Logaan’s Site

Felt left out on sunday. My fellow guild mates had bought Left 4 Dead and sounded like a hoot.

Before I comment on the game, I just want to state how far and how good Steam has come along in the several years it has been about. When I first used it, it so flaky that I had to scrap it and go back to CS1.5 and running Valve games from the start menu instead of through Steam (you know what I mean)

But now it is really stable now I cannot believe it. Another gripe I used to have with it was that all games in the store were listed in dollars, and you could only use credit cards to pay for new games (at the time I didn’t have a credit card).

I was also against buying “the virtual box”; I loved to purchase the game box in store. Feel the box and take pride in the artwork. It is a very different matter nowadays, it is a real pain in the arse to keep track of all those disks. In fact, I find myself favouring services like Steam and Stardock over the physical game since I don’t have to worry about installing the thing or keeping it up to date, that is all done for me.

Anyway, they game.

BEST GAME EVER!

It is so simple, 4 people, kill zombies, achievements, great laugh. Best played drunk I think.

I am currently in the process of creating my own application to help manage my guild wars skill templates, when I came across this application: GW Teddy, you can find it here: http://gwteddy.manuthie.de/?menu=home&lang=en

It certainly has all the aspects of what I was hoping to acheive in my guild wars build manager, however the most useful features I am looking for are not there.

Such as searching folders recursively for a specific build, or automatic organisation of the skills, or backup mechanisms for saving the templates.

Still, a very good app worth mentioning.

I am currently working on a small project to help me organise my Guild Wars skill builds but I came across a problem, I had nothing to help me decode the templates and I found I had a gap in my knowledge when dealing with converting binary and base 64.

I found some source code long ago from GWFreaks however it was so old, messy and written in VB.NET that I really struggled to understand it. The last resort was a PHP based version of the template parser and a small snippet I found on a Code Guru forum. With this information I begun playing around and eventually began to build a greater understanding of what was involved.

Using the wiki guide on the Skill Template Format and the Equipment Template Format I finally built a set of objects to help encode and decode the templates.

You will find the details and the project files on the Template Parser project page

Myself and my guildies ran FoW a while back, and only now have I just dug up the screenshots:

 
From left to right: Born of Adversity, Not Me , Not Me, Me!, Not Me, Not Me, Not Me

Continue reading ‘Exiles goto Fissure of Woe’ »

So my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars arrived yesterday and I was like a little school boy all day… itching to play it.

 It is fantastic, I did have my doubts after recent let downs in games I bought and played.

It has lost nothing from the old game, and has everything that Battlefield 2 should have had. It has objectives, it has vehicles and aircraft. Better feedback and reporting about “missions” and objectives. Cool toys etc.

Continue reading ‘Freaking Awesome!’ »

I got Supreme Commander the other day, it looked really nice, lots of really nice graphics, a 3D environment and a few friends recommended it as well.

 But I was a little dissapointed when I played it. Yeah the graphics were nice but the 3D bit was a bit misleading. Its the old 3rd person view, but if you press the spacebar you can look around… I was expecting that the camera was fully 3D and I could move it around one way… move my units then move it somewhere else etc.

“Best RTS experience”… its still lacking, it just seems to be a commander and conquer with some more advanced unit commands and a greater range of units. Homeworld 2 is better than this imho. Even the simplest thing ruins it, like I was playing the training missions (bugger all help they were as well) and I built a huge army of quick units, some tanks and Anti aircraft and like many RTS when i moved them they all get strewn out. All the quick units sped ahead and stopped… then got bombed as there was no AA to help them. Homeworld 2 for example… as soon as you group a set of units, you can choose the formation in which you want them to be and then they will always move at the speed of the slowest unit in that group.

So to me, so far it just seems like another generic RTS with nicer graphics and suffers from what alot of other games have atm with is no innovation… just continuing the RTS genre. Why doesn’t someone remake the old classics, like Dungeon Keeper… that was fantastic.

I do however look forward to Enemy Territory; Quake Wars…and Assassins Creed.

As a result of no “krewe” to hang with ( :P ) I decided to return to Guild Wars. My old  guild are fantastic bunch of chaps who I have known for quite a while. We got together from the Egosoft community and went on to play Enemy Territory and moved onto Guild Wars.

Its nice to be back, GW differs from WoW, its more plot based, there is a storyline and you get to watch cutscenes… its more like a Co-operative RPG… but it works. I can take out 8 henchmen (NPCs) with me and struggle, or I can get together with a group of people and not struggle so much :P

 I decided that instead of playing the Warrior all the time I am going to see if I can focus on healing so I am playing my Monk at the moment and to say I am not struggling is an understatement. But, once I can get into the midset that such a class requires… I think I can take those skills into other games in the future. My basis for this is that everyone always needs a healers, and healers in WoW were practically treated like royalty.

 So Ive also picked up the new campaign and expansion since I started playing it again and there are so many parallels between GW and WoW.
GW has something called Hard Mode… this is the same as going into an instance in WoW in Heroic Mode.
They have some new classes called the Paragon, that to me seem alot like Paladins in WoW
err ok that was many but I cant think of any more. There is the odd thing I miss, like being able to link items into the chat.

What I do like is that they have the ability in GW to save a template of your set of skills and attributes… thats nice, you can quickly switch between builds.

But I am so far behind the pack now that i am doing my old routine of trying to do everything myself, so i dont encumber everyone else and slow them down.
Ill get there I guess… so much I have forgetton.

Its pretty much official now… I have cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription and in 8 more days… my character will be cryogenically (sp?) frozen…

Its sad, as the game and its people were all special and they will be missed but like X and ET before… it must come to an end. In fact I had got a bit fed up with it over 6 months ago, the expansion was the only thing that kept me playing. But a mix of friends and good guild members leaving and all the bickering that came out of it… just got fed up.

 Bit miffed… as I bought the guild website and put alot of time into where it might now become defunct.

Left with a bit of a hole… bored, its back to BF2… just waiting for Quake Wars to come out… might revive some of the ET glory days ^^

 It surprised me somewhat that I could spend more than 6 months on a game… when single players are lucky if they last a week with me before i complete thier content or get fed up of them (*cough* STALKER *cough*)

Just over a year! i spent playing world of warcraft… and then i realise that I should have had XFire running as it doesn’t show on my profile… ¬_¬ bugger

 Life is generally good, thats all im gonna tell ya ;)

So I play World of Warcraft and have no life… well.. a life.. and its a eSocial life i guess (or iSocial?)… anyway… today has been weekly maintenance day! No surprise there but, I play on a famously nicknamed server Lagdrassil.

This server is most famous for its tendency to be laggy for no apparent reason… even when its not reporting lag… it must be a feature!

Today was a prime example, hours after weekly maintenance was finished got home and logged on. Within seconds I was exposed to complaints about the server… bombarded by online-offline messages… that, was the first hint. Shortly after getting on, I joined up to a group to go into an instance (Black Morass to be exact, you know, end of the Karazhan attunement chain etc, whole load of fun for a Warrior but not for the poor sod playing the Mage).

So after struggling through what seemed like treacle… i managed to grab a lift down to Gadget. Going afk for 5 mins it takes to get there to relieve myself and stock up on water before the run, i come back to find myself still flapping stationary in mid air over Bloodhoof Village… I cry for help in vain; “Someone get me a ladder!” but sadly my fellow guild mates are suffering a similar fate. Stuck to the floor, unable to open mail, banks  or bags.

After various restarts, and stuttering attempt, it finally takes the group 2 hours, just to get into the instance. After that it went quite smoothly, well, we did two attempts but didn’t manage to complete it. (The Shaman respecced to resto and was under geared, and the Warlock had a power cut, and the Rogue had lag… apart from that we wiped on the 2nd (hardest) boss each time)

 Ah well… give it a few days and it will be back to normal… just in time for the next weekly maintenance!

I play a level 70 Tauren Warrior, in a small raiding guild called the Mournreavers. Great guild, brilliant people, great atmosphere, everything you want from a guild.

But, like I have seen quite a few times back when I played Guild Wars, and in the odd clan I have been in, you get round to the old Polictical slandering stage. Now this was going to be a big rant.. but I have calmed down somewhat.

I still have not worked out a way of mitigating such events, if I could, I would run the best guild around I think. As it is, I really don’t want the hassle, and I think my good mate J does a very good job at running the guild. Not soft, not harsh…but fair and doesn’t take shit.

I’m not even sure “Politics” is the right word, its more like “arse covering whinging and finger pointing”! Usually starts off with the boss (and its not usually his her its thier fault), but they have a talk, and would like to see a bit more activity. They might interrogate one or two of thier underlings to find out whats going wrong, maybe pushing something they want to happen, and this is where everyone looses sight of the fact that this is a game, and it starts getting all “Political”.

Then you get the whinging and stuff and thats where it all goes down hill… and if you aren’t careful.. everything falls apart. Especially if this is all said in game.

Whenever I get into such a situation, I call time out… i leave the game a post a message on the forums or through email… setting down how i feel, what I want etc. I also try and see if from someone elses point of view and overall, I get to read it, so I don’t say anything rash… 9/10… this calms the situation.

But just… how do you stop this? I guess you could write down a really strict policy and procedures… but you are already taking the fun out of the game with the rules… I guess this is a natural process that guilds go through and you find out who the loyal members are, from the ones that really are there for thier own benefit and not thinking of others.

…. I think the rant was better… made it hard to read with censoring turned on