This year's trf costume.

So as a blogger I fail because I don't think about taking the in process pictures until it's to late but I figure I can at the very least post up the final results.

It's not perfect, but it's a fairly large improvement over the ash mask from last year. The crowds certainly seemed to to want to take a lot more pictures of it. 

Replacing characters in mass effect 1

So I went through and saw some neat videos on youtube of people replacing characters in mass effect but I couldnt come across any easy to use instructions for people so I figured I would post some. These instructions are for the pc version of the game.

Say for example you want to accomplish this. Replacing shepard with garrus (which works fairly well, suprisingly) heres what you would need to do.

1) Download and install a copy of notepad ++ (you can get it here)  It's not really a requirement, but it tends to add extra bits into files less often. If you can't or won't install it you can use regular notepad from windows but DONT USE WORDPAD. It may insert extra formatting into the files and screw them up.


2) To replace shepard with another character like tali or garrus (or any of the party members with any other party member) we will need to look at the biogame file. So open windows explorer and navigate to where mass effect has stored your saves and configurations. Typically this is in your my documents folder.

In your my documents folder navigate to the bioware folder, then the mass effect folder, then the config folder.

If you make it to the correct plase you should see a handful of .ini files. The file we are interested in is BIOGame.ini (MAKE A COPY OF ANY FILES YOU EDIT BEFORE PROCEEDING) so right click it and hit edit with notepad ++ (or just regular notepad if you skipped step 1)


3) Now we need to tell the game that instead of loading shepard's character model we want it to load garrus.

You will see that the file is divided into sections followed by the entries for the sections. Scroll down until you see the section named "BIOC_Base.BioEvtSysTrackVOElementsInst" Rolls off the tounge doesn't it? More importantly this is where the entries for party members are located. Looking through the entries you should see a line with lots of the species of character that you want to use. In our case we want to replace shepard with garrus so we are looking for turian.

m_aDefaultActorTypes=(sTag="hench_turian",sActorType="BIOG_Turian_Hench_C.hench_turian");

That fits the bill. But we dont need the whole thing, only the Actor type is important for what we are trying to accomplish so the important part from our line is:

BIOG_Turian_Hench_C.hench_turian

Thats the portion of the line that specifies what type of character to load, as well as what meshes and textures to use.

So copy that portion of the line and start looking for the portion of the file that specifies what shepard looks like. So scroll up and look for the section name "BIOC_Base.BioCharacterImporter"

Inside of that section you'll see two important lines. m_femaleActorType and m_maleActorType. To complete the swap take your selected gender (I have heard that using the male can cause issues with facial animations, but I've never tried it) and delete everything on the line after the equal sign. Next paste in your selected party members code. So for example I am replacing my female shepard with Garrus and my line now looks like this.

m_femaleActorType=BIOG_Turian_Hench_C.hench_turian

Thats it! Save the file and fire up the game. Most everything seems to work pretty well after I swapped to Garrus. Good Luck :)

(If you do run into a major problem you should be able to copy the files you saved before you edited back over the files you edited to restore your game. If that doesn't work, well, you might try reinstalling :-P )

Now doing web hosting

Vanquishvps has been doing pretty good the last few month, we've almost tripled our server capacity since I last posted about the company.

Now we also have a server doing basic web hosting. Check it out Here. Basic packages start at $4 a month.

Terraria support coming soon :)

Beast from xmen

Heres a few examples of the excellent Beast make up from the film .

Xmen first class and Kung fu Panda 2

I recently watched xmen first class and I have to say I was blown away.

The trailers for the film left me thinking that film was going to be a b-movie at best and loaded with shlock, but it wasn't at all. Yes fans of the comics will note it isn't faithful to the original stories, but the material is treated with respect.

The effects are top notch and Beast's makeup effects are superbly done (definitely has me thinking about trying my hands at something similar). The thing that really makes the movie shine though is the writing. The story takes center stage instead of the action and the dialogue flows smoothly. I also don't think they could have picked a better set of actors to portray the first generation of xmen.

I also saw the trailer for the remake of conquest of the planet of the apes. The more I see of it the less I like.

Kung fu panda 2 was also pretty good. I wouldn't say it was as well thought out as the original, but well worth seeing. 

Vanquish Vps specials

Just wanted to let people know that we are running a deal where you can get a 20 man minecraft host for $15 a month.

When ordering use the code Lifer.

 Vanquish Vps

An awesome tutorial over xml in actionscript 3

I found an awesome tutorial over some real world usage of xml in as3 and I figured I'd share it out to everyone else. Check it out here

Minecraft hosting

A buddy of mine and I do Minecraft hosting on the side if anybody needs any check us out. Vanquish Vps

slow motion lightning

Saw this and I thought other people would like to see it as well.

Pretty cool robot

Check this out!

The easiest way I've found of embeding xml in flex

 I am messing around with flex using the flashdevelop ide (which you should check out) and everything in it works fairly well. Right up until I tried to embed an xml data sheet into my little application. Some googling revealed about half a dozen methods but most of them were kind of long or drawn out. Here is the absolute shortest method I've come across thus far. It's probably not the best way of doing it, but it seems to work. It consists of three lines and must be put inside of a parent class.

 The first and second lines really might as well be considered one line. The first line is the embed line that actually describes what kind of file you are trying to load and where it is. In my case I have a sub folder with xml data structures in it that I'd like to load. The first document I want to pull up is the items.xml structure. So inside of the class that I want to use my xml from I put the following lines.

[Embed(source = "data\\items.xml", mimeType = "application/octet-stream")]

This is the line that tells flex where the file is coming from and what kind of file it is. The "\" character can be used to escape characters. So in my case the "\\" is actually fed into flex as a single slash. If you put only a single slash the entire url of the file gets smashed together.

 public static const classitems:Class;

This is the second line, it must immediately follow the first line because the first line isn't a standalone command much like the [bindable] tag for variables. So whatever class you insert here will be the container for your xml document. In my case I chose 'classitems' because the actual reference I want to use in my program will be just plain items.

So now the xml document is loaded and assigned to a class inside of the application, but flex still doesn't know that it's actually an xml document because we are sort of sneaking it through the back door. So we need to feed the data into the xml structure.

public var items:XML = new XML(new playerstats.classitems);

This line feeds a real flex xml data structure with our piped in xml document and allows us full access to the xml document just like we had put it inline in our program. So now we can run normal calls against our external xml document, woo hoo!

trace(items.item[0].name);

I don't pretend that I came up with all of this on my own most of the information came from mattmakesgames.com All I did was try and clear up the explanations that I didn't understand in the beginning myself.

Sanctum - A beta preview

Today I'll be talking a little about my hands on experience with the beta of Sanctum from Coffee Stain Studios. (Steam $15 / 2 pack $25)

Sanctum is a sort of unique take on the tower defense genre. The game is played out entirely from the first person perspective and features co-op multi-player(a feature I wish more developers would embrace). The game is built on the unreal engine (presumably UDK) and so the first person controls and the net code provides a stable base around which the game is constructed.

The games graphics, while not mind blowing in this day and age, are sharp and professional. Animations are fluid and the creeps look great running through the maze. Audio and music while not exactly memorable are also professional in presentation and well mixed. The overall production value is quite high for an indie studio.

The game play area is split into three zones in the two maps available in the beta client and presumably in the rest of the levels. A spawn area that allows you to use your player weapons to plink at the creeps before they enter your maze. A player build-able area that is set up as a grid. Finally the core that you are attempting to defend which features a small killing field so that you can attempt to take out any stragglers before they reach it.

After each round (which had randomized mixes of creeps in the co-op games I played) you are given advance warning of what is coming next round and allowed to build additional towers.Resources seem to be round based increasing by a set quantity each round. There are more than a few creep types, many of which have very specific methods of being killed. Some have only one weak point, others can only be shot from behind, some resist small arms fire, and the list goes on. The list of build-able towers isn't as varied but has your standard mix of weak/fast and strong/slow towers, area effect towers, and anti-air towers. In addition to the towers and their upgrades (which are just a linear progression of strength) players can choose to spend their resources on their own weapons.

 

The player is a very critical part of the defense in Sanctum. The after action report indicated that our maze was only responsible for around 50% of the damage we dealt to the creeps. So the player can't sit back and let the maze do all of the work. Player weapons are upgradeable just like the towers are, featuring a linear progression of increased damage and a higher ammo capacity. Smart usage of the player weapons is definitely important. The weapons we had access to in the beta were an assault rifle, sniper rifle, and freeze gun. All of the feature alternate fire mode and it's the alt fire modes that become critical. The freeze gun's alt fire is especially powerful as it launches an area effect freeze that roots all the creeps in range for several seconds. Giving your partner and your towers extra time to chip away at their health. This makes for a nice combo with the assault rifles grenade alt fire.

The game came off as very polished and decently challenging for me and my friend (of course neither of us are what you call elite players). Never managing to make it more than a handful of rounds in before being overwhelmed. The game does have a few flies in the ointment. We had several crashes over the course of our three hour play session and at one point I lost the ability to move. If Coffee Stain manages to get the bugs ironed out over the three weeks until launch I would highly recommend Sanctum to anyone who enjoys tower defense games but is looking for a little more action in their diet.

Morrowind in Oblivion

For anybody who plays alot of Elder scrolls games check out this mod for oblivion that allows you to experience the Morrowind content in the new engine.

http://morroblivion.com/

Revenge of the Titans - a micro review

After a friend of mine kept telling me how awesome it was I went ahead and purchased Revenge of the Titans through steam (for $15 at the time of writing). I thought I'd thow out a short little review for it.

Revenge of the Titans is a cross between a real time strategy game and a tower defense game. While that sounds a little weird the game succeeds at it beautifully. On each level you have to build and defend your headquarters as well as refineries from waves of creeps that come from a variety of directions. Like Harvest: Massive Encounter (also worth checking out) the creeps come from all over the place and follow no set path. You can corral them using an assortment of mines and barriers as you channel them towards your towers. All the while keeping an eye on your limited resources. It makes for gameplay that edges towards hectic but stays manageable striking a very nice balance that leaves me wanting to keep playing for just one more level. Generally thats a good sign.

The art style is wonderfully retro. The 2d monsters and towers smoothly animated and looking great. The soundtrack harkens back to the days of the snes and unlike most games I play these days I didn't opt to turn it off and run winamp in the background. The characters that help guide your experience from the menus are charmingly stylized and deliver some fairly funny lines in between the levels.

After each of the levels in the campaign and challenge modes you are allowed to select a single item to research. With dozens of items combining to allow access to further items. The system is deep enough to be fun without being a time sink in between levels. Allowing you to jump back into the action relatively quickly.

Overall the game is nicely balanced. With a quick pace and a campaign design that keeps you in the action and out of the menus the game is well worth the price of admission for anyone who enjoys tower defense games. Puppygames did an excellent job and I hope they keep going down the retro path. They certainly seem to have a knack for it.

Furrier Khajiit for Daggerfall

So I recently tried out Daggerfall, mostly because of a recent spree in playing Oblivion. It's held up far better than I thought it would have. One thing was kind of bugging me though. In daggerfall the Khajiit were pretty much humans with tails and that sort of bugged me. A quick bit of googling revealed no mods that fixed it so I figured I'd take a crack at it.

So here is release one of the furrier khajiit mod. This release is a straight drop in replacement of the stock Khajiit faces for females, I should have males done in the next few days. They should work with all helmets in the game since they are just modified versions of the stock heads.

Furrier Khajiit mod - Release 1