Getting back

And we're back.

Nu har jeg vist været stille længe nok. En del er gået galt, og en del er gået godt. Først og fremmest må jeg her til januar indrømme at min stakkels maskine simpelthen ikke kan mere.

Det er grafikkortet. Et gammelt Nvidia NSV400. Det har tjent mig godt, men der er grænser.

CPU'en kan godt lidt endnu, men også kun lidt. Men grafikkortet skal opgraderes og med 65W at gøre med hedder det nyt bundkort, ny PSU, nyt kabinet.... Ny computer.

Ja ja, det kommer, men indtil da har jeg stadig en smule Star Craft 2, Minecraft og min nye World of Warcraft hobby. Men skal vi se om ikke jeg kan lave et ugentlig oplæg, evt lave et til projekt listen ect.

Der bliver spillet mindre end tilbage i tiden, men det er stadig det samme. Jeg rykker dog ikke ind på Youtube igen tror jeg, da jeg nu har nye muligheder i Twitch. Men lad os se.

Som altid er kommentar feltet åbent, og måske er jeg lidt langsom til at reagere, men intet forsvinder.

Eye of the Beholder

Hvad skal bruges:

Spillet:  http://hopeless.death.kiev.ua/EotB1_9.zip
Cheats: All Seeing Eye (Et automapping program, med hints, tips og tricks)
DRM  : Manualen

Hvorfor lige Eye of the Beholder?

Jeg har brugt så mange timer på det her spil, og nu med internettet opdager jeg at jeg ikke var den eneste. Da det udkom var jeg lige startet på at spille AD&D pen and paper, eller havde gjort det et stykke tid. AD&D var ihvertfald en stor del af min fritid, og det vi nørderne lavede sammen.

Da jeg ikke selv havde en computer sad jeg når jeg kunne låne en af mine kammeraters, og jeg kom faktisk ret langt i det. Men jeg gik altid død det samme sted.

Da jeg selv fik en computer var det også en af de første retro spil jeg gik på jagt efter og jeg fandt det da også flere gange, og selv med manualer kom jeg aldrig længere end et bestemt sted hvor jeg falder igennem et hul i gulvet, også sidder jeg fast.

Min tanke om hvordan jeg ville slippe ud af det var at så måtte jeg finde papir & blyant frem simpelthen tegne kortene over området så jeg i det mindste ikke bare gik rundt og gentog mig selv.

En ting der gør jeg bare er nødt til at gøre det her spil færdigt er de 2 efterfølgere. Jeg var umådeligt imponeret over konceptet i at du spillede EOB 1, gennemførte spillet også kunne importe til 2'eren.

Det blev hurtigt en achivement needed ting for mig at gennemføre 1'eren ikke for spillet selv, men simpelthen for at kunne importe et færdigt spil til 2'eren. Og 3'eren?

Men med DosBox og Ase her er det hele en let og elefant. faktisk har jeg gennemført, og jeg har luret et longplay på youtube, og jeg var ikke helt tilfreds med mit slut resultat, så jeg startede op igen igår.

Efter min søgen rundt på nettet for forklaringer på de 12 speciel quests faldt jeg over CRPGaddict, hvilket fik mig til at tænke på min spilleblog her har været stille meget meget længe. Samtidig har jeg via DosBox fundet et hav at spil fra min barndom, som jeg aldrig tilfredsstillende blev færdige med, og min plan er at gøre noget ved det. (Med EOB som det første).

Lige nu er jeg 4 levels nede med et Human Paladin, Fighter dværg, Human Cleric, og Elf Mage.

Min plan er at bruge de 4 og kun de 4 (+Tod Uphill - tyven) igennem hele serien. Tænker det burde være muligt men vi må se. indtil videre går det meget godt, og jeg har alle 3 speciel quests. Min umiddelbare tanke er at jeg kommer til at mangle inventory plads, men hvis jeg nu smider alt mit skrammel væk og får brugt de wands jeg finder, scrolls så burde jeg have bedre plads (RPG forsigtig hoarder typen, du ved: må hellere gemme bomben til bossen der kommer efter bossen?).

Jeg tænker jeg kan blive færdig idag, med en samlet spilletid for gennemgang på små 12-16 timer.

Nu fortsætter jeg og skriver om resten når jeg er færdig i aften.

Resultatet

Det endte med at tage mig en 16 -20 timer at blive færdig med resten. Som forventet var der ikke meget nyt, og jeg fatter ikke hvordan jeg nåede op på maximum level tilbage i de gamle dage. Fighterens max XP er oppe på en million og paladinen kan komme helt op på 1,2 millioner. Tyven, Mage'en og Clericen ligger på noget mere opnåeligt med omkring en halv og jeg landede i omegnen af 250.000. Efter at have læst en masse taktiker blev jeg enig med mig selv om at begrænse holdet, så i stedet for at slæbe extra folk med, besluttede jeg mig for at holde på den tyv man finder i starten også lade den sidste plads være tom, lidt i håbet om at det ville give mere XP pr mand gennemspillet.

Da jeg var færdig med det hele og kun manglede egentlig at afslutte spillet begyndte jeg at grinde de der mantis warriors som jeg opdagede respawnede i et okay tempo, men de 3 gav mig 840 XP for hver spawn, og det fik mig på et gennemsnit af omkring 1.000 xp pr minut, klokken meget sent. Så eg tænkte 250, det må være nok. De er jo rimelig vist level 9-11 så det jeg går og grinder for at de sidste levels på min fighter. Det gider jeg simpelthen ikke bruge en aften/nat på. Så det må være det.

Som sagt er det første gang jeg har gennemført spillet, faktisk har jeg aldrig været nede på sidste level, som egentlig ikke var noget særligt. Første omgang tænkte jeg at jeg ville hack n' slashe bossen, men det er tæt på umuligt. Og efter at have læst alle de walkthoughs og play thoughs kunne jeg ligeså godt gøre det rigtigt. Slutningen var så lidt en skuffelse, men jeg vidste at det ville være tilfældet med Dos versionen, der er Amiga slutningen mere detaljeret og gør spillet rette.

Nu kommer så næste omgang med 2'eren. Det bliver ikke lige i dag, men senere når jeg god tid igen.

Jeg tænker jeg helere lige må finde en Speciel quest liste, men egentlig tror jeg ikke det er nødvendigt med en trial run rigtigt. Og med ASE burde der ikke være et problem. Men dejligt endeligt at få krydset EOB af bucketlisten.

DosBox

Nu er jeg seriøst kommet på Old School vognen.

Her på det sidste har jeg genopdaget en af mine glæder fra barndommen nemlig Eye Of the Beholder.
Det vender jeg lige tilbage til med et nyt indlæg.

Først og fremmest vil jeg lige lave et grundlæggende indlæg omkring DosBox som et en Dos emulator.
Jeg kom på det via Play Dos games online, jeg kan ikke huske hvorfor jeg lige faldt over den side, men 2.700 spil fra dengang far var dreng...

Det først jeg gjorde var at spille SimAnt i browseren, hvilket er et spil jeg brugte måneder på at drømme om at gennemføre, men da jeg hverken havde min egen computer eller spillet tilbage i slut 80'er, start 90'er. blev det altid ved drømmen.

En aften senere fik jeg endelig gennemført spillet i 1 go selvfølgelig, et rimelig simpelt spil, men bare tidkrævende, og rimelig kedeligt efter de først 15-20 minutter.

Så gik jeg på jagt og fandt SimCity, Colonization, og Transport Tycoon gamle kendinge som andre end jeg har brugt mange mange timer på, aldrig rigtigt har forladt, eller bare har nostalgiske minde om.

Det eneste problem jeg havde med at spille dem i browseren, var at Save game funktionen ikke virker...
Det er ikke det store problem når vi snakker om spil man lige hurtigt booter op leger lidt med og lukker igen, men Sid Meyer's sims er jo netop ikke bare noget men lige bruger et par timer på. Det kan jo hurtige tage dage. Så uden savegame, blev det lidt mehhh.

Fint. Så hopper vi på teknikken:
Hele siden bygger på noget der hedder dosbox og nyeste version er i skrivende stund 0.74.
Det er egentlig ikke særlig svært at få igang, og jeg har tilladt mig at downloade det og smide det på min Windows 10 box. Jeg tror det virker helt fint på alt fra XP og op, så kombado.

Min opsætning er så at jeg har standard installeret det, lavet et biblotek  på C:\ kaldet dosbox.
Ved installationen har jeg fanget konfirmationens filen og indsat denne mappe som et mount point.

Der er mange flere opsætningsmuligheder, som f.eks. start i Fullscreen, forskellige CPU modeller. Men lad os holde det KISS. Hvis du vil i Fullscreen, så vælge en firkantet skærm som primær skærm, og tryk [ALT] + [ENTER].


DosBox spil... Ja de ligger derude over det hele og er ret nemme at finde. At finde den helt rigtige og mest fejlfrie version, tjaaa. Du kunne også ridse en cd i 90'erne :)

Alle mine DosBox spille indlæg, vil indholde links til alt hvad jeg selv bruger i starten, så du kan følge mine fodspor, uden at skulle bruge timerne på at lede og researche.

Ohhh, ja de fleste steder med Dosbox ting, kan man hente en .zip fil, denne skal selvfølgelig pakkes ud, jeg bruger 7z, zip formattet er vist let at pakke ud i dag.
.zip filen har gerne en mappe som flyttes til "c:\dosbox\games\" mappen, f.eks. "C:\dosbox\games\EOB" også kan du finde EOB mappen i dosbox

Blizzards Authenticator

This will be one of my raving moments.

One thing that's been pissing me off quite a while is the usage of authenticators. You all know them those small key chain things that prints a pin code or something like it, to verify you're the owner of the account being used.

I utterly hate that concept and here's why:
Being an old school gamer the nature of ownership with the games I acquire is based on the old thinking that I buy a game, and thereby hold that media or a copy of it to use for my whims and pleasure.
This means I don't believe I be limited by draconian settings like having to authenticate my copy versus a server somewhere to play an offline single player game.
playing an old game should be limited to simple fetching a machine with the needed operating system,and hardware and launch it on that.
I love when the games are able to run in more modern systems, but don't expect Command & Conquer 2, which was made for windows 95 to run in windows 7 64 bit, but it should be able to run a windows 95 computer. Always!

Over the ages various concepts have sprung to stem the time of pirated software in a cold war so to speak, where some producers are more or less keen on having you authenticate yourself versus one of their server.
What I hate is that I have no guarantee that server will remain online. So getting an old game like Neverwinter Night I have a problem on the multi player front as there might be multiple servers, but they need to be verified via a Bioware server that has been taken offline a decade ago. Technically I think it's a gamespy server, ad there's fixes for it.

Recently I've unpacked Star Craft. Including Broodwar. A game from 97, and it runs decently with the 1.16 patch from Blizzard. The reason I pulled this out was on a notation from my kid which loves Pylons and consistently needs to build additional pylons. He's 8 now not speaking English, but he's currently going for it.

This made me look into Star Craft 2 again, which is one of the games i have on hold, and the reason for this is that you needed the authenticator to play the game. This they didn't quite tell you and most people I know found out after getting the game that they needed this thing.
Sure they all got one, they are next to free, and they already payed the 20€ for the game. So it was just a minor added cost. But that didn't cut it, then you needed to register with Blizzards gameclient thing called Origin, which I think also was the thing that made me back away from Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic.
At that time I just gotten hold of Dawn of Wars in physical copy, and having quite a problem activating it via not just steam but also Microsoft Live Gaming system.

You see it adds up, slowly they are restricting you further and further, I've noticed sms messages with login codes for games. Come on, why should the gaming company have any contact with my phone number and where would you draw the line.


Back to Blizzard and Star Craft 2, it took me 3 hours searching their support site to find any indication whether this authenticator was still a requirement for playing the games, and it seems this is no longer the case.
In the case where I would feel a need for added security with my accounts, of course they are wonderful options. But it is addons, and not part of the minimum requirements.

These producers seem to fail their community communications, which is why I rarely deal with them.
As an opposed option I often recommend www.gog.com which are very bad for you wallet, but all their content is under the concept of: You buy this, you play it to your hearts content, we'll even help you. And if we should ever go bankrupt, download a copy you can use for ever.
Last thing I got in there was the Total Annihilation packages (of which I have 20 legal copies on disk)

The end....

That's it. I've been sick and bored with Eve for a long time. It became too elitist. It's the things I liked about the game in the first place that is now turning me away from it.
Back in the days shortly after Beta the game was quite open, and the decree that CCP would never interfere with the ingame stuff, and let that be handled via the playerbase was a dream to my ears.
What I failed to predict well, was that the nature of people in general would come to unfold.
For some reason I tend to insist that given time a sufficient intelligent population would find some sort of balance where there's room for everyone and the main objective is to create or construct.

This is not the case.... For the past couple of years I've seen the Goons rise to power, and from what I know they are still the people love to be and love to hate. They are essentially the griefers, well the organized griefers. Not saying that any and all grunts are scheming bastards, rather they wish to the the scheming bastards that prey on the weak for the lolz. It's a lifestyle, and I've noticed it being more and more common in society. In general people what to the the all powerful tyrant, with emphasis on tyrant.

Eve have slowly turned into a pretty rough emulation of reality, where the powerful gets their way, not because they are right. But because they are powerful.

Granted CCP has had their shares of megalomaniac moments, and their rep has been forever more stained. I still recall the T20 episode, and things haven't changed much to be honest.

Over the decade I've played, I've combined amassed some 250-300M skillpoints on 3 characters, with 2 of them being in the high profile class but there's no point in playing them. Everything has already been done and nothing will really change until the eve population implodes on it self.

I've tried many a times to drag people into playing. My first struggle have been for people to understand there's no mercy and it's a dark place. 2nd. Have always been the fact that it is not an easy game, it takes time and skill to play. 3rd. Lately I've tried to convince people that there's still a world. No more. I'm quiting.

I'm not even rage quitting, and I have a sense that I'll return one day. But honestly I don't think so.

Good bye Eve, you have been a wonderful companion

Aaaaand let's tear it down and rebuild somewhere else.

So I've kinda nailed this PI stuff now.
I know I promised pictures, they aren't coming.

The big problems in this would be the need for enough Lava/plasma planets to extract enough Chiral structures and Plasmoids from.

With my current design you have 2 extractors with 4 heads each doing a minimum of 18k pr hour. That is routed to a warehouse, that stores the P0 while 2x3 factories are converting them to P1 and sending it to a Launchpad. The factories I place in a spider formation with closest range to warehouse possible, and a single link to the Launchpad (The extractors link to the warehouse, again as short as possible).

From the launchpad the P1's are processed by 3 advanced factories building transmittes, routing that back to the launch pad. and that yields 15 transmitters pr. hour provided the extractors are pulling at least 18k pr hour.

The setup can run for roughly 3 days before you need to purge the launchpad.

The other set can be put a on barren/gas/storm, same setup, but building watercooled CPU's.

The transmitters are picked up and shipped to a processing planet Currently I have a 12 factories setup churning out 36 Guidance systems pr hour, provided it's kept feed with transmitters and CPU's, Having a launchpad for CPU's and one for transmitters eliminated the need to planetside transports and one launchpad can store good for 2 days of running. The guidance systems are routed to a 3rd launchpad to extraction.

This setup takes roughly 15M to setup pr planet and with it running a week or so it's just flipping the bottom line into green now.

But alas, C4 is a bit too heavy for me and another option have opened for me: C3 and I'm going there to settle in calmer waters. That means every needs to be shut down and rebuild, and the planet selection pose a challenge as I lack sufficient planets.

A more dynamic and effective solution seems to be my choice with planets focusing on a single extractor and P1 material, and rely on secondary input.
in terms of yield I seem able to build 4 Advanced factories on each planet (with 8 basic factories) but rely heavily on transporting and distributing the P1 materials for P2 processing, or maybe I should consider having P2 processing planets and increase the P1 production pr planet. I'll have a look at it slowly during this week after I've entered and settled with the C3. The baseline from here is 6 planets X 15 P2 X 0.5 X 24 hours X 3 Characters X 0.1 = 3.240 Cycles = building 3 systems = 9.720 Guidance systems produced pr day. (which is a bit insane and over the top)......

3240 spread over the 24 hour day = 135 Factories which is a bit excessive, as I've only had 12 on a planet thus far. Seems I'm up for a lot more balancing acts.

Welcome to the Dark side

Yep, I finally succumbed to Star Wars, The old republic.

I've been playing for some 14 days now and my hand is just about ruined. Those who know my gaming life would know that 14 days is about the time I can play any wasd game, before my hand slowly turns into rubble. Something about the nerves, and the way I'm using my fingers, there's no real work around, there's aidtools and bandages, but no fix. I simply will never play a piano for that long.

Now Star Wars, TOR (as it's called)... But why? You hate warcraft style games.... Yep, that's correct.
i passionately hate WC and loads of other games of that type, but I love the SW stories, the Jedi concept the world in where it takes place. Sure it's a bit small, and the stories aren't quite alligned with the movies and other stuff in the universe. And then again it is.

Recently I've picked up on Clone wars, and I'm slowly grinding it to an end with the 6th. sesseaon. And my love for that world has only been rekindled.

I did notice it's launch by EA, and first thing was intrest, and much to my satisfation the game ended on the market exactly as i predicted. Another WC clone with the attached scamming and stuff attached needing to get that Secure key and join the wars against Steam (game only available via Origin). The same problem I had with Star Craft 2. In the mean while the game has been handed back to Bioware and turned into F2P /P2W in a way that the game is playable, but alot of things have been barred when you're not a subscriber or paying for the game.
That's quite fine really, considering how many games that are currently subscribtion only, monthly payments here or your game will forfeit.. SW has taken the approach of, play the game for free, play it more and better for cash. And I like that. It doesn't put holes in my wallet, I can store the game for quite a while without playing come back and pick up without loss. It's low budget = less focus on pretties, more on player content.
This is a game where PvP is meaningless. If you lose -> P2W.
The game have decent PvE, it's there you can get more by paying, but the baseline is there.
Which leaves RP'ing to be the main attractor.

As it's mainly RP, most griefers don't stick around as there's no point. Intelligence/maturity is a bit higher and it's freaking Star Wars MMO.

I've played KOTOR a few times, and would do so many times more (at some point I'll get KOTOR2), and I never get tired of that story and playstile. Here's it's open ended. It's Roleplaying. The game mechanics kinda blows down quickly and it not something to praise (you can even pay to unlock GUI features like multiple taskbars).

This is my temptation, and I won't resist. Stay tuned for more, and I migth be getting this to youtube, if bandicam approves.