Gamezilla

What’s worse that being hunted down by death crazed creatures hell bent on ripping your gizzards out? Being in death row at the same time! The Suffering was one of my all time favorite PS2 horror games and still is worth a look at today. Although I’ve not seen it on the PS Store, perhaps in the future?

So what is The Suffering? It’s one of the most sophisticated and psychological survival horror game on the PS2 bar none and this one does it’s level best to give you extra wash days specifically for your soiled underwear, I shit you not (pun intended)! So the central character is on death row, so either way he is about to face a grisly end, so why not go out with a bang? A nightmare on death row begins. You play as death row inmate ‘Torque’, and unlike other survival horror games such as Silent Hill, the scene is set as you go as opposed to via flash backs and dreams. So your character find out what happens when you do, and boy does it happen, a lot, and right from the get go. This one reminded me of those warning at the start of shows on Channel 4 “This next program features swearing and graphic scenes from the outset”. There are flash backs about how you end up on death row though, which sets the scene for Torque and why he is where he is, in clink.

Verdit:

The Suffering is pretty conservative but does not fail to hook you from the start. A great survival horror which I hope makes it to the PS Store soon8/10

If 3D rabbits and carrots are your thing, then Jumping Flash! On Playstation will be right up your street. At the time of its launch, this game was very new and fresh after all the 8 and 16bit 2D gaming (not that it was bad of course).

So what was Jumping Flash! All about? I hear you shout. Well, of course it all starts off with a baddy; in this case Baron Aloha is out of control and all set on world domination. You are cast as Robbit, a multifaceted mechanical rabbit, tasked with thwarted Baron Alohas evildoing’s.

The game is set across 18 variously themed levels, all in glorious (well for 1995 that is) 3D. You get jump around in industrial wastelands and snowy mountains, tossing carrot grenades at baddies and trying to stop the Baron.

Our robotic rabbit has an arsenal of weapons that even Arnie would be jealous of (ok, probably not now) each of which is used to dispatch Baron Alohas minions. There are also powerful weapons to find at strategic points within the world for even more mayhem. You can even jump on the enemies from a great height; well you are a Rabbit after all. Tossing a few well timed carrot grenades was always one of my favorite methods of clearing out some nasty critters.

For it’s time it really was a first of its kind and a game that I would love to relive. Maybe Jumping Flash! Vita or Jumping Flash! PSP will beckon me to relive this fantastic first person 3D romp.

I’ve heard a lot of people recently asking about dynamic arrays for maps of any size within tile editors. Well here is a tutorial that should help you get started pronto.

First of all, lets consider what we want as map data. We want a list of tile ID’s that correspond to tiles within a datafile, we want the tiles type (e.g. whether it is walkable, animated etc).

So we’d define a structure such as:-

typedef struct
{
    unsigned char TileID;   // The ID of this tile
    unsigned char Type;     // What type of tile is this
} MAPTILE:

So we have created a new type called map tile. Now we need to know how to declare our map tile. If we had fixed map sizes we could declare it as follows:-

MAPTILE Map[MAPX][MAPY];

Since we want a variable sized map, we have to think a bit more cleverly. Also, we want to implement variable layers into the map. In order to use variable map sizes we have to setup the Map like this:-

MAPTILE ***Map;

Looks strange doesn’t it? Trust me, I thought this at first. What we now want to do is dynamically add each element to the Map pointer:-

// Allocate memory for the maps Layers elements
Map = malloc(sizeof(int**) * MapLayers);

// Allocate memory for the maps X elements
for(lyr = 0; lyr < MapLayers; lyr++)
{
   Map[lyr] = malloc(sizeof(int*) * MapWidth);

      // Allocate memory for the maps Y elements
      for(x = 0; x < MapWidth; x++)
      {
         Map[lyr][x] = malloc(sizeof(int) * MapHeight);
      }
   }
}

And that’s it, simple. No error checking has been included here but a cannot overemphasize enough how important this is.

Now we want to access the map pointer to initialize the values:-

// Initialize the elements of the map
for(lyr = 0; lyr < MapLayers; lyr++)
{
   for(x = 0; x < MapWidth; x++)
   {
      for(y = 0; y < MapHeight; y++)
      {
         Map[lyr][x][y].TileID = NOTILE;
         Map[lyr][x][y].Walkable = WALKABLE;
      }
   }
}

And that’s it, a simple way to create a dynamic map array.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any comments to make on this tutorial. In fact this is my first ever attempt at a tutorial so be easy 🙂

Well I finally completed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed last night after purchasing it at launch. During the first few weeks of owning it I had only played it a few times. But the recent Saturday showings of the full star wars films on ITV gave me the star wars bug, and I decided to start off a new game on the Force Unleashed.

I normally play games on the easiest possible level the first time I play them through, and this was no different. Although it was very easy, there were some parts that still caused me a little frustration like the pulling down of the big destroyer, and the death star beam alignment level. But the rest just felt like I only needed to hit one or two buttons to get through. Some of the bosses did need some strategy but for the most part, it was very easy. Which is good since it matches the level the skill setting described.

The story is probably one of the best I have seen for a while, and a nice addition to the star wars franchise. The cut scenes feel well voiced and acted (can we say acted for digital cut scenes?) and emotion is well convey throughout. When I finally finished the last boss fight (which of course was easy) the final cut scene ended things nicely, and did make me want to rush out and buy the sequel, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II.

The easiest mode took me around 6 ½ hours to complete, which is not bad since it was pretty easy throughout. I immediately tried the unlocked Sith Master mode upon completion and can really see the effect this has on life drain and recovery in the first Darth Vader level. While I am eager to move on to complete Force Unleashed II, I do feel the game deserves me completing it on one of the more challenging levels. If I have learnt something while completed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, it was to not go for the easiest level, since it removes most of the challenge and shortens the amount of total playing time, and indeed the thinking and strategy you’d need to complete the game on higher levels.

I do want to complete the game on the Sith Master level if only to see how it increases the total time played. I am sure the boss fights for example would take longer to beat but I can’t see any dramatic increases on 6 hours. Overall, the games quality is evident from the beginning, the load times when viewing objectives, force upgrades etc. was my only real gripe. I never really was that into Star Wars, and only during ITV’s 2011 screening of the films did I sit down and watch them all.

I give Star Wars: The Force Unleashed a Gamezilla Roar Rating of 7.9.

After much AA point grinding in Northern Grasslands, I felt it high time that my Conqueror got his easy 2 expertise points from the Gateway to Khitai. So off I trundled with claymore in hand to hunt down the NPC’s that offer the quest chains. The first I found was to the left of the open door as you approach the entrance to the Northern Grasslands. The NPC’s name is Taichu and he gives 3 quests (at least to me at 80), one of which is the quest chain which sees you darting around the wall area.

Taichu’s quest chain is as follows: Gate and the thief, Common People, Wei-li, Wei-li’s powder, and finally Kang Zai Summoning.

Upon summoning and defeating the Kang Zai, returning to Taichu gives the Phial of Tranquillity which grants the plucky adventurer with one whole Alternate Advancement expertise point! Jolly Good! But there is another one available too!

In the centrally positioned Medudsjin’s Camp, you’ll find a shaman by the name of Dair Usun and he gives a somewhat quicker quest chain than Taichu’s to get another Phial of Tranquillity. Dair Usun sends you on 3 quests to collect hearts from several of the Gateway to Khitai’s beasties, and then finally on to kill the formidable sand Kraken (well, not so formidable if your at 80).

So a 30 minute spell in the Gateway to Khitai gave me 2 easy expertise points. I have heard rumours that there is another NPC that gives an ‘alternative’ quest chain to Taichu but I have yet to try and do that one. The rumour does state you can only do one of the wall chain quests though.

Nearly 2 months on from the launch of Rise of the God Slayer and I am still having fun. While the alternate advancement system was a little different to how I envisaged it to be, I think it’s pretty damn good. Although some of the conqueror specific alternate advancement points seem a bit weak in comparison to other classes, overall I feel quite a difference with 7 weeks worth of points spent.

Since launch, my main aim has been to get to rank 4 with the Last Legion faction, which I finally achieved last week. Of course, getting to rank 4 does not mean I can actually purchase anything yet! I need to get around 800 marks of acclaim to buy 1 piece of epic armour. Although I have my sights set on the two handed edges weapon they offer, a worthy upgrade to my Bloodseeker Claymore T1 sword.

The grind seemed a much easier with the Last Legion than some of the other factions. For example, with the Last Legion, I get 4 quests in Northern Grasslands and each give 2 marks of acclaim and 1850 faction points for completion (plus some other generic items I can sell), this, when combined with the poster quests I can do en route means a round trip of the grasslands can net me around 16,000 faction points in total (from the 4 faction quests and insignias from the poster quests), After a few rounds, I developed an efficient pattern which resulted in getting the 16,000 every 40 minutes or so. The key with the Last Legion is that all faction quests and poster quests are all roughly in a logical order, and pretty easy to complete. The Last Legion also has the added benefit of having faction quests in other zones such as Kara Korum and Pai Kang meaning there is variation from the monotony (albeit not as efficient as a refined grind cycle).

Now compared this to the Hykanians, they are based solely in the Northern Grasslands and have some quests that are quite spread out in terms of what you need to do to complete a single quest. The fact they are based only in Northern Grasslands also means there is not much variation to doing the quests and some of them only give much less than the 1850 that all the Last Legion quests have.

On getting to tank 4, I embarked on completing the Last Legion quests in all the other zones which was very enjoyable after the Northern Grasslands grind. Since the other zones are not as active with other people, I even managed to read the quest lines and follow the stories.

I am now embarking on ranking up with the Tamarin Tigers to get the tiger mount and their heavy armour items. So it’s the autumnal splendour of Chosain Province next for me. Only 965,240 to go…

Well, today I saw a ranger in global show this off. The Phial of Tranquility is an epic that drops (I think) somewhere in Khitai. Now the ranger in question wanted to sell the information on where it drops for 5G. Of course I am now curious. The Phial of Tranquility grants a free alternate advancement expertise point so looks to be worth finding. My journey through Khitai continues.

Age of Conan – Rise of the Godslayer Free Crocodile Pet

The Age of Conan expansion, Rise of the Godslayer is well and truly with us now. If the loyal kappa is not enough to keep you company, you can also take up MMORPG.com’s offer of a free loyal crocodile pet companion. Funcom and MMORPG.com have teamed up to provide this limited offer, which allows you to get an upgrade key giving you this exclusive Loyal Crocodile pet. The keys are limited in number and there were 1878 keys left as I write this so you’ll need to be quick.

The Loyal Crocodile is a social pet that will stay by your side as your journey through the Age of Conan world. The good news is the new pet can be used both in the original game and the expansion too. Croctastic I say!

Loyal Crocadile Giveaway

A brand new domain extension is set to be launched and is now available for pre-order. The new .co domain name is brand new and so has a complete range of possibilities. Ideal for company websites, community websites, and personal websites alike.

You can now pre-order .co domain names so make sure you secure your domain name now before some other scamp beats you to it.

The .co domains can be registered on the 20th of July 2010 but some domain companies are providing pre-orders for domains for as little as £29.99. Why wait! Secure your next domain name now!

Having been part of the closed beta for the original Age of Conan, launch day came and went without any new surprises since I had already had an in depth (albeit buggy) primer of the game. With Rise of the Godslayer it was different, my first impression of the game came this morning at 8:00am before work. The planned downtime was increased from 12 hours to 24 hours with the patch download starting at 2:30am BST. So I stay up for that, playing Warcraft in between and then finally go to bed.

So I kick off the game first thing and notice nothing different at first, sure my Mirage UI is not working (which I expected) and Conarch is unusually empty, as is Old Tarantia. Khemi on the other hand is very busy with people all heading in the direction of the Khitai travel point (I swam there). Firstly the plan was to get MirageUI to display the Perk bar, a forum post on the US forums showed how to edit the XML but this didn’t work for me so I left it as is for the time being.

A quick inspection of the Feat trees showed me the Alternate Advancement bars that I had been waiting to see, lots of options but amount of points you need to get them is massive 1,000,000 for the first points for each of the 3 types. I completed a quest on my way to King Conan’s castle (via the claim “Summons” quest) and got 7000 alternate advancement points. So I foresee a bit of a grind fest here, I’m glad it’s not going to be fast. There is also the time based option which allows you to gain points for each 18 hours played (I assume this will scale as you progress).

On finally making it to the Khitai travel point in Khemi (I needed to swim across the river) I promptly set sail to the new land. On route I am confronted with a Kithan with four eyes talking in riddles. All full speech and very nice animations and movement. I read and listened to all the dialogue and if the rest of the role-play encounters are like this then we are in for a real treat. This four eyed Khitan gave me 2 quests for the new lands.

Once finished talking to old four eyes I find myself in the first zone. Guards appear to have green names now as opposed to yellow and I see the familiar PVP action of people intercepting people on horses. An assassin in particular killed a mage on a horse. So with my conqueror, decided to teach the assassin a thing or two. Thanks to the conqueror Overcome The Odds and the Retaliation (and indeed retaliation), the assassin pretty much killed himself, a couple of Hail of Furious Strikes (HoFS) and he was down. The mage came in towards the end to help exact some revenge on the Assassin.

I walk up a nearby rock, go into hide and log out until after work. So far, Age of Conan Rise of the Godslayer seems brilliant. I cannot wait to explore the world of Khitai later today and begin my journey through this eagerly awaited expansion. Brilliant!