Blrg

As you may know, I have Steam. These days a lot of the games I own I've either purchased through Steam, or redeemed through Steam (e.g. buying an indie bundle and adding it on Steam) - sometimes I forget how I even got games, which happens sometimes with the indie bundles or Steam package sales. One such game that I've had sitting around for a while is a game called The Scourge Project - developed by Tragnarion Studios and published by Bit Box S.L.

Now and then I play co-op games with a friend of mine, and recently we'd been looking for some to play since we thought we had completed our last set of games. Rather than try to find new games, however, I decided it was time to trawl through the Steam games I already had and categorize them - with one specific category being one I'd mention to my friend to look into and decide if he was interested in; One of the games was The Scourge Project. It hasn't had good reviews, so I'm not entirely certain why he picked that one in particular, but then we've enjoyed some games that didn't get good reviews so we're well aware that reviews are not end-all be-all articles.

Sadly, in this case, they turned out to be an accurate warning - while there's a fair amount of detail to the game, it is incomplete in a number of ways:

1. The most galling is it has some severe and easily reproducible bugs:
   1. Hosting and joining seems to be partly broken. For one, we couldn't switch from LAN games to Internet games - the option was there but it didn't seem to take effect. When trying to join a LAN game, the game insists that "The character filter does not apply to LAN games" and is locked to the first character, Stonewall. However, this is false: Whenever I created a game and picked any other character, my friend could not see my game. Thus, I resigned to creating the game by picking stonewall, then .. switching to another character. I don't understand why it is necessary to pick a character first when players can freely switch in the game lobby! I played as Mass, and he could play as Stonewall - not a game breaking bug if you figure it out, but otherwise odd and a sign of bad design.
   2. At least in multiplayer, when a partner is revived there's a chance they are revived in a "half dead" state: They're alive in the sense they can revive downed party members, can activate switches and the like, and are fired at by enemies... but they're still dead in the sense that they cannot attack (shooting or mélée) and cannot use any abilities - they're basically walking decoys. If such a half-dead party member uses a mounted gun, they might as well stay with it - the moment they let go, they collapse as though downed, but cannot be revived. They can resume use of the gun, however. Go figure. This bug patches itself when a cutscene occurs (and some other event I didn't bother tracing - maybe on pause?), so it isn't entirely game breaking - but enough to be quite frustrating.
   3. One particular mission - I don't remember a name or anything, other than having to extract DNA from an already dead scientist - has a game breaking bug that broke the camel's back for us - the door doesn't open. Well, it opens visually, but physically it still bars access.. which had not only us confused, but the bots as well: They would attempt to walk through for a moment, realize it wasn't working for some reason and back off, wait a moment, then try again. Clearly, something broke there.
2. Repetition. Most of the game is a plethora of "shoot these guys, hack this console, open this door - oh wait you need to pretend to be some other guy, kill said guy and extract DNA, open door, rinse, repeat". There's a few bits that were a bit different and were kind of refreshing, but even then they were a bit lacking - the bomber, for example, always seemed to hit the exact same area the exact same way at each pass. While I understand it would have made the game frustrating if it were to hit the player trying to use the mounted gun, you could at least make the rest of the party squirm in fear while they pressure said player to figure out how to destroy the bomber. ;)
3. Another issue demonstrated some bad game design: In an earlier mission, one of the objectives was to activate some emergency exit of some sort. If you listened carefully to the computer voice (which is hard to hear, particularly when you are being shot at), I believe it states something to the effect of having to remain near the console while the emergency exit is being opened. However, if you don't notice or understand this, you'll (understandably) charge towards where you saw said exit and try to leave... only to find the objective is marked as failed for some reason, and you have to retry the procedure. There is no other hint that you are required to remain in the central area where the panel to activate the exit is.

So why do I think it could have been good? Well, for one, we didn't find it too unenjoyable despite the flaws above; Overall it worked decently and had features - like cover-based firing - that didn't get in the way and were relatively well executed. Another reason is that I've noticed a number of neat features that other games don't seem to have, which would have given it an upper hand if only the game had been properly completed:

1. You can pause. No, seriously - you're playing a LAN game, the pizza (let's say) arrives, bam - you hit pause, the game freezes for everyone and you don't have to worry about silly things like the master server booting you off for inactivity in a LAN game (I'm looking at you, Valve). It seems there's no sort of indication that the game is paused, but as long as the game host makes it fairly clear they're about to pause the game, it's not exactly a big issue. I don't see it being quite as useful in over-the-'net games, but it's still a decent and rare feature.
2. Resume from any checkpoint, any time - if your character got there. Simple enough: Host creates a game, picks not only the mission but the checkpoint as well. Resume your game almost right where you left off, no save necessary. The only downside was that, well, since there's no save (which seems to be a recent craze) you may not have the weapon load-out you had before.. The fact that your characters are tracked is kind of neat, and while I understand it may be irritating to some people (and in some cases), it makes you have to play rather than just skip through and see the ending... I guess.
3. While it was unrefined and the bots weren't exactly obedient, there was a nice ability to give the bots orders - without fiddling with some vague voice command menu. Point, hit the key, bot goes off on its way - context sensitive (i.e., you aren't necessarily saying "move here" - point at a console, and you're saying "go use this", for example). One bug I noticed was that the selection, being either sequential or random, included players - whom of course didn't have to obey and usually didn't have to be ordered this way. It would work better if either I still had to pick someone, or players weren't included since there are better ways to give orders.

So, it could have been good... but as it is, it kind of deserves to be at the lowered price point it is at now - if not lower. Oh, and I forgot to mention - playing it now means we've played it after the company had released a few patches and no more updates were coming out... I don't want to think of how much worse it could have been beforehand.

The bells were the size of the rabbit's head by then, and also sparse. Fun and addictive game for most, but I think I'm going to have to stay away from this one now ;>

Space Cowboy!

As mentioned in my previous short post, I've been playing an MMORPG lately (*gasp!*), called Space Cowboy. Oddly enough, I'm finding it to be somewhat interesting and time consuming enough that I can jump in and come back out a few hours later feeling refreshed and without so much time (Which is an odd thing to say, but there it is.).

There's something nice about blasting things out of the sky.

Must be the the gattling thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka-BOOM...

Anyhow, this company apparently has not one, not two, but four free MMORPGs to which you can use the same account for. Interestingly, all of them claim to be free for life, which is kind of an interesting promise - not that I disbelieve it, mind you (Gunz is still alive) - and I wonder how long it'll last. GPotato (the company) does get income from these games, I imagine, given some of the paid options that are available. So far, though, it seems that these paid options are nowhere near necessary to be able to enjoy the game which is, it hopefully goes without saying, a very nice fact indeed.

I get spam!

So recently, my main e-mail address was a target for spam. At first it came slowly - an e-mail or so per week - but then it began to grow, more and more e-mails per day. Originally, I wasn't too concerned, but then I got really annoyed - I'd managed to keep all my e-mail addresses entirely spam-free. Why did this one start getting spam all of a sudden?

Eventually I remembered a bug which was spotted in my ICQ client, Miranda: Recently, for some odd reason, the "Do not publish primary e-mail address" option would always switch off, causing anyone to be able to collect your e-mail address off your profile.

I removed my e-mail address from my profile (I doubt I'll be needing to reset my password any time soon anyway.), and the spam dropped almost magically.

Server updates on forum

To give my forum some use (and I think I had decided some time ago to do this, and didn't stick to it), I'm going to post any updates relevant to the server itself only on my forum rather than cluttering my personal blog with that information.

This will be the last post on my blog in that category.

Gallery changes done

All the changes to the gallery have been done. All galleries are completely available again. I'll remind once again that some galleries and features may require registration.

Looking for an apartment

I said I was moving out last year, and I haven't yet! I'm looking for an apartment, and my future roommate Eth has spotted one near St. Laurent that might be good for the two of us.

He works in Orléans, and myself downtown, so we're looking between those two areas.

Xmas gifts

For the curious, I've updated my wishlist, showing what of it I've gotten as well as including a new thing or two that I'd like. It seems I'll have to buy the Okami soundtrack myself (and probably soon before it goes out of print). I got lots of chocolate again, but at the time of this posting, it's already all gone ;>_>

Joe's Goals - What my own goals are

I'd spoken about Joe's Goals beforehand, but I hadn't really mentioned what my goals on there are. So, without further ado:

• Chores (+1)
• Exercise (+1) - Last check 7 days ago
• Wrote (+1) - Last check 31 days ago
• Coded (+1) - Last check 11 days ago
• Blogged (+1)
• Added todo item (+1) - Strange as this item may seem, this is to encourage myself to remember things, especially things I need to do.
• Completed todo item (+1)
• Been outside for a while (+1)
• Cleaned / Cooked (+1) - Placed separately from "chores" as expansion, not chores with that description
• Filtered Mom's e-mails (+1) - This one is likely to get archived as now most of the spam in her inbox gets correctly tagged as "bulk" anyway, which her OE now has a filter (or "rule") for.
• Been to Joe's Goals (+0) - Used as a tracker
• Socialised (+1)
• Changed bed sheets (+1) - Set as valid for only one particular day (Saturday); I'm trying to get myself to do it always on that day, and not on other days, for various reasons. Mostly a question of routine.
• Ignored things to do (-1)
• Ate Out (Alone) (-1)
• Haven't been to Joe's Goals (-1)

So now you know what influences the graph, and why it doesn't go negative all that often (I think).

An amusing error message

My job requires me to keep, among other things, lists of documents up to date; Documents of all kinds that have something or other to do with situations and people in other countries. At some point I came upon some links which were no longer valid, and gave this error message:

There is an end-user problem. If you have reached this site from a web link,
- Through your internet options, adjust your privacy settings to allow cookies or
- Check your security settings and make sure this site has not been blocked or
- You are probably using a very slow link that may not work well with this application.
Otherwise you have reached this site through unauthorized means.

Seriously, considering you get this very same error message accessing their index page, can any of those really be true, including it being unauthorized, of all things?