Tag Archives: Gaming

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds: Red zones are shit. This is how I would change the red zones.

The red zones are clearly flawed in this game. They need to change. On one hand I completely agree the red zones should just be removed. It just seems bad. On the other hand, if it’s there to add a bit of a twist (for example playing the game for the first time and suddenly experiencing a bombardment, or being caught out to it) then it needs fixing.

The first thing for me is in terms of the world we are in, who is doing the bombing and why? We don’t seem to know and so it just breaks down the suspension of disbelief that there’s a round circle on the map, it’s red and in that zone, you get bombed randomly. Give it a story for one.

Games are all about storytelling and you (as in the developer of the game) never bothered to tell the viewer (the gamers/players) the story behind it. I can’t even be bothered to go dig a quote where someone from Bluehole tries to explain why it needs to stay. What I heard just did not sound right. Oh and calling players bad for dying to it is just plain stupid.

How would I change it while accepting to keep it in-game? Well, instead of a circle, change it to more like a line and have the bombs explode in a certain direction. Soon the mini-map, the red zone would look more like a thick line across the map in random directions. Ensure that it never spawns in the same exact area twice in a row.

Alternatively, if it’s going to be more like mortar fire, have the minimap reflect that and be a bit more random shaped. Have the bombardment come at an angle also. Again it all depends on the story behind this and how to then design it.

Opinion Piece – Out right hypocrisy – Why is it acceptable to say the N words in music videos, but be offended other times?

So last month a Twitch streamer made a public apology after supposedly accidentally saying the N-word. Here’s the tweet to that. I would provide you a link to the video in which he lets loose the word nigger or nigga (not sure), but to be fair I personally and honestly can’t hear it properly and so I’m not sure if I even managed to find the video! But that’s beside my point here.

What gained my attention was the hypocrisy of society to go into this guy is what I find very much hypocritical. Why is it that we are so shocked for people to use the nigger or nigga like this when we have mainstream music literally repeating the word over and over again… Is nobody else questioning the hypocrisy literally being played out here? Here’s an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQNOy5UOOd8

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here championing that we should all be free to use such words, but I think we need to not find it acceptable to use it in the examples in the video. What I am trying to say here is, we need to be equally angry at the use by the music artists like the above, why are we being selective? I understand the offence, so I want to know what gives Kanya West that free pass? What’s the difference?

I don’t mind outright banning the word, the offence caused in the past would be fitting to actually remove a word from our vocabulary to signify the regret that is felt. Or society can take the opposite and release this word and remove that meaning, to move on from such effects it had. Just not both.

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds: Why I think the Miramar map is viewed as bad and what I think is needed to fix it.

It’s widely known that a lot of players dislike the Miramar, desert map on the Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds game. I wasn’t going to write this post on stating an obvious fact and leaving it at that or I would have posted something a lot sooner so my objective in this is to actually provide some meaty suggestions to fix the map, but before I do, I think maybe it’s worth mentioning when I say “fix”, it might not actually be broken in the eyes of the developers in which case maybe you consider that a bigger problem to contend with.

I read an article written (I’ll link down below if I manage to find it again) which went into what the game developers want from this map or even from this game and how they designed the map based on their vision of how they want their game to be played. Supposedly it’s all about being sneaky and very cautiously going for the win. A scavanger, almost.

Some people have said streamers made this game and the most viewed streams are those who seem to drop in the most highly populated areas and fight it out with a lot of fast paced play, so with the above direction, it essentially works to remove this. Even if Bluehole Studio’s did not mind pissing over their streamers, my main point would be is the whole reason some of those streamers recieved such high viewers and became more popular was in essence the game’s success as it’s enjoying to watch and play like very kind of play.

Weirdly enough you’d think they would see the success of the first map and change their plans a little if that was their game plan to begin with, however judging from their previous statements and ignoring the community here and there, it seems like they ignored that and drove right through that settlement.

Anyway, putting all of that to the side. I think a lot of people don’t get down to the gritty details of how to “fix” it when actually discussing the solutions, making vague statements like “it’s not a good map”, “I don’t like it” and the “It’s not a competitive map” views which would have a slightly different perspective to keep to. As if making a simple opinion was enough.

This map is larger than the old map and there was supposedly a slight reduction in parachuting distance. This results in having a flight path that sometimes leaves very few options and you’re left with either dropping and scavanging for miles or dropping in high populated areas and scrambling for weapons, fighting in urban combat which ironically contradicts the statements made about wanting players to be stealthy and play conservative.

One of the main issues with the map is the lack of vehicles. If more vehicles were added, players would pick a place across the map, land as close as possible, pick up a vehicle and reach their destinations, resulting in spreading people about a lot more.

It seems like the very opposite is occurring on this map. They even have a lot of burnt out vehicles on the sides of the roads, piles of rubbish to fool you into dropping in the middle of long stretches of roads with no vehicles. Either you have to have eagle eye vision or you reduce your risk and pick up vehicles only in towns, which again is not an easy task. To top it off, the vehicles are very slow.

Add more vehicles, speed up some of them by a few kmph. This would begin to solve the lack of weapons people complain about, while you take your usual years to fix issues in the game.

One of the complaints in this game is the lack of cover in some final circles. I know they have looked and added more buildings, rocks and cover, but there’s more to be done. If you need help, ask your community it’s not hard. Ask for screenshots or game logs and go look at it. I’ve played a circle in which there is nothing but a field, very rarely is this the situation in the first map.

To solve this, add some cactus trees and cactus bushes that’s more like foliage that can be driven over. NOT more hills to make driving across the map impossible. It’s critical that paths for vehicles for fast rotations is viable and possible.

Reverse the amount those unnecessary ridges that was decided to be added or at least take them off dirt roads. It does not help, it actually seems to block the way to solving the issues on the map. Honestly felt like it was a trap or even worse, someone who doesn’t even play the game in charge of fixing a problem they have no ability to even comprehend. Probably the latter to brutally honest.

Before I end there, I felt that I would mention a final potential change along with the above that I think would fix the map. Adding more players and increasing the loot by around 25% more. Along with these changes I would implement game modes with only random portions of the map and the standard 100 players. But these ideas for another time.

How to fast switch between resolutions using a batch file.

Here’s a quick way to switch between Windows desktop resolutions using a batch file and an executable file. I needed to do this in order to have a better overview in the game Age of Empires HD (on Steam). Let me visually show you what I mean. Have a look at the screenshots below, you can clearly see a more broader view as you up the resolution.

For some reason the viewing distance is different to the one in the original game.. A few years ago I tested to see if there is a difference in resolution compared to the old Age of Empires and there is so they have in fact made your viewing distance closer. As someone who’s played Age of Empires for a long time this was a problem for me. Now in the original you could change your resolution so simply enabling DSR Factor via your graphics control panel and changing the resolution in-game could resolve this issue for me, in this version the ability is not there (I assume poor development). Anyway, you will first need to enable DSR Factor, I currently prefer x1.75 as shown below.

Then you’ll need to download the file below. Tweak the resolution settings for what you prefer and run the game. If you have the option you can play around with the smoothing, essentially it’s anti-aliasing between the pixels so it doesn’t look pixelated due to the difference of your monitors resolution capability and what’s being scaled.

Now I was under the impression that a batch file can’t actually do this (on its own), I still think this is the case, but with simple help from a file you can still achieve it. The benefits of this way is you can change your preferred resolutions and simply run the batch file with as less clicking as possible, while an executable would require a bit of extra clicks.

At the time I could not find the source code for QRes (and I downloaded it from a separate site) so I did a virus scan on it – here’s the result. Secondly I used Sandboxie and launched the file in a sandboxed environment and looked at what – if any – files were executed along with it.. It left zero trace and the file size also indicates to me it’s pretty simple.

Now here comes the actual batch file.

QRes.exe /X 1920 /Y 1080

Yup, that’s it. So in the folder there is the ‘QRes.exe’ file, then there’s ‘RC 1920×1080.bat’ and ‘RC 2560×1440.bat’ files which I run to switch between the resolutions. All these files must be in the same folder for it to work and by the size of the QRes.exe file it looks to just simply run based on the resolution that’s provided in the batch.

Download Resolution Changer version 1.0 here.

 

My PC System Specifications for 2017

As of writing, this is my current PC system specs:

Type Item Price (Purchased)
CPU Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor £196.49 @ Scan.co.uk
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-H170N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard £109.99 @ Amazon UK
Memory Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory £89.99 @ Scan.co.uk
Storage Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive £39.99 @ Amazon UK
Storage Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive £62.99 @ Scan.co.uk (Today Deal Only)
Video Card EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card £167.95 @ Scan.co.uk
PSU
Case Fractal Design Core 500 Mini ITX Desktop Case £43.99 @ Scan.co.uk(Today Deal Only)
Operating System Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Mouse SteelSeries Rival 100 Wired Optical Mouse £29.99 @ Amazon UK
Headphones Kingston HyperX Cloud II 7.1 Channel Headset £68.05 @ Scan.co.uk
Monitor LG 32LF580V http://www.lg.com/uk/tvs/lg-32LF580V
Total £809.43

You can check out my full list at PCPartPicker – https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Vk9h2R

My PC System Specifications 2016

As of writing, this is my current PC system specifications:

CPU: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz
Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E
Memory: 6GB Corsair
Storage: SanDisk SSD PLUS 240 GB Sata III 2.5 inch Internal SSD (£39.99 – Amazon.co.uk)
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460
PSU: Corsair HX850W
Case: LIANLI PC-8FI
Operating System: Windows 10
Monitor: LG 32LF580V
Internet: 80Mbits (Plusnet)

OLD (2015)

CPU: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz
Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E
Memory: 6GB Corsair
Storage: OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 2.5 SSD (£169.34 – Scan.co.uk)
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460
PSU: Corsair HX850W
Case: LIANLI PC-8FI
Operating System: Windows 10
Monitor(s): 24″ Samsung SyncMaster 2493HM
Internet: 17Mbits (Plusnet)

World of Warcraft Useful Macros (6.2.x.x)

Priests

Fast Fade (stop casting anything and cast Fade):

This is pretty simple; it will stop whatever you’re casting and cast Fade.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Fade

Fast Silence:

Same as above, but you will stop whatever you’re currently casting and cast silence on your target.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Silence

Holy Fire & Shadow Word: Pain combined to save space:

Using the same button, spam this should cast Holy Fire and finish at Shadow Word Pain and reset to Holy Fire, saving button space.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=20 Holy Fire, Shadow Word: Pain

Holy Word: Serenity & Circle of Healing combined to save space:

Mostly due to preference, this is same as above, but for Holy Word: Serenity & Circle of Healing

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=20 Holy Word: Serenity,Circle of Healing

Purify if friendly target or yourself if nothing selected, if unfriendly target Dispel Magic, if shift, alt or ctrl held down Mass Dispel selected:

Title is self-explanatory, puts 3 spells in one button.

#showtooltip
/cast [nomod,help,exists] Purify; [harm,exists] Dispel Magic
/cast [nomod,@player] Purify
/cast [mod:shift] Mass Dispel
/cast [mod:alt] Mass Dispel
/cast [mod:ctrl] Mass Dispel

Flash Heal modifier, if Alt, Shift or Ctrl held down ‘Heal’ is selected:

This is a simple modifier, if you hold shift, alt or ctrl you can cast ‘Heal’, if nothing is held you can cast ‘Flash Heal’.

#showtooltip
/cast [nomodifier] Flash Heal
/cast [modifier:shift] Heal
/cast [modifier:alt] Heal
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Heal

Cast sequence for trinket (Judgment of the Naaru) & Shadowfiend combined to save space:

This basically targets your target and casts your offensive spells and goes back to your previous target, making it easier to continue to heal without having to any specific manual targeting.

 
 #showtooltip
 /assist
 /castsequence reset=60 Judgment of the Naaru, Shadowfiend
 /targetlasttarget

General Macros

Change specs:

This should just switch from your Primary to your Secondary Specialisation and vice versa.

/usetalents [spec:1] 2; [spec:2] 1

RMS syntax support for Notepad++ (UDL)

So I wrote a guide on Steam on syntax colouring for Random Map Scripting for Notepad++, the scripting language to write random maps on Age of Empires. Essentially Notepad++ supports language syntax support, allowing you to make syntax easier on the eye.

So you’re writing a random map script, using standard default Notepad (that comes with Windows), it would look like this:
notepad

With Notepad++ and syntax colouring (User Defined Language Files) enabled, it will look like this:
notepad++

So you get the drift, basically giving you a clearer visual on your code and possibly preventing errors in them as well.

You can see the guide here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=439948511

The Phoenix Legion

So this project started around Jan 24, 2013. A community based gaming website, mostly focused on the Steam game Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and the likes.The_Phoenix_Legion_-_News_-_2015-11-25_11.20.41 It may look like a full CMS (Content Management System), but it’s not – it is pretty much custom and in a sense integrated into the phpBB3 message board for obvious necessity reasons. The news feed, the roster page and some of its other pages are connected to allow its users to gain access on the content available and also moderate it based on the changing statuses, so basically a dynamic roster page, a news feed connected to the message board. So no need a web-master or administrator to make those changes needed.

You can check the website out here – http://tplclan.eu/

 

 

Speeders

Have to say this holds a certain place in my heart, this project was started as far back as 8th Aug, 2010, but goes even further back in terms of when the community began. It started off due to certain requisites of its community and moulded from there. Over the years, a few different designs. The game seems to be dead and the community has dried out. The news feed dynamically retrieves content from the message board integrated into the web design as a whole. The roster page is custom built with it pulling the users based on the phpBB3 forums group management system. All allowing complete access without the need for a web-master or administrator.

Speeders_-_News_&_Announcements_-_2015-11-25_11.29.41

You can check out the Speeders gaming community over at – http://speedersclan.org/

A snapshot of the achieved page, dating back to 5th Sep, 2011:

Speeders_-_News_&_Announcements_-_2015-11-25_11.37.40

https://web.archive.org/web/20110905043657/http://speedersclan.org/