Game-play

You take on the role of Tactics, a shapeform – human, that controls vatforms – organisms created from cloned human tissue. Vatforms are dumb, their cognitive capabilities are mostly limited to basic reflexes and simple logic. However, they are good for more dangerous tasks, such as combat. Operating in the city of Markov Geist you will face 55 single player missions. All the missions are placed in a sort of urban environment immersed in The Shape. A virtual reality system that was created from complicated computer networks with the combination of technology and biological computing.

If you don’t like games that use dice, games of chance, then you will love Frozen Synapse. Combat system in Frozen Synapse is completely deterministic. The same conditions will always result in the same end result. At first you are presented with the intial tactical situation and you begin planning your turn. Keep in mind that your opponent will be doing the very same thing.

When you plan your turn, you can simulate what will your opponent do, play that scenario and decide if you like the outcome.

Planning your move

Simulating opponent's move

Checking the result

In the above example you can clearly see that running straight into a machine gunner isn’t such a good idea. That is why we need to rethink the whole plan. In the second try I used a rocket launcher to fire a shot at the enemy and then used the same unit to distract an enemy machine gun for a fraction of a second. My shotgun unit was able to take cover behind the square object in the middle.

Alternative approach

Your only limit is your imagination. Two important things that matter in the outcome are kill time and range. How long does it take one unit to fire a killing shot? Unit that is moving will take more time to fire than a unit that is standing still and a standing unit will take more time to fire than an aiming unit. With range, aiming time will increase and the time to fire a killing shot will also increase. A unit standing behind the cover will be harder to hit and a unit ducking behind the cover will be invisible.

Unit types

There are five unit types, named by the weapon they carry

• Shotgun
• Machine gun (an assault rifle would probably be better name, but who am I to argue? ;))
• Sniper rifle
• Rocket launcher
• Grenade launcher

They are ordered by the time it takes them to fire. Rockets and grenades take the same time, but they differ slightly from other weapons. Vatforms will not fire them automatically unless you instruct them. Rockets will destroy the walls and obstacles and will only explode when they hit one, grenades have bigger splash damage and will bounce off the walls.

Units that are ducking or aiming will move much slower so make sure you turn off aiming and tell your units to stand up when you want them to be somewhere quickly. Duck and cover when you’re moving in front of the windows and keep in mind that line of sight of a unit that is not in front of the window (and looking out) is narrower than when you’re in front of it.

Verdict?

Frozen Synapse is an excellent game if you like turn based tactical games that require a lot of thinking, simulations and failed attempts untill you get the hang of it. Many times it will happen that all your planning was completely useless because you overlooked a doorway through which and enemy will slaughter half of your units in the blink of an eye. Sure, you can always restart, but you can restart only from the beginning of the game and the map is different each time you restart. Bummer. ;)

Frozen Synapse is what indie gaming is all about. Great games with a simple idea, simple graphics, awesome music (make sure you get the version with a soundtrack) and excellent game-play.

With numerous single player missions, a multiplayer mode in which you can play in ‘real-time’ or ‘over the email’, ranking system for online players and an ability to publish all your games instantly to YouTube, Frozen Synapse is a winner.

Go indie games!

Little is known about the game. Apparently it is a FPS and MMORPG hybrid. CCP’s creative director in charge of Dust 514, Atli Mar, calls it Persistent Shooter. Shooter because basically it is a first person shooter and persistent because it will have you coming back for more by combining elements of FPS and MMORPG and giving console players the unique experience in the world of EVE OnLine.

Game will be exclusive to PS3 owners! Although some near sighted bloggers may write “Suck on that XBox lovers!”, my personal opinion is that CCP weighted their choices between console platforms and decided that Sony’s infrastructure and their PSN game deployment model is most suitable with the business model that CCP has with EVE OnLine servers.

From my understanding Dust 514 will have in-game economic model that is similar to EVE OnLine model. As in EVE ISK will be used to buy equipment. New monetary unit already introduced in EVE called AUR – Aurum representing real money will also be available. Reading between the lines of Dust 514 blog – equipment available for ISK will not give the same edge to players as equipment bought with AUR. It is also indicated that skill, production and research model similar to EVE will be available in DUST.

DUST is all about putting your corporation on the DUST/EVE map.  Yes players from EVE will be able to play in DUST and vice-versa. But DUST will not be about space battles like EVE. It will be about planetary battles and planetary conquest. Two games coexisting in the same universe, corporations fighting for prestige, pilots fighting for space supremacy while mercenaries are doing the grunt work on the ground. Corporation wipe-out and takeover, +1 for the winner, AUR and ISK loss for the loser.

CCP and Sony are proclaiming availability in Summer 2012. For now watch enjoy the trailer.

The problem lies in the libasound which is bundled with the game. The solution is pretty much trivial, just get rid of those libraries. If you installed the game as root for all users then do this for Shadowgrounds:

# cd /usr/local/games/shadowgrounds/lib32/
# rm libasound*

And this for Shadowgrounds: Survivor:

# cd /usr/local/games/survivor/lib32/
# rm libasound*

Or if you are afraid that you’ll break something, move libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so and libasound.so.2 out of the lib32 directory.

Run the game, enjoy the sound. :)

Volley Brawl will not change much in this perspective, but it does suck less. You will get this exclusive Ubuntu title for a measly $2.99. How to get it? Open Ubuntu Software Center, select For Purchase and you’ll find it there. Payment is processed through your Ubuntu One account and in couple of minutes the game will install itself and appear in the Applications | Games menu.

Getting it is easy

Simple and funny 2D graphics makes the game pleasant to the eye. Volley in its simplest form where two sprites (players) are trying to put another sprite (ball) over the net and score a point. It reminds me of pimped up Pong. A game that I played for hours when I was much younger. 8 bit music background lightens up the mood. Tunes are nice and melodic, but just like with every other silly game you get tired of them pretty soon. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to include a dozen more tunes for a little variety.

Rebel taking care of lunch...

The game supports multiplayer mode over the internet and over the local network. I tried the internet mode, but  couldn’t find any players for a long time. After I found one, the game refused to connect. Probably firewall issues, port forwarding and such.

Volley Brawl was developed by Sigmoid (a terrible choice for a name, I failed at googling them, hints are welcome) and published by Ohso that brings us OMG Ubuntu.

Bugs?

I managed to find a few bugs. The most annoying one was with the game losing focus and going into pause mode if you pressed print screen. The ability to take screenshots was almost impossible in Ubuntu running Gnome. If I managed to capture the in-game screen without pause window then sprites on the screen were usually corrupted because of the screen redraw. Half of the steak was on the left side of the field and the other half on the right side. Note to developers: F12 is a standard print screen key in some games, make it work! It shouldn’t be too hard. :)

Who will win?

If I used volume slider on my keyboard, game lost focus and paused. This might be related with Ubuntu notification boxes popping up and stealing focus (which they shouldn’t do).

Lastly, if games loses focus during initial count down it won’t go into pause mode.

There's the answer.

Under the hood

As someone that used to tinker with graphics and game programming, I just had to dig into this game. I didn’t read a thing about it, so digging was the only way to get to know it better.

Volley Brawl is built upon LÖVE, a framework for writing 2D games in LUA, an MIT licensed scripting language used in many applications. I counted a little bit more than 3500 lines of code for Volley Brawl. It is a rather simple game, but the count number is still impressively low. The game does support network play. AI player (that is sometimes really hard to beat) is controlled by 34 lines of code. Being replaced by a small shell script isn’t just a funny one-liner that you used in your email signatures few years back.

I missed

I missed more slimes. Slimes are characters that play volley brawl, sprites that represent players. Avatars, some people call them. There are no female slimes, that was a disappointment. A big one. There is no whale shaped slime, here I’m just playing favorites.

Custom names would be awesome!

No input fields to enter your name, I didn’t want to be Player 1 all the time, so boring. AI players should get random names based on the character you pick. So, Awesome could be Joey or Benjamin, Communist would be Ivan or Sergey and Rebel would be Trash or Nitro and so on and so on…

Whales rock! ;)

Maybe animated slimes would make things a bit more entertaining, but you get bored with them and it is the same with repetitive music.

The verdict

I’m not keeping score here, so I’ll just say that the game was fun and enjoyable. With less than three bucks I had at least few hours of fun. Especially after I did a little bit of hacking. If you are looking for a ‘killer game for Linux’ then Volley Brawl is not your thing. On the other hand, if you are looking for something to kill some time, go for it.

Disclaimer: Whale icon that I used in-game was found on Google. I just slapped Afro’s eyes on it. I don’t have any copyrights for that picture. I stole it, or something. And I probably violated half a dozen DMCA laws by modifying a game. Good thing that I live in some third world country, right? ;)

Installing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on your PC is not a very difficult task, but reinstalling it is a completely different story. A story full of surprises, disappointments and breath-taking moments. Fortunately the story has a happy ending. Let’s start from the beginning.

In a land far, far away (Slovenia, Europe), not so long ago, lived a wise man who installed Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The wise man was happy with it and they would live happily ever after if some computer didn’t decide to die. The game was no more and the wise man had to buy a new computer. When he got his computer it was also time to reinstall the game. He tried to do so, but surprisingly to his disappointment the game barfed with an error: Game already registered.

Confused and flabbergasted he decided to contact Electronic Arts support team with a simple request.

I have reinstalled my game and I would like to receive my activation key.
Thank you.

Electronic Arts was not so keen on providing the answer, who would blame them, they didn’t know if he really had purchased the game. The strange thing was that they should have this information. After all, I used to play with him and I know he was logged in with a legit account. So Daryl from EA wanted to know his full name, EA account name and the date of birth.

He gladly provided him with the info they requested. This story would be much shorter if EA would provide with the registration key for the game. They didn’t their response was a bit surprising:

Hello,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

We have searched information provided by you and found that you have not previously registered the game.We can only assist you If you have previously registered your game through our electronic registration site. However if you wish you can purchase a new Registration code/Serial number/CD from our warranty department, please mail our Warranty department the following information:

-The [Proof of Purchase] page from the manual, or if that is not available the game disk. Note: If you send the game disk, please send it using a traceable method, as Electronic Arts is not responsible for products lost in transit.
-A letter explaining that you need a replacement serial number.
-A money order for $10.00 USD.
-Note: We do NOT accept cash, checks, or credit cards.
-Include full contact information:
-First and Last Name
-Return Address (Including City, State, and Zip Code)
-Phone Number
-E-mail Address
You must mail in your request to the following address:

Electronic Arts Warranty Department
9001 N I-35 Suite 110
Austin, TX 78753

Once all of the information has been received, our Warranty Department will process your request and e-mail as well as standard mail you a serial number. If you mailed the game disks to us, the disks will be returned to you shortly. NOTE: If you fail to include all of the requested items, it will prevent us from processing your request. If you have any further questions feel free to respond to this email for assistance.

We look forward for your reply.

Thank you,
Gabriel,
EA Online Support.

Money order? A letter? Manual page or game disk? But, but? The game was a digital download purchase, there were no disks involved. Can’t they simply look up in their database who purchased the game, when and how? Oh, I forgot. They couldn’t find that record. Okay, so they need a proof. Let’s try something, let’s try this:

Dear Gabriel,

Thank you for your response. Let me clarify things a little bit. I bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2, online on May 29th 2010 at GamesPlanet.com. I attached the confirmation email (in two parts) that contains my activation key and all the relevant data. I also attached my PayPal receipt which should serve as a proof of my payment.

When I bought the game, I successfully installed it and played it for several months. I used this EA account that I am using now, for support, and my in-game character name is “Joe Blow Average”. The information I already provided you with.

Because of the hardware failure data on my previous computer was not salvageable and I lost game installation and other game data. I bought a new computer and I tried to reinstall the game, but I keep getting an error that my activation key was already registered.

Because I have a broken computer I am unable to un-register my previous installation.

I do not need new medium, new serial number or anything. I just need someone to un-register my current game registration so that I can reinstall it on my new computer. The game was bought as a digital download and License Agreement doesn’t specify anything about single, one-time, installation.

Please resolve this as quickly as possible.

Some relevant data that already have, but you might require it again:

Address:
Some place …
Slovenia, Europe
Phone: ….
Email: ….

We all kept our fingers crossed and hopes were high. Archangel Gabriel from EA please don’t disappoint us! The answer came in the form of Greg, EA supporter who responded to the mail:

Hello,

Thank you for writing back to us here at Electronic Arts. I have gone ahead and have made an exception for you. I have generated a new code for BFBC 2.

“XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”

Please use the same code to go online and to register your game.
If issue persist please uninstall your game and reinstall with the new key.

Answer Title: Manual uninstall of Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Answer Link: http://help.eastore.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2274

If there is anything else we can help you with please let us know.

Thank you,
Greg
EA Online Support

The whole procedure actually worked, but the wise man lost his character data and all the experience points that he used to have.

The moral of the story? Buy a 100% reliable computer and DRM will not cause you trouble. No, wait. This doesn’t exactly compute and throws a Syntax Error.

Here at Three Wise Men we decided that we will respect copyrights and that we don’t like piracy. In this world you need to pay to play, at least for now. Unfortunately game publishers are sometimes making it impossible for us to play (even if we paid!), because of the piracy and because of their downright silly copy protection mechanisms.

Dear users, please restrain yourself from violating copyrights, you are making things harder for those who actually pay to play. Fight the evil publishers by supporting indie authors, buy that awesome World Of Goo (and others) instead of copying it!

And dear publishers and authors, please try to realize that we do live in 21st century and we really don’t need that DVD in the drive to actually play the game. If more content is available online and we will be able to purchase it with a single click of the mouse, things will be easier for us and for you. Fight the piracy with common sense and modernization of your business model. We are one of those people who are willing to pay for your content, but we can’t.

“Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States” — Hulu.com
“We’re not sure you will be able to sign up for Netflix from your area.” — Netflix.com
“We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S.” — Pandora.com

Slider image taken by WordRidden.

If you have a PC version you could try few things and the game will work better. Don’t worry, this won’t eliminate your problems it will help a little.

Open folder \Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty black ops\players then look for the config_mp.cfg file and open it with a text editor. Notepad is not a good idea since the file is in ‘unix text’ format and notepad doesn’t support that. Better user Wordpad or some other text editor.

Look for the following options:

• r_multiGpu – set it to 0 if you have only one graphics card.
• r_multithreaded_device – set it to 1 if you have more than more than one CPU. Core2Duo and Core2Quad fall also into this category.
• cl_maxpackets – set it to 100 or so, depending on your uplink speed. The higher the uplink speed, the higher the number, but don’t go much higher than 100, it won’t help and don’t go below 30.

So much for the game settings. Beside this, you could also disable in game steam community and syncing with steam cloud.

Steam settings for Call of Duty: Black Ops

Int he video below you can see the performance before any changes to the game settings. Then configuration file was fixed and few changes were made in game to the graphics settings. The result is not perfect, but it is much better than what we started with.

It is finally out, the new Sid Meier‘s Civilization V, time to call in sick, take a long unpaid vacation and stock yourself with caffeine, you will need it. Civilization V is everything that you expected. Still the same as Civilization I, but so much different that you want to play it anyway. My first run was few days after the North American release date (here in Europe we always get screwed, one way or the other). I have to admit, last Civilization that I played was Civilization II, I still should have the original box somewhere and the big technology tree poster that was taped to the wall while I was playing the game. Now, all I have is an email with an activation number. So sad, but in a way also thrilled, because after I received that email it too my slow internet link only four hours to get the game. So in 4am I had it in my grasp, installed on my computer. Twenty eight hours later, I am writing a review. Read on if you want to know more about the game play and the changes in this release. I won’t go easy on the bugs either. Screenshots will be provided.

The Game

So, what has changed in twenty years? After running the game I was asked if I wanted to run it in DirectX9 or DirectX10/11 mode. I decided for the latter, recommended, option. The short intro movie was beautiful, and if it weren’t for the rigid, early Star Trek like, moving of the actors, I would think that those were real people. Great rendering. Without much hesitation I started building my Russian empire, the influence of the eastern block is still strong in this part of the world. I became Catherine or Katarina.

If you played any of the previous Civilization games, you will know how to play Civilization V, yes, it is that easy. With few minor changes. For example, Civics government system is gone, finally. Now you have social policies, which can be bought with cultural points. Social policies can be upgraded and added on top of another and their effect is cumulative. Of course you can’t adopt all of them, because some of them are exclusive.  You can’t really have freedom and autocracy even if you really want it.

As usual cities are the more important part of the game, you will want to found as many of them as you can, just make sure that your gold income doesn’t drop too much early in the game. Cities are now a bit more active during the fights, they can bombard enemy units. Also now, you can garrison only one military unit, I remember this being different in previous games. Each city has hit points that are increased by building various buildings, walls, castle, fort or military base. City resources are still controllable and micromanagement of the cities is still the same. Cities can spread a little further out and you can buy adjacent tiles to the cities.  Money is a bit more important than it used to be, it can help your city grow and expand quite quickly. What to do with enemy cities? You can annex them, you can raze them and you can made them into puppet cities. Annexed cities will become a part of your empire just as any other cities. Make sure you build a courthouse there, to remove the unhappy faces. Puppet cities will generate income, production, science and culture, but you don’t have any control over them. So you can end up with a puppet city that has a massive production, but people are starving there. You can annex puppet cities at any time later in the game.

The Combat

Aha, improvements and changes! Movement grid is no longer square, it is hexagonal! Battle Tech or Panzer General style hexes. No more unit stacking with the exception of Generals. Units cost much more than they used to, so they will be more valuable to you. Especially because they gain experience points and levels. When leveling, units gain special benefits. From automatic healing, to bonuses when attacking on rough terrain, when attacking from water and when attacking cities or fortified units. Did we finally got rid of ‘Phalanx defeats tank‘ phenomenon? I don’t know. They promised that we did.

I did notice a really annoying thing with ranged units. Archers, cannons, artillery sometimes didn’t want to attack a city from a range. Cannons and artillery have to be in a special ranged attack mode and even if I put them into that mode, the unit will still drive to the target and attack it in a melee mode. I am sure there is a reason for that, right? Authors say that it is more important to have less and more skilled units than a big number of units. Which is true, with no-stacking penalty it is harder to attack a city with a larger number of units and you will see that a level five unit will decimate a level one unit.

Another new thing are City States. Independent single cities that are actually small, non-expanding civilizations and can sometimes have a bigger influence on the game. I attacked all city states on my continent which resulted in all other city states declared war against me. I got to the “you attacked too many city states and this state will never make peace with you” point. City states can also form other treaties and if they form an alliance with your arch-enemy it can prevent you of conquering a state that is in the way.

The Resources

Many, many, many of them. The worst part is that citizens will demand some of them! “We demand pearls!” “We demand silk!” and so on and so on. Those are luxury resources that make people happy. Then there are other resources that are needed for military, iron and uranium, for example. I can imagine attacking a City State for 2 units of iron, to increase my army output, but when I go to war with a neighboring civilization and wipe them out just because my citizens demanded ivory and I had none. Well, that just makes things more interesting and fun. Fighting over those sugar plantations and wine yards!

In short, manage your recourses wisely, bonus resources will benefit your food growth, production or income, luxury resources will make people happy and strategic resources will buff up your army. Sugar or uranium, happy citizens or atomic bomb for your neighbor?

The End and the bugs

Together with the intro movie, the graphics is quite amazing. My old Nvidia 8800 GTS was choking in DirectX 10/11 mode at 5-7 FPS, however the game was still quite playable. After I switched to DirectX 9 mode everything was running much smoother at 30-60FPS. I am happy to report that making the game prettier didn’t ruin the game play. All the attack animations can be turned off when you decide that you need to speed up your game pace. All the changes that were introduced seem to fit right in, multiplayer (still untested by me) will need to prove itself. I have rather mixed feelings about long going multiplayer games. I played only one multiplayer game of Sins of a Solar Empire, not turned based and takes hours to finish. I’ll probably never finish that game.

My complaints are these: Map warping – unit jumping. When you are finished with one unit, map will scroll to the next unit that is waiting for orders and that unit will be selected. This happens with a certain delays before the previous unit is deselected and map starts scrolling. You will end up sending a unit on a far away mission and you won’t even know about it.

Saving the game is a pain. Sometimes. It happened on several occasions that I wasn’t able to save the game. Only quick save was working. I had enough disk space, there was no error message, save button didn’t do a thing even if I frantically clicked on it. Nothing. I was partially rescued with they “Save to Steam cloud” option. This new feature allows you to save the game in a Steam cloud and then continue on some other computer. It might come handy someday. I miss an option to make online save games available to public or friends on Steam, great for sharing save games.

In the conclusion, make sure you ask your neighbor to water your plants, feed your cat and pick up your mail, you will be busy.

Final verdict: I give the game a solid nine out of ten. :)

PS: Due to the lack of sleep, I skipped the proof reading, kthxbai.

Prerequisites

You will need one PS3 (for obvious reasons), you will also need a username and a password for accessing your router. Make sure that you set your PS3 Internet settings correctly. The easy way to do this is to set everything on automatic then configure your router appropriately.

Router setup

Make sure that DHCP is enabled, if you are using default configuration of DD-WRT then this should already be the case. To be on a safe side, select the Setup tab and then Basic Setup. DHCP type should be set to DHCP Server.

Now you will need to set a fixed IP for your Playstation. Make sure your Playstation is turned off. Open the Status | LAN tab in the menu and you will see the screen similar to this:

Now turn on your Playstation and wait for it to boot and connect to the Internet. Then refresh Status | LAN tab and a new DHCP client should appear:

You can click on the MAC address that appeared and a popup will open telling you that this segment of addresses belongs to Sony. If you have no other Sony devices that are connected to your router, this is your Playstation. Copy this number and select the Services tab in the menu.

Now you need to add PS3 MAC address to the Static Leases table:

Click Save at the bottom of the page and then Apply Settings. You can now power cycle your PS3 to confirm that it got the correct IP from DHCP server. Now, we can move on with configuring th actual NAT.

The easy way

Just enable UPnP like Sony suggests. This usually works, but not all the time, as I mentioned before. You can turn on your UPnP settings in NAT/QoS | UPnP tab. It shoud look like this:

If you don’t get the NAT Type: Type 2 connection with UPnP or you don’t have a router that supports it then you will have to do this the hard way.

The hard way

Sony clearly states which ports PS3 needs for communication with Sony servers and which ones it needs for games and audio/video chat. Many guides will tell you to forward ports 80, 443 and 5223. You do not need to forward those ports and it is wrong to do so! Those ports need to be open for outgoing traffic, they are used for Playstation Store and Playstation Network. Most router software, including DD-WRT, will come with all ports open for outgoing traffic. You shouldn’t be concerned about this. Sony also mentions UDP ports 3478, 3479 for Playstation Network, but I believe that those do not require forwarding.

For voice, video and gaming, Playstation will use UDP port 3658, this port needs to be forwarded, because games will try to connect directly to your Playstation. Open NAT/QoS | Port forwarding tab and add another port forwarding rule. You will need to supply the correct IP of your console. Check the Enabled box, click Save and Apply Settings.

Now when you select  Settings | Network Settings | Internet Connection test on your Playstation, the screen should look similar to this:

Livestream’s Procaster was the first thing we tried and while we had some trouble at first it picked up rather nicely and the overall quality was decent enough.

Procaster supports streaming of any Direct3D game together with sound and in the free version you can mix output of your web camera and your screencast. We also had some trouble with the sound being recorded from the camera and we needed few minutes to figure out how to turn off the extra sound input. Here is some room for improvement, an audio mixer that can be controlled while streaming.

All in all, the broadcasting was an interesting experience and we are likely to do some more screencasts in the future. We were pleasantly surprised with the recording of our video. If you missed it and you are not bored with pirate oriented adventure games you can watch our screencast below.

For more information check out official site, Follow RRunner or BigWhale on twitter for more up to date information.