January 18, 2016

Elite: Dangerous Ship Progression.

iambiebs | Make A Comment | Gaming, nerdisms

If you read the official forums and/or the sub-reddit you will find it full of people asking what your ship progression should be. I didn’t follow the advise and I am glad I didn’t.

When I first started playing E:D I started out with a sidewinder, Just like everyone else.

The Sidewinder is the default craft offered throughout the game. and if at any time the ship is destroyed you can get a free Sidewinder. New players who still struggle with learning the game, may find themselves flying in a Sidewinder for a longer time or going back to it often.

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March 30, 2015

Gamenight – Pandemic

iambiebs | Make A Comment | Gaming, nerdisms

Pandemic, a board game in which players work together to protect humanity from four world-devouring viruses. The game ranks up there with Settlers of Catan as a sure-fire “gateway drug” to German-style boardgames; it is thoughtfully designed, deeply polished, and has just the right amount of story world. Most everything about the game suits my idea of ‘fun’: strategic thinking, a healthy dose of variability from play session to play session, emergent complexity, cooperative play and thoughtful communication design.

One problem though my game had misprinted instructions that inadvertently made our attempts at playing really hard. I have owned the game for quite awhile but never played it. Having contacted the game maker they emailed me the proper instructions that I can print out.

But be careful, because it’s addicting. When you lose, you’ll just want to start all over again. And when you win, you’ll want to increase the difficulty level and try again.

February 24, 2015

The Superfight!

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As soon as you’re old enough to understand things like Superman and Wonder Woman and Batman and Wolverine, you’re old enough to know the horrible battles which must ensue for total hero(ine) dominance. Who would win in a fight: Batman or Superman? Godzilla or The Toxic Avenger? Bambi or a photography intern? Finally a game harnesses this inborn desire to argue about fictional battles, and this game is called Superfight!

• Mr. Rogers (who is made of sand and armed with a rotating machine gun turret) vs. Stephen Hawking (who is armed with a baguette and 3 stories tall)
• A Woolly Mammoth (that is literally afraid of its own shadow and throws knives) vs A T-Rex (that uses the force and has one million twitter followers)
• A Senior Citizen Bowling Team (that is on a jet ski and armed with nunchucks) vs. A Kindergarten Class (that just drank 5 energy drinks and sprays neurotoxin)

Superfight went through a major reprint in late 2014. The rules and about 30% of the cards were refined to improve the game after it sold out of the first five prints in preorders alone. The CAH/Apples mechanic has been replaced by a table vote and one-one one battles, but the battle royale and villain rulesets keep the old single-judge mechanic.

I looked up some advanced rules for the game last night. I was concerned about the advanced rules where you have 3 white cards and 5 attribute cards. This setup kind of behooves you to not use the negative cards and then just dump them. There’s an option for this to dump your hand by losing one of your victory cards but this means you won’t have the funny negative cards.

So here’s my plan. You get 3 white and 5 black cards or however many, it’s not as important. After the random enemy is created by the judge, each player plays one white and one black card. Then the judge chooses left or right and each player is allowed to play one black card on the player in that direction. This will do a couple of things. It will mean that positive and negative cards are both valuable since you want to play positive ones on you and negative ones on the other players. It will also make for funny contradictions as players try to disable others’ heroes. Also, nothing is stopping you from playing positive cards on other players if you think it will be extra funny.

From what I can tell The rules that made it to the Basic Rules status are just that. They are meant for players who play this stuff just to laugh at it. Players who often don’t even keep score.

where to buy? follow this link

February 19, 2015

Majora’s Mask N64, why it is my least favorite game.

iambiebs | Make A Comment | Gaming, nerdisms

Before I go on with my rant this is solely based on my experience with the N64 version. I am aware of the 3DS version and I am not convinced yet that I need to give this game a 2^nd chance.

Majora’s Mask (the N64 version) is an acquired taste and as remarked so many times before, it’s not for everyone. The beginning part is the only part in which the 3-day cycle gets really irritating. The game departed too much from traditional Zelda values, but made up for it in a quirky, innovative way. What it lacks is replayablilty. There is a pattern with Zelda games; 15 years down the road from time released they are almost universally loved by the same people who were complaining about it 15 years ago. Before you start asking yes, I’ve completed the game. I’ve completed it back when it was on the N64 I disliked it then. I didn’t like the distanced atmosphere and the “everything is a time limit” mechanic. You could not build a relationship to characters, since every character in town did forget you after the time reset. This is minor, but also that after working your ass off to get the ultimate final mask, you can only use it during the end-boss fight – what a letdown. Each day is only about 18 minutes for a total of 54 minutes on the first day. Imagine only having 54 minutes to trial and error your way through the rather large beginning area of the game talking to people and trying stuff hoping to find a solution. A time limit for something you have no clue in what you are doing a lot of times will frustrate you. Yeah, I know of the inverted song of time which triples your time which you can do after you get your Ocarina back. That does help quite a bit, time itself is a constant reminder and pressure for you to finish whatever it is you are doing… I constantly felt rushed.

A crappy save system. You are only allowed to save your game in two ways: Owl Statues and when you reset time Via the Song of Time. Owl statues are only temporary saves though, that means you are forced to play out any sequence until you get a mask or item you need to progress until it’s safe to perma-save by resetting the time. But since you absolutely have to finish something or restart a quest from the start that is a lot of pressure to put on to a person playing. I get why they did this because if they didn’t, you could cheat the time system. But you still can cheat simply by copying owl save files to another slot. But I’m talking about a legit-play through attempt. I remember the frame rate being atrocious in areas. Walk around the place in Termina field where those huge Dodongos are or roll around as a Goron in the Goron Village and watch the frame rate plummet. There are many more spots, but those are good enough to show you what I mean. These frequent frame rate drops can throw off your timing, making you take hits, miss things and even die as a result.

People have defended the game in this regard by claiming that the reason for it is because they pushed the system and game to its limits. But let’s face it: If you really pushed it to the max making it have bad frame rate at spots as a result and you were a designer, wouldn’t you try to tone stuff back so it runs smoother? Exactly. The amazing thing is that the game uses the Ocarina of Time engine and that the game still needs the expansion pack to run. Ocarina of Time was MUCH more consistent and it only used half the RAM (4MB instead of 8MB) because it didn’t need the Expansion Pack. What’s the deal here?

How is it possible that this game has so many blindingly obvious issues anyway? It’s very likely because they rushed it out in just a year. To do that, they lazily reused sprites and graphics from OoT and said that Termina was a parallel world to Hyrule. Except… Whoops, they didn’t actually say that anywhere in the game. They instead described it in the manual. See here: http://zeldawiki.org/Termina#cite_note-0. So it is debatable if they just made that up after the game was made to cover their mistake of leaving it out of the game or not because we all know it is certainly something that could have been explained in-game since that is not beyond the technical capabilities of the game or system. I could go on and on and on, but I’m done here. I covered all the major points on why I think the game is bad. I finished the game once I will not return to it. I will not play the 3DS version. I will never play through the game again because I don’t like it. I just beat it for the sake of saying that I did beat it. I get the feeling that so many people who love this game want me to reply the newer version thinking that is will debunk my negative thoughts on the game. But they will just have to get over the fact that they will not be able to change my stance on it.

February 4, 2015

Minecraft Server Tricks and Tips, AKA Cheats

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It happens to even the most cautious explorer: you’re far from home, you die, and all your precious loot is left sitting in a pile far, far away. Tired of losing your loot? No problem. Read on as I show you how to make your Minecraft inventory persist after death (along with some other handy game-changing tricks).

Note: This tutorial is focused on the PC edition of Minecraft as, presently, neither Minecraft Pocket Edition or Minecraft Console Edition support the editing of the in-game variables required for enabling persistent inventory or the like. Should this change, I will update the tutorial with instructions for the other editions. 

Why Do I Want To Do This?

I am a huge proponent of playing a game the way you want to play it and in the case of a game like Minecraft, the game is outright designed to encourage players to do just that: to build, create, manipulate, and outright edit the world to create the game universe and play experience they want.

One particular aspect of the default play scheme that many players find quite frustrating is the way player inventory is dropped upon death. By default, when you die in Minecraft you lose experience (and some of that experience is dropped as experience orbs at the point of death) and you lose your entire personal inventory at that location too: all your armor, weapons, tools, and all the loot you’re carrying drop into a scattered pile (as seen in the screenshot below).

While some people enjoy the challenge of such an arrangement, there are plenty of times when it’s just downright annoying. If you die very far from home while exploring, for example, and you have no idea where you were when you died then your diamond armor and other hard earned loot is as good as gone.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to edit the in-game flag that specifies whether or not you keep your inventory upon death as well as several other very handy flags that change other game behaviors. Let’s take a look at how to keep our inventory and perform other useful edits now.

Changing Minecraft Game Rules

There are many commands you can execute in Minecraft via the in-game command console, but only around a dozen of them are persist changes to game variables. You can, for example, give yourself things in creative mode (or survival mode with the cheats turned on) using the /give command but doing so doesn’t alter the state of the game.

How To Use Commands

For truly game altering modifications I need to change the “game rules” variables with the /gamerules command. All game commands, including the /gamerules command are entered into Minecraft via the chat box (which functions as a command console when input is preceded by the “/” character).

Before I proceed it’s important to note that the /gamerule command and other powerful command options only work on servers if you are the administrator or one of the operators, and they only work on single player/open-to-LAN multiplayer games if you have enabled cheats.

Open the chat box by pressing T (alternatively you can use the “/” key as a shortcut which will open the chat box and preseed it with the “/” character).  The format for the /gamerules command is as follows.

/gamerules <rule> [value]

The <rule> is always single variable (no spaces in between multi-word rule names) and is always case sensitive. The [value] is always Boolean value of “true” or “false” to toggle the game rule on except in the case of a single game rule; the game rule “randomTickSpeed” which allows you to increase or decrease the number of random game clock ticks that cause plant growth and other changes by integer based adjustment (0 disables the random tick, any positive integer will increase it by X amount).

Enabling keepInventory

One of the most useful game rule tweaks you can make, by far, is to toggle the “keepInventory” rule. As I mentioned above (and as you’re well aware if you’ve taken the time to seek out this tutorial) when you die you drop all your items and loot around you, like so.

In the above screenshot you can see clearly that our quick access inventory bar is empty and all our loot is laying on the ground around us. That’s unfortunate (and if you die in a lava pit you’ll never get that loot back).

Let’s fix that now by editing the “keepInventory.” Pull up the chat window in your game and enter the following command (remembering that it is case sensitive).

/gamerule keepInventory true

Now look what happens when I die with the keepInventory flag set.

You died! But you kept your loot! Game rules are magical.

Look at that! We’re dead but we’re still holding our sword, the armor indicator above our toolbar indicates we’re still wearing our armor, and the toolbar itself is still loaded with our supplies. As an added bonus, above and beyond keeping our precious loot, you’ll also notice that there are no experience orbs floating around. When the keepInventory flag is on you don’t drop experience orbs either. (I wouldn’t mind a way to tweak this so you lost experience but not your loot, but as of now there isn’t a game rule for that).

Other Useful Game Rules

In addition to the very handy keepInventory game rule, there are fourteen other game rules you can easily edit in game. While some of the game rules are very specific to server administration (like the “commandBlockOutput” flag that specifies whether or not game administrators should be notified when command blocks perform game commands), many of them are very useful in local single player and simple local multiplayer games too.

You can read the full list of game rule commands in the Minecraft wiki, and you can also type /gamerules and hit the Tab key to list off all the available game rules as seen in the screenshot above. While we’re not going to list and explain all of them, here are our favorite useful-in-single-player commands.

Halt Fire Spread

We’ve all been there. You build your first house. You set up a working fireplace with lava or netherrack. You pat yourself on the back at a house well built and then the next thing you know, the roof is on fire. Unless carefully and properly contained fire in Minecraft will spread. Lava, netherrack, and lightning strikes can all start and spread fires, so if you don’t want to come back from your mine to find that your entire house has burned down this is a very handy command.

If Minecraft had regulatory agencies, this would definitely be against building code.

Disable the spread of fire with the following.

/gamerule doFireTick false

In addition to keeping lightning strikes and other natural fire sources from damaging things, it’s also very handy if you want to incorporate fire and lava into your designs without worrying about nearby flammable structures going up in smoke. With the fire spread disabled you can do improbable things like build a checkerboard made from wool and lava blocks as seen above.

Stop Mob Griefing

“Mob griefing” in Minecraft is the ability of game mobs to interact with in-game objects. Every time a zombie picks up an item and carries it, an enderman pulls a block from the surrounding landscape and zips off with it, or other any other mob interacts with an item or block, that’s a form of mob griefing.

Not even the enderman knows why he’s holding a cactus.

If you would prefer that zombies can’t run off with your loot or enderman will never be able to pluck a block out a structure you carefully crafted in survival mode, you can turn off mob griefing with the following command.

/gamerule mobGriefing false

Be forewarned that turning off mob griefing disables all mob-on-block interactions including those that are benign or beneficial. For example, sheep will no longer destroy grass blocks while grazing (a relatively benign activity) and the villagers’ ability to replant crops (a beneficial activity) will vanish.

Enjoy Permanent Daylight

When you’re playing a survival game, the day/night cycle adds interest and challenge to the game. When you’re building, however, the constant cycling of day and night (and the difficulty of working in semi-darkness) can get real old. Thankfully, you can easily toggle the daylight cycle.

/gamerule doDaylightCycle false

It’s important to note that the above command doesn’t permanently set the game to daytime, it permanently sets the game to the time it is when you issue the command.

The moon never sets on the zombie island.

As such it’s useful not just for setting the game to be permanently fixed at bright noonday sun, but also to fix the game in permanent darkness if applied in the middle of the night. If you want a sort of six month Siberian darkness to fight off horde after horde of zombies you can lock the game at midnight until you tire of the adventure.

December 14, 2014

Rabbits: Minecraft 1.8

iambiebs | Make A Comment | Gaming, nerdisms

With the release of 1.8 there are several things to be excited about. From armor stands to flags, and new doors to Ocean/Water temples, 1.8 was a feature packed update with tons of new adventures to take, items to craft, and so on. Minecraft rabbits are one of the new mobs added to Minecraft; they are quite the elaborate addition.

The new Minecraft rabbit has 6 natural variants, with one variant obtained using a name tag and one hostile variant, bringing the grand total to 8 variants possible. New drops include rabbit hide, the rare rabbit foot, and food types (raw and cooked rabbit). Rabbit stew will be the second kind of stew added to Minecraft and has been added as part of the 1.8 update.

Rabbit Types:

Toast is obtained using a nametag renamed “toast”, or a spawn egg renamed “toast”. The Killer Bunny has a change of 1 in 1000 in spawning, and is hostile.

Breeding & Taming Rabbits:

Minecraft rabbits can be bred by using carrots, golden carrots, and dandelions. When a bunny is bred, it is always the color of one of its parents. When taming a Minecraft rabbit, it uses the same mechanics as any other tamable mob. You feed them carrots until they no longer take carrots. Rabbits exhibit the same breeding patterns as pigs. Untamed rabbits behave in similar to those of ocelots. If you move towards a minecraft rabbit too fast, it will get scared and run away. Hold a carrot in your hand, hold shift, and they will come to you.

Minecraft Rabbit Drops:

The rabbits foot is a new drop obtained by killing a rabbit. Its use is for brewing the “Potion of Leaping”

Rabbit hide is dropped from a rabbit upon death. Four rabbit hides arranged into a square in a crafting table output 1 leather.

Raw rabbit is a drop that drops upon the death of a rabbit. When consumed, the player will receive 3 hunger points. Cooked rabbit is obtained when a Minecraft rabbit dies while on fire or when raw rabbit is cooked. Cooked rabbit gives a player 5 hunger points when consumed.