How to win the Greeviling

It's been a couple days that I've played the Greeviling in Dota 2, and I've learned a little bit about how the game works. In the Greeviling, the objective is to land the killing blow on 11 greevil camps before the other team does. In the first few rounds of greevils, the camps only have 1 big greevil to kill. However, towards the end, the camps start filling with up to 2 big greevils and 2 little greevils. It's important to remember that all of the greevils count, so you only get credit for the last greevil killing blow, regardless of whether it is a small or big greevil. So be careful about the enemy sweeping in at the last moment, or using long range abilities to steal kills that you did all the damage on.

Another important part of the Greeviling is hero selection. In the Greeviling, items are only granted at random, so there is no way for you to pick which items you want or go shopping. Instead, you have to hope to get items that will be useful to your particular hero of choice. As a result, the safest hero picks are the ones that are not very item dependent. I like to pick heroes with abilities that scale well in damage since items won't affect how useful they are. Stuns and disables, like always, are also very good reasons to select certain heroes. An interesting part of the greeviling, is how you get to select which greevil you want to use in addition to choosing your hero. It's significantly more effort to have all the best greevils available, but I've found my greevil selections to make hero selection less important. Since you can switch to your greevil as often as you want, you should ideally pick a greevil with a stun or disable of some kind. Luckily, most greevils seem to come that way.

Dota 2 Holiday: the Greeviling

So apparently Valve has had a promotional site up for a couple of days advertising something they call Frostivus. Well, today is the 3rd day of the site, and today they announced that Frostivus has been canceled because of something they call the Greeviling. It would appear that the Greeviling will pit players against hoards of Greevils in an effort to recover items which will be gifted to other players. If you weren't aware, a Greevil is a creature that Valve introduced back around Halloween for that special event. In fact, Valve is continuing to sell eggs that will hatch into Greevil couriers, so you can head to the store to purchase them. Hopefully, this event will give us a chance to pick up more essences for our Greevil eggs. Check out the official video if you want some excitement about the event.

Thoughts on farming casual games

I've spent some time tinking lately about farming style games and what I think of them. The basic gameplay in these games is almost exclusively clicking on something once to initiate a timer until you can click on that same thing again. This waiting game naturally provides some excitement as the moment of clicking approaches. Then you get a brief feeling of joy as you click and the reward for the action pops out.

This basic gameplay is actually a fairly good representation for a number of real world activities. For instance, in a real farm, you perform a brief action of planting a seed, then after some much longer period of time, you perform another small action to reap the reward of whatever that plant produced.

However, the vast majority of farming style video games these days seem designed almost entirely to separate the player from their money as efficiently as possible. Many gamers are offended with the genre because of this commercialization, but I don't believe that the design has to be monetized in that way. In fact games like simtower were very similar, but had a more traditional monetization through a one-time purchase.

If I find the time, I may design a game using this play style, but a much more reasonable monetization.

Planetside 2

I recently saw Planetside 2 on Steam and decided to give it a whirl. It turns out, this is the first real MMO-FPS game I've tried and I found it very interesting. First, you choose one of 3 factions on which to fight along with which of the 6-12 (if I remember correctly) servers to play on. Then you choose one of 5 classes to play (flyer, fighter, healer, reloader, sniper) and a spot to spawn on the battlefield. The spawns are almost always right next to some fighting, so you are very quickly placed into some action.

As it was my first experience with the game, I ran around shooting guys and dying a lot. Then I noticed that there are tons of vehicles flying and driving around. It appears that one of the main strategic actions in the game is to take a troop transport vehicle near an opposing base and deploy it to allow your team to spawn there until it gets destroyed. If you are attempting to defend a base, it's almost certainly a good idea to find where those spawning trucks are and destroy them as soon as possible. However, the majority of players really just seem to swarm all over the objectives, spending much of their time shooting the other team in the face.

For a first time player, I like how easily you can get in and play. For extended play, I'm unsure how well upgrades serve to keep the gameplay interesting. I'm also concerned that the weapons and progression may require too much grinding to really make it worth my while to keep playing long term. Still, I think the game is worth a couple play sessions.

Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP

I've been known to buy every humble bundle whenever they come out. I recently bought a nexus 7 and have been able to try out the android humble bundles that I had previously not played. I found a pleasant surprise in a game called Super brothers: Sword and Sorcery EP. It is a point and click (touch) adventure game with old-school pixel graphics. They do an excellent job of using the features of tablet and cell phone devices. Occasionally you rotate your device to switch between movement and combat modes. The game is broken up into a number of segments and they lead to natural stopping points which is good for short play sessions. I haven't yet beaten the game, but I keep wanting to play to learn more about the setting and the story. I recommend that anyone who can, try the game to see what they think. Here are a few screenshots from the game so you can get an impression of what it is like.

Wizard Fight Race Steam Greenlight

Back in March I made a post about about Wizard Fight Race 7II, a game I made with a few friends in 72 hours. While we have a prototype as a proof of concept for the game, I believe there is still a lot more that could be done to improve it to the point where people might be willing, and interested in paying money for it. To that end, I made a concept page on Steam Greenlight to encourage community interaction and feedback. If you're reading this, and you feel like you'd like to give me a thumbs up (or down) or any sort of suggestions and input, then head on over to the Wizard Fight Race project page to leave comments and discuss the possibilities for the game with other interested steam users.

How to enable follow player in Dota 2

I have a friend that has Dota 2 and would like to play, but has not really been able to get into the game because he misses the screenlock feature available in other similar games. In other words, he would like the camera to be able to follow his character at all times so he doesn't lose track of what is happening to him by having the camera in a strange location. If you, like him, would like to be able to do this, I'm going to provide the steps right here in this post!

1. Find Dota 2 in your steam games list.
2. Right click Dota 2 and choose "Properties"
3. Click the "Set launch options..." button.
4. Type "-console" in the options if it is not there.
5. Start up Dota 2.
6. If the console window is not showing, press the ` key to get it to show.*
7. Type "dota_camera_lock 1" in the console and press enter.
8. Start a practice game (create lobby) to test it out and make sure it works how you want!

The downside of this method, is you will have to repeat steps 6-7 every time you start the game to turn on camera lock mode. Another method I found allows the F1 key to center in 1 press instead of 2, and you can customize the follow distance for that centering too. If there is interest, I can post those directions as well!

Towns (Steam Greenlight)

So this last week I saw a game that had recently been greenlit on Steam Greenlight called Towns. Now Towns is a game that is quite similar to Castle Story in a lot of ways, but with a number of differences. First, Towns in it's current alpha state has a lot more content than Castle Story in it's alpha state. That is, there are a lot more things to find and do in Towns. However, even though Castle Story has buggy building construction, Towns somehow manages to have even worse building construction. As both games are in alpha still, neither is really user friendly or good at directing the user to understand the interface and which things should be done.

One thing I've started doing in Towns, is to set a few commands for my town citizens to follow, then walk away and let them live their lives to see what they've done when I come back. Most of the time, I've come back to a ghost town where literally all of the town citizens have been killed and ghosts have spawned from their corpses. However, as I've managed to set up a fairly well armed standing army, the last couple attempts I've been able to return to a town population that was even greater than the one when I left. Right now my recommendation would be towns over castle story, just because there is more content in towns so far. It'll be interesting to see both of these games progress to see how much fun they can be when they are finished.

Castle Story Prototype Controls

Last night I was able to download the Castle Story Prototype and begin playing it a little bit. The first thing I noticed with the prototype, is that the controls aren't immediately intuitive. The camera mouse controls can be turned on by pressing "space" and you can select and control the yellow guys when you are not pressing "space." In order to mine, you need to first assign people to a mining group, then describe the zone that should be mined by drawing with the tools on the right. Setting up lumber teams can be done similarly. Finally, in order to construct things, you should assign brick men to the building team and lay out where the bricks should be placed using the blueprint tools. While using the building tool, you can hold right-click to bring up a menu or single right-click to rotate the currently selected block. Here's an annotated screenshot that will hopefully help you learn some of the controls.

Is anybody out there?

This is just a post attempting to see if anybody really reads the things I post. I haven't been writing them for other people so much as I've been writing them to be able to put my ideas out there. So if you are reading, feel free to leave a comment or something telling me what kinds of things you'd be most interested in reading or seeing show up on my blog. Has my series of Kickstarter reviews been useful or interesting? Should I review more Minecraft creations? Should I create more of my own things in Minecraft? Should I play a bunch more Dota 2 and post about it? I'll probably do much of the above anyway, I just want to know which things I should remember to post about on my blog. Thanks for reading!

Kickstarter – Planetary Annihilation

Planetary Annihilation is a game I discovered this morning through a twitter message from Notch. It provides an RTS style of gameplay on a grand scale, but appears to be much faster paced than a game like galactic civilization or normal planet level strategy games. In addition, it's being made by the company that makes Monday Night Combat and Super Monday Night Combat, both of which are games I have enjoyed playing. If this game sounds interesting, I encourage you to head to the kickstarter and support them, because this game will not be made unless they reach their funding goal.

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Kickstarter – Harmonia

Harmonia is a game I just found on Kickstarter that looks very interesting. The game is still in fairly early stages, but it is planned to become a multiplayer role playing game with real time strategy elements for the combat. It makes me think of what a game would be like if it combined the story and combat of Final Fantasy Tactics with multiplayer cooperative capabilities. On top of the basic gameplay, they plan to release a full set of modding and customization tools to allow players to add any new scenarios or content they want as well as server software for users to run their own servers. I'm excited for the ideas and concepts that this game is promoting, so I really hope the game will end up reaching its funding goal.

They currently have a text-based preview available, though it barely represents what the final game will be like once the graphical interface is ready. If you want to download the preview that is basically a MUD, you can get it here and you can read more about how to use it on the Harmonia Wiki.

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Kickstarter – Echoes of Aeons

Echoes of Aeons is a kickstarter project for a 2D action RPG that appears to have gameplay similar to Secret of Mana. I really like the art style they present in their kickstarter video, and right now they will let you secure a copy of the game for as little as $10. This is one project I'll definitely be watching closely in hopes that it gets funded.

Kickstarter – Steam Bandits: Outpost

Today I bring you an example of how NOT to create a kickstarter project. Steam Bandits: Outpost is a social game similar to most Facebook games, despite the claim on the project to the contrary. Now I'm not saying that this project has no right to be made an won't be a successful or fun game, in fact I think it will probably do quite well financially and may well be a fun game to play with friends. However, I do think this kickstarter project is all wrong. The true downfall lies in the fact that there is no way to preorder the game since they have decided to make the game "free to play" with micro transactions. I have seen a number of other projects using this model, and I find it very hard for me to preorder micro transaction credits prior to even trying the game. In addition, people playing the actual game are likely to engage in impulse buying of cheap bonuses, but I don't believe kickstarter backers have the same sorts of impulse buying, especially when most of the rewards are just micro transaction currency. This game will be made regardless of the eventual funding level the project receives on kickstarter, and I find no reason to back it when they will eventually give me the game for free anyway.

Kickstarter – Eternal Fate

Today I'd like to talk a little about another kickstarter game project, called Eternal Fate. This game is meant to be a 3rd person action game similar to Diablo 3 and Torchlight, only focused entirely on PVP without any standard defeat the computer style gameplay. I personally only enjoy games like Diablo 3 and Torchlight for the coop gameplay where I can defeat the computer controlled opponents with my friends and feel awesome, so I'm not sure if Eternal Fate will be my style of game. However, if you are the kind of person that enjoys PVP, this may well be another option for you, and I'd recommend backing them as you can gain access to the full game for a relatively small amount of money.

Kickstarter – Forge

Today, I have yet another kickstarter project that I have decided to put my money behind. Forge is a game that they describe as "An incredible blend of MMO-style abilities and FPS controls." In addition, they claim that there will be no endless grind like is found in most MMOs, and will instead focus on getting you in the action in the same way that FPS games do. While I know I have generally not enjoyed PVP in games like WoW because I'm always out geared (honestly I'm probably just really bad), this game might provide the short play sessions without required commitment to keep me interested. Forge can be preordered from the kickstarted for as little as $15 if it reaches their funding goal (which is still a ways off). I bet they will still finish the game even if they don't get kickstarter funding.

Here is a gameplay video for those interested in more about the game:

Kickstarter – Castle Story

A while back, my friend showed me an interesting video for a game called Castle Story. Right now, they have a kickstarter campaign going, where you can get the full game for only $15. They've already reached their funding goal several times over, but if you are interested in the game, this preorder will give you access to the beta and will likely be a lower price than the final release. To get an idea of the game play, check out the video embeded below.

Kickstarter – Project Giana

I found an interesting platformer on kickstarter yesterday. I decided to fund it because it looks fun. I think the best part isn't just that the main character can change modes, which changes the player's abilities as well as the enemies', but because when the mode changes, the music shifts, but both musical tracks match up with each other during the shift. This kind of musical feel seems very interesting to me and I look forward to playing the game. Plus, it's only $10 to get yourself a copy of the game. I really hope the project can gain more traction.

Kickstarter – OUYA

The newest kickstarter project that I'm excited about is OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console. I'm excited because I've had a few similar ideas bouncing around in my head for a while about how to create an open game console for home use. The OUYA appears to do a lot of things right and I wish them the best. I am a backer of the project, and they've already reached their funding goal, so I'll be getting one when they launch some time next year.

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Dota 2

I've been playing a lot of Dota 2 recently. There are a few things I like about it that I think give it a pure lead in my mind when compared to League of Legends and I'll attempt to list a few of them here and then explain what I mean by each point.

1. Better good behavior incentives.
2. Better incentives for playing the game.
3. Better welcome back for players that take a break.
4. Better spectating through replays.

First, the game encourages the community to be kind and forgiving. Every match begins with a reminder to commend people for good behavior, and to report anyone who is misbehaving. Dota has traditionally been known as one of the worst online communities due to very aggressive name calling and other text abuse. Other games have the ability to report and police bad behavior, and that still exists in Dota 2. The thing that they do right that no one else does is allow commendations for good behavior. This follows my long-standing belief that rewarding good behavior is the right way to get people to do what's right. While punishment for doing what's wrong can be effective in some cases, no one likes to be hurt, whether they deserve it or not. Everyone likes to be rewarded, and placing a carrot in the right spot can do a lot to make everyone enjoy the game more together.

Second, Dota 2 gives you rewards for playing the game. In essentially every other free-to-play game that I'm aware of, the principle reward you get for playing, is things required to play the game anyway. In a game like League of Legends, that includes things like levels up, which unlock masteries and rune slots that are required to compete with your opponents. Additionally, to truly be competitive, you need to have all of the heroes available to you in the game. Nearly all other dota-like games allow you to pay either real money, or in-game currency to unlock those heroes, thereby giving you more of a fighting chance to compete. In Dota 2, everyone has everything available to them for free to be able to compete. The rewards you get are purely cosmetic. Furthermore, these rewards become yours, and usually have some real cash value. There is a thriving marketplace where you can trade things you earn for playing Dota to other players in exchange for other items, or even for entire games on steam. 

Third, taking a break from Dota for a while doesn't set you back competitively. This point is related to my second point by the fact that each player is on an equal footing in terms of hero unlocks. There are no preparations required before you can jump into a real competitive match in Dota 2, presuming you know the heroes already. You don't have to look up all of the changes, and redo your runes and masteries, and purchase all of the new heroes before you can feel caught up with people that have been playing during your break. Even when new heroes are added to Dota 2, you don't have to have saved up 80 hours of playtime "rewards" to be able to unlock that hero. A single practice against bots is plenty to get the idea of that hero's concept.

Fourth, better spectating in Dota 2. Now the quality of the spectating modes between League of Legends and Dota 2 may be a matter of preference, but one point in which Dota 2 wins outright, is the ability to watch replays. You can look at any of your recent games, and download the replay to watch. You can check the play history of anyone on your friends list and download their replays. You can even create links to any replay that you can post online, or send to friends to be able to load up and watch on their own. Plus, while you are watching a replay, you can queue for a match and continue watching the replay while you wait for a match to be found.

For me, these simple changes, some of them fundamental to the payment model of the game, put Dota 2 in a league above the competition. It matches well with the way TF2 works, creating its own marketplace and allowing the players to extract value for themselves by contributing to the community through playing. While other games make playing the game seem like a method of grinding out tons of matches in order to remain competitive and current, Dota 2 actually presents rewards for participation, and refuses to punish you for not playing. Why can't all game companies be like Valve?

My opinion of E3 2012

This year's E3 seems to have been less exciting than I would have liked. For me (as a computer engineer), the biggest thing missing from Nintendo's presentation was any discussion of what the actually computation units will be. Sure it'll use an IBM multi-core processor and a AMD Radeon GPU, but those were expected partnerships and they don't really say much at all about what the actual computation units will look like. Based on current trends and the lack of information about the memory, I think it's safe to assume that the Wii U will use DDR3 RAM, though it could use DDR2 depending on the exact chipsets they're using. I don't particularly think the amount of RAM they have is as important as the type of memory they use, and I think consoles have greater flexibility of using more exotic memory technology, so I would have liked to see them toying around with a partnership with RAMBUS or some other unique memory technology.

As for the things that were announced, there will be a bunch of new games coming out in the next year. The ones I'm most excited about (that weren't necessarily the ones announced at the convention) include Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, SimCity, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, Bioshock Infinite, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. You may notice that much of my list are PC games, and that's because I really enjoy having a decent gaming PC that I maintain, and I enjoy good games that use a mouse well.

Because We May

Because We May is a site that has a bunch of indie games listed for discounted prices until the end of May. If you want to pick up some good games for fairly cheap (some of them are even free) I recommend heading over there to check them out. They have games for iOS, Mac, Android, Steam and even other platforms.

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Diablo III Account Security

So I've played a lot of Diablo 3 in the last week. Probably too much. In the last couple days, a lot of reports started showing up on the battle.net forums and other fansites of people losing all of their gear or having their accounts hacked. Some rumors were posted that a Game Master command was somehow available to some players or that session ID spoofing was possible to allow other users access to your characters. I was kinda skeptical, but figured there was an outside chance that something like that had slipped through before the game was released. The one thing that the theories said was required for the "hackers" to gain access to your account, was your battle tag, which becomes available to others when you add them as friends, play with them in a multiplayer game, or post on the forums.

This forum post from Bashiok seems to indicate that they have not investigated any cases of accounts actually being compromised except through the traditional methods of password stealing. Furthermore, they "have yet to investigate a compromise report in which and authenticator was attached beforehand." If you play any Blizzard games and don't have an authenticator yet, I highly recommend either buying the keychain one from the Blizzard store (for about $6) or using a smart phone authenticator app.

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Diablo 3 Launch

Diablo 3 will go live this evening at 1am my time. I have raid with my friends before, and I just got enough food and drink to last until I beat the game. I cannot remember any game I've ever been this excited before ever. The only possible exception is Final Fantasy 3(six) when that came out on SNES while I was in Junior High. I saved for months and months and I read every magazine about it multiple times leading up to the release. With the greater pervasiveness of information on the web, I've read way more about Diablo 3 than I did about Final Fantasy 3, however I still don't know all that much about the story that will unfold in Diablo 3. I hope everyone will enjoy Diablo 3 as much as I will.

BAS is coming!

The Joystiq article linked here discusses how DOTA is going to be used commercially by Valve while Blizzard will only keep the rights for fans to use the term non-commercially. As a result, Blizzard Dota has been renamed Blizzard All-Stars or BAS. I look forward to this game because Blizzard seems to be doing a lot of game redesign when compared with the original DOTA.

For more on this subject check out: Blizzard and Valve settle DOTA argument, Blizzard DOTA is now Blizzard All-Stars | Joystiq:

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Elven Mansion - Minecraft

Today I present my review of the Elven Mansion build by fretz on planetminecraft.


View Elven Mansion -Now with Download-

I followed the directions on the planetminecraft page to connect to the server where the build exists and view it for myself, but there is also a download available on the planetminecraft page of the world. Since the world comes from the server, I believe it probably contains many other builds and would be hard to find this particular mansion.

The first thing you notice on approach is that the mansion itself is almost entirely made of wood, and raw wood for the most part instead of more refined planks. The other striking feature is that this mansion is gigantic. It's so big that my view distance doesn't allow me to see the back side of it from the front. The other nice external feature is the purple roofs, which I very much enjoy and were what made me want to review this creation in the first place.

When you enter, the internal decorations are a number of different wood types and quite a lot of glowstone. The floor of the main room is a pond with some ice and glowstone at the bottom to illuminate it. There are also a number of flames somehow burning at the bottom of the pond. The ceiling of this main room has a similar glass structure with water and glowstone above it. There are two side exits from the building in the main room that looks exactly like the main entrance.

At the back of the main room, there is a doorway to the tower. The tower is quite tall with no real way up, but there are windows half way up to let some light in to the building. There is also a hold going down that leads to a secret underground tunnel. The tunnel is lined with wooden supports and leads to a dock in a cove. Overall I enjoy this build because of its grandiose scale. I also enjoy the purple roofs and their contrast with the wooden structure.

Luxurious Modern House

Today I am reviewing the "Luxurious Modern House *Version 4*" by pigonge on planetminecraft.


View Luxurious Modern House *Version 4!!*

I downloaded the map, but there's also a mcedit schematic available if you would like to include it in your own map. On the map, you arrive in front of the house, where a small shack rests outside the main building. There are a number of switches and levers around, but I have not been able to figure out if they serve a purpose. Right away, I saw a slime fall off the roof of the house and split into 4 small slimes. On the other side of the wall behind me, I found a 2 way paved road (out of colored wool I believe).

I then wandered past the shack on the path by the water leading to a small door and then up a wide wooden staircase into what I imagine is the main floor of the house. There are a pair of purple couches with a glass coffee table for entertaining guests followed by wooden benches leading to a balcony looking out to the road. There is a small indoor pond followed by a large blue dining table next to the kitchen. The whole time I was exploring this floor, I could hear creepy pounding sounds coming from the floor above me.

On the next floor, there's another purple couch with a good looking house shrub next to it. On the other side of the wall, there are a number of book cases with a small reclining chair for enjoying a good book. The master bedroom is on this floor, complete with yet another purple couch, a double wide bed, and a fairly large tub in the bathroom.

On the next floor there were a couple more bedrooms and a couple small bathrooms. Then on the top floor, there are even more purple couches and another bedroom or two. There is quite a lot of room for entertaining guests. From that top floor, there is an exit to a rooftop garden, complete with benches and tables for parties. From there, you can see an entire extra building as well as an interesting water feature. Overall this house gives you a lot of room to explore and entertain and I recommend checking it out if you are interested.

Diablo 3: Wrath

On the reveal site for Diablo 3, they released an impressive video showing the conflict between angels and demons in the world of Diablo. I recommend checking it out over at reveal.diablo3.com or the video I have embedded here. While you're on the reveal site, be sure to collect the sigils by creating a banner for each class. They won't be available once the time runs out.

I really can't wait for this game to come out to be able to experience the story and play cooperatively with my friends and family. This is something I've been anticipating for nearly 10 years.

Good Intentions

When I last posted, I had every intention of following through with my idea to review Minecraft creations regularly. I've ended up being very busy with other things. So for my first review, I choose the following project, which is a palace posted by owner_rekna1 on planetminecraft:
 

View The forgotten palace

I like the look of the palace with nice gold and brown roofs. The center of the palace is an open area, complete with a water feature and what appear to be pink bushes. Since the planetminecraft page does not have a download link, I can't actually explore it myself, but the build does seem interesting from the available pictures. I encourage you to check out the pictures and see if it inspires you to build a similar palace.

Minecraft Creations

I'm considering starting to do a weekly review of some minecraft creation that I find somewhere on the internet. It would include a video looking at the creation as well as a few screenshot highlights. I'm posting this to see if I can get a feeling of what current readers might be interested in seeing, and how frequently I should post these reviews. So if you're reading this and you have an opinion on how many I should do each month, which days I should post them, and what kinds of things you think I should look at, please leave a comment on this post.

Treasures of Montezuma Blitz

This last week, a new game was released on the playstation network for playstation Vita that is free to download and play, at least initially. This game is not in fact a gift to players as the term "Free to Play" seems to indicate, but instead has micro-transactions that allow you to get ahead in the game. If you've tried bejeweled blitz on any platform, this game is basically the same idea. You get 60 seconds to match 3 as many times as you can to get the best score you can. 

I've actually been really enjoying playing this game, and I find the 60 second play sessions easy to fit into my life. I also personally like how the number of lives is limited, but that they refill over time. This encourages me to go do something productive after I spend 5 minutes playing. Of course someone that doesn't have other things to do, might be tempted to spend $0.99 to instantly refill the 5 lives to continue playing, but that option does not interest me at all.

My main complaint about the game is the gem system. Each round you can generate a number of gems based on your performance. However, the special abilities that you unlock as you level up cost a number of gems to use in each game, and this number is typically way lower than the number of gems generated from playing the game. As a result, I tend to just play the game with all of the bonuses turned off all the time, making me wonder why they are even in the game if I can't use them. Other than the customization being useless, this is a decent way to casually play a few minutes of "Match 3" ever now and then.

Kickstarter — Nekro

Finally I'm making a post about something on KickStarter that I think has some promise. Nekro by darkForge — Kickstarter is the page where you can learn more about this game that seems to be an RTS of sorts. It looks like they have a pretty decent game engine put together and the concepts for the game are generally things I find interesting (other than the pooping pig). I've noticed that this particular project is currently suffering from a lack of funding, but I don't really think that they'll stop making the game if they don't get the kickstarter funding. Many of the projects I find on kickstarter seem to be primarily asking for extra money to do something they are going to do anyway. I think Nekro deserves more backing than they have received so far, but if you have to pick and choose which projects to fund right now, this is one that I think will survive without your money. I still recommend backing Nekro after checking out their kickstarter page if it is something that seems interesting to you.

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Kickstarter — Yogventures

Just when I thought kickstarter couldn't get any worse projects, a wild project appears. I've been a fan of Minecraft for a while as it's an interesting game with a good price and allows for the player to be creative. In addition it is simple and easy to pick up.

The one thing I've never liked about the Minecraft community is the Yogscast. The show is just obnoxious and irritating and I've never understood the appeal. Now it appears that they are trying to exploit their popularity to crowd-source funding for a rip-off game that is essentially a copy of Minecraft. I hypothesize that their primary motivation is their irritation that Mojang doesn't treat them like gods. Whatever you do, DO NOT SUPPORT THIS PROJECT. Yogventures! by The Yogscast and Winterkewl Games LLC — Kickstarter

I realize this and my previous post have been fairly negative, so I'll do my best to be positive in the future. I have found some good projects that I think deserve funding on kickstarter so I might talk about them a bit.

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Kickstarter — Aries (FPSMMORPG)

I for one am very interested in crowd sourced funding for video games (and other projects). After the hugely successful KickStarter campaign from Double Fine, I think a lot of independent developers have awakened to the possibilities of having the game paid for by the end user rather than some publishing organization. The benefits of such a technique are numerous and I won't go in too much depth right now, but the biggest merit is that the developer is able to maintain autonomous creative control over the final product.

Many of the projects on kickstarter are very small in scope and only ask for a modest amount of money, perhaps a few thousand dollars. Occasionally there is a project that I come across that appears to fundamentally defeat the purpose of kickstarter in my mind. The Future of First Person Shooters- Aries (FPSMMORPG) by Derrick Smith — Kickstarter: is one such project in my mind. It comes from a guy who is "a recent graduate at University of Phoenix with [a] BA in Business Development specifically in Organization and Innovation." He also "use to play football" so he must know his stuff.

Regardless of his qualifications as a businessman, this particular project is already "pre-funded." I get the impression that they really just want to collect some of the free money available on KickStarter and aren't doing something that is truly crowd-funded like Double Fine Adventure. Obviously they are within their rights to start the project and see what interest they get. I think the numbers speak louder than I can about the interest in this particular FPSMMORPGWTFBBQ game of videos. As of the time of this writing, there are 64 hours to go and they have 15 backers for a total of $950 of their $275,000 goal. If you are reading this post, I implore you to not support this project and put your money somewhere that they actually need it. Aries will eventually happen or not and I don't believe any kick-starter money will have an affect on whether they complete the game or whether it will be any good at all.

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Escape Plan DLC

Escape Plan has done amazingly well for Sony. At only $15 to download the whole game, it has a low barrier to entry, and allows vita owners to show off the features of their new device to friends. Additionally, it has a charming story with an attractive, mono-chrome presentation. Naturally, it makes sense that Sony would want to release extra downloadable content for the game. The unexpected part is that they are making this DLC free. I know I'm excited to get my hands on a new chapter of this game, so feel free to read more about it on the playstation blog post.

PS Vita Commentary

I've now had my Vita for more than a month, so I thought it would be a good time to make a post about what I think about it and how I've been using it. First, I got the vita primarily because I have a great amount of interest in current mobile computing platforms and want to support further development and research in that area. I also believe that dedicated gaming machines are important for the video game industry, and I feel like I should support that area too. Beyond my desire for these areas to expand and continue improving, I genuinely believe the Vita to be an interesting device for someone like me to play with.

The Playstation Vita has a nice large display and a good array of control options. In particular, I really appreciate the direction pad, the analog sticks, the face buttons and the shoulder buttons. All of these inputs allow for traditional control styles. The front and rear cameras have very quick response times, making them ideal for interactive gaming applications, but sub-par for more traditional image capture purposes. The other methods for input include accelerometers, and front and rear touch pads. Some casual applications can benefit from the touch screen, however I've yet to find a game that uses accelerometer data as anything useful that goes beyond just a silly gimmick. In fact, I almost always find accelerometer based gameplay to be obnoxious since I like to play for a few minutes in bed while relaxing, and I'm not in a mood to move around much at that point. The rear touch is occasionally interesting, but entirely too easy to hit accidentally. This becomes even more irritating when the score in a game is affected by all of the accidental rear touches going on.

The games I have been playing since I got it include "Plants vs. Zombies", "Escape Plan", "Motorstorm RC" and "Super Stardust Delta." Each of these games is convenient for a mobile platform because they provide short play session options with plenty of ways to continue playing. Plants vs. Zombies is essentially the exact same game that appears elsewhere with intuitive front-touchscreen controls. If you don't have another version of PvZ already, this one is worth picking up. Escape Plan consists of a set of levels with mostly front and rear touch controls to move your characters and adjust the environment to allow them to travel from beginning to end. Motorstorm RC is a simple RC car game with quite a few maps and intuitive RC car style controls. It is a great deal at the free price I paid for it, but I would actually even recommend it to anyone who likes RC cars. Finally, Super Stardust Delta is an interesting asteroid shooting game with a few annoyances in the controls (tilt to change the view and accidental rear touch or shake bombs). This is just a brief overview of each of these games, but hopefully I can say something more in-depth about them in the future.

Overall, I think the Vita is an interesting system with a lot of promise. I believe the hardware itself is a steal even at $300 for the 3g version, but it remains to be seen if consumers will realize that. Additionally, I think Sony is going to have a lot of problems trying to move mobile device software at prices as high as $50 for a single game when nearly all other mobile devices have an endless supply of free or $0.99 games that, while they are lower quality overall, make people think twice about buying a downloadable game for even $10. PS Vita games can charge some premium, but they really should not be allowing games that sell for $3 on iOS and Android sell for $40 on the Vita. Things like that are really an embarrassment.

Wizard Fight Race 7II

Last weekend I had a few of my friends work on a game that we started from scratch and brought through to a state of completion. A lot of the ideas were things we had been discussing for a while, but the concrete plans came into being during that 3 day period. If you want to see what we made, the game can be downloaded or you can play it in a browser (assuming you install the right plugins). For the record, the title of the game is Wizard Fight Race 7II, and the number should be pronounced "seventy-two".

If you download and try it and want to provide any feedback, feel free to send me messages at my twitter account, @cordoro1, and I'll try to get back to you when I can. I feel like this experience was something that I needed and that it helped me remember how fun it can be to rapidly prototype a game when using the right programming environment. We used Unity as our game engine, which we had barely touched before we started this project. I'm impressed with how much we got done, despite the fact that the game might feel a little unfinished (the whole thing was done by only 2 programmers/designers in 72 hours).

Diablo 3 Release Date

I'm super excited and just needed to mention that Diablo 3 finally has a release date. It'll be out on May 15, 2012. For proof, here's a twitter post. That is a time that works extremely well for me, meaning that I might actually get to play it a fair amount when it comes out.

Also, I'm happy they decided to remove PVP from the game at least at launch. I think that the best thing for a game like Diablo would be to maybe allow PVP but completely ignore it and just let players do whatever they think is best. If they allow PVP balance to affect the main part of the game, then they will be doing a huge disservice to the players that actually wanted to play the game.

Games Made in a Weekend

I think the development of a game from scratch in a very short time is an interesting way for new ideas to end up as games. If you're interested in checking one out, take a look at https://sites.google.com/site/72hourgame/

There should be more content appearing there shortly.

How I've played Diablo 3 beta so far

As a mentioned in my last post, I'm most excited about getting Diablo 3 this year and the class I want to play primarily is the monk. I thought I'd take this chance to post a few of the abilities that I've enjoyed as I've played in the beta.

First, I find that the basic attack I enjoy most is Deadly Reach because it does a good job of hitting a cluster of enemies. Blinding Flash or Lashing Tail Kick I like to use as my primary spirit dump. Then the main signature ability, and the one I enjoy the most is Dashing Strike, because it allows the monk to quickly dash around the battle and get to the high priority targets quickly to then be able to clean up the minions later. It is a good thing that abilities will be able to be modified with runes, otherwise I feel like every monk would feel the same by always needing the Dashing Strike ability for mobility.

This year in gaming

There are a couple things I'm quite excited for that are coming out this year and will affect the gaming part of my life. The first one is on "early release" today and that is the PS Vita. I'm the kind of person that is always excited about a new piece of hardware, and since gaming consoles are released so infrequently and are relatively inexpensive, it's a good chance to get the latest and greatest for me. The bundle I'll be getting is the one releasing next week that comes with an 8GB memory card and the Super Stardust download game. The only other game I plan to get at release is Escape Plan. If I remember, I'll post something about my thoughts on the games and the hardware after they come out.

The second gaming item for this year that I very much look forward to getting is Diablo 3. This is a game I have wanted since I was much younger. It will give me a chance to play satisfying hack-and-slash rpg game play with my brothers and friends that live all over the place. I've been in the beta for a while and I can say from experience that it is a very enjoyable experience to fight your way through hordes of beasts and demons on the way to collect shiny new gear. For the record, I plan to play a monk as my first "main" class. Oh, and Diablo 3 is supposed to come out in Q2 of 2012, so I presume that I should get the full release version by the end of August.

Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the new expansion for World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria. MoP will bring a quite large redesign to the classes in WoW, probably one of the biggest changes to happen to WoW yet. I think this change is much needed, and will show the rest of the MMO industry that it is important to actually rethink things instead of just sticking to what everyone else has done. For those that don't know, the design of talents in MoP will change from the talent trees (dump a bunch of points in early talents to unlock new tiers) that have been in WoW since it first came out to a much different system. Talents will appear every 15 levels or so, and will effectively be a choice among 3 options, each providing a meaningful decision. Now, everyone gets the basic necessities of their spec and instead can have actual variation that isn't just choosing to be worse than everyone else.

New Minecraft Server

Earlier this week, I built a new computer with parts purchased from newegg (and an SSD and HDD I had sitting around). The parts I got include the following:

• CPU: AMD FX-4100 4 Core (3.6 GHz) $109.99
• MOBO: MSI 760GM-E51 $69.99
• MEM: Patriot 1333 DDR3 4x4GB $69.98
• CASE: Antec Three Hundred + 430W PSU $69.99
• HDD: 1TB (not sure of the details)
• SSD: Intel 160GB
• DVD+RW stolen from my old Compaq

The total cost including shipping but not the drives came to $327.28. I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the SSD and I use the HDD for minecraft server backups (daily at 3am). One of the first things I did after putting everything together was to overclock the CPU to 4.0 GHz by increasing the multiplier from 18x to 20x. There's something satisfying about having a computer running at 4 GHz. I haven't had a chance to play on the Minecraft server much, but it appears to be a bit better than my old machine which only had 2GB of DDR2 and an old Athlon X2 5000.

Running a Terraria server on my linux machine is a new thing for me, so I don't have all the scripts in place yet. However, I found it relatively simple to get TShock to work by just installing the new version of the mono runtime. Once I get my scripts in place to make it easier for me to start and stop my two terraria worlds remotely, I'll consider posting a version of the script for other people to use if they are interested.

My Stream

It's been a long time since I've streamed any games regularly. I haven't completely given up on playing games despite being really busy with various real life things that I have going on right now. However, I've decided I should really get back into streaming at least a couple times a week. Right now I'm thinking of including the following games in my streaming rotation:

• Diablo 3 beta
• Dota 2 beta (probably not too much playing myself)
• Terraria
• Minecraft
• WoW raids with my guild

If you think of any other games I should stream, feel free to send it in a message to my twitter: @cordoro1

Vacation Gaming

Over my break I played through Borderlands again (this time on PS3). This is one game that I really really enjoy and which I'm excited for the sequel. Just to illustrate how much I like the game, I've purchased 10 copies of it in total. I think even terraria I've only bought about 8 copies of. I am really excited for Borderlands 2 to come out later this year.

In addition, I played quite a bit of the indie game Stacking. Actually it was mostly watching my family play that game. I have to recommend it because it definitely has appeal to quite a wide audience, including my siblings that don't normally enjoy playing video games.