Westfront PC The Trials of Guilder

While cleaning out some old USB sticks I found one where I backed up all my 3 inch floppies before throwing out the last computer that had drive to run them.

Among tons of things I forgot about, there is a copy of one of the first games I owned, Westfront PC The Trials of Guilder.

To run it on my computer today I have to use DOSBox.

I still remember where I got stuck in it. Yeah, I never beat it. I was supposed to 'appease the wolf'. Nobody on any of BBS's I frequented had a clue what this game was, nor how to appease the wolf, there was no place to look it up, so I set it aside and forgot all about it for all these years.

I Googled the name of the game to find how to appease the wolf, or at least read a summary of what actually happens in the game, and found this page:

http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yurg8ah4pdcapc5g

This game is now in public domain (used to be shareware). You can download it at that link for free.

Edit: I just found out that Paul Allen Panks, the creator of Westfront PC The Trials of Guilder died back in 2009, 5 years ago. More specifically I found out about it by reading this:
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2063

I was not aware of anything he said/did other than this one game. And as it seems that there were lot of people who disliked him and as he is not around to defend himself, I feel need to add this here as well. I cannot post on that page as it does not seem to have a comment box any more, but I can clone post that I wholeheartedly agree with that somebody else posted and that reflects how I feel about it today:

Thank you Paul.

BEST MMO IDEA EVER (I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST THO)

While back I was thinking how great it would be to play MMO that actually replica of Earth, but perhaps in Fallout-like setting, or Shadowrun. I prefer Shadowrun setting, as much as recent Shadowrun games butchered it, but Fallout setting would be far easier to manage.

Years went by, and as I am not game developer but a gamer, nothing came of that MMO idea. Until now.

Randomly today I  chanced upon these guys:
http://rerollgame.com/

If they make it, it will be like dream come true for anybody into this type of thing.

First part is set for release at some point mid next year (2015), and as Elder Scrolls Online just made me lose hope in gaming companies actually producing what they promise, I'll defer my judgement on this until I see what they wind up creating.

The IDEA of it tho, is where gaming companies should be aiming. Create worlds, not dozen crappy, empty zones. Populate those worlds with players, not with stupid AI. And then let me PK all those carebears and noobs in that world without repercussion, and let them try to do the same to me.

ESO going F2P or shutting off servers

Its a prediction.

And I'd like to say, before anything else, that anybody who purchased Elder Scrolls Online is financing regurgitated garbage that these wannabe developers are throwing out. You should be ashamed! Crap like ESO should be denied support, people who got to make decisions which resulted in failure and waste of resourced should be blacklisted and never be left in charge of anything again. By being complacent you are getting exactly what you deserve: garbage.

Anybody that knows me knows that finances are a non issue for me. I buy several games each month and whether game has cash shop or subscription, or both, if I like it, I'll support it.

But when I play MMO, it is not just about me and my own likes and dislikes. MMO's are also about community and population. You cannot do 60 man raid if there are only 40 people playing on your entire server at any one time.

That is why Warhammer Online failed. I actually got two free copies from two different friends who each preordered extra copy because they wanted me in their guilds. They were on different servers so I joined both as I was touched by the gestures. At first it was ok, but then I got to mid-range levels and most quests seemed to be designed for groups, but there were no groups. I tend not to play during primetime. Solidly populated MMO has people around 24/7, average one just has people during 4-6 busy hours. I guess if I was not there to play with friends I could have switched to different timezone servers, like Oceanic ones, where their primetime would be dead hours when I have free time. When population starts to dwindle, its a ripple effect, it does not get better without outside influence, such as promotion, new xpac, etc. Whoever was making final decisions for WAR was simply incompetent as far as promoting and running a MMO goes. So many people on WoW servers saw WAR as WoW Killer that WAR should have succeeded by default.

Free Elder Scrolls Online Beta Weekend Codes!!!

Raptr Giveaway.

It costs 10 points, which basically means play one game with Raptr running.

More info here:
http://raptr.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31637

Weekend ENDS March 16th 11:59pm EDT, it starts 14th noon, so if you want to try ESO, heres your chance, don't miss it.

Good luck.

Fallout 3: Fix for freeze/crash on Quadcore

I just installed Fallout 3 GOTY on my newly built power rig running Windows 7 64 bit (I actually got Windows 8.1 free but uninstalled it same day I tried it. I'll wait for Windows 9 to move on up from 7) and it froze dozen times before I could even get to B-Day Party.

Here is solution that worked for me:

In My Documents/My Games/Fallout3 folder there is fallout.ini file that needs to be slightly modified

CTRL+F bUseThreadedAI=0 and change that to bUseThreadedAI=1
then hit Enter, and on next line place
iNumHWThreads=1

Save and you're done.

Hearthstone: Opening 146 Expert Packs and odds of what you will receive

Its split into 2 videos, first one was supposed to be 40, but due to unforeseen circumstances recording starts with 26 packs remaining:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MsoCcVElU

And second video is opening 3x40 packs (I was looking for specific Legendaries, not getting them I simply acquired more packs until I was able to disenchant for dust to get what I was after):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbwRFmOhDgw

If you are curious, odds are about 1 Legendary per 40 packs. I got 5 in 120 but I did open about 100 other packs earlier from gold rewards, my first purchase which was $3 just to get gold Legendary Beta Promo, etc, and I kept track of #'s of rarities acquired overall.

Now, I also found info where they claim actual odds are:

Hearthstone: #1 Ranked Player's Supposed Decklist

I am far from pro at Hearthstone at this point, but I did win number of tournaments for Magic The Gathering and honestly these games are very similar to each other. So as I was curious about metagame at top of the ranked play I found decklist posted by Railedlol who Blizzard themselves listed as #1 on list of top 50 ranked players. Perhaps game was different when he got that place, maybe ton of things changed since, but I just don't see this deck doing all that well. He is Australian and apparently tried to have stream, but when I found link to that as well, he does not appear to be streaming at all. Cause stated was 'Australia has bad internet', me living in North America cannot confirm nor deny that.

Here is decklist:

Hearthstone Hidden Quest List

Here’s the entire list of hidden quests in Hearthstone:

• Complete a game in play mode – Award: 1 booster pack
• Unlock every hero – Award: 100 gold
• Get any class to level 10 – Award: 1 booster pack
• Win 100 games in any mode – Award: 300 gold
• Win 1,000 games in any mode – Award: 300 gold
• Defeat all expert AI – Award: 100 gold
• Disenchant a card – Award: 95 Arcane Dust
• Enter the arena – Award: Free arena entry
• Own every pirate card – Award: Captain’s Parrot
• Own every golden pirate card – Award: Golden Captain’s Parrot
• Own every Murloc card – Award: Old Murk-Eye
• Own every golden Murloc card – Award: Golden Old Murk-Eye
• Make a real money purchase in the game – Award: Golden Gelbin Mekkatorque (beta only)
• Collect every card in the basic set (all classes to level 10) – Award: 100 gold
• Collect every card in the expert set – Award: 100 gold
• 
  
Thanks to Vedmak.

How to completely uninstall Punkbuster

Get tool from this link:

http://www.evenbalance.com/downloads/pbsvc/pbsvc.exe

Run it. Done.

Free League of Legends Tristana and Alistar + some skins

Simple.

For Alistar:
http://youtube.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/youtube#

For Tristana:
http://woobox.com/potb6z
or
https://na.leagueoflegends.com/facebook

How to Install League of Legends WITHOUT PANDO Media Booster

I detest garbage like Pando Media Booster. Its used by companies to steal your bandwidth to save themselves money. Its torrent client, but without any settings you, the consumer, can change easily. If you are paying for your bandwidth that can result in rather large, yet unexpected, bill from your internet service provider.

Basically it uses your upload bandwidth to seed, send to others that are trying to download. It is despicable disregard for customers by any company that uses it. If I cannot find download without crap malware like Pando I simply skip game involved.

Anyway, if you want to download League of Legends and need links to clean installs, here they are:

North America:
http://l3cdn.riotgames.com/Installer/SingleFileInstall/LeagueOfLegendsBaseNA.exe

Europe West:
http://l3cdn.riotgames.com/Installer/SingleFileInstall/LeagueOfLegendsBaseEUW.exe

Europe Nordic and East:
http://l3cdn.riotgames.com/Installer/SingleFileInstall/LeagueOfLegendsBaseEUNE.exe

After you click on one of these 20 MB installers they will install crap-free League of Legends game whose patcher will then download 800 mb-2gb (whatever its at now) rest of the game.

If you wish to use torrents, learn how to use them, how to control your upload speed and how to turn them off when you want. Do not use garbage like Pando as there is no sane reason to do so. If you already made a mistake and have Pando installed, uninstall it.

TERA Rising: Issues with creating new account and downloading: Easy fixes

This blackscreen thing actually never happened to me previously, so its bit strange, but in case you experience similar issue this might help.

I was trying to create account with Enmasse so I can try Tera MMO. However, all I would see is webpage with black page, nothing on it. I tried Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, Avant, and got same result with each.

What got me through to signup page was using TOR browser, which is available here:

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

I received email followup, confirmed account creation, and then encountered another issue. Game uses something for streaming which did not want to play nice with my antivirus and firewall. So, what did work was torrent of it found here:

http://support.enmasse.com/tera/downloading-tera-via-torrent

I was also pleasantly surprised with quick, friendly response on Twitter by somebody from Enmasse, and even got a chance to try their customer support which quickly dealt with minor issue.

Now off to actually try gameplay.

They do not make them like they used to

Few weeks ago I picked up some games I used to play decade or so ago from GOG and Steam.

Master of Magic, which I never actually owned as full version previously. What I had was magazine promo 3 inch diskette with demo version of Master of Magic. Due to free time limitations I was under back then I never even got my fill of that demo. So it stayed as something on my 'to do' list, to be done when I get a chance.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate 2 with Throne of Bhaal, also Enhanced Edition, from Steam. While I did actually play sequel quite a bit, all I got to see of first one is Candlekeep. It was during 30 minutes prior to 8-man team match of some FPS, I do not remember which one it was, and as we were in LAN internet cafe and waiting for couple guys to arrive, we were checking out some other games. Among others, I saw Baldur's Gate, and did not expect much as previous computer DnD games I tried (stuff from 80's) were pretty bad from my point of view. RPG's I played back then were on Sega Master System (Y's and Phantasy Star), Nintendo, Super Nintendo, then Playstation, which was last system I bothered to buy as I switched exclusively to PC gaming as of 97.

Need For Speed Rivals

Need For Speed: Rivals. Great looking game, horrible controls on PC. Why let some monkey unaware of existence of MOUSE on PC do the conversion from console to PC?

Kongregate Rise of Mythos (formerly Kings and Legends) Beast pack Codes

Rise of Mythos is an online collectible card game/strategy mixture available at several different locations. This is promotion for US West (which includes East USA and Canada) and EU Severs on Kongregate.

This First Beast Pack includes: Rare Griffyn Card, Rare Redstone Nid Card & Beast Package

Free $20 Might & Magic: Duel of Champions Starter Box

At time of writing there are just over 1500 codes remaining.

Your Starter Box Includes (120 Cards – 10 Packs of 12 Cards Each):

o 80 Commons
o 30 Uncommons
o 10 Rares or Epics
o 12 Chances at Premium Cards
o 12 Chances at Wildcards

Gotham City Impostors : DEAD

I was actually contemplating buying it, based on three matches I got to play few days ago. However, today I kept trying to get a match going for several hours while doing other things in-between, and ... long story short, there was not a single person in matchmaking other than me.

Its too bad that Warner Brothers had rights to this game as I can see more intelligent companies making it into profitable venture. Yeah, I'll blame Warner Brothers as main reason Gotham City Impostors failed to be long term profit venture.

Kickstarter, Elemental Labs and Reborn

I already posted about this on Facebook, but I guess since I have this blog, I should post stuff on it here and there as well. Ever get this feeling that there are just too many social media outlets that it becomes too time consuming to keep up with them all?

Text from my Facebook: