Oct 18 2013 No Comment by Darin

Kingdom Hearts HD Final Update

Posted in Kingdom Hearts

So, I was anticipating having more of these updates as I went, but random things kept getting in the way, so I actually ended up finishing the game before I had a chance to write another post.  But, I’ll wrap up my thoughts here.

I left off last time about to start Hollow Bastion.  As expected, having Beast in my party was a lot of fun.  What was not so fun was a lot of the platforming bits, and areas with no ledges.  Locking onto an enemy to start a combo just to have the game drag you off the edge halfway through was not exactly my idea of gripping gameplay.  And the slow cutscenes that you have to sit through as you make your way up the lifts just adds to the pain.  But, I made it all the way up and handled Maleficent and Riku without much trouble.  After I was done there, I went right ahead and blasted through all of The End of the World level, and got up to the last save spot before the final boss.  As with a lot of RPG’s I’m a little OCD, so I decided I was gonna finish up all the side stuff.  Game time roughly when I made this decision?  Probably around 35 hours give or take.

So, the trek back through the rest of the game now begins.  I went back to get all the Trinity marks (thank god they moved the one that was missable in Halloween Town).  I then was going to push for all the synthesis items, then realized it was gonna take me hours…then tried to do some of the side bosses, but again realized it was gonna take me hours to grind up to a high enough level.  Ditto goes for the Coliseum cups.  I honestly almost gave up at this point, but I just buckled down and took it step-by-step.

I started by getting as far as I could in the Hades cup.  I managed to get through it the first time, and then again with just Sora.  No way I was able to do the time trial though (hell, I couldn’t yet do the previous cups’ time trials).  I then started going through the worlds, getting as much of the synthesis materials I could.  The guide I was using was mostly for the original KH, not the Final Mix version, so some of my earlier attempts at trying to get materials before I needed them didn’t really pan out.  After getting enough items to open up the 4th list of items, I went back to beating 2 of the side bosses I had left (the one in Agrabah and the stupid Phantom in Neverland…what a bastard).  By this point, I made it up to around level 75.  I figured I’d give Sephiroth a try…yeah, no.  That didn’t work.  I realized I honestly just needed to grind more, and get enough synthesis materials to get the Ultima Weapon.

So, out into the world I go.  After chopping down what felt like millions of heartless, I got all the materials I needed.  Side effect of all this searching?  I’m not level 92.  Yeah.  Lets just say Sephiroth wasn’t much of a challenge anymore.  I figured I’d also give the last secret boss a shot (The Unknown).  This was late at night, and figured I’d lose, but may as well give it a go.  Well, turned out he was much easier than even Sephiroth.  So much for hardest boss in the game.

I’m now level 99, and the game clock now reads just shy of 50 hours.  I honestly can’t believe I grinded for 15 hours.  It really didn’t feel like it (which is probably a good thing).  Obviously by this point, the final boss was just a walk in the park.  Fly up to him, bash on the A button, and win.  Game, set and match.  And spoiler alert, but how awesome was it seeing King Mickey there at the end?

It was sorta sad to be done with it already, but am now excited to get going on Chain of Memories.  I had played the Gameboy Advance version way back when it came out, but never played the 3D remake they did for the PS2, so I’m looking forward to seeing how its changed.  It’s also pretty heavy on story if I recall, so we now get into the meat and potatoes of Kingdom Hearts.

Until next time…


Sep 18 2013 No Comment by Darin

KH HD First Impressions – Small update

Posted in Gaming, Kingdom Hearts

Just wanted to add a couple extra things to my last post about how I’m going through this game…

I chose to take the staff route at the beginning.  I’m usually a magic user in most RPG’s, so I stuck with it this time too.  I believe I played it this way my last time through too.

I’m probably not going to do a full 100% completionist playthrough this time for a few reasons.  First of all, if I’m going to be going through all these games, I just don’t have the time to put 100+ hours into each of them, and in all reality, a lot of the mini games in KH HD aren’t very good or fun (the Jungle slide thing comes to mind).  I will be trying to get all the Trinity marks as well as all the Dalmatians, since you tend to find most of these things just playing through the game normally anyways.  I’ll also try to do all the side bosses (including the new one I hear was added to the Final Mix version).  We’ll see if I can actually do it without spending too much time.  Oh, and I’m basically saying fuck the Gummi ship stuff….I don’t think I know a single person who ever liked those things, and like hell if I’ll be putting in any time into that stupid mini game thing besides using it to get to new worlds.  Whatever possessed the developers to put this stupid thing in the game in the first place?  At least in this version is “seems” easier…either that, or I’ve just gotten better at putting up with dumb shit in games…

Oh, I am also using a guide…I know, I know.  Some people don’t like guides, but they help me blast through the game much quicker.  I’m not using them to spoil any of the story (even though I’ve played this game before)…it’s just there to help speed things up, that’s all.  Once I get to the games I haven’t played yet (like the DS and PSP games), I may change my mind at that point.  We’ll see.

I am currently about 20 hours in.  Just finished up Neverland last night, and am currently wrapping up some side stuff before I head to Hollow Bastion.  Looking super forward to this…I remember loving having the Beast in my party :)

Until next time…


Sep 18 2013 No Comment by Darin

Kingdom Hearts HD First Impressions

Posted in Gaming, Kingdom Hearts

KHHDI realize I’m probably a bit late for this to be only first impressions, but here’s my first update in my (hopefully) long-running Kingdom Hearts marathon.

To start, I’m playing the HD remix version of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix that is part of the new Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix release. The HD-ification Square Enix did looks incredible…like really, really incredible. Last time I played the first KH game was probably 8 years ago on an old 28 inch CRT. Does it ever look so much better now. You’ll notice it almost immediately when you start a new game during the tutorial. The large stained-glass platforms of the various Disney princesses you’re standing on look like something out of the movies…so crisp and clean. Framerate also seems much better. I don’t recall the PS2 version running this smooth. The audio mix is also damn good…full 5.1 sound, and when you mix it with some classic Disney themes, I almost fell over…

There are some downsides though, first and foremost being the camera. If I recall from the original, it was awful. And that stands true here. It feels like a game of its time…hell, even earlier. Mario 64 had better camera controls. It just doesn’t move smoothly when you move the right stick, and isn’t very smart about following you. All of this wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that there’s so many platforming elements that require very precise control. Oh well….I’m putting up with it over 20 hours in at this point, so I won’t stop now.

What really does it for me is the awesome mix of action RPG gameplay with a story just as absurd as any Final Fantasy game, all set in the various worlds of Disney. As of right now, I’ve been to Wonderland, The Colosseum, Agrabah, Atlantis, Neverland, 100 Acre Wood, and a few more, including some non-Disney places like Halloween Town from A Nightmare Before Christmas. The nostalgia just keeps running back every time I step into one of these worlds, especially 100 Acre Wood. The music, voice acting, art style….they nailed Winnie the Pooh to a T. I don’t want to continue gushing here…simply put, if you love Final Fantasy and Disney, you need to play this game.

Thats’s probably all I want to touch on today….yes, this game is still Kingdom Hearts, and I realized I still love it after all these years.

Until next time…


Sep 11 2013 No Comment by Darin

So yeah…I guess I’m back…

Posted in Gaming, Random

Heh, so I suppose it’s been a while, eh?  I’m still around, of course (as you can tell by the twitter feed there on the side of the page)…unfortunately, life totally got in the way these past couple years.  Where to begin…

Well, first of all, Mass Effect 3 finally shipped!!  It was a long haul there near the end, but so worth it.  I know most everyone on the team was so proud of the game we made.  For myself personally, I worked a ton on the multiplayer lobby flow, including the store and card reveal UI’s.  I also had my hand in some of the single player screens, including the 2 Galaxy at War screens, plus Character Creation, Squad Selection, and a few others.  We supported the game as well over the course of last year, and while I was off on another project (more on that below),  I came back for a couple months to give a hand with the last single player DLC, Citadel.

After ME3 shipped, I moved over to help out the Dragon Age team with their new project, Dragon Age: Inquisition.  I spent most of 2012 (minus a couple months in November helping out with Citadel) working on various features.  I’ve since moved on, but DA:I had a HUGE presentation at PAX Prime this year…here’s a link to some of the demo that was shown.  The DA team really outdone themselves with that demo…I’m so proud of them!!

As of now, I’m back on the Mass Effect team working on the next game.  I’m mostly working on UI’s, but that’s probably all I can say (oh, besides the fact that I’m SUPER EXCITED to still be working on the best franchise ever!!).  It’ll be a while before I can really say more, so I guess stay tuned…

Been keeping up on a few games in my downtime.  Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown are some of them, and just tonight I wrapped up Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch on the PS3.  Talk about an incredible JRPG.  Great art, great story, awesome battle system….all around great game.  I won’t go into too many details (as this post is already getting a bit long), but here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry.  If you are a fan of JRPG’s, this is a must.

And, to wrap up, just this week Square Enix released an updated version of the first Kingdom Hearts game called Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix.  It’s not only an HD remake of the KH1, but also the Game Boy Advance/PS2 game Chain of Memories, plus all the cutscenes from the DS game 358/2 Days.  I played KH1, 2 and CoM back in the day, but never made it around to the newer ones (the DS, PSP and 3DS games), so I’ve decided I’m going to start playing all of them.  I’ll be a long haul, but I think it’ll be fun (not to mention I’m very nostalgic for all things Disney…)  My hope is I’ll keep posting as I make my way through them.  Hopefully I’ll be done before they finish Kingdom Hearts 3…but, you know me.

That’s probably all for now.  

Until next time…


Apr 16 2011 15 Comments by Darin

The Great Hackintosh Experiement

Posted in Code, Tech

 

A few weeks ago I decided to embark on a great experiment….to see if I could successfully install Max OSX 10.6 on my PC hardware.  This is not a task for the light-hearted.  Apple likes to keep their OS running on their own hardware, which is prohibitively expensive (compared to PC hardware).  I wanted to experience OSX for myself,  but I wasn’t going to fork over $1500 for new hardware when I have a perfectly capable machine here.  So I decided what the hell…why not try, right?  I’m going to detail every step I took to get this beast up and running.

To start, if you’re even considering any of this, you need to make sure you have compatible hardware.  To make life really easy, stick with Intel processors if you can.  Apple uses Intel in all of their systems (as of this posting..who knows if that’ll change in the future), so if you want the most pain-free experience, start with that.  Motherboard support seems pretty good across the board, as long as you’re sticking with simillar hardware to what’s in the Mac.  Here’s a list of all the hardware I have in my system:

Processor:  Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Motherboard: Asus P5K-E Wifi/AP (using the P35 chipset)
RAM: 8GB DDR2 1066 (4 X 2GB sticks)
Video Card: XFX ATI Radeon 5870
Monitors: 3, one hooked up to DisplayPort, the other 2 to DVI
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live 5.1 USB
Hard Drive: 250GB SATA

Now these were all the important pieces.  I do have an Asus Xonar DS as my main sound card in Windows, but there aren’t any Mac-compatible drivers.  I just dug up my old Sound Blaster USB one to use instead.  I also have my old Geforce 8800GT video card sitting in the extra PCI-Express slot, which I use in Windows as my PhysX card.  I wasn’t intending on using this at all, but I wanted to leave it in the system if I could.  It seemed like all of this hardware would work so the next step, OS installation.

For this you’ll need a few things things.  First, get a retail copy of OSX Snow Leopard from Apple.  It’s only $30, so it’s worth going legit (or as legit as you can…).  Plus it’s much less of a headache that way.  Some of the pre-built OSX images out there (like iAtkos and whatnot) have extra drivers and stuff in them, and can cause problems when you update(as I discovered…my first experiment didn’t turn out well using that method).  Second, you’re going to need a a couple pieces of software called iBoot and Multibeast.  You can get both here.  iBoot is going to allow you to boot into OSX since regular PC hardware won’t work by itself.  Multibeast will allow you to make small tweaks and install extra drivers that will make your life much easier.  So I downloaded both of those, burned iBoot to a DVD, and just threw Multibeast onto a USB stick.  Also while you’re at it, grab the OSX 10.6.7 Combo update from here and throw it onto a USB stick too.  Makes life easier later.

I’m only sticking with 1 hard drive here too…again, to make my life easier.  Make sure it’s empty (or at the very least don’t mind formatting it).  You’re also going to need to make sure your BIOS has the SATA system set to ACHI.  If not, iBoot and the install DVD won’t boot.  You’ll be able to find all these settings in your BIOS.

Put in iBoot and restart your computer.  It should boot into a menu where you can choose to iBoot…don’t yet.  For me, I had to do 2 things here…first, unplug the SATA cable from my HDD.  Without this I was constantly getting EBIOS read errors when going into the OSX Installer.  Second, eject iBoot from your DVD drive, insert the Snow Leopard DVD and press F5.  This should refresh the menu and the new option should say Mac OSX Install.  Choose that and you’ll begin the boot process.  Once the Apple logo comes up, you can plug the SATA cable back into the HDD.  When you can take control in the installer, just go through the menus.  Once you hit the point where you can choose where to install the OS, make sure you create 2 partitions.  One for the main partition and one for a backup (trust me…you’ll need this).  Then just install to the first partition and away you go.

Once installation is done and you reboot, you’ll need to make sure you put iBoot back in.  You’re going to need to keep that in the drive every time you boot for the time being (we’ll fix that up later).  When you get to the iBoot menu you’ll be able to choose 2 options: either iBoot or your new OSX partition.  Move over to the OSX option but before you hit enter I had to type “PCIRootUID=1″.  This allowed me to actually boot into the system…without it, it would just lock up.  Press Enter and you should see the intro video…go through the steps, create your user account, blah blah blah.  After this, you should be in!!  Awesome…except for me.  I didn’t have the correct video resolution (let alone proper desktop expansion across 3 monitors), nor did I have network access.  That’s ok…we’ll fix both in short order.  First thing to do is to make a backup…go to Applications->Utilities->Disk Utilities, and do a restore from your main partition to the backup one.  If you run into any problems along the way, you can just use iBoot to boot into that partition and restore back to the main one (which I had to do on multiple occasions).

Now back to the system.  I fixed my network problem first because I didn’t have the 10.6.7 on a USB stick.  But if you do, we’ll install that first.  If not, look below for the network fix but be prepared to reapply that after the OSX update (it updates the network drivers, forcing you to do the entire process again).   Install the OSX update off of your stick (or from a networked drive in my case) but DON’T RESET after you do…just leave the installer up.  If you do at this point, you’ll have a busted OS and need to restore.  At this point, fire up Multibeast.  It may crash (and bring down the Update installer window too) but don’t worry…just restart Multibeast.  Go through the Multibeast screens and when you get to the point where you can choose different options, you’ll want to install EasyBeast and the PCIRootUID fix.  This should make it so you won’t have to type anything in when you boot.  Restart.

At this point, I had proper video resolution.  I made some adjustments in the Display settings but that was it.  Great.  Now to get connected to the Interwebz.   This part was tricky.  There didn’t seem to be any kexts out there for my specific network chipset but I luckily found this great walkthrough.  The trick here though is my network didn’t come back right away.  It took a couple resets…but that’s ok.  Also since my motherboard had wifi, I wanted that to work too if I could.  Lucky for me Realtek (the wifi chipset manufacturer on my board) provided drivers.  I found them here.  Ran that installer, restarted and backed everything up.

Once network access was up and running, I was almost done.  There was just a few small things I still wanted to get fixed.  First, the OS only detected 4 of 8 GB of RAM.  Also, I was still at the mercy of iBoot…EasyBeast isn’t enough for my machine, not if i wanted to keep hardware accelerated graphics.  I wanted to be able to boot into my system without the need of a boot disc if I could.  Lastly, I was still in 32-bit mode.  Ideally I’d like to be running the 64-bit kernel if I could.

Well the first and second problems were easily solved with 1 step.  Using Multibeast, I installed the Chameleon ATI Experimental Bootloader.  Once this was installed and I restarted the system, I was able to boot into OSX without the help of iBoot and the machine detected all 8GB of RAM.  In order to get it to boot into the 64-bit kernel though, I needed to modify the boot.plist file.  Look for a file called com.apple.Boot.plist located in the /Extra folder off the root of the hard drive.  Open this file in TextEdit, and look for an entry for “Kernel Flags”.  You probably see an string entry just below that says “arch=i386″.  Change that to “arch=x86_64″ and reboot once more.  You should now be running the 64-bit kernel. Remember, after this point, do another backup.

I was now at the point where everything essential to my computing experience was good to go.  I had a desktop that spanned 3 monitors, I had sound and network access…I was solid.  I was now able to install all of my other software, run updates through the Apple Software Updater thing…all that good stuff.  As I kept saying above, any time you are going to install a new driver or a system update from Apple, always make a backup of your drive incase something screws up. You can then always just revert back to the last good state (albiet after a somewhat lengthy copy process).  But that’s better than having to reinstall everything again.  There’s still small things: I can’t put my system to sleep (not sure if it’s even possible to fix that) and I still have my main windows drive unplugged while I use OSX, but that’s fine.

I’m now rocking OSX and can happily develop for the iOS platform without having to jump through hoops using a Virtual Machine.  If you have any questions/comments, please post below. I’ll update this article as I go with new discoveries and whatnot.  But for now, I hope this guide helped.

 

Until next time…


Feb 16 2011 1 Comment by Casier98

What a ride!!

Posted in Gaming, Random

Ok, so I know it’s been a while since I last posted here, but I’m still alive…you see the updated Twitter posts, right??

In all seriousness though, I’ve had a good reason to be away for so long. Things have definitely changed over the past few months, and I thought I should share them with everyone.

To start, I’m living in Montreal now. It was somewhat of an unexpected move, to say the least. To put it in the simplest terms, an opportunity presented itself and I took it. I am now working up here for Bioware Montreal, my dream company. For those that know me, they know how much of a Bioware fanboy I am, and to be given the opportunity to be a member of this team and make some really awesome games is truly a dream come true. I can’t say too much about what I’m specifically working on, but I can say that I’m part of the team making Mass Effect 3.

Unfortunately, I did have to leave a great job in Toronto at Tecmo Koei Canada. TKC gave me my start in the industry, and I’ll be forever grateful to them for that. I worked with some truly awesome people over there too, and won’t ever forget them. Regardless of the games we ended up releasing, I think those were some of the best people I have ever worked with. We had something special there. The truly sad part of this whole story is that I just learned that TKC went through a massive round of lay-offs this week. A lot of these friends are now without a job. I know they were all great people, and I know for a fact that every single one of them will land on their feet in short order. I wish them all the best in their future endeavors. To any of them reading this, you WILL find something you want to do…trust me.

The last bit of news is of course my trip to Italy. My girlfriend and I took a trip over there from December 28th through to January 7th. We started in Rome, and from there traveled to Florence, Pisa and Venice. What a time that was. It’s almost a totally different world over there…almost. There is a lot of stuff that’s very familiar, but also so much that’s different. To start, there is a McDonalds over there, but it serves beer :) The architecture is just amazing. Walking around the Coliseum was a sight to behold, and seeing the leaning tower in Pisa was spectacular. We even took a gondola ride around the canals in Venice. Just phenomenal. If you ever have the opportunity to go, take it. The only regret we have it that we didn’t have enough time to explore Florence. Next time, I suppose…

What else…wow…so much that I’ve missed. Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers for winning the Super Bowl. Didn’t really touch on football much this year. That’s probably because my Cowboys self destructed. I still watched, but just never had the urge to comment about it. I’m sure more thoughts will spill out now that I’ve started to settle down here in Montreal.

Until next time…


Oct 17 2010 1 Comment by Darin

The NCC-1701-E

Posted in Models

As a follow-up to Friday’s post, I finished the Enterprise E model.  It turned out really, really well, considering I haven’t done a model in probably 15 years.

The paint job isn’t near as perfect as I was hoping for.   The overall color was darker than I was hoping for, and I couldn’t keep my hands steady enough, so some of the lines are a bit rough. Once I got the decals all placed and the clear coat applied, most of the imperfections went away, and the whole thing turned out pretty good.

Here’s a few pictures of the final model:

Until next time…


Oct 16 2010 No Comment by Darin

Models

Posted in Models

When I was growing up, my parents one year gave me a small plastic model car kit to put together for my birthday. I can’t remember exactly what the car was, but all I remember was that I had a blast with it. Over time, I got more and more models, and eventually half my room was filled with them. They were mostly muscle cars, but I do remember putting together one of these model engines. I had so much fun, and the thing actually had a crank on it that you could turn and have all the parts move.

Now, for those that know me, I’m also a HUGE Star Trek fan. Obviously these 2 things came together, and I did have a couple Star Trek models. One being the Enterprise with lights and sounds from the original 6 movies, and the second being the iconic Enterprise D. I don’t know whatever happened to these, but needless to say, I don’t have them anymore.

About 3 or 4 years ago, I got the itch to try this out again. I wanted to stick more to the Star Trek models, specifically the Enterprise E. Well, at the time, these models were well out of print, and best I could do was to hit up Ebay and hope for the best. Unfortunatly, all these models were running in and upwards of $100 at the time (eg this). Well, on a university budget, I said no.

Just over a year ago though, a company by the name of Round 2 decided to bring back a lot of the old AMT Star Trek models, and one of their first was the Enterprise E. The thing was that these models were all going to be reasonably priced as well. So, I hit up Ebay, and for a cool $30, I had myself a brand spanking new model.

I then thought why not go full out and get the entire line. I did a bit more research, and it turns out that most of the Enterprise models were either already re-issued, or where in the process of being so. So, I picked up the original Enterprise, the Refit from the movies, and the NX-01 from the show “Enterprise”. Coming in short order is the Enterprise D (from the show) and the Enterprise B (from the movie Star Trek Generations). I’m so pumped. The only thing missing now is the Enterprise C. But I’m sure this will come in time.

And this weekend, I figured I’d make my start on the E. Here’s a few pictures of my work in progress:

I’m hoping to get most of it done this weekend, but what I don’t, I’ll finish up this next week.  I’ll post a few more pictures once the E is done.

Until next time…


Jul 10 2010 5 Comments by Darin

VisualSVN and Trac on Windows Home Server

Posted in Code

At home here, I’ve set up a simple little home server for all my media storage.  I run Windows Home Server on it (for those that don’t know what it is, check here).  Suffice it to say, it’s a nifty little server OS that shares easily with my XBox 360 over the network, and it’s very extensible.

Anyways, the point of today’s post isn’t to talk about Windows Home Server (although I can make a seperate post on it later discussing it further…).  Today, I’m gonna talk about setting up some extra services on it so it’s not just used as a media storage server.  I needed to set up an SVN repository on it, along with Trac to handle some of my personal projects.  SVN is a version control system mainly used for code, and Trac is a Wiki and bug tracking software used to keep track of all kinds of things for any sort of project.  I use both of these at work, and am very familliar with them, so I decided for my personal stuff, I would stick with what I know.

Now, installing anything that’s not specifically meant to run on a Windows server can be a little tricky, but fortunately I discovered for this little experiment, it wasn’t too bad at all.  To start, I needed a version of SVN that would run on Windows.  Conviniently, I found something called VisualSVN Server.  It’s a fully functional SVN server, but has a nice GUI interface for managing it in Windows.  You can create your repositories here (and easily set them up with the base trunk, tags and branches directories that all SVN repositories should have), and also create users and groups.  Perfect.  Much easier than mucking with ini configuration files.

The second part to this puzzle though is Trac.  Now, for both SVN and Trac, you need a web server.  Windows Home Server convinently comes with IIS for it’s own web serving capabilities, but trying to get SVN working with IIS is a nightmare in of itself, let alone Trac too.  VisualSVN Server includes a version of Apache, so I figured Trac could hook right into that.  Well, as luck would have it, the guys over there running VisualSVN has detailed some nice instructions here, along with a package you can download to get yourself up and running.  Now, I basically followed everything on that page there to the letter, except 1 small thing.  I couldn’t get the SVN server to start after I installed Trac.  I had to grant access to the folder the Trac libraries were installed too (‘Program Files\VisualSVN Server\trac’ in my case) to the Network Service user.  After that, everything started up correctly.

Now, the package that I downloaded to install Trac didn’t include the latest version (they’re up to 0.12 now….VisualSVN provied 0.11.6).  I really wanted 0.12 as that’s what I’m used to at work now, so I thought I’d take a shot at trying to upgrade it.  This turned out to be much easier than expected.  I went to Trac’s download page and grabbed the Windows zip package.  I unzipped it to some temporary folder, opened a command prompt, and typed the following:

python D:\Temp\Trac 0.12\setup.py install

*where D:\Temp\Trac 0.12\ is where you unzipped the package too

After things were installed, I started the SVN server back up, and bang…I was in business.

Anyways, I thought I’d share this little adventure to anyone who might find this useful.

Until next time…


Jun 21 2010 No Comment by Darin

Infinite Space thoughts

Posted in Gaming

A couple weeks back, I finished playing a DS game called Infinite Space.  It came out a while ago, and I just managed to get around to starting it back around the first of May.  All in all, I was very impressed with the game.

Infinite Space can be best described as a Japanese RPG, but instead of fighting orcs, elves and giant eyeballs, you’re in a space ship fighting other space ships.  Seems pretty cool, eh?  To RPG it out even more, you not only get 1 ship, but a whole fleet of them.  AND, you can customize your ships too, from what kinds of weapons each ship has, to what modules are in the ship, like Crew Cabins, cargo hold, Sick Bays, engines, bridges, and many, many more.  Oh, and to top it all off, you also assign crew members to different posts in your fleet, like First Officer, Chief Engineer, and even Head Chef.  Yeah, this game is an RPG in the true sense of the genre.

The game starts out as the main character, Yuri, discovers a crashed ship on his home planet.  He helps the pilot get the ship ready, and she (Nia) takes Yuri along for the ride.  You pick up new crew members and other characters along the way, do quests for various people, and discover this incredible force that enters your galaxy and wants to take it over.  It’s kinda your standard plot, but I’ll tell you, the storytelling is really good.  I couldn’t put the game down.  I just wanted to see what would happen next.  It’s got some of the Japanese RPG-type characters and such (like the quiet, but concerned hero, beautiful side-kick with very revealing clothing, and other stereotypes), but hey, this was created in Japan, right?  It’s part of the charm.

As for the gameplay itself, as I said above, you have a fleet of ships.  You’ll fly around from planet to planet, sector to sector doing the story missions and side quests, and you’ll get into random space battles along the way.  When a battle starts, you’ll have a meter that fills up (think the ATB meter from any of the SNES-era Final Fantasy’s).  When your turn comes up, you’ll use a portion of this meter to either Dodge, Attack, or Barrage (super attack).  Regular attacks take up 1/3 of this action bar, and they are just that…regular attacks.  A barrage though uses up 2/3′s of the bar and hits the enemies with a much stronger attack, except that it can be dodged.  Hence this is where dodge comes into play (which itself takes up 1/3).  Once you get into the battle system though, it’s pretty simple to understand.  Later in the game, you’ll gain access to special First Officer powers (depending on what crew member you put in your first officer slot), fighters, and Anti-air guns to combat fighters.  All these make for some interesting battles.

There’s also melee battles, which if I were to pick a weak part of this game, this would be it.  You have 3 attacks to choose from: Leadership, Slash, and Shoot.  Leadership beats Slash, Slash beats Shoot, and Shoot beats Leadership. Each side has a bar that starts to tick up as soon as you make a selection.  This then gives the other side about 3 seconds to choose an action (and their bar starts to tick) before you actually switch to your action.  The AI tends to be totally random though on it’s choices, so there’s no logic here…just straight up guessing, and hoping you guess right.  There are a few things you can control, like your health and attack strength, but if you never guess right, it won’t matter.  I tended to just load up on health and attack, and hope I got lucky.

The main story takes you across many different systems, and you do meet many different characters along the way.  It took me over 55 hours to beat this game, so it’s not for the light-hearted (mind you, I was farming for some of the best ships and components in the game, so naturally this takes a bit longer).  If you’re able to put up with the length and a bit of the JRPG-stereotype stuff, this is a must-play game, and worth every penny.

Overall, I’d give it a 4/5.

You can find it on Amazon.ca (kinda expensive) or just try searching on Ebay (if you can get lucky and find a copy for around $40).

Until next time…