The Flow of Consciousness

A few weeks ago, I chided the gaming industry for releasing so many games nearly simultaneously. I believe that studios/distributors/producers should stagger releases so that gamers don’t have to choose between games and so that gamers can have a few weeks/months to recharge their wallets.

I found out today that Gears of War is due to be release for PC on November 6, further complicating my purchasing decision.

In other news, Orange Box sales have been magnificent, apparently. It’s #2 on Amazon’s video games section, with the Wii at #1. I’m actually contemplating purchasing it because I haven’t played HL2 Episode One yet, so I’d only have to gift HL2. $10, anyone?

Within two or three months’ time, there have been so many good game releases that even the most hardcore gamers find their wallets uncomfortably light, or entirely weightless.

BioShock, August 21: $50.
Medal of Honor Airborne, September 4: $42
World In Conflict, September 18: $50
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, October 2: $50
The Orange Box, October 9: $45
Hellgate: London, October 30: $50
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, November 5: $50
Crysis, November 13: $50
Unreal Tournament III, November 19: $50

On top of those, there are a few expansions to major games:

Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, September 24: $40
Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack: Mask of the Betrayer, October 9: $30

I want almost all of these games. However, I’ve got tops $50 to spend. I played the ETQW and Crysis demos, and I’m sure that UT3 will be good simply because UT2k4 was awesome.

There are too many nearly simultaneous releases. Gamers aren’t going to be ready to go pick up another game—they’re too busy playing a game that just cost them a day’s worth of work.

More than likely, I’m just going to wait until Black Friday to buy any of them. Last year, I got BF2142 and NWN2 for $25 each. I’d like to buy them through Steam, but Steam rarely has price reductions or sales unless the game’s been out for a few months.

Crysis is just a beta.
Crysis is just a beta.
Crysis is just a beta.
Crysis is just a beta.
Crysis is just a beta.
Crysis is just a beta.

I must keep this in mind.

Dear Game Developers,

I applaud the developers who have so mindfully moved screenshot directories and other per-user game data to a more easily accessible place, My Documents. My Documents, what should be the center of all a Windows user’s document storage, is a wonderful place to put this information. Instead of having to dig through C:\Program Files and find your publisher’s directory, or the game name, or your company’s named directory to backup saved game, configurations, and screenshots, those precious things are saved in a location that is easily backed-up and requires little effort to do so.

However, what disgusts me about this practice is that the directories run rampant. I have a lot of games, and so do many, many other gamers. In my My Documents directory, I have folders for the following games:

• Battlefield 2
• Battlefield 2142
• Bioshock
• GTA: San Andreas
• id Software\Enemy Territory – QUAKE Wars Demo
• MrRobot
• Neverwinter Nights 2
• SpellForce 2 Demo
• Starscape
• Lord of the Rings Online

Interestingly enough, I have yet one more directory related to games: My Games. Nota bene that I did not create this folder: Halo did. THQ put the data for Company of Heroes in there, too.

What a fantastic idea! Put game information in one industry-wide-standardized location to keep sane the gamers who properly use their My Documents folder.

Better yet, allow the user to choose where the save/screenshot/cache data should be saved. Is it not an unwritten usability rule to allow a user to choose where their data goes?

Honestly, I’d almost rather have to dig through Program Files to find this data rather than having it cluttering up My Documents.

So, developers, agree upon one standard location, allow me to choose where I want the data to go, or stay out of My Documents.

With much respect and sincerely,

Colin “Rhettigan” Dean

I’ve been accepted into the Universe at War beta and was attempting to create my Games For Windows Live ID when I encountered this strange error:

I even tried just using Linux alone and it didn’t work. However, if I append an “!” to it, it will go through. That’s what I did.

C’mon Microsoft. Don’t suck like that.

Update: One can’t use the word “problems” in the chat, either. What the heck, Microsoft?

It looks great.

I like the atmosphere.

The remaining sentiments can be found in this Escapist video review of BioShock.

Edit 2007-09-13: Replaced the removed YouTube video with the one provided by The Escapist.

The Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, of which I am a staff member, held its eighth event this past weekend: Iron Storm 7 (the number difference is a result of a smaller LAN called Pittco Lite that was held very quickly and was very small).

While attendance wasn’t its highest because of both Quakecon and the Family Values tour being in Pittsburgh on Saturday, it was still a very energized and highly interactive event.

We held a Counter-Strike: Source tournament and a Unreal Tournament 2004 tournament officially. I didn’t play in the former, but I did manage to get hosed in the latter. We’ll not go into the scores, but suffice to say that I need to learn how to use the shock combo far more effectively. I also need to remember that the shield cannon cannot counter said shock combo and that I should stop trying to use it in 1v1, no matter how hilarious a kill with it may be.

I conducted the 8v8 Battlefield 2 tournament on Karkand. Three teams vied for bragging rights: ITO, Spyder, and Pornalicious. I played with ITO against Spyder in the first round. We lost by about 70. A not-so-narrow defeat, but we still played well for having a team that was thrown together haphazardly. Spyder went on to defeat Pornalicious narrowly (I believe by less than 10). Spyder kept the crown, having won at IS6, too.

I tried to get in on some Far Cry action, but the guys who were playing quit by the time I was patched and ready to go. I really miss Far Cry multiplayer FFA–it’s insane.

Jon, Zack, and I fetched some sushi from Giant Eagle Market District. I had a summer roll and blue crab California rolls. We also picked up some hummus and pitas as a side and a strange kosher candy bar that Zack likes. It was made of crushed sesame seeds and was pretty delicious. Zack said that a person can only handle one once in a while so as to not come to dislike the incredibly sweet taste. I agreed.

I did play CS for a little, but only enough to get myself pissed off. It happens when I play that stupid game.

The jackass tournaments went well, too. The karaoke tournament was small but amusing. I think I will do it next time. I’m certainly a better vocalist than the chap who won. The boxer sprint made a return, too. At least this time, it wasn’t snowing outside like at IS3.

I’m looking forward to IS8. We’re considering adding some more official tournaments using newer games that will be out then (UT3, Crysis, etc.). I want to get an official BF2 tournament going, too.

Check out the activity on the forums.

I’ve recently gotten really into City of Heroes. I really like the game’s approach to character management. There’s not many items to worry about, so the focus is on building skills and shaping your character’s combat and travel abilities. Paragon City, the city in the game, is very, very large and has a number of subdivisions, including Galaxy City, Atlas City, Peres Park, Skyway City, and The Hollows.

The graphics in the game are fantastic. The character models aren’t a sweet as World of Warcraft or as detailed as Lord of the Rings: Online, but the character combinations are ENDLESS. I’ve taken nearly 100 screenshots of neat character designs. The game really does allow a player to construct an awesome superhero.

My hero’s name is Summermute. He’s a bit of a parody of Wintermute from William Gibson’s Neuromancer. His story is that he gained enough power and knowledge within the Internet to construct a being based on electricity alone. From there, he turned to good and devoted himself to smiting all things that threaten the Internet. He also donned a red fedora as a symbol to those who would recognize his mission.

The last time I really got into an MMORPG was Ultima Online, and that was back in 2000-2003. I think the reason I’m getting into City of Heroes so much is the camaraderie that I’ve experienced. Fortunately, there’s a bunch of Phi Taus that play it, so I can find people to play with pretty often. The community is very accepting, too. Doug, who plays as Douglas McKiln, met up with a higher-level raiding party and one of the players was incredibly impressed with Doug’s ability for being so new to the game. He gave Doug 100,000 influence, the currency in the game. I also really like the combat system. There’s not a lot of abilities to manage, so things are fairly straightfoward. The whole point of the game is to use your superpowers, so regular attacks are very rare, unlike some games where mana or magic points are limited and don’t recharge very fast.

So, to the real purpose of the post. As of July 1, 2007, it is impossible to play City of Heroes using Wine on Linux. Do not waste your time like I did trying to get it to work. PJ and I installed Ubuntu on his laptop last night and we messed around for nearly three hours trying to get it to work. We even tried copying real Windows DLLs into Wine’s system32 folder—it actually made it worse. A fresh installation of Wine can launch CohUpdater.exe and begin to launch the game, but it stops there and exits. The only way to run City of Heroes on Linux is with Cedega.

Sign up for, download, and install Cedega. When you get to the download page, you can just use the “Open With” option in a fresh Ubuntu Feisty install to install the package with GDEB. Then, download CohUpdater.exe to your home directory and execute it using Cedega:

Now, the program will download. However, if you already have the files, you can copy them to the place where CohUpdater.exe will look for them:

Make sure that you remove the CohUpdater.exe file from there before you try to run it within your home directory again. Once the files are copied or downloaded, you should be able to run Cedega like this:

and it will run. After that, open Cedega through the applications menu and launch City of Heroes from there.

If you know of someone that has gotten it to run within Wine, please please please tell me about it and give me their contact information.

The Pittsburgh LAN Coalition Inc. proudly unveils details about its next LAN party, Iron Storm 7.

When: Saturday August 4th – Sunday August 5th
Where:
Castle Shannon Hall
3600 Library Rd
Castle Shannon, PA 15234
(map)

How many:
150 seats

Look forward to:
Jackass Tournaments
Counter-Strike: Source
Unreal Tournament
COD2
World of Warcraft
DDR
Console Gaming
Prizes
And much more!

Make sure to keep these dates open. Stay tuned for more information.

-The Pittco Staff
www.pittco.org

Pittco is a great organization, and its Iron Storm LAN parties are among the best I’ve ever attended, MillionManLAN included. I was on staff for IS6 and will be on staff for IS7, as well. Most of my work is in the background, excepting the Battlefield [1942|2|2142] tournament and bouncing at the door during check-in. I’m working on producing a booklet with a schedule, rules, and other feature-y things with some advertisements for sponsors and local colleges. I’m looking forward to it.

Electronic Arts silently added Logitech G15 LCD support to BF2142 in its recent v1.10 patch. Displayed when you aren’t in a game are your career points, points until next rank, how long you’ve played, your kill/death ratio, and how many dog tags you’ve taken. You’ll have to check out the pics for the in-game stuff—I’m not typing in the wealth of information displayed

Proof:

Button three under the screen is the one that changes pages.

Yeah, my career points aren’t that high, but I’m in the middle of attempting to graduate and work at the same time.

Thanks to the folks of Gunslinger for not booting me while I marveled about this.

Update: Guntizzle over at StrafeRight saw it before I did and posted pictures, too.