Blrg - Games

The Scourge Project: It COULD have been good

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:03:47 -0500

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:

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.
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. ;)
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:

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.
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.
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.

Winterbells, aye?

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:45:56 -0500

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 ;>

Oh where, oh where, has the little kitsune gone...?

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:26:48 -0500

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?

Finally, some snow!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 01:13:25 -0500

Work's been fairly boring, unfortunately.

I've been playing Space Cowboy. Free MMORPG, and it isn't too bad.

But more on all that later.

Yup, that's the worth of a PS3.

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 20:57:07 -0500

Three dollars.
Yes.
Three dollars.
I kid you not: This is the worth of a PlayStation 3, or any Sony product for that matter.

Play time and work time get confused!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:06:32 -0400

Recently, a friend of mine told me about a game named Okami, which I've gotten a copy of and so far has been a fairly interesting and very beautifully made game. While I've been able to find a few glitches (mostly related to invisible walls), it's been a fairly solid experience and I've been trying not to play it too much - I've limited myself to only an hour or two per day so that I don't finish it too fast. I also appear not to be the only one who thinks there are similarities to Zelda in this game - I think my sister may enjoy playing this game as well, so perhaps next time she's around I'll introduce her to it :)
I've found the music score to be so beautiful that I've written and highlighted the OST on my wishlist (Which, by the way, has lost most of it's items due to the database loss previously described.). I've already found a download for the whole OST and gotten it, but I'd much rather actually have those five CDs... as well as the game itself. Normally, I'd also back this up with And hey, I'd be supporting the company!, but it turns out that Clover Studio, the creator of Okami, will be dissolved by it's parent company, CAPCOM.
I've got a digit up at 'em.

Speaking of music, though, I've been finishing some uploads at Jamendo, and the music is pretty sweet. I'd recommend having a listen to Simon Slator and/or Saelynh, depending on your music tastes, or perhaps just browing by tags. It's too bad there aren't people as interested as I am in choruses*. Hard to find, that.
Moving on to more technological things: My mother recently decided to have VoIP installed at our house, though I've no idea why. She must've gotten an offer in the mail - I thought I threw that thing in the recycling! - and decided to go for it. Sigh. Though I've not had the chance to verify yet, I think this means that my bypass method can't be used anymore - Mereo, care to test this with me? Anyhow, I'd forgotten that I'd split the TV cable and run it to my room (without Rogers' permission... I guess that's where they make their money) at some point to test something out. So, the guys (Yes, there were three Rogers techs here to install the damned device!) decided to cut every cable except one TV cable, the internet cable and the VoIP cable. This might've been fine, had they picked the right TV cable... so we had to get someone to fix it the next day.

The recent downtime of my server was caused by me shutting down everything so as to completely upgrade and recompile everything. (Technical details: gcc & glibc update, you see; While C programs are actually mostly unaffected by such an upgrade, C++ programs usually all need to be recompiled. The problem is that you can't really tell one from the other, so you pretty much have to recompile everything that's C-based.) Thankfully the process wasn't all that long.
Also, on the subject of the server: Since I've been forgetting to do the changes on the gallery, I've been thinking of allowing access to it right now, but to still exclude the albums I haven't done the work on yet.
And one final thing: It seems more spambots have found me and decided to try to plague me. Although this one, while it gave me several spam comments (~8-10), was using pretty much the same URL each time so I only had to add that to the filter list. It seems even diabetes medication has made it to the spam market.

One of my cousins is supposed to visit near the end of November. Joy.

And finally a local event: Municipal voting has begun, and once again I wasn't on the voters list. I suppose it's not all that surprising, but anyway, I found it amusing that I didn't even recognize the names of most of these candidates, nevermind knowing who they are or what they're planning. I only know two because one of them keeps getting talked about (though he's apparently not the current mayor?), and the other I saw his ads on the bus about lowering bus fares. Hah.

* A particular type, I should mention. I'm very picky on the subject for some reason, and it's not even a steady mood.

It was a bright and stormy day...

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:18:53 -0400

Pretty hefty winds out there today. I think it managed to open the screen door for the cat a few times now.
In fact, I'm not sure if the cat's outside or not, at the moment...

My brother and I have been playing Starcraft on and off recently. Yeah, it's a nine year old game, and people still play it - they (Starcraft players) account for over a third of the people on Battle.net, still. Only about 3% of those don't have BroodWar (the expansion set), which is interesting: By now, most people have noticed that the Starcraft Battlechest / Set goes for about 20-30$ - even here. Oddly enough, my brother only recently got the expansion set from Futureshop, along with a copy for me (so that I would have a legal copy - I somehow have two keys spare to use, but no actual copy of SC)...
...and somehow managed to buy the French version.
(By the way, when I checked Battle.net just now, there were 48517 games in progress. Of those, 20189 were reported to be Starcraft: Broodwar games (43%)! Only 598 (1%) of them were regular Starcraft games, however. Mind you, neither comes as a total surprise: More SC games are required for more players fairly often, considering two things: People often play private games with their friends, not allowing in the general public; Also, people often don't wait for their games, as the average age is fairly low, and the average attention span is lower.)

Anyhow...
It seems I've not spoken of Wombat here yet (at least not of his currenct condition); He had a lump growing on the side (behind) of his jaw. He was diagnosed with a curable form of cancer, and is undergoing treatment. It's pretty bad for him; He can't go to work, and his work only pays him for the days he works. He can't do much and has a reduced attention span, not to mention being fatigued all the time. And his hair is gone. It's really taking a toll on him...

Lemmings... in your browser!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 13:38:51 -0500

Some of you may have played, and may remember, the old Lemmings games made by Psygnosis.
I found a version which will play on (fast) computers, through a web browser (IE, Moz, FF compatible):
DHTML Lemmings!
NOTE: Make sure you read the known issues, it might answer a few questions, such as why it runs so slowly, or why sounds and music are disabled outside IE (by default, not permanently). It's ironic that the original version of Lemmings could run on a really slow computer, and this browser emulation of it requires a fast one...
WARNING: Proxomitron users should add the site to the bypass list, or enable bypass mode, while visiting this site; Otherwise, odd problems may occur, such as media player showing up and crashing...

EDIT: Gameplay notes:

Climbers, floaters and exploders cannot be selected when falling, unlike the original.
Move your mouse to select a lemming. Again unlike the original, you will not automatically select a lemming when they pass under your pointer.
Animations will cease if there are too many lemmings onscreen. This is normal. Similarly, fast-forward mode may not work as expected when there are many lemmings present.
Climbers and floaters will still appear (and be named as) as walkers even when skilled. It seems to me that the original wouldn't call them floaters, but perhaps I'm too used to Lemmings 2.
You can unselect the current skill and be left with pointer that does nothing when you click. Don't panic, it isn't a bug - you can still select skills normally.

Shadow Of Destiny: Playstation 2 Game

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:45:29 -0500

Not bad... not bad at all. It was worth getting, I'd say (though I don't know if I could've gotten it any other way than through eBay). It's an RPG - a real one, where the entire game completely revolves around the plot, and there are no battles to worry about.
Instead, time is what you need to worry about - almost constantly. You see, the game revolves around time - you go back and forth through time, trying to solve problems. Well, one big problem, really; Namely, the fact that you have this knack for... well, being murdered. Someone's after you, and you have to find out who and why - but you can only go to specific time frames.
The story is affected by the choices you make: the things you say, the things you do, and so forth. And while the story does get a little complicated - like most time travel stories tend to be - it's actually fairly easy to follow.
I think they leave a few ends untied, but... I guess that's the price I pay for getting the "D" ending. There's five endings apparently (A through E, naturally), but it seems you only get to know this after finishing the game at least once. What's nice about this game, though, is that you keep using the same savegame (Well, if you want to, anyway.), even after the game's over: If you load a completed game, it starts over, letting you play the game over again, and try to get a different ending... ...plus, all the cutscenes can be skipped. You can even skip the introduction.
We'll see if I can get another ending...

Doy. ...the things people do...

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:08:57 -0500

Ugh.

Parappa M-I-Xes flour into a bowl, LIVE.

Geh?

Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones acted out?

...just, what? x_x;