This week we were tasked with a seemingly impossible assignment.  Even after slaving over the lectures and optional labs to better understand the material, my brain refused to comprehend how to solve the problem presented to us, the students.  Here’s the assignment, in its entirety (meaning we didn’t get any help or assistance beyond the following words):

Your program must do the following:

• Start with a rock, centered in the window, with a random sprite and a random diagonal velocity. The rock should immediately start moving
• Every second, if there are fewer than 3 rocks in the window, spawn a new rock, centered in the window, with a random sprite and a random diagonal velocity. The rock should immediately start moving
• Every update, for each rock that’s outside the window, spawn a new rock, centered in the window, with a random sprite and a random diagonal velocity. The rock should immediately start moving

We were provided .png sprite files to use, and a “Rock” class that the professor wrote and included, which did provide some necessary methods.  He even includes documentation for us to practice reading and interpreting the kind of documentation that’s found out in the real world.  I perused through the class forums, and due to the large volume of students enrolled (over 40,000), there were lots of complaints, problems, and questions available for me to browse through.  

After giving up and putting this aside for a day, I came back to it with a plan:  read through the forums and take whatever complete and correct fragments of code I can find there until my program runs.  Well I lucked out within ten minutes; someone had posted their entire program and a corresponding video to demonstrate the correct behavior.  So I, of course, took this code and put into my IDE.  After double checking that it worked, I began going through it to understand what was happening under the hood.  After an evening of this, I began writing my own code to solve the problem with my new knowledge in hand.

This video is my first attempt at solving the problem:

The first rock spawns and performs great, but the difficulty comes from the second and third rocks. They spawn late, and then don’t immediately move (or move at all).  My solution was to comment out and rewrite every single if statement that I’d wrote, and to start over from scratch.  

Here’s the correct behavior that’s required (hopefully):

This was accomplished by using a mishmash of code that I had previously eliminated, and fusing it with new code that I rewrote.  I’m still not 100% sure which parts went wrong initially, but I think the rocks weren’t updating and drawing properly, or even not accurately deciding if they were within the window, which would then require another update and draw. Moral of the story: don’t delete code, just comment it out in case you need it later.

So that was a crazy experience.  Learning curves, am I right?  The prof claims we’ll be slowing down a bit after this week, and we’ll begin work on our class project, creating our video game!  I guess I can hang around for a little while longer.

Programming in C# is coming along.  We’re in week 3, and this is what I learned to do:  explode 2 colliding teddy bears.  Cool stuff right?

I am often late to the party when it comes to playing video games.  Besides the obvious price cut by the time that I gain interest, it’s nice being able to take your time and set a pace while playing through the game. Once all the hype and coverage dies down and the prices start to drop to the sub-basement over at Valve headquarters, that’s when I make my move.  I found The Banner Saga for sale on GamersGate.com for $10, and $12.50 for the soundtrack.  (Just FYI, here’s one of my pro-tips:  if the game offers a bundled soundtrack, go ahead and get it.  It’s probably fantastic, hence the reason it’s sold together with the game.  Rarely have I been disappointed.)  In this case, I’m almost one year behind The Banner Saga’s initial push, but here’s the thing, nobody was really talking about it last year.  Obviously review sites gave it a number between 1-10, but this game didn’t resonant through the gaming community, at least from what I could tell.  And this is a game that deserves conversation. I’m hoping to spark a discussion in our little corner of the internet, at the very least.

The Banner Saga is gorgeous.  It features beautiful, hand-painted scenes that remind me of cartoons from the 80’s and 90’s (in particular The World of David the Gnome).  Set in the creator’s own version of the harsh Nordic north, the background is an integral part of the game, just as much as the characters we meet living inside.  Spooky undertones highlight the presence of a looming threat, and all this setting is backed up by an epic symphonic soundtrack which is heavy on the horns and percussion.  

Unfortunately, there’s a human in the way of the awesome characters, the varls.

As the game begins, we meet a group of varls, immortal giants (with badass, Loki-like horns protruding from their heads) that live separately from, yet peacefully, with the humans.  Most varls live north in their capital, but there are a few cities where varls and humans interact.  Combat is introduced early in the game, which is good, because it takes lots of practice to get the hang of it.  As the tutorial displayed hints, I found myself taking notes just to keep track of how to play just as much as I was taking notes for this review.  I’m enjoying the combat so far (this is a two hour test, after all), and it’s a fun and interesting mechanic as you use each of the classes available to you.  Each turn, your character gets a movement and an action, such as, move up 3 squares, special attack a dude in the face.  However, unlike most turn-based RPG’s, each character alternates turns instead of each team taking turns.  This is true even if the teams are uneven numbers.  It’s unique and interesting, and really, really enjoyable.

Grid-based combat in a tavern, best game ever!

Story events happens, and I don’t want to spoil anything, and you find yourself in control of the characters as they caravan to their goal destination far across the map.  Everyone is trying to outrun the dreaded enemy, the Dredge.  The Dredge are really interesting, and a great villain for the setting.  They look like a combination between golems and ancient robots, and make a stark contradiction to the natural, beautiful world they’re invading.  They’re also powerful and tricky to defeat in combat.  As your group is evading the Dredge along their journey, the camp mechanic is introduced where you can choose when to camp, how long to rest (to heal injured and improve morale), and upgrade your fighters and items.  There’s a supply resource that must be diligently watched, otherwise characters will begin to starve and fight less effectively, and eventually die due to starvation which decreases morale even further. I feel that in my two hours with the game, I was just introduced to this concept and I haven’t had the time to see the long term effects of my decisions.  TBS also presents itself as a game where the events early on that you control will dictate events as the game progresses forward.  We’ve seen games that are successful with this mechanic (Choice of Robots), and games where the decisions seem trivial and aren’t actually affecting future events (Mass Effect series).  For instance, around the one hour mark a major character died.  I wasn’t sure if it was due to something I had controlled, or if it was a scripted story event.  That’s a really interesting feature, rarely are you unsure of how much input and authority you have over a game.  I’m willing to stick around the find out what the outcomes will be.

The caravan marches onward.

The Banner Saga has introduced itself as an epic and unique story set in a fantastical world.  The characters are strongly written and it’s easy to become invested in their lives.  That might be a good thing, because it turns out that this is only the first episode of a series of games.  I’m not sure how many TBS will be released, but they’ve certainly set themselves up on a strong foundation to work from.  One of my favorite aspects is the world map. It’s very interactive and you can select certain items (and by certain I mean territories, mountain ranges, cities, rivers, forests, and more) and receive history and stories about that particular place.  It really helps to build the game world, and because it’s optional, you’re able to invest as much or as little as you’d like.  I really, truly, highly recommend the game if only because it’s so special and unlike most of the games available.  Thankfully, a year after release it’s easy to wait for the price to be right.  

UPDATE:  As I booted up Steam earlier, it seems that The Banner Saga will be a part of the SteamOS sale.  Add it to your wishlist if you’re interested in checking it out for a reasonable price.

Dreaded Dredge dragging a dead deer.

I’m now in week two of an online course about C#.  The interesting thing about the course isthat it’s geared towards coding for video games.  Once upon a time I was trying to research and explain what exactly is going on under the hood when you boot up a video game.  This lead to one of my favorite posts so far, a look at the specific hardware within every computer.  Unfortunately, Google searches could only get me so far when it comes to looking at the code of a game and explaining how it becomes the images and sounds that you’re able to interact with simply using a controller or mouse and keyboard.  I found this free online class about coding games with C# on the Coursera site, and it’s going pretty well after only two weeks.  I recommend looking through the course offerings and seeing what’s available.  You never know if that skill you’ve been dying to learn is available through an accredited university and online for free.

We started off simply for the C# class, which was geared towards nonprogrammers.  In first lab, we wrote a series of statements to be output to the user.  “My name is, my favorite video games are,” and so on.  This was accomplished using the very versatile and useful Console.WriteLine command.  This was followed by utilized constants and variables and different data types used.  We declared our age as a constant, and then printed that to the user.  We also declared some more constants and variables and began using C# to perform mathematical expressions.  We calculated someone’s average score percent by taking an average, which lead to a discussion about division in programming.  Integer division in C# (and other languages, I’m sure) will provide a whole number, often rounding down to the incorrect answer.  To overcome this, it’s necessary to calculate the remainder that’s left over and print that as well.  Another tactic is to use floating point numbers.  These numbers maintain accuracy up to 7 digits, which allows a better representation of real world numbers while sacrificing the accuracy of dozens of decimal places.

In the comments to the Lab 3 I actually wrote, “now sh*t is getting crazy.”  I think that aptly describes the learning curve of coding.  When I first looked at the assignment that was due for week 1, I became immediately overwhelmed and had no idea how to proceed. The optional labs were a big help, but even they had a lot of difficult ideas and challenges that I needed to understand fully before moving on.  Lab 3 seems extremely simple to me now that I’ve done it, even though I’m only one week more experienced than I was before.  That’s the great thing about learning, isn’t it?  For instance, one of my vertebrate physiology courses from college had us learning how to identify mammals by looking at skull structure. Initially, every rodent looked the same, literally.  There was no telling if you were holding a mouse, or vole, or squirrel for that matter. Over time, the longer you spent staring and comparing, the differences became more pronounced.  After practicing that skill for a few weeks, I was able to easily identify a rabbit versus a squirrel, or even the difference between a muskrat and a porcupine.

An image solely featuring code is better than no image at all. Right?

After spending only half a week learning about and utilizing classes and objects, we’ve moved on to using XNA framework to build games.  Our assignment this week is to define, render, and display moving sprites at different speeds to the user.  Again, this seems daunting to me now, but I know with time and effort I’ll begin to understand how it all fits together.  It makes me excited to think where I’ll be in my understanding in 10 weeks once the course has concluded.  Luckily there’s plenty of extra information available, and with 40,000+ students enrolled worldwide, the forums are a great place to look for help and information.  Hopefully by the end of 10 more weeks I’ll be able to describe exactly what’s happening when you start up your favorite game.  

Okay, fine.  Here’s a muskrat versus a porcupine. Or is it?

BP + AB GO DC I’m in DC yet again, but this time with my friend Butler! We did touristy things, including hugging a great auk at the Smithsonian castle. It was an AUK-ward experience! Then at the Air and Space museum, Butler was overwhelmed by knowledge. Now it’s time for some happy hour beers to ring in the last evening of the trip.

Man, I have been off the grid for while.  It’s been 6 days since my last post, which is far, far too long for me.  I have the usual excuses of being busy and work being hectic, but that doesn’t matter.  I made a commitment to cool gaming and gamers around the world.

Once upon a time, I was researching game programming trying to find out what exactly happens when you boot up a game.  This lead to a description of PC hardware that facilitates and runs the software that spits out a sweet video game.  But some news!  I’m currently enrolled in an online game programming class.  It’s slated to programming novices, which is great because I’m one of those.  We’re using C# and XNA in Visual Studio Express 2010.

My first impressions of coding are, complicated.  As someone who hadn’t programmed anything before, I can tell you that coding is really, really strange.  Of course it’s dependent on the language you’re using and how familiar you are with the process.  Our first assignment is to write a program about cannon ballistics where the user inputs an angle of trajectory and the output is height and distance of the cannonball.  The final project of the whole course is a video game of our own creation.  I’ll keep you posted, but given my new hectic changes we’ll see what happens.

I’ve still been playing games, of course.  Last week I started Sleeping Dogs, which I’m enjoying so far.  The mechanics remind me a lot of Bully: Scholarship Edition, which as you may remember is one of my favorite games.  SD is also different enough from GTA that I don’t have to hate it.  And last night I finished yet another Civ 5 campaign (don’t worry, I won).  I’m house sitting right now, so my gaming has to be done on my 1.4 GHz Core i3 laptop, which is…not setup for gaming at all.  I’ve downloaded a bunch of emulators, including my favorite Game Boy Advance program.  So I’ve been binging on Pokemon (FireRed and Gold) and Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town.

So sorry for the lack of posts, it’s been a strange gaming week.  I’m still going strong Citizens, and will be back to my regular schedule sometime next week.  

For the number of games that I play, I’ve finished shockingly few.  Whether it’s due to getting tired of a genre or a games poor performance, I end up quitting long before the final boss battle.  After losing my patience with a new game, I’ll shut it down and Steam tells me that I’ve played for about two hours.  It happens so often that I’m more shocked if I spend more than two hours with a game before finally putting it down and stepping away.  It’s become my unofficial benchmark to test games with.  If the experience doesn’t inspire me to keep playing after that time period, it’s getting moved to the “Over it” pile.  So after spending about two hours with Thief (2014), I haven’t given up yet.  This doesn’t inherently mean that it’s a quality game, just that I can’t decide how I feel about it.  But I know that it does deserve some recognition because it survived the two-hour test.  

So Thief opens and we’re in a room with a drunk guy on the bed. What the heck is Garrett getting himself into?  After taking everything from the room that isn’t bolted down, I escape through the window. I found the art style interesting, and enjoyed the cityscapes.  It’s hard to make objects in the dark look pretty, or vibrant, but Eidos Montreal did a solid job of designing the setting for the game

I can’t wait to zip-line across that cable.

Then Erin entered the game. For those of you who don’t know, Erin is a quasi-mentee of Garrett’s who needs to be taken down several pegs.  She’s immediately giving him grief for being too slow and wanting to start a competition of who can steal the most stuff.  Erin’s first impression is not great.  Even Garrett agrees as he starts berating her for relying on her “claw”, a pretty sweet climbing device of her own design.  So we’re sneaking and thieving through the tutorial, thankfully not directly with Erin, and we meet up at the location of our job.  This entire time I was reminded of Durzo Blint and The Way of Shadows (if you haven’t heard or read the series, stop now, go get it.)  Durzo Blint is the baddest of badass assassins (technically called wetboys; assassins have targets implying that it’s possible to miss, which a wetboy doesn’t do). Blint decides to apprentice young Azoth who must follow one simple rule:  do what I say or I’ll kill you.  Simple as that, and you know what?  It gets results.  Not to spoil the whole book for you, but Azoth gets good, almost as good as his mentor. I think that Garrett and Erin’s mentor-mentee relationship would have been much improved had he used this rule. Don’t talk back to me, or I’ll kill you. Stop using that damn claw, or I’ll kill you.  Stop sprinting on rooftops making so much f*****g noise, or I’ll kill you!

Garrett missed his chance long ago to get rid of this chick, just saying.

So Erin-the-crappy and Garrett approach their job site.  A cult of old men below are chanting around a magic stone, the same magic stone you’ve been hired to retrieve.  Garrett decides that the job is over, but Erin is insistent.  Obviously, Erin is wrong and bungles the whole thing.  She goes diving over the sky light to retrieve her claw, and shocker, it breaks and she goes plummeting down to the circle of chanting old men.  After the scene fades to black, we awake as Garrett in the back of a cart being carried away with the bodies of the city’s plague victims.  After sneaking around and making your way to your friend Basso’s house, it becomes clear that Garrett has been missing for almost a year, and he has no recollection of the passing of time.  

After two hours, I’m a little further into the plot.  We have a bad guy, the Thief-Taker General, and we have an organized good-guy front lead by Orion.  I’m also enjoying the secondary characters, such as your good ol’ buddy Basso, and the matriarch of the underworld, the Queen of Beggars (does she remind anyone else of a 70 year old Momma K?).  I’ve enjoyed myself up to this point, except for a few combat sections that were avoidable and some bad glitches that crashed the game and forced me to reload a mission.  I enjoy the levels mostly due to the open-world aspect and the art-style of the setting.  With a few exceptions, you can often take your own path to the next objective. Even when it’s more confined, there are at least two options that will highlight your preferred play style.

DON’T piss off the birds.  Trust me.

I’ll admit here that I’ve been playing on easy because I have nothing to prove.  There’s no shame in bumping down the difficulty to complete a game.  Or, you know, starting on easy because you know you’ll have more fun that way.  That being said, the combat is awful and difficult, which is a good thing!  What’s the point in forcing you to sneak if you could just fly in like Errol Flynn and swashbuckle everyone to death?  That’s the problem with the AssCreed series; the combat is too easy and there’s no consequence for being spotted.  In Thief, if I’m spotted by more than two baddies, I end up save-scumming through the level to make sure I’m not spotted again. The impenetrable combat is actually contributing to the gameplay, making sure that you use combat as a truly last resort.  More often than not I end up sprinting away, especially at the end of levels.  At one point there were five guards and their dog in a courtyard, and they had all spotted me.  I immediately turn and ran, and actually ran through the end of the level gate, success!  I felt no remorse for it either.  In Thief you have to do whatever you can to survive.

I do have a few complaints, because of course I do.  Obviously a game called Thief expects you to do a lot of sneaking, especially given the tone of the first games in the series.  It’s also integral to restock your supply of special arrows (fire arrows, poison arrows, water arrows) in order to best complete the next mission.  The game dumps you into the city hub wherever your cut scene just ended.  The store and Momma K, I mean the Queen of Beggars, are also found within this city hub, and visiting both is necessary for restocking equipment and upgrading your abilities.  But all throughout this city are guards that will try to kill you immediately on sight. I have to sneak to the freaking store in order to get ready for the next mission that will inevitably be full of sneaking.  I wish they gave just a little break from the skulking and allowed you to upgrade more easily.  Another complaint is that the setting is shockingly similar to Dishonored.  Corrupt officials, a savior sneak-thief, and a city-wide plague that drives the plot forward.  Honestly, the gameplay and artstyle is better in Dishonored, so why did Thief need to be so similar?  It’s pretty difficult to avoid drawing a comparison between the two games, and I wish that Eidos Montreal had branched out a bit more and avoided stepping on Dishonored’s shoes.  Especially with the popularity and cult-fanboys of the original Thief series, it would have been beneficial for the development team to reboot the canon in a more creative manner.

At least faces look better in this game than Dishonored

After my initial two hours with Thief, I’ve found that it obviously has flaws, but there’s also something appealing here.  I will probably go back and continue playing, which is more than I can say after spending two hours with most games that I start.  I hope the plot cinches up the holes a bit more, and that the characters figure out more to do than just stopping the plague.  I’ll probably be disappointed, but it’s okay because I’ll be playing on easy. There’s nothing worse than experiencing a bad game story after busting your butt to get through hordes of baddies (I’m looking at you, Mass Effect).  

What sort of product can we make using the same parameters as the last build, except for one caveat: we’re using an AMD chipset instead of Intel.  What will we end up with in terms of performance?  How will it compare to the Intel build from a few days ago?  Parts that aren’t chipset specific will stay the same, such as case, RAM sticks, and power supply unit.  

The first step of this process was to find CPU benchmark scores to determine which processor I’m going to choose.  Here’s a spoiler, and I’ll discuss the implications in more depth later, but according to this site, the top 20 computer systems are all Intel processors.  In this long debate between AMD and Intel, keep this piece of information in mind

Here’s an interesting point:  PCpartpicker makes their own PC lists.  This is the $1000 rig they’ve created and titled “Great Gaming build.”  I like this PC, but I like my Intel build from earlier this week, obviously.  In the past few days as I’ve been researching for this article, I decided that if I did buy the Intel build I originally made, I would spend about $200 more or so, and get a better video card.  I created the build with easy upgrading down the road, but what’s the difference between dropping $1000 and $1200 really? If you shop around and wait to buy everything on sale, you can still make this build for under $1000.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the card that I originally picked.  For the price, it does a great job and passes many benchmarks for graphics and processing. I’m just including what I would do if it were really my money.  Here’s the card I would get instead.

Here’s my $1000 AMD build:  

AMD FX 9370 Vishera 8 Core 4.4 Ghz $219.99      

Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R9 280 3GB $199.99

Gigabyte GA 990FXA-UD3 Mobo $129.99

CPU Cooler:  Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo $34.99  The AMD FX 9370 doesn’t come with heatsinks or fans, so I needed to add some additional cooling.  I like this combo, and it’s a fair price.  I’d probably add it to the Intel build.

NZXT Source 210 Elite (Black) $49.99

Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 RPM 64 MB cache $79.99

Samsung SSD 850 Evo series 250 GB $149.99

G. Skill Ares 16 GB DDR3 1866 $129.99

Corsair CSM 750W Gold+ $119.99

Total is $1,114.91. We definitely went over, but I’m not going to go back to change anything over $100.  

I’ve been using this site to rate the PC builds.  It uses consumer reviews based on each component that enter.  They don’t have exactly every one of the parts from my lists, but I’ve tried to find the equivalent.  Obviously this is a subjective test, but I take reviews pretty seriously and they have a big impact in how I decide which parts to include.

Here are the results from the Intel build:

The AMD build:

And here’s the Intel build with the upgraded video card:

So people like their Intel components better than AMD.  The performance seems better in the AMD build, but I know that the Intel works great for gaming and will leave you satisfied for longer.  I’d go straight to the 4GB video card and save yourself spending cash in a year or two.  At the end of the day, it comes down to preference.  Are you building a gaming system and trying to stay under $500?  Do you have some more cash to spend, and want to create the best PC that you can?  Do you want to invest everything into the video card, but have potential bottlenecks in the rest of your system, or spread your cash out evenly and spend less money over time on parts?  This is why building your own PC is the preferred experience.  You make the machine that best suits you.  In four or five years when I’m ready to build a new PC, I probably won’t even look at this list I made.  Everything will be upgraded to new generations and components will be cheaper.  So if you’re going to build a PC, here’s my advice:  do your research, create a goal for your build to accomplish, set a realistic budget and expect to spend time shopping around and finding good deals, and finally, do more research before you commit to anything.

I’m including some of the websites and articles I found that compare and contrast AMD and Intel.  If you can’t decide what’s best for you, I recommend looking through these links.  The last two links are about video cards that compare Nvidia vs. AMD performance, and provide a breakdown of price and video card for each manufacturer. Hopefully you find some needed information, or just find it entertaining to read a little about computer processing history.  

Techradar’s comparison of processors.

PCadvisor goes looks into the history of each company and how they emerged as the leaders of the processing world.

Digital Trends analyzes the two companies based on price point.

Let’s talk about video card comparisons.  Here PC Gamer compares some of the highest performing video cards made by AMD and Nvidia.

And finally, Techspot shows which AMD or Nvidia video card is available for every budget.

A friend of mine told me he’s looking to buy a new computer sometime this year.  We started chatting and came to the ultimate conclusion, he should build his own PC.  I might have said something along the lines, you’d be a complete idiot if you don’t build your own computer, it’s hard to remember these things.  We’ve been friends since high school and have bonded over many a video game.  I’m pretty sure that he’s playing on the same laptop he’s had since college.  Poor guy, am I right?  Once we started talking price, he asked if it would be possible to build a good PC for $1600. I scoffed and replied, “You could do it for $1000, easy!”  

So now I’m hoping to back up my words of excitement during that conversation.  Here’s my dream PC build with the only requirements being it should be a great gaming PC and cost around $1000.  Like most PC builds, I’m going to assume I’ll still have a mouse, keyboard, and other peripherals, so I won’t be including them in the build.  I won’t include the operating system either, to leave it up to buyer personal preference (hint: get Windows 7).  My process here is to find the parts that I want on newegg.com by looking at prices, reviews, specifications, and referencing a few benchmark comparisons.  Then I’ll hop over to PCpartpicker.com to make sure that everything is compatible. I’m also going to be using list prices instead of sales prices.  This way the build will stay consistent, and it’s up to the buyer to shop around for deals. I’ve also heard that waiting to buy your parts one at a time is the cheapest way to build your computer. That’s assuming that you can wait several months to get a new set-up.  I’m including pictures of the pretty parts only, because nobody wants to look at a picture of a processor. 

CPU Intel Core i5-4690K @ 3.50GHz $249.99:  This really is a bang for your buck processor.  After looking at benchmark testing, it’s clear that this is one of the highest rated Intel i5 CPUs, and it’s in the top five for processing power/$.  It still has a perfect rating on newegg.com after 204 reviews. The main complaint is that the processor tends to run hot and the stock fan is not always adequate (most of these reviewers were overclocking the processor, which I wouldn’t recommend doing anyway).  But just in case, you can find inexpensive aftermarket heatsinks for around $30-50. I looked up various graphically demanding games like shooters, graphically dense RPG’s and sandbox games, and more.  Games I included in the benchmark are Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, GTA V, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and the consistently demanding game Battlefield 4.  This processor exceeds the recommended processor speeds of every single one of these games.

Video card ASUS GTX650-E-2GD5 2GB $139.99: I was debating between this and the GTX 660 that offered 3 GB.  The reviews on this one are great and everyone seems happy (except with dead on arrival’s), but when looking at the highest demanding games, SOME of them required 3 GB of GPU power.  I’m trying to keep this build relevant for the next few years, and if you’re into the newest released shooters and high graphics AAA RPG’s, you probably want to look into 3 GB video cards.

Motherboard MSI Z97 PC Mate $109.99: The motherboard is going to be the gateway to upgrading down the road.  Whichever components can be added will determined by the capabilities of your mobo.  This one features plenty of expansion slots, multiple SATA hook-ups, USB 3.0, and last but not least, four memory slots.  My current PC has only 2 expansion slots, and it drives me crazy that I can only upgrade to 16 GB of memory.  I don’t know if I’ll ever need more than that, but I like knowing that I have the potential to do so.

Case NZXT Source 210 Elite $49.99:  Disclaimer:  I don’t give two flying f***s about how my computer looks.  I would rather save money, get a durable case that will last for years and more importantly, fit everything inside, be easy to put parts in, and keep all the internal parts at a cool temperature.  But this case also comes in white if that floats your boat.  The Source 210 Elite has won dozens of awards, has tool-less design (great for first time PC builders), and includes a USB 3.0 port on the front.  Just FYI, it’s currently sold out on newegg, and the secondary seller has it for about $15 more.  I would shop around to find it for the actual manufacturer’s price.

Memory G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) $129.99:  8 GB of memory is the MINIMUM I would go for making a gaming build.  My current computer has 12 GB, so that’s the lowest we’re going to go here.  Luckily, our mobo has 4 RAM slots so it’s upgradable later on.  In this configuration, down the road you can buy this set again and get 32 GB of memory! Which even if you never do, it’s nice to know that you can.

Hard drive Seagate Barracuda 2TB $99.99:  We’re going to go straight-up disk drive HDD. I decided on at least 2 TB, mostly because of the recovery partitions built into your OS, you’ll only have around 1 TB to actually store data.  It’s easy to find decent and inexpensive HDD that fit our requirements, so this one is all up to brand preference and the price being right.  Good news from the future!  We were under budget at the end of the list, so now we’re going to go back and add SSD!  This is for boot systems and commonly used programs to convert your computer into a PC with screaming fast loading times.  Here’s the drive we’re getting:  $149.99 Samsung 850 Evo-series 250 GB

Power Supply Unit Corsair CSM 750W $119.99:  750W is MORE than enough power for this build, but when you go to upgrade your graphics card to the newest, beefiest one out there, you’ll be glad you got a bigger power supply when you did.  I picked the Gold rated efficiency for the PSU because that means that out of the power coming from the outlet, your PC will use over 90% of that.  The standard benchmark is 80% efficiency.  

And the final total is… $1,049.92!  I’ll take it!  Here’s the link to the PCpartpicker site which has the cheapest prices for each component.  At the time I wrote this, the total there was only $857.54, so it’s probably worth it to shop around and find the good deals.  Keep in mind that computer part prices are constantly fluctuating.  You might have noticed that I didn’t include an optical CD/DVD drive.  Since I first booted up my new PC, I’ve used the optical drive one time, and I don’t even remember what it was for.  Some sort of hardware driver that was probably available online.  These days, most games/software/media are downloaded to your hard drive.  If you feel the need to add a CD/DVD drive, you can easily find a reliable one from a well-known brand for around $20, see here.

Let me know what you would change by hitting the Submit button under my face!

sunf1re96:

test test test

Don’t worry guys, I’m just testing!!  New post goes up later today!

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I occasionally have problems with starting new games.  I tried starting a new game yesterday, and after about two hours I realized that I’m not going to continue with it anymore.  Unfotunately, this game is beloved by its fans and I hesitate to tell you all what it was (It was Final Fantasy VII.  I think I missed the boat on this one.  It’s my first FF game, and while I liked the characters, especially Cloud, I eventually hit the wall.  Feel free to send in the hate mail, that’s what the “Submit” button over on the right is for.)  The reason I’m writing this post is so that other gaming Citizens out there know that we all experience this problem.  I’ve split my Steam library into four categories: Started, Haven’t Started, Finished, and Over It.  Right now Haven’t Started is the largest group and it just keeps on growing.  

Today I had high hopes of moving onto another new game (either Thief 2014 or Batman: Arkham Asylum), but then I woke up this morning thinking about Fallout: New Vegas, and then I stupidly started watching the Spoiler Warning season of FNV.  Stupid, stupid me.  My Xbox is sitting in the corner feeling lonely and abandoned with a perfectly good copy of FNV sitting nearby.  Yet I immediately jumped to the Steam store to find out how much the PC version costs.  For a mere $10 I could be blowing heads off of fiends and radscorpions on my beautiful 24” monitor.  

Or I could start working through my backlog.  If any of my fellow Citizens out there have troubles moving onto new games (like me), I found this article on Games Radar that I found pretty helpful.  One tip I constantly remind myself is that while I could binge on $5 and under games during the Steam sale, I’m more likely to play a game I spent $15-20 on that I know I would enjoy.  Like spending $20 on the Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition with all the DLC and weapon packs…

So my next post will either be a review of the new game I started this weekend, or a post about how much I absolutely adore FNV. It’s a complete toss-up at this point, and hard to tell which way I’m going to go.  Smart money would bet on Vegas.

The other day I was browsing for games on the Steam store,as I often do. I usually look throughthe daily or weekly specials, check out the new releases, or even scroll through the top sellers to see if I’m missing out on anything good. One thing I really like about the Steam system is that players get to add tags to describe the game. These are usually genres that the game fits into. For the most part this is really useful and lets you easily find out if the game is a shooter, RPG, or other. Unfortunately, though I’m fairly educated about the gaming world, there are often genres that I’ve absolutely never heard of or have any flipping clue what they could mean. So for all our entertainment, I’ve compiled a list of genres and tags I found the other day that I needed to look up on the internet. A bit of a disclaimer though, this is not a glossary or dictionary of any sort. I will use terms that I know, or most other gamers would understand, so I apologize if the descriptions are not helpful. Hopefully most of these keywords will make sense contextually. Here we go!

·         Strategy: Lots of game require strategy, but few are among the Strategy genre. Here it’s all about out-thinking your opponent(s) by utilizing resources or some sort of economy, conflict or combat, and exploration. This is further broken down into subgenres, including 4x, real time, and turn based.

·         4x: strategy based games where the player controls an empire where they “explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate.” Coined in 1993, it’s now used to describe games with deep and complex gameplay. This only makes me think of Civ 5, which I’m STILL playing. I’ve racked up about 50 hours so far.

Here’s a screenshot from my current campaign of Civilization 5

·         Real-time strategy vs. Turn-based strategy: The two biggest subcategories within the Strategy genre. The main difference is whether gameplay is continuous (in real-time), or split into distinct phases (turn based).

·         RPGMaker: This one took a little bit of digging. After looking through the games labelled RPGMaker in the Steam store, I finally figured out that these are games made with the RPG building program, RPGMaker. Sounds pretty straightforward, and there are hundreds of these available out there.

·         Dating sim: This is a pretty niche group of games, mostly produced in Japan, where the goal is to date other characters and build a romantic relationship. Yes, this sounds ludicrous and borderline creepy, but I won’t lie, there’s a dating simulator that’s been on my wishlist for a while: Hatoful Boyfriend. See, in this particular dating sim you’re the only human in a school of pigeons, which sounds fantastically entertaining and hilarious.

I know, it looks AMAZING

·         Rogue-like: Back in 1980 there was an extremely popular RPG called Rogue, which has since inspired decades of similar RPGs that we call Rogue-likes. Pretty simple, eh? There are some elements that are implied in this genre, such as procedural level design, turn-based combat, tile graphics, and permanent death. Obviously there are variants in this system given the hundreds and hundreds of Rogue-likes being produced.

·         Procedural: The proper title here is “procedural generation” games. Most games have levels and designs which someone sat down and planned out. They put thought into each and every door, wall, and floor that you walk through, by, or on. In procedurally generated games, someone has written an algorithm that determines all those elements as you go. The room that you walk into next won’t be made until you’re just about to go in. A very cool idea, and it allows for high replayability since each level will be different for each playthrough.

·         Casual: This isn’t a true genre because casual games encompass all other game genres. There are casual platforming games, casual RPGs, and casual puzzle games. These days most casuals are played on cell phones, because it’s easy to jump in or out of the game and come back to it later when you have time.

·         Isometric: It turns out that this refers to the angle of perspective that the game presents. Which, as far as I can tell, is angled up from the floor sharply, and lets you stare diagonally into the room you happen to be in. Fortunately, there have been similar games that are made in this style, mostly dungeon crawlers. So if you’re looking for a game where you descend into level after level of dungeons while snapping up all the loot in sight, it’s likely to also be isometric. 

Bastion is a great action game with an isometric camera angle

·         MOBA: I’m throwing this one in because I had literally no idea what it meant, or referred to, or even had a slight hint as to what it is. Turns out it stands for “Multiplayer online battle arena,” which is a subgenre of real-time strategy where players control a single character on a team that’s warring with another team to complete objectives first. Some of the biggest money-making esports games are MOBA’s, such as Dota and League of Legends.

A few days ago I told all of you about the games I’m most looking forward to in 2015, including the game that I just finished, Life is Strange. I explained that LiS is a point and click adventure game that’s trying to compete in the story based game world. Another interesting mechanic is that this is an episodic game (not from Telltale Games, thankfully) and it advertises that the decisions you make in early episodes will have consequences in the future. This game constantly reminds you of this fact and gives you the option to change your decision using the main gameplay aspect, being able to rewind time! This time master is Max Caulfield, who recently moved back to her hometown to attend Blackwell Academy. Max is an aspiring photographer, and the other characters tell you that she has a “gift” for photography (meanwhile the only pictures Max seems to take are selfies with her Polaroid camera).

Max discovers her gift of time-bending early on in the story, and it allows the player to rewind and answer questions correctly or to change the outcome of certain events. It’s pretty obvious that this the core mechanic to the game, other than pointing and clicking on things through a really strange interface. The item that you want to interact with is highlighted, and then a box pops up with options such as look, play, or search, and you click and drag your mouse in the direction of the action of your choosing. It’s just as overly complicated as it sounds. Even the time-rewinding is finicky, and only lets you use it when the game says it’s allowed. During a conversation with one of Max’s friends, I wanted to back up and change my answer. But since you can’t rewind during dialogue I had to wait until the end of the conversation. Five minutes later we were still talking, and more characters kept popping in until Max hopped into one of their cars and was whisked off to the next part of the game. It never let me utilize this one gimmick the way that I wanted, and instead railroaded me off into the distance.

The game has a unique art-style, the nature looks nice and the people look and act realistic. None of the movements look awkward or strained, except for when characters talk and the dialogue rarely matches their mouths. LiS is also set in Oregon! I mentioned in my Gone Home review that I love a good Oregon shout-out, and now I’m on my second point and click, story based game set in my home state. The soundtrack is excellent. It reminds me exactly of the music the kids at my high school listened to, indie underground with acoustic guitars and male vocalists. I’m actually considering finding the soundtrack from this game, or even searching out the tracks individually, it’s a great soundtrack.

So I’ve been kind of harsh on LiS up to this point with its weird gameplay mechanics and imbalanced characterization. It’s been said many times before that if you’re going to make a point and click game, the story needs to be damn good to back it up. And honestly, Life is Strange presents a unique story with characters that seem interesting and are fairly in-depth. They’re all angsty teenagers living in a small town along the Oregon coast, so they can be forgiven for their poor attitudes and crazy moodiness. At one point Max’s friend Chloe tells her that she needs to “medicate” before pulling out a joint to light up. Which, bleh, what teenager in their right mind would say that? That really pulled me out of the story, but LiS won me over again a few moments later when Chloe uses a sweet Oregon ashtray.

The voice acting in the game is spot-on, it’s convincing and helps me to believe these characters could be real people. The school and the town feel like places where people actually life and interact. One of my favorite parts of the game was wondering around in the girls’ dorm looking at peoples stuff, especially in Max’s room. It’s a great moment of environmental storytelling, and lets you become invested in the characters stories and histories without walking up to them and spending five minutes of dialogue asking questions.

I can’t help but compare Life is Strange to Gone Home. Both are point and click, story based, and emotional games set in small towns in Oregon. The first episode of LiS takes about the same time to complete as the entirety of GH. It’s hard to say if being episodic will help or hurt LiS, because in the same timeframe GH fleshed out an entire story and character arc that was extremely moving and emotionally compelling. I get the same feeling here as I did before that makes me wonder why these stories are being told as a game. They could easily transfer medium to a short novel or film. I’m curious if these types of games are being made because game-makers simply came up with the idea or if they were compelled to tell the story. Would the developers feel incomplete if they were unable to produce this game and put it out there for players to experience? Obviously companies like The Fullbright Company and Square Enix are trying to make money. Were these games made because Square Enix needed a new game to produce and someone came forward with the premise for Life is Strange? Did The Fullbright Company have the idea for Gone Home first and started the game studio second? Maybe the motivation behind the games is one of the differences between indie studios and big AAA developers.

Life is Strange is trying to be the next big story-based game with long term consequences. It’s hard to say too much about the story since we’re about 1/5 through the plot, but the groundwork that’s been laid down so far has been intriguing. How does Max’s ability change in the future, and how do the seemingly insignificant choices made so far all fit into the big picture? It’s hard to say if I’ll play through Episode 2 yet, but I am genuinely curious what the next installment will look like. I hope that some of the characters and plot will be more polished, but I’m most excited for the next episode’s soundtrack.

LET’S GO SEAHAWKS!!!!!!

Come on 12th man, let’s do this.  I’m ready!