oh look I made some new stuff.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
MSI afterburner
As previously mentioned I've been fanagalin' about about trying to find some decent video capture software and I think I've stumbled across what I can say is the best I've found so far. Everything else I've gotten my hands on didn't work for one reason or another or it simply didn't put out the quality I was looking for in a video capture device. That's all changed pretty much with MSI afterburner- It has a simple interface that has pop-ups ( the informative kind, not the ones that make you check your antivirus) showing you what various buttons and options do, it's very good on CPU power usage allowing me to play current generation games with reasonable frame rates while recording separate audio commentary on top of recorded video, and its free. That last part is the real ringer as there are several powerful recording tools on the market that have a free trial but none of them are exclusively free and have everything they offer on their free trial. I'll link up a couple different games recorded using MSI afterburner along with a review of MSI afterburner.
MSI afterburner
Just Cause 2
Dark Souls
CSGO
MSI afterburner
Just Cause 2
Dark Souls
CSGO
Friday, January 18, 2013
new video editing techniques
I've been working with MSI afterburner for recording video and audacity to capture my voice at the same time. My main issue right now is my microphone isn't picking up everything so I'll need to increase the sensitivity. That and I may also need to lower the in game volume of games I'm playing. Here's my most recent venture using World of Tanks. I kept a decent frame rate throughout the match which I wasn't expecting as I remembered MSI afterburner slowing the game's performance down but it hung around a steady 30 FPS which is adequate.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Private server World of Warcraft and related drama.
I'm still floating around. I feel like I'm drifting around not doing much as of late. The inner artist in me wants to create something but I'm not sure what to forge. I need to play around with some video editing as I've had fun doing so in the past. In the mean time I'm dealing with the wait... I'm waiting for PSO2 (Phantasy Star Online 2) to be released but as of late I've heard of Tera going free to play here in February so I may give it a go. PSO2 is shaping up to be the same as PSO from what I've seen so far which isn't necessarily bad but the lack of an open world limits the exploration the game can offer. I'll go over that more at some point today I wanna talk about private servers for World of Warcraft.
I'd say around 2006 or so I dabbled in a lot of private servers for World of Warcraft. I don't remember the exact number but I tried half a dozen or so different servers. If you're not familiar with the concept of a private sever its basically an emulation of game server. In the case of World of Warcraft it was a way to play the MMO without having to deal with a $15 monthly fee. It was good as I didn't have a disposable income at the time.
I'd say around 2006 or so I dabbled in a lot of private servers for World of Warcraft. I don't remember the exact number but I tried half a dozen or so different servers. If you're not familiar with the concept of a private sever its basically an emulation of game server. In the case of World of Warcraft it was a way to play the MMO without having to deal with a $15 monthly fee. It was good as I didn't have a disposable income at the time.
The last one I played on that I can remember was WoWscape. It was probably one the best ones anyone could play on at the time I was playing it. It had a big player base for a private server and it worked well with my dial up I had to use at the time. It closed down around 2009 since the owner of the server, Peyton, made bank on donations for the server by selling items offering them as a bonus for donating. The practice of taking donations isn't that uncommon among private server owners but Peyton made $500k a month or so while the the costs of the running the server weren't nearly as high. As it turns out Blizzard didn't like others profiting off their intellectual property. It did suck losing all my progress I'd made with the characters in that server but that's the chance you take with any MMO. This of course is even more of an issue on private servers since there's really no contractual obligation for the server owner to maintain or upkeep the servers whatsoever.
Blizzard doesn't really care much about private servers for the most part. Legally its more work to prosecute private servers than it is to go after them so private server owners have next to nothing to fear. In a way it can be argued that private servers are free advertising for WoW. Personally, I did end up buying an expansion and a month or so of time for WoW. The official servers are a lot nicer than private servers. The allure of the official servers being the scripted events that work, lack of bugs all throughout, and of course general customer support that you won't find when using a private server. What really drives an MMO is the community and strangely that's one of the reasons I quit playing the WoW altogether. I had a rather sour experience on the official server involving a guild. The simple politics associated within the community of a guild are enough to leave a bad taste in one's mouth if you happen across the wrong megalomaniac group. That was just my story though. I'm sure there's a lot of better structured guilds and my experience was merely an isolated incident but it was enough to turn me off to the game. There was also the issue of me not being able to play from home reliably, at this time the official server wasn't as easy since I was using a dial up connection. Finally, I felt the $15 a month wasn't really justifiable for the amount of fun I was deriving from my playtime.
It was around this time I started looking into more action oriented online games.
It was around this time I started looking into more action oriented online games.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
more spessmen
I've finally touched down in spring hill. I think I've done enough driving for a couple days. Going from east Tennessee to middle Tennessee is quite a drive. Hopefully I can get a job around here pretty soon or at work from home or something. Not that I'm hurting for money I just need some insurance. Its bitterly cold around these parts at this time of the year. I have my space heater on right next to me to keep me warm thankfully. Enough simple sentences though time for me to about vidya game
The last game about spess I have to talk about is SPAZ or Space Pirates And Zombies. Its somewhat similar to FTL in concept - explore various star systems and upgrade your ship(s) as you go. On the most basic level its reminiscent of the original asteroids in regards to how the game controls. To grasp the feel of the game it's essentially "welcome to space, everyone hates you." and I love it. The atmosphere and humor of this game are what drive this game to be exemplary in my opinion.
Its a classic tale of going from scraps to riches, gathering various pieces of junk to assemble a capable team of (from what I've played thus far) 3 ships not including your mothership. There are two factions; UTA and CIVs. The UTA are the intergalactic space police so to speak but they are more or less completely inept in in regard to keeping the peace and they go out of their way to be dicks to everyone. The Civs can be scientist, miners, or regular space faring folks keeping to themselves. Both the CIVs and the UTA can have different opinions of you every time you go from one system to the next. Sometimes the CIVs will be stronger than the UTA or vise versa. You can serve either faction depending on what they have that you want to get for making them like you. If you don't want to bother buttering them up you can always kill them for what you want. This can be easy or difficult depending on how each side is laid out in the respective star system and since every new game presents a randomly generated universe you're going to get a different map every time.
time to wrap this up though
the positives-
+Like all the other spess games I reviewed as of late this one isn't really graphically demanding so most computers shouldn't have too much trouble playing it
+Style wise the atmosphere is what really brings this game together and sets it apart from other titles.
+You have moral freedom to help or hurt any faction in the game with consequences for your decisions accordingly
the crapitives
-theres not much difficulty in this game. Its hard to do bad if that makes sense. As long as you have a large bank of space money you're more or less good to go.
-space in this game can get boring when the missions usually revolve around you going to x galaxy and killing/looting/escorting the exact same way you did for the last couple star systems
-progression in this game is tedious and will take a while if you go through and explore each star system. You can easily lose an hour in one star system if you want to make one faction like you a lot.
The last game about spess I have to talk about is SPAZ or Space Pirates And Zombies. Its somewhat similar to FTL in concept - explore various star systems and upgrade your ship(s) as you go. On the most basic level its reminiscent of the original asteroids in regards to how the game controls. To grasp the feel of the game it's essentially "welcome to space, everyone hates you." and I love it. The atmosphere and humor of this game are what drive this game to be exemplary in my opinion.
Its a classic tale of going from scraps to riches, gathering various pieces of junk to assemble a capable team of (from what I've played thus far) 3 ships not including your mothership. There are two factions; UTA and CIVs. The UTA are the intergalactic space police so to speak but they are more or less completely inept in in regard to keeping the peace and they go out of their way to be dicks to everyone. The Civs can be scientist, miners, or regular space faring folks keeping to themselves. Both the CIVs and the UTA can have different opinions of you every time you go from one system to the next. Sometimes the CIVs will be stronger than the UTA or vise versa. You can serve either faction depending on what they have that you want to get for making them like you. If you don't want to bother buttering them up you can always kill them for what you want. This can be easy or difficult depending on how each side is laid out in the respective star system and since every new game presents a randomly generated universe you're going to get a different map every time.
time to wrap this up though
the positives-
+Like all the other spess games I reviewed as of late this one isn't really graphically demanding so most computers shouldn't have too much trouble playing it
+Style wise the atmosphere is what really brings this game together and sets it apart from other titles.
+You have moral freedom to help or hurt any faction in the game with consequences for your decisions accordingly
the crapitives
-theres not much difficulty in this game. Its hard to do bad if that makes sense. As long as you have a large bank of space money you're more or less good to go.
-space in this game can get boring when the missions usually revolve around you going to x galaxy and killing/looting/escorting the exact same way you did for the last couple star systems
-progression in this game is tedious and will take a while if you go through and explore each star system. You can easily lose an hour in one star system if you want to make one faction like you a lot.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
more about spess
I'm getting ready to for launch and should be making my way to spring hill shortly. It was nice to see my parents but god help them. I'm beginning to remember now why I left. This blog is definitely no testament to my dutiful pursuit of writing. Still, I'd rather try to adhere to a new schedule than lament failing older ones so lets continue from yesterday.
Awesomenauts has been described as a side scrolling MOBA. That's a rather accurate description but what is a MOBA? The acronym of MOBA stands for Multiplier Online Battle Arena. This style of game was originally popularized by Warcraft 3 and went on to spawn many games of a similar flavor. Most notably DotA (Defense of the Acients) and HoN (Heroes of Newerth). In a MOBA things basically boil down to you picking out a fighter and using team work and a various combination of skills to break down "towers". These towers are powerful defensive points that deal death to the opposing team if they're approached without an army of minions. Minions take damage from towers so you use them to shield yourself as you attack your enemy's towers and eventually get to their base where you can attack said base. Awesomenauts implements all of these facets like you'd come to expect from most MOBAs. Unlike most MOBA's however, matches don't drag on for more than 10 to 20 minutes compared to League of Legends where you can expect to spend 30 minutes to an hour in a single match...assuming of course both teams are equally matched.
Aesthetically Awesomenauts is very well rounded. The environments and the characters work together to create a Saturday morning cartoon kind of feel ( check out the intro here). The game controls well but the action can be all over the place which is not uncommon in the genre. From what I played it so far it was fun until one match which had a space monkey that would hover unending while attacking me from beyond my reach. I stopped playing and figured there may be some rebalancing in the future. When I wasn't getting trounced the game was actually very fun. I'd hold off on buying the game until they manage to fix matchmaking to make sure new players don't get matched up against better skilled ones as well as one's who have a high level player level. On that note you get experience after every match that increases the level and gives you access to more (read better) options for customizing how your character plays in matches.
to go over some things quickly
+the game is pretty is simple to learn and easy to get into.
+stylistically it looks wonderful and sounds great.
+like FTL it has a smaller file size than most games and the graphics won't strain your computer but this game does have future updates planned so the small file size may change.
-lack of variety- more specifically there's a hand full of "Awesomenauts" to pick from so far. This should be addressed in future updates hopefully. Also a few more levels would be nice too and since things are in 2D the sky is pretty much the limit here.
-The game also lacks balance in some areas (Jetpack monkey I'm looking at you). Hopefully issues regarding balance will get resolved in subsequent patches.
Awesomenauts has been described as a side scrolling MOBA. That's a rather accurate description but what is a MOBA? The acronym of MOBA stands for Multiplier Online Battle Arena. This style of game was originally popularized by Warcraft 3 and went on to spawn many games of a similar flavor. Most notably DotA (Defense of the Acients) and HoN (Heroes of Newerth). In a MOBA things basically boil down to you picking out a fighter and using team work and a various combination of skills to break down "towers". These towers are powerful defensive points that deal death to the opposing team if they're approached without an army of minions. Minions take damage from towers so you use them to shield yourself as you attack your enemy's towers and eventually get to their base where you can attack said base. Awesomenauts implements all of these facets like you'd come to expect from most MOBAs. Unlike most MOBA's however, matches don't drag on for more than 10 to 20 minutes compared to League of Legends where you can expect to spend 30 minutes to an hour in a single match...assuming of course both teams are equally matched.
Aesthetically Awesomenauts is very well rounded. The environments and the characters work together to create a Saturday morning cartoon kind of feel ( check out the intro here). The game controls well but the action can be all over the place which is not uncommon in the genre. From what I played it so far it was fun until one match which had a space monkey that would hover unending while attacking me from beyond my reach. I stopped playing and figured there may be some rebalancing in the future. When I wasn't getting trounced the game was actually very fun. I'd hold off on buying the game until they manage to fix matchmaking to make sure new players don't get matched up against better skilled ones as well as one's who have a high level player level. On that note you get experience after every match that increases the level and gives you access to more (read better) options for customizing how your character plays in matches.
to go over some things quickly
+the game is pretty is simple to learn and easy to get into.
+stylistically it looks wonderful and sounds great.
+like FTL it has a smaller file size than most games and the graphics won't strain your computer but this game does have future updates planned so the small file size may change.
-lack of variety- more specifically there's a hand full of "Awesomenauts" to pick from so far. This should be addressed in future updates hopefully. Also a few more levels would be nice too and since things are in 2D the sky is pretty much the limit here.
-The game also lacks balance in some areas (Jetpack monkey I'm looking at you). Hopefully issues regarding balance will get resolved in subsequent patches.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
jobless and games about spess
I quit my job a while back to move down to spring hill. Fate has been kind to me so far as I have house full of wonderful friends. Various video games have distracted me in this time, most notably Borderlands. Its more of the same if you liked the original borderlands with a few quirks about it. Its one of many games that will suck away all your time if you're not careful. I played this game almost exclusively while down at my new place and it screwed up my sleep schedule accordingly. My parents wanted me to come see them for the holidays so I drove 6 hours to get to East Tennessee. As if to be expected I had to watch my step as dog crap carpet mines lay in wait. Animals with no regard for their excrement aside, I managed to grab a couple different games during the steam sales thus far. I bought multiple copies of Awesomenauts, FTL, and SPAZ (I'll go into detail about those in a bit) as well as a gift for my bro christian; Warhammer 40k space marine. I hope his computer can run it.
As previously mentioned got a couple different games for christmas, the first I'll mention being FTL (you can click that link before this to check the website) or Faster than light. If you click on that link there it will take you to the website for it. It of course can also be found on steam. This is quite the gem and for the low price of about $2.50 I paid for. I couldn't help but buy up a couple copies. Most describe it as a rougelike space adventure and that's pretty much spot on for a description. If you're not familar with the rougelike genre the basic premise is this- Your ship has data valuable to the federation fleet (just go with it). You have to jump through 7 star systems to deliver this data and get to the final boss. Each of the star systems have multiple planets and other features with random events occurring in many of them. You have to manage your crew, maintain your ship, battle other ships or use diplomacy to get out of sticky situations and adapt to unique challenges along the way. Its a fun if not unforgiving experience. To keep things short here's the main points to be aware of-
The positives-
+the game is genre aware and plays itself perfectly in this respect making you feel like a starship captain with its almost tongue in cheek style.
+there's a lot of customization in this game- from what crew you use to what weapons are on your ship and how you upgrade your ship's stats as you go.
+There's lots of replayability with all the content unlocked by completing certain challenges .
The crapitives
- The game as I mentioned before is very unforgiving. Even on an easier difficulties its not uncommon to encounter a terrible end.
-the graphics are nice for what they are but this isn't going to push your computer to the brink. If you have a older computer this won't be a problem.
-its very short. It can easily be beaten in one sitting if you're lucky enough to get to the end. Again this may not be a bad thing if you don't want to get lost in a 60+ hour game.
I'll go over Awesomenauts and SPAZ what when I can. I won't flake out like normal I hope.
As previously mentioned got a couple different games for christmas, the first I'll mention being FTL (you can click that link before this to check the website) or Faster than light. If you click on that link there it will take you to the website for it. It of course can also be found on steam. This is quite the gem and for the low price of about $2.50 I paid for. I couldn't help but buy up a couple copies. Most describe it as a rougelike space adventure and that's pretty much spot on for a description. If you're not familar with the rougelike genre the basic premise is this- Your ship has data valuable to the federation fleet (just go with it). You have to jump through 7 star systems to deliver this data and get to the final boss. Each of the star systems have multiple planets and other features with random events occurring in many of them. You have to manage your crew, maintain your ship, battle other ships or use diplomacy to get out of sticky situations and adapt to unique challenges along the way. Its a fun if not unforgiving experience. To keep things short here's the main points to be aware of-
The positives-
+the game is genre aware and plays itself perfectly in this respect making you feel like a starship captain with its almost tongue in cheek style.
+there's a lot of customization in this game- from what crew you use to what weapons are on your ship and how you upgrade your ship's stats as you go.
+There's lots of replayability with all the content unlocked by completing certain challenges .
The crapitives
- The game as I mentioned before is very unforgiving. Even on an easier difficulties its not uncommon to encounter a terrible end.
-the graphics are nice for what they are but this isn't going to push your computer to the brink. If you have a older computer this won't be a problem.
-its very short. It can easily be beaten in one sitting if you're lucky enough to get to the end. Again this may not be a bad thing if you don't want to get lost in a 60+ hour game.
I'll go over Awesomenauts and SPAZ what when I can. I won't flake out like normal I hope.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)