have such a game as my hobby, but it's simply not good enough in my opinion to survive in the current market.  It looks dated, it's not gripping, the effects and models are clunky and the interface is not straight forward enough, even for me an experienced computer user, I found I was always having to look at things thrice.  So, trial over, my frank review has already been posted.  My quick caption... "Don't bother".

I have also played a little more CIV5, I've been enjoying it in both DirectX10/11 and DirectX9 mode... on the same hardware, under DirectX 9, you really can see the difference in the quality of this title.  More on that in a later post.

I'm also revisiting all the games on my Steam list, this started with one of my favourite games of all time, Day of Defeat.  The original and best IMO.  I was a demon on this game, was in a clan ranked in the top 9 in the UK while playing it.  Good times.

Another title from my Steam list is Operation Flash Point : Dragon Rising.  (tumble weed goes past)

And that's it, that has been the sum total of my gaming this week, I'll be off now to put my nose back to the office grind stone.

LOTRO - An Appraisal

Okay, today I'm going to be brutal, I'm going to be honest, I'm going to talk about Lord of the Rings Online. A game I have picked up and played in the last month.

I had played a trial account way back when to get me an idea of how LOTRO plays, I wasn't impressed back then, and I'm not overly impressed now.  A few details have been fixed up, a few bits and pieces have been sorted out, but I still look at the game and can't see the appeal factor.

This time I've come to LOTRO, again on a trial, but without my WoW glasses on, I've not played WoW in nearly a year so I gave LOTRO its own shot, first things first, getting the client... You have a few options.  Previously there were options to download the game and it would load content up dynamically in the background; this was the option I took before; and I was up and running in the game looking around after about 30 minutes.  This time however, with a lot more content in the game (with the different chapters having been released) I opted to download it all... 30 hours to get the client.

Now let me tell you, 30 hours is a pain in the bum, I also tried to download the client (later on) by the Torrents available from Codemasters... it took 6 days...

I was informed, unofficially, that this was because LOTRO is going free to play, so they are looking at torrent seeding and less HTTP server bandwidth for installing the game, as a key cost cutting exercise.  And I can only think they are cutting off their nose to spite their face.  If players are being made to go down a RMT route to fund your game, the most basic thing you can do is save them from having to wait a week for the client...

Anyway, I got into the game, after about 1000 additional patches (seriously, 1000 ish patches WTF!) and I started a Dwarf.  Not my natural go to race, but I find that these games have an interesting story line for Human but the other races get ignored.

So, in I went, what immediately stuck me was how bad the game looked, it seemed to default me to a silly low resolution and no anti-aliasing.  And it looked horrible, worse than horrible, it was terrible.  So, I quickly upped the graphics resolution, slapped on some anti-aliasing and restarted the client.

It looked a lot better, I would make out my characters face, it no longer looked like someone caught on google street view.

I enter the game, and classically you're faced with a few tips and an NPC right there to tell you where to go.  Here's my first comment about the interface.  I didn't like it... The icons are functional, they do what they say they will do, but there is immediately a lot going on.  You have all your bag slots, you have skills, you have a dial and a marker thing which is not explained, you have a load of icons to the left, some of which I've still not used yet... It is information over load.

I played through to level 4, and let me tell you, I used 4 buttons on this interface, including my skills... Two for actions in attacking, one to open my bags and one to open my character sheet and drop items onto my character.  4 buttons.  Yet there is more than 20 on the screen...

This sort of sets the precedence, there is a lot of information to get through.  Talking to NPC's you have an interface pop up window, in which is their text, I found the text quite hard to read.  It is a serif font (like Times Roman) it is presented in a block, with a blue background and blue buttons, there's not a lot of distinguishing going on.  We all know another game in the genre uses a parchment style looking quest text box, and it defaults on install to showing the text appearing with a writing pen scratching sound... this is much better than LOTRO's approach, just a pop up full of grey/white text on dark blue... with dark blue buttons to proceed.  Not that other games get this perfect, but LOTRO seems to have this one quite badly done.  I even pondered, while still below level 10, going to look for a mod to change the quest text, until I stopped myself and made myself play on.

And made myself I did not, my first job was to jolly down a mine and watch a bit of annoyingly cut of action... “Oh we can't go through this gate”.. bish bash whollop “oh we can now”... erm... what, you just happened to not have the key in your pocket until we were made to watch that distant action go on?

Anyone who has played a Dwarf in LOTRO will know to what I refer and probably hold it in mind with fond memories, it is the first time you are introduced to Gandalf for example... but I just found it frustrating.

Other comments I have is the animation and performing actions (like shooting my bow) seemed to me to be rather clunky.  They were not bad for a game, but they weren't brilliant, average would be being generous to them.  The actions just simply didn't flow from one to another.  And LOTRO suffers, at least the dwarves do, of terrible jump action... you jump and your character lifts into the air really quickly... then some weird gravity takes over, that seems to slow your descent... clunky, ugly and off putting.

Now, this sounds all pretty negative doesn't it.. well don't worry, I'm sure there's something positive about LOTRO.  And when I find out what it is, I'll be sure to let you know, but now onto the rest of the game as I saw it coming up.

The world around me, though certainly brought alive by numerous NPC's was pretty sterile, there is a lot going on though, so I set about exploring.  I was sent after Lynx pelts... that's right, no Kobolds or Rats for me, it's 6 Lynx Pelts, so I tramp up a road indicated as the place I might find some... and I find a Lynx, but just a single one, there's goblins and other creatures up there in the hills, but no more Lynx... I kill so much other stuff in this pretty small area, and eventually decide to head back to the town to empty my bags of the junk I've picked up... when low and behold I see Lynx, lots of Lynx...

And this is what bugged me... I had levelled up to level 4 killing other things in the hills there... this is a level 1 or 2 quest... so I'm going to lose XP handing it in “late”, you know what I mean... so I kill these level 1 Lynx in one hit and survey the area.... in real life terms the area must be 100 meters by 200 meters... it's not a long way, yet in it there is a sliver, less than a quarter, of the first gap containing Lynx... And it looked so easy to wonder away from them, and seemed so much easier just to shoot other animals and entities for XP... that set a bad taste in my mouth... If you can walk past one of the first beginner quest objectives, just hands in pockets whistling while you walk on by, I wondered how the rest of the game might fair for quests...

I'm yet to find out, as at this point I went back to down, sold all my junk, endured the annoying NPC screen as I bought my new skills from the hunter trainer, and then set about working out how to eat and drink to replenish myself.

Everything in the game so far seems to be bog standard MMO fair, it just doesn't seem to hang together nearly neatly enough for me.  It seems awkward, almost forced.  Some parts of the game looks really nice, but closer inspection of the graphics made me wonder about the quality of the engine, it is after all meant to be newer than WoW, but comparing the two, I'd have to say WoW looks prettier.

Busy Busy...

Oh me oh my, could more be going on this week?  Gaming wise, we’ve had the release date for Cataclysm… Clearly someone at the BBC News desk has a huge game boner for World of Warcraft, because they report a lot of stuff about the game on there.  I reckon they’ve also got an Eve player and a fair few Console players… get in touch chaps & chapesses, I’d love to hear what you play at the BBC?

But yes, Cataclysm, 7^th December, if you all missed it, just in time to get the bugs sorted for Christmas, or more specifically for the University holidays… yes here in Britain the Universities full of Students start to break up and most have completed the break up for the Yule period by the 15^th… so I guess most all Student UK customers of Blizzard will be busy busy busy enjoying the new game.

I still fear for the inflation of items in the game, I’ve also noted that the retail price is listed as €34.99, that’s about £30.  That’s the price of a whole new game… I don’t doubt Blizzards work is worth the cost, but thirty quid… when you already pay a subscription?... Nooo thank you.

I have to admit, I’ve had a few pangs to go back to WoW recently, notably last weekend, when I thought long and hard about trying to introduce the misses to it with me… it’d only end in tears though, and she’s got better things to do with her time… As have I… *cough*.

Eve-Online

Alas other gaming news, I’ve had to let my Eve Subs slide for a few months, I might pick them back up after Christmas, but I simply wasn’t playing enough to warrant all three subs.

Grand Theft Auto… WHERE?

The other gaming news I wanted to bring to the fore, since Darren took my link about Wii elbow J, was a report of Take Two Interactive (aka Rockstar Games) winning damages in the High Court… yes the law came down on their side; and rightly so; after Express Newspapers (a tatty rag of a newspaper here in the UK) said they would make a new game… “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.

This fictional title was so named for the town in which the now infamous gunman Raoul Moat had his final stand off with Police, the full story is here.

I’m not too bothered about Rockstar winning the case, I just find the “joke” from the newspaper; which kicked off the case; as in such bad taste it’s like I’m sucking on a pocket full of old pennies.  Bitter Bitter Bitter.

Obituaries

And finally, sadly, we’ve lost two shining lights in Entertainment and Film this week, first in the US Tony Curtis.  I liked Curtis in his films, my favourite being Operation Petticoat where he starred opposite Cary Grant.  I don’t know why I really like that film. I just do, and I enjoy Curtis’s character within.

But a bigger loss for me is that of Sir Norman Wisdom.  Who died yesterday evening.  Many of you in the US won’t have a clue who Norman was, you’ll not have heard of him, not have seen his films.  You may see one on BBC feeds soon, as a tribute to our Norman.  You may not understand the films, you may not get the social context, you may not know the jokes, just watch the utter brilliance, the sheer delight that is Norman’s legacy to us.  His body acting, his comic timing, his slap stick style.  He was described by Charlie Chaplin as “my favourite clown”, go on, go find out why.

Sir Norman Wisdom, OBE (1915 - 2010)

Be Broken, or Don't Be Broken... Just make your MInd uP!

i Am cRaZeee mAd aT my ComPutER!

The damn thing can't make up it's little solid state electronic mind to be broken, or not be broken.  To break, or not to break, this is my EVGA 680 SLi Motherboard's question... Gah.

I started having trouble when I came back from my Holiday, picture below, I came in and I turned on the power sockets and I heard a buzzing AC high squeel.  I checked everything out and the squeel went away, but then turning on the machine it got to the Windows Desktop and BOOM Blue Screen.  And upon reboot during the BIOS Post it was reporting memory errors.  I blogged about that before... bit of a pain in the ass. I confirmed this is a motherboard issue and I contacted EVGA and they were very helpful and gave me permission to RMA the item... I was not able to however, as my heatsink back board is glued on... GOD DAMN WHY DID I USE THE STICK PAD  AAAAARRGGGGHHHH.

Anyway, this weekend I set some time aside and I stripped my whole machine down, and I mean stripped. The only three things I left in place was the CPU and cooler on the mobo.  But I took it all out, washed (with water) all the fan covers, all the fans themselves, all the air filters and I installed a new 500GB drive in there and sorted everything out...

I then made the mistake of trying to fix my memory problems, I reset the CMOS, I set up the memory as the base values and I copiously cleaned all the memory slots and the chip connectors.  And guess what...

It all worked... yes, after moaning that I was down to just 2GB of RAM, suddenly it all worked... 4GB right back in there... cool... but not so cool, there were (and are) issues, at the memory does not report that it's SLi ready anymore... it is OCZ nVidia SLi ready DDR2 PC8500 Ram, but it simply won't work in SLi overclock mode.

Anyway, I have 4GB of RAM back... so I was moaning at nothing, everything checked out and I used a memory test and ran it on soak for two hours as the different parts of the machine, which I had washed, dried out on the radiators.

Then things got stttttrrrrrraaaaaannnnnggggggeeeeeeee.  My machine reported 4096MB of RAM... correctly.... It booted up, and half way through a couple of turns in CIV5 I suddenly got a pop up telling me windows had detected a change in the hardware... it detected some new memory...

That's right, while running the amount of RAM changed... UP?  I didn't put any more in... but in the Vista Performance dialog it said I now has 5037Mb of RAM... WOWzer, Da Computer Got L33T Skillz At Da Installin' New RAM LOLz.

The trouble then began proper, as I think Windows, or CIV5 tried to use this phantom RAM, Boom Blue Screen of Death.

It did this twice or so more times, and then I went on the hunt for the problem, I've wheedled it down to Bank 3, the fourth of my RAM Slots, sometimes, it just flakes out.  I can populate any RAM into any other banks (in matched pairs) and its all fine, the problem only comes up when I try to push the RAM hard and its in that last bank.

So, I've been a bit crafty and used a RAM Disk program (with a little tweak from me) to allocate so many K of RAM from the END of the RAM memory address space, I started with allocating 512K of RAM and let it cycle down from the end of the RAM and max out the memory usage.  It kept going wrong, until I got down to MB 3125 of 4096.  And then when allocated in the second half of 512K the crashes stopped.

I then lowered the amount of RAM allocated to 128K and tested again, still no crashes.

Again at 64K and crashed, so I left it at 64K and moved the memory address up until this 64K patch fitted over where I think the problem is.

All sorted, no crashes.  And then to second check it is not any of my sticks of RAM I cycled through my tests at these settings with 3 different sticks of RAM in slot 3, and then I swapped to the RAM from a whole other PC.  All seems fine.  My final test was to keep the RAM from the other machine and remove the RAM DISk... Boom Blue Screen.  So it's definitely a motherboard issue.

Anyway, right now I have all my RAM swapped back, I'm back up and running, I've even had a good tidy up of all the wires which lay in a spaghetti pile below my desk.

Time to finally get around to listening to SUWT #71.  I hear that Darren had some listener mail poking fun at my comment about WOW not being an RPG as everyone has the same jobs... I think said mailer didn't get my point... which was that I showed my friend three different classes... and they all did the same thing... while I showed him two others which did just one thing... and my friend thought it strange that some classes can be a Swiss army knife, while others are just for the one job... Anyway, I'll get back to that later.

Levant Mine, St Just, Cornwall - September 2010.

On CIV 5

Well, to kick off my play time, I've been playing Civ5, and I'm impressed, I like Civ, and this is a lot like an improved version of Civ IV, which looked great but I didn't get along with, this one looks great and I get along with it.

It's not without faults however, there's bugs in trying to cancel the introductory movie playing, which is a pain in the bum.  There are strange, almost random, camera movements being carried out, which to my eye lead to feelings of nausia at times... game devs why do you want players to feel sick?

But the most strange thing to me, as a Civ Player is that you always used to struggle to get to the sailing tech, to colonise more and more of the world, my personal favourite Civ game I've ever had was in Civ2 where I had to mass and keep a huge navy of the classic destroyers and cruisers to keep an AI opponent at bay... and I think that Civ 5 leads to the potential for more of that great action, but also undermines it.  Yes, the feature to which I'm elluding is the new feature to let units instantly travel over water.  Before you had to mass up transport ships and protect them, this time... well you can just move a unit onto water and hey presto it crosses said water..

I'm yet to be swayed over by this, but so far I have only been playing small continental games, I am however about to start a giant archepelego marathon game... lets see where this takes me.

CivV - The Preload

Here I am folks, back from holiday, a little earlier than expected.  I've spent no time whatsoever over the last week gaming, I have however read three books in seven days.  And I'm not talking about little ones, I'm talking about 1000 pages of Robert Jordon's Wheel of Time, the whole of Terry Pratchetts "Unseen Academicals" and a good slice of a C++ book about 3D Terrain Engines... all in all, I've fed my brain sufficiently for the comming autumn season.

And with all this new brain power at the ready I've today preordered and started the pre-download of CIV5 on Steam.

To anyone else out there pre-ordering on steam, ignore the message "An unexpected error has occurred with your order", simply ensure you wait for the payment confirmed email from them, and then restart your machine.

Now, speaking of restarting machines... my Motherboard has had a fault come up today, I thought it was a memory issue until I investigated it.  My board takes four memory modules, in pairs... on the board one set of slots is black, and one is blue... the blue pair are broken.

As in, blue screen of death, beeping at the BIOS, dead as a door nail, broken.

This is my gaming rig.... so I'm currently hobbling about with half my normal compliment of RAM... god help me.

My remedy for the situation is not a simple one though, I'm going to pick up a not so cheap new mobo (which can take all my current parts) and then over the next couple of years save up for a new top of the range i7 based system.  Hopefully by then they'll be affordable.

Because I notice that parts equivalent to the ones I have fitted at the moment, are rather more expensive than one would expect after two years...

Anyway, there's been a wonderful rain storm here today, my preload now states 5.7% and tomorrow I've got nothing to do... the Mrs is on about cutting one of the ever green's tree's out back down a bit, but I'd rather take the fence panels down and torch the bloody thing... hey ho, a litre of petrol is greater than my horticultural knowledge.

More Future Development of MMO's

http://megalomaniacbore.blogspot.com/2010/09/future-development-of-mmo-genre.html

Further to this post which I put together earlier in the week this sad news has come to light...

I've mentioned APB before, upon its release, and I noted in the report a quote from Dave "Lemmings" Jones, which says:

"I truly wish we had the chance to continue to craft APB into the vision we had for it,"

And I think this echo's tenfold into my point made in the post I made earlier in the week, these guys released a product which was not the intended vision that had for it. Basically is appears they had to ship, it shipped earlier, and though I've not heard of them I'm sure there were teething issues.

And basically, aside from the game being in a field of interest thoroughly covered by Grand Theft Auto titles (meaning this APB was going to be on the back foot from release as you don't need to keep coughing up cash to play GTA... therefore one has to wonder whether anyone involved in APB realised that unlike WOW they didn't have a unique product?).

But that as it may, it also seems that the game released was not only not quite ready for market, but it was not quite what the developers intended for us players to experience.

And I have to say, ANY title coming to market which uses this excuse again needs to be trashed, seriously trashed.

I understand that development scales are on the fist full of years side, however, beyond development these games need to be put through full and thorough testing regimes. And they need producers with balls, balls enough to stand up to market pressure and say "no, it's not ready".

I can't stress my point enough, that these people funding these games need a re-education that though with a traditional game release you make your most sales in the first few weeks is true, but with an MMO they have to realise their outlay of funding is returned over a longer period, like a mortgage, it could take tens of months, or as in the success of the mega titles out there today, in tens of years!

It's all annoying me, I don't think I'll ever see a fully tested, fully working from the box game ever again. And I've not seen one in a long time. Patches & updates are just run of the mill now. And they shouldn't be, we players and users should ask, why was it not working before you shipped it?

I'm not saying a developer should not release a patch, oh no, they are always needed at some level, but the easy going approach developers, like Blizzard, like Bioware, like 2KGames when it comes to sorting out issues grates over me.

In the case of Bioware, I speak of my personal issues getting Dragon Age to work and keep working, in the span of a week we had nothing but patches and community speculation as to the problems being encountered. And the longer things dragged on there, the worse the convoluted confused critique got a chance to take hold and so ruin my optimistic outlook of the game.