Dragon Age II

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I like Dragon Age’s flavor: It’s high fantasy, but it has a small twist. Dwarves aren’t your run of the mill tolkienesque dwarves (I mean, some of them lack beards!) and the elves as a whole aren’t your standard tall graceful mystically superior race. It has a slightly unique feel not usually found in fantasy genres and I like that. But that said, most people have been fairly divisive regarding Dragon Age II to say the least. Honestly, I don’t think that it is as good as it’s predecessor, Dragon Age: Origins, but it’s still a good game. So if you are passing it up because of the negative reception, you are missing out on a good RPG.

BioWare’s saving grace has always been the quality of their writing and acting; Dragon Age II is no exceptions. They once again present to us, a fascinating tale of political intrigue. It is different though and feels less epic than its predecessor Dragon Age: Origins. DA II is a character based story. The plot isn’t about saving the world, it’s about one man (or woman), his life, the lives he touches and the impact that he has on a touchy sociopolitical situation. I really like character pieces so I appreciate Dragon Age II for what it is. But that said, for the a character based game, there are grossly fewer character interaction opportunities in comparison to Origins and character development suffers because of this. My favorite quests were the character stories, I would have loved more of those.

Overall pacing feels off as well. The first act is too drawn out, it takes way too drawn out; It takes too long to get into the meat of the story. Until you acquire enough capital to move to the next part of Act I, it’s just random quest after random quest. the acts also do not seem to piece together all that well. Much of the story feels disjointed, especially the Qunari storyline, which was neat but I’m not 100% certain how it meshes in with the overall plot. Is there an overall plot besides the life and times of Hawke?

The entire game for better of for worse occurs within one, albeit large city, so the number of locations that you are able to visit are pretty limited. Kirkwall is an interesting location and an appropriate one given the context of the story but if you are expecting a tale spanning continents, you will probably be disappointed. Also,the city of Kirkwall doesn’t really change all that much between the three acts. It’s somewhat awkward watching Hawke seemingly change, but the background remaining exactly the same. I could have really done without the cut-and-paste scenery though. Really BioWare? Literally every single cave and every single building interior looks exactly the same, down to the layout and everything.

Yes, the combat pacing has been sped up. I’m not sure what so many people have been criticizing it so much, it feels fine to me. My only real gripe is that the camera is very restrictive this time around. You can’t place it into a full birds-eye view, which makes dragging and repositioning party members around or just getting a general tactical view of unit positioning a pain in the ass. I am also not a huge fan of the random waves of random enemies popping in at semi-predictable locations (big empty area with crates = random battle time). Can we do away with this sort of thing BioWare? It’s been in everyone on of your games…

For all of its faults, and there were quite a few this time around, Dragon Age II is a compelling story and a blast to play. It’s worth buying, or at least waiting until it’s on sale on Steam.

Minecraft: Log Cabin

We constructed a nice living room on the second floor of base 3 last night (overlooking the library). The original intention was to make it a bedroom, but the space we dug out was awkwardly large. Also, I really wanted to tile in a nice wooden floor with a red throw rug underneath the double bed. Unfortunately, because of the way the first and second floor are laid out, that is an awkward thing to do unless I want a multi-color ceiling above my wheat farm.

So, I built a log cabin up top instead. Dave fenced off the top area; We still need to level out the dirt but as of now, there’s a nice grassy plateau with a wooden cabin, a natural pond and some trees. The spiders can still jump over certain areas of the fence and the creepers will explode if you get too close, regardless of what side of the fence you are on. I may just carpet the entire area with torches for safety or at least shovel off more dirt below the fence line. We have already had a few….setbacks. The cabin’s interior decorating isn’t entirely original: I found a great thread last night with awesome decorating ideas. I really liked the kitchen ideas in that thread.

Here’s a picture of the back of the cabin, which is more interesting than the front (which is little more than a wooden wall with a door). The cabin is a studio bedroom with a small kitchen and a loft. I’m not sure I like how some of the roof turned out. It looks odd in my opinion, but I can fix that later.
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The ladder on the left leads up to the loft. If you go past that, there’s a staircase around the corner leading down into the second story of the base (note to self: post pictures later). The bed is sitting on a 3×3 red wool carpet. For some reason it took a while to find the rest of the roses that I needed to dye the wool. There are a lot of yellow flowers in the area but not red. At some point I would love to add a fireplace on the left wall, but don’t want to burn down our cabin.
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This is the view from the other side near the ladder.
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Here is the kitchen. I had originally built a bread dispenser (dispenser + bread + button) in the store room, but moved it up to the cabin. Hadn’t considered that it would make a decent looking fridge in combination with an iron block. The counter-tops are made up of a log with signpost paneling and stone buttons for granite counters.
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And here is the loft. I don’t really know what to place up here. Another bedroom? Bookcases? Chests? We will decide later.
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Musings: Minecraft & the DA2 Demo

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I’m unsure what exactly the Beta 1.3 Minecraft server client did to my poor server, but it didn’t weather the new update too well. In fact it kind of imploded, or rather, was inundated with java errors every time I would start the Minecraft process. I finally got around to fixing it this weekend (was a simple error on my part lol), so huzzah, back to building we go! I’m not sure if it’s because I dropped Craftbukkit (white list feature eliminated my need for a mod wrapper) or because of the new save format, but since the update, server CPU usage is down by approximately 25% to 30%.

Not being able to get on the SMP server on the patch release day wasn’t so bad (in addition to server problems, Minecraft.net was having authentication issues….). Tuesday by coincidence, was also the release day for the Dragon Age II demo. Combat is much faster for better of for worse; It is much more engaging, but at the same time I have a sneeky feeling that a large portion of the tactical combat aspects have been compromised in favor of the new pacing. I loved having to pause DA:O in order to seriously think about my combat strategy and am hoping that DA II a similar level of difficulty.

Out of curiosity, was BioWare really going to deny us content if the demo didn’t reach 1 million downloads? Also, Dragon Age seems like a kind of odd game to release a demo for given that it is one of the most anticipated games of the year and also given that RPGs (or any long complex game for that matter) don’t demo that well in my opinion. I wonder how many more purchases they got out of it. But regardless, I am sure that I will have fun and am greatly looking forward to Dragon Age II. I have always been impressed by the writing and presentation that BioWare places on their games.

Oh, Shadowfang keep finally popped on my heroic daily. Yay achievement!
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Video Games and Storytelling

This entry was supposed to be a comment post in response to a Kotaku article that I forgot to bookmark (note to self: check phone later). It kind of went astray and turned itself into one giant thing. I am pretty sure that I am rehashing at least one or two previous posts, but I don’t feel like checking. Anyway, as I gather, video game storytelling methods fall somewhere on or between these two spectrums

  1. Open-ended storytelling: Your story is your own and it is one that organically immerses as a result of gameplay. The game provides the necessary tools and settings. In some cases, a rough direction or purpose, but your goals and what you do to achieve them are your own to decide.
  2. Linear storytelling: These games have a specific story to narrate with a very specific cast and setting. Think of an interactive book.

Most games seem to fall somewhere in the middle, probably leaning more towards being linear as most games have a fairly defined story. It’s a tricky balancing act and treading on the paper thin border between being too open and too linear is no small feat. In fact, I would say that it is one of if not the most challenging aspects of crafting a video game story. A game that is too open lacks guidance and gives way to a non-cohesive story. When you unleash players upon your world there is always a risk that they will get sidetracked and forget about the main storyline, often to the point of becoming bored and dropping the game all-together.

On the other hand, being too linear hinders gameplay. Games should be designed to be experienced and not just told. Never underestimate the importance of interactive content within an interactive game. Linear stories are a tightly kept package, everything from the camera angles to the pacing needs to be delicately crafted without feeling forced. Even so, even linear games need choices and choices need consequences. You want the player to feel like their actions have an impact on the outcome of the game, whether they really do or not. It is essentially giving the player an illusion of choices. This kind of balance is rarely found and difficult to achieve, but artful when properly executed.

Ultimately, by definition, the focus of a game should be with the gameplay. Many of my favorite games are able to integrate the narrative with the gameplay into one seamless package. Portal for example, the gameplay pretty much was the narrative. I like the recent immersion trend in first person shooters: Eliminating interface elements and integrating ammo and health meters into the game context (vision fading for health, ammo meters on the guns, etc). I mean, isn’t that kind of the point in a first person game, being able to see through the character’s eyes and all? A giant red bar along the bottom of the screen doesn’t exactly suck you into the whole experience. I also liked the Animus in the Assassin’s Creed series. It was kind of a plot gimmick, but works well for explaining away game elements.

Games in my opinion at least, have much more potential as a storytelling medium if they can ever get over their own tribulations (well, publishers). But you know what gaming really needs? I mean, REALLY needs?? Better writers. Good God.

No Eggs, No Cake

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I have a mild cake obsession; I can resist or just not care about a lot of things, but if free cake is offered I have to get a slice. Most people that I communicate with regularly have realized and this fact by now. To my personal delight, Cake was added into Minecraft beta 1.2. It seems to function a lot like Lightwell in World of Warcraft: It is a multiple hit healing item. You place it on the ground and it is good for 1.5 hearts x6. Most importantly though, it is a fucking cake and naturally, the first thing (well, maybe no the first) that I wanted to do once establishing myself on the new SMP server was to bake a cake.

Cooking one of these delicious treats requires: 3 buckets of milk, 2 sugar, 3 wheat and 1 egg. The milk isn’t a big deal, any one cow yields an unlimited supply; Neither is the sugar and wheat (yay indoor farming). Eggs however, I have no eggs and have not seen any all week. So thus began my egg quest. Sadly, it took a good portion of Sunday morning (and two cups of coffee) to gather all of one egg. After about an hour of wandering around the known world, searching the ground for eggs, it had occurred to me that trapping a chicken and waiting a couple of minutes was probably a more efficient gathering method.

However, one egg isn’t good enough. Nothing short of an elaborate egg farming mechanism was good enough for the sake of future cake baking. So that started the next project: An egg farm. The plan is to load the eggs into a switch operated dispenser that would shoot them into a glassed off pool. Chickens would pop out of some of those eggs and lay more eggs. The water currents within the glassed off area would carry the eggs to a safe gathering point. Today I learned two things about constructing dispensers. Both should have been obvious, but I haven’t delved into Minecraft in a while. If I recall correctly, pre-Beta was when I set the game aside to fixate on Cataclysm.

  1. You need to use a pickaxe to destroy a dispenser if you want any hope of reclaiming it. If you punch it, it is gone. The dispensers are a little bit finicky to place, it randomly turned the other direction twice. In the process of repositioning them, I had accidentally punched one to death. I had used my only bow to construct it was out of string. So I had to go wandering around in the middle of the night searching for spiders. When I accidentally destroyed the second dispenser, I rage spawned another bow on the server console.
  2. The dispensers don’t autofire by default; I thought they did. Press the button once and one item pops out. If you want the dispenser to function as a rapid fire turret, you need to connect a series of rapid pulsers. Ugly wiring.

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This is a screenshot of us, enjoying floor cake together.
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Here’s a nice map of the server thus far. Tertiary Base is coming along nicely, despite minor creeper setbacks. I’ll post about it once the library and tree farm are complete.

Keiya’s SMP Minecraft Server

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My latest “project” has been a dedicated SMP Minecraft server. For the time being, the server is running off of a 512 Linode slice. If I recall correctly, general internet consensus pins the minimum memory requirement for a Minecraft server at around 1024MB; For two people however, 512MB should really be fine. In theory. My stupid map generator seems to increase my CPU usage by quite a bit, but nothing too bad. I will see how the server holds up. Not that it matters, seeing as how there’s probably only going to ever be two people online at a time max >_<. If I find a cheaper game server host I may switch service but I’ve been very happy with Linode and enjoy having full control over the server.

Oh, Mr. You Know Who (If you are reading this): I have a tertiary base not too far from Base Site Beta. It used to be fairly hidden, but should be fairly obvious now, with the outdoor reed farm, glass exterior and all. There are a couple of goodies inside of it as well. PS: Please don’t blow it up with a creeper. I did that already earlier because I was watching TV. The glass is a pain in the ass to redo.

Rant: Final Fantasy

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This post is a long unstructured rant. Read at your own peril. Square Enix is the poster-child and public choice whipping boy for the decline of Japanese RPG (JRPG) popularity, and I would be hard pressed not to agree. To clarify, by “Eastern” I am referring to Final Fantasy or any Final Fantasy-esque style role-playing game. I recognize that there are other excellent titles on the market. I haven’t had a chance to play Valkyria Chronics, The World Ends With You, the Persona Series or a small number of Japanese titles on my to play list.

I remember when a Final Fantasy title used to be a real treat, the one game series that bridged the gap between Eastern and Western game storytelling and game culture. The careful attention to detail, story (no matter how ludicrous) and characters were elements that could be enjoyed by all. Nowadays, it seems as if Square Enix continues to push out more and more junk. Their flagship title, Final Fantasy, has been inundated with crap; diluted by numerous sequels and unnaturally long development cycles. Destructoid had phrased it nicely in one of their recent articles: Square Enix is, essentially, the George Lucas of Video games.

A good story offers something enjoyable to everyone. I don’t think that Final Fantasy falls into that category anymore. It seems as if every new title just panders to an increasingly narrow demographic. For example, playing a young character is fine, but I am not sexually attracted to teenagers nor do I really emotionally connect with them anymore. I can appreciate a good romance and good character development but not high school level cheese. I just don’t get my jollies off of anything like that anymore.

I liked Final Fantasy X, went back and finally finished Final Fantasy XII and learned to appreciate it. But the last game of the series that I really loved was FFIX. Unsurprisingly, FFIX was also the last game produced by Sakaguchi before he resigned from Square. Also, unless I am mistaken, FFX was the last Final Fantasy game produced under Square’s label before the company merged into Square Enix. From that point on, my enjoyment of the series sharply declined. I don’t think that Nomura is a very good character designer, certainly not as good as Sakaguchi or Matsuno.

Because of my work and real life schedule, my free gaming time is limited to a couple hours of play time at most. I need a game that will accommodate my schedule. I need the ability to pick it up and put it down in an hour or two. That means discreet, natural periods of play time, whether it be in a form of a quest, mission or whatever. Actually, it doesn’t really matter as long as there is an intelligent save mechanic in place, allowing me to save anywhere or at least frequently autosave upon entering a new area and/or exiting combat. I like not feeling lost after picking a game back up after letting it collect dust for a period of time. Usually, just a synopsis of what I have done so far as well as my correct objectives is sufficient.

Also in regards to time usage: Please cut some of the crap grinding out of role-playing games. I know that grinding is synonymous with the RPG genre, but I would rather play a 25 hour game of solid gameplay than an 80 hour game crammed with filler. In all honesty, most 80 hour games only include about 25 hours of solid gameplay, if that. If difficulty is the root issue, that problem needs to be addressed in a more intelligent manner, whether it be through improved fight mechanics or otherwise. All-in-all, Square Enix isn’t very good at pacing games.

A big part of Final Fantasy’s problem is that the game mechanics haven’t evolved much in the past two decades. It’s a bit of a catch 22 situation: On one hand, the slow turn based system is part of what defines Final Fantasy as a label. On the other, it’s one of it’s biggest problems. In theory there’s nothing wrong with a turn based system, but that system in combination with massive grinding really really really does not work out. If repetitive fighting is a must, then combat needs to be lightning quick. That means, no combat bullshit, no cute battle transactions: Combat must occur naturally. Integrating combat from other genres works for most Western style RPGs. Turning a role-playing game into a first person shooter may or may not be a good solution but if all else fails, characters and story included, it’s almost always fun to shoot someone in the face repeatedly.

And to all forms of RPGs: Please cut out some of the unnecessary micromanagement (party swapping and gearing mostly). If you are going to include 12 party members, either make the all level equally regardless of which members are active. Or at the very least, do not ever place me in a situation where I am forced to use a party member that I dislike and have thus not bothered to level.

Along similar lines: I have always appreciated games that blend gameplay elements and introduce the story in intuitive and creative ways. Never underestimate the power of doing things within a game. Passive observation has its place, but interactive play is the one element that gaming has over virtually all other forms of media. Please don’t tell me a story in the form of a giant monologue. I want to discover and experience it on my own. I love watching rendered cutscenes, but I feel like they should be on their way out or at least used more sparingly than every 5 minutes or so. Any break from gameplay detracts from the game (not only picking on JRPGs. *cough* quick time events *cough*. Looking at you Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, etc).

Final Fantasy VII:
The vast majority of Final Fantasy fans, myself included, place FFVII on a pedestal. It was an exceptional game for its time, way ahead of the competition. But nostalgia aside, I am unsure if it holds up to the test of time. I would love to see this game remade in HD and finally retired. We don’t need to dilute it with even more inane sequels.

Final Fantasy XII
I liked Basch quite a bit, he was a good character. In fact, Basch was originally supposed to be the main character. Vaan and Panelo were added later in the development cycle because adult male leads apparently don’t sell, based off of the figures from one the development team’s previous games (Vagrant story, one of my favorites by the way).

Vaan was an awkward main character. Other than providing a new perspective on the main story, I don’t recall him contributing much and by the end of the game he did not evolve much as a character. Because he was tacked on, I didn’t really emotionally invest in his story. Consequently there was a huge  disconnect between the player and the characters of FFXII. Character empathy was replaced by uninteresting and generic political intrigue. I absolutely loved FFXII’s feel, setting and design. In those departments, it is one of my favorites but I play Final Fantasy for the characters and the character stories. DON’T EVER compromise on the character stories, that’s probably one of the biggest draws for JRPGs.

Final Fantasy XIII
I’ve already said my piece about this title, but I feel as if XIII would have had a more positive reception had it not been under the Final Fantasy label. Most of the people who actually enjoyed playing this game had little no no experience with other Final Fantasy games. For better or for worse, Final Fantasy games have a list of expectations that need to be addressed. Otherwise, it’s not really a Final Fantasy game.

Final Fantasy has had a good run but I’m not sure I will be purchasing future titles if they follow the same trend. Versus XIII does look pretty good though. I’m a sucker for action RPGs so I will probably pick it up.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

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Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is to Assassin’s Creed II as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is to Grand Theft Auto: III. That is, better and more polished in almost every way, but not a true successor to the series and not different enough to be considered one in any sense. It lays somewhere between an expansion pack and a sequel; Suffering from the middle child syndrome to some extent. Assassin’s Creed II was a huge leap in improvement over Assassin’s Creed I. Brotherhood doesn’t provide nearly that degree of improvement, but it layers additional polish to an already polished series, adding a new single player story as well as multiplayer action.

Assassin’s Creed II was an epic story spanning several decades. Brotherhood, being more condensed, does not have that degree of narrative impact but is still a good story (even though some of the plot missions feel a bit scatterbrained). I am also finding that I enjoy the side missions quite a bit. They are plentiful without feeling spread too thin, disjointed, or distracting from the main story (like GTA, I’ve only managed to finish one of those games, got bored with the rest). Rebuild your assassin empire one citizen at a time and kick back as a team of hand trained minions duke it out with a hoard of guards at your pleasure; It is a surprisingly satisfying experience. On the other hand, it feels a bit inconsequential. Level up the assassins and use them, or don’t. I don’t think it matters plot wise.

Combat is still way too counter heavy, but an execution streak system has been added: While executing your current target, you can continue a one hit kill streak by quickly selecting a close enemy with the left analog stick and hitting the square button. Though it’s more fluid, much of the combat still consists of mashing the X button while waiting for opportunities to counter attack. Even so, attacks a bit more diverse and there are a wider variety of weapons: From poisoned darts, to large two-handers to crossbow. Each weapon has it’s own flair. It’s not a huge combat improvement, but still an improvement nonetheless and most importantly, still very fun.

But you know what? I really like the Assassin’s Creed series, a lot. The overarching plot is a bit ludicrous, but I love the gameplay and there has been a notable and steady improvement with every title. I love the blend of fictionalized history with a science fiction edge. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood picks up literally right where Assassin’s Creed II left off (and in those few moments between games Ezio has managed to grow a beard?). If you haven’t played the second game, Brotherhood will make little to non sense. Similarly, if for whatever Godforsaken reason you did not enjoy the second game, Brotherhood won’t change your mind because it’s very similar. Highly recommended. Go stabify people.

…I am still convinced that Leonardo is mad at me. I can see the disappointment in his eyes, even after all these years (or months?). I would have bro hugged you if I had known 🙁

The Logitech G13 Gamepad

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Edit: My WoW configuration is posted here if anyone is intersted.

Just a little background: I have been using the Belkin n52te and its predecessor the n52 for a number of years. It’s a great device, great functionality, pretty decent software and an okay(ish) build quality. The software though hasn’t been updated in quite some time. I don’t think that Windows 7 is listed as a supported operating system (I mean, it works fine, but still). But that aside, the computer peripheral itch hit me once again so here I am, with yet another gamepad: The Logitech G13. So, this post isn’t so much a review as it is a semi-comparison to the n52.

It is also worth noting, just as a general preface to any gamepad: These devices really shine in MMOs and perhaps PC RPGs with a crapload of buttons. After binding every single ability and overcoming the learning curve, there was a notable improvement in my performance and reaction time. It  does though take an amount of time to create a profile, bind shortcuts and learn the layout for a possibly not very long computer game. So if you are a WoW player, highly recommended, especially for classes with an enormous amount of keybindings. Other game genres like first person shooters? Not so much.

As always, with any peripheral, ergonomics will differ according to hand size and personal preference. You really need to give the G13 a test drive on a store display or at a friend’s place before purchasing it. From my experience, it is suitable for people with medium to large hands. I find the gamepad comfortable with my average sized chick hands, though I do have to awkwardly stretch my fingers over to hit the G1, G7, G8 and G14 keys. Small handed folk may want to find another alternative.

G13 itself is much more comfortable than I thought it would be. I was initially worried about it’s curvature. It is much flatter in comparison to the n52 and was under the impression that it would feel awkward or something. I am actually finding the G13 to be less of a strain after extended play periods. The palm rest is textured nicely and the flatter design is more in tune with how my hand wants to naturally rest. I have two ergonomic gripes though.

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One, I wish that the thumbstick was a bit closer. One element that I really liked about the n52’s design was how the D-pad was angled. In terms of location and distance, it sat exactly where my thumb wanted to sit. I have to stretch my thumb over a little on the G13; It’s not uncomfortable but it doesn’t feel optimal. The thumbstick’s hat is also a little small for my taste. I wish it were a little bigger.

Two, I wish that the first 2 columns of keys (G1, G2, G8, G9 and G15) were shifted downwards by perhaps a quarter of an inch. The first column of keys on the n52 are slightly lower (along the horizontal axis) than the other 4 columns, which makes sense seeing as how most human left hands have pinkies that are shorter than the other 4 fingers.

In terms of build quality, I have always been very pleased with Logitech’s peripherals.The G13 is no exception: it is a very well constructed and solid device. I mean, it has to be at least 5 times heavier than the n52. The thumbstick doesn’t creek and the paint doesn’t look like it’s going to wear off. It feels premium. My n52te still works, but there is notable wear and I am wondering if I will run into key sticking problems in the future. If the keys on the G13 are of the same make as Logitech’s gaming keyboard line then I shouldn’t have any problems. As far as the LCD goes, it’s almost identical to the LCD on the original G15 keyboard. The one thing that I really miss about the G15 LCD was the ability to see who was talking on Vent without having to tab in and out.

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Ergonomics aside, if you are already used to playing with a gamepad then there isn’t much of a learning curve. You can pretty much transfer your entire n52 layout over button for button with leftovers (the G13 has way more bindable keys). By the way, using the LUA scripting future build into the keypad software, you can even retain the n52’s shift state toggle functionality. For example, on my WoW profile (default state being M1), the G11 key will activate hotbar slot 3. When my WoW profile is set to M2, the G11 key will activate the map. I have thumb button G23 bound to momentarily shift into M2 when pressed and back to M1 when released. So in order to activate my map, all I need to do is press both G23 and G11 at the same time.

I will go over my WoW profile in a later post when I finalize it, but in a nutshell, I have combat abilities bound in M1, menu items (map, bags, talents) bound in M2 and extras like the raid icons and recount screens bound in M3. If anyone needs it, I can also post my LUA script. Oh: The thumb buttons on the G13 are a lot easier to press than the n52’s thumb button.

If I haven’t already mentioned it: The Logitech’s software is really pretty nice. It uses the same configuration program for their gaming keyboard line (as you can probably see in the screenshot). The G13 is a bit expensive for what it is, but that’s just the way it is with gaming peripherals, or so it seems. As mentioned above, try all of the gamepads out in the store before buying one. If you are impartial, you might as well just get the G13. It has better software, it’s built better and has more buttons.

If anyone is curious, size comparison:
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Minecraft: Wanderlust (and Minecarts!)

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I went on a Minecraft binge the other weekend and spent all Saturday morning searching for a dungeon spawner (or something interesting) because honestly, I haven’t really found anything noteworthy in the game for quite some time.  I was unable to find one through standard means so I started using the half-in sand/gravel x-ray vision cheat to scope out areas beneath me. No such luck. So then I generated two Cartograph maps: A normal render and a render displaying only mossy cobblestone (code 46 by the way). I overlayed the mossy image over the normal image in Photoshop and used that as a rough adventure map.

That map showed that there was a dungeon roughly between the island observation tower and the mountainside base. After searching for it for about an hour I gave up and resorted to running a standalone 3d visualizer to search for certain block types. It turns out that the dungeon was way deep and that I probably would never have found it unless I had dug a hole straight down to the baserock. I also found out that there was a dungeon literally 20 paces East of my spawn point. It was one block below the surface, go figure.

I played around with the portals more later that day. I wish that they were a bit more precise, I’ll explain: Portal A is located on the second floor of my base and leads to Point A within the Nexus. I had created another portal at Point B within the nexus, approximately 30 or so paces from Point A. Point B opens up to Portal B in the normal world. Every single top side portal that I have created leads to Point B, no matter how far out I am. I’ve tried destroying Portal B to see if that made a difference, but not so much. Portals C, D and E all link to Point B.

In the process of creating Portal C (or D), I had destroyed Portal B without bringing a compass. Instead of rebuilding and hopping back into the portal I wandered and got hopelessly lost, eventually burning down a large Forest and starting a small base in the middle of the destruction for the sake of mining enough obsidian to complete a portal that would lead me home (I didn’t want to die and lose my inventory). I turns out that the new base was located over a huge network of caves (seriously huge, I think I found Moria…). I mined enough iron to complete a lengthy cart track linking my spawn, the island tower and the mountain base. I want to link Portal C and the new base in the middle of burning forest but I ran out of iron. Here’s a video of it: