Archive for December, 2007

Farm Cry

first post in ages, and probably the first for an actual mod as opposed to one I just made up. Moddb.com is a goldmine of failed mod projects, with several bizarre and ambitious entries buried deep inside. I found this one while searching for Far Cry vehicle mods!

Farm Cry is a mod under devolpment by Toxicdream Studios.

* Gameplay is based around running a farm and competing against others online.
* Farm Cry will be round based, each round lasting a maximum of about 30 mins.
* At the start of each round every team will start with a small farm, single tractor and tools.
* More tractors, tools, crops, trailers and silo space can be brought from a shop.
* The aim of the game is to make more money than your opponents.
* Currently no single-player is planned but it is a possibility

The project is being run by ‘Butterman’ and ‘Oggy’ – aka the toxic team – and they are looking for “A scripter, Coder, and animator”

Gameplay – in depth
Each map will include atleast 2 farms (one for each team).

They will both contain a shed full of tools for planting seeds, harvesting crop and whatever else we think of. At the start of the game a shed will only contain 1 of each kind of tool ( more can be brought). Teams will start with a single tractor and a plow/seeder and possbily a harvester.

Every 5mins (aprrox) all teams harvested crop will be sold at its market price (market will be affected by how much of each crop teams are selling). Diffrent crops will grow at different rates but also will have diffrent yields.

Strategy will have a large impact on the teams successes, numbers will not be important aslong as a team keeps communication (get those mics out! :P )

At the moment we are not fully decieded on the buying system, wheather we have a single team leader or the whole team voteing on what to buy next. So please share your ideas on what we should do!

Oggy is an amazing mapper and Crytek is an amazing engine so look forward to some eye-candy.

The Story Of Farm Cry

Farm Cry started as Fun mod v2. The main aim was just to mess around with tractors on a farm. I had known Oggy from a previous mod and towards the start of March he asked for my help, at the time i wasnt sure about using Crytek for what he wanted. Oggy pointed me in the direction of Irrilichit and for 2 or 3 weeks i was working on that. Oggy came to me and said he was having serious problems mapping with Quark.

Then we had a think about other standalone engines and decieded that Far Cry was probably the way foward. So Oggy got to work making our site and forums. I started looking at endless screens of lua code, my doubts of Lua quickly vanished. After about a week of studing Crytek i slipped playing a game of football (soccer) and broke my left wrist in two places (im left handed).

Im only now recovering and i can just about type a page without problems.

Sadly, the last update was back in october 2006

We now have 3 vechiles working in game. 2 which do need a better texture, but at the moment our skinner is busy with the splash screen, so they are on the to do list.

Priorities…

We also have more than 2 new objects in the game.
These include:
1 shotgun
Gates
Fences
Bridges
Telephone box
Deck chair…
Bench
1 House
And more.

That certainly was more than 2!

In fairness, it looks like it would have been fun. It certainly would have been unique – a sort of multiplayer Harvest Moon but with tractor racing. There’s a link to a website, www.toxicdream.co.uk, but it turns out this is (now) a paintball site.

Damn Shame.

Farm Cry – R.I.P

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So Deep, The Space

Recent posts on my favorite games blog (besides this one) have brought me back to that sess pool of tragic hilarity, Deep Shadows. They have a new section up for their upcoming project, 'The Precursors', which I have quoted at length here.

Please note, any wayward? ?question ? marks?, mipslelings, or poor implements of grammar-ness are in the source material!

From http://www.deep-shadows.com/en/projects.php

Precursors. The Creators. The Legend of the Galaxy. We can only guess who of the existing races carry the genes of the Progenitors? The Worlds are endless? Beautiful, unique and dangerous. Some of them are inhabited, the others serve only as the shifting bases for the smugglers. Some worlds are in the infancy of their development evolution, while others have already collapsed.

Only when you yourself travel through these worlds, you will see burning seas and frozen skies, then you will realize the power of nature. Only then you will see corrupted politicians, unselfish patrons of the arts and brutal despots, then you will realize the truth of the society. Only then you will deep into unknown sectors of the Galaxy, face the unknown abnormalities, fly in the comet?s tail and plunge into some accidental portal ? then you will realize the endless depth of the Space.

But this is just the future. And it?s still unknown what will this journey be like ? but we can say it for sure ? such journeys will be unforgettable.

That about sums it up for me.

Only then you will deep into unknown sectors of the Galaxy, face the unknown abnormalities, fly in the comet?s tail and plunge into some accidental portal ? then you will realize the endless depth of the Space.

It’s those ‘unknown abnormalities’, and ‘accidental portal’s that make deep shadows games worth their weight in gold. or maybe potassium.

then you will realize the endless depth of the Space

So deep, the space. that no person can hear you to scream into it.

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Reset Default Folder Actions

Ok, this might not strictly be freeware, but it's free, and it's very useful at times.

If you've spent any time messing with default actions for file types or folders (in my case, trying to add "play this folder with 1by1") you'll inevitably end up with your default folder action screwed up, often searching a folder on doubleclick instead of opening it. Well, relax, because theres a very simple solution.

I came across a vbs file during a google search for a solution to this problem. The file is by Doug Knox, and available on www.dougknox.com. You can go there and download it, or you can just copy the source below into notepad and save it as whatever.vbs and run it. Et voila – your folders are fixed.

'folder_open.vbs – Fixes problem where Search opens on a double click
'© Doug Knox – 03/13/2002
'Downloaded from www.dougknox.com

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

p1 = "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\"
p2 = "none"

WshShell.RegWrite p1, p2

p1 = "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\"
WshShell.RegWrite p1, p2

X = WshShell.Run("REGSVR32 /I /S SHELL32.DLL",4,True)
Set WshShell = Nothing

MyBox = MsgBox("Folders will now Open when double clicked", 4096, "Finished!")

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XnView Shell Image Extension

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/endownloadwin32.html

Finding a decent replacement for the discontinued shell image viewer 'Picaview' has been something of a holy grail quest for me lately. I've searched and searched and searched, and even considered coding my own, probably from tutorial code off codeproject.com since i'm not a very apt C++ coder.

Lucky for me, then, that I found XnView. Image preview in the context menu is something that, to my mind, can never fully be replaced by thumbnails or image icons. My favorite file view in explorer or any file manager is the 'details' view. This view leaves little room for image previews, and if I want to get a quick look at an image, a right click is ideal. Several right click imageviewers are out there, but few match the mighty, tiny picaview that is no longer on the go. Most offer previews, but none I found ever offered PSD previews.

Until now.

XnView is actually the name of a fully fledged image viewing / editing app, but the homepage also has a download link for XnView Shell Extension, which doesn't require the full XnView to be installed. It's neat, customizable, converts images, does PSD previews, and isn't stuck needlessly in a submenu that requires extra navigation.

It's all I need in an extension viewer.

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GlarySoft Utilities

http://www.glarysoft.com/gu.html?tag=download

Right after I posted my review of Absolute Uninstaller, I got in touch with GlarySoft (the authors) about adding the 'install size' feature. They replied within the hour, telling me that they would soon be implementing that feature (although they left it up to me to decide whether I had inspired it or it was already planned). They also suggested I check out another piece of freeware they produce called Glary Utilities, which I did.

Here's the review.

Glary Utilities is a utility that incorporates a number of other small freeware apps by Glary, including the previously mentioned Absolute Uninstaller. It has loads of really useful stuff that saves you having to download other separate apps to do the same. There are probably too many things in it to list here comfortably, but screw it – I'll try.

It includes:

  • a disk cleaner utility
  • a registry cleaner
  • a shortcut fixer
  • absolute uninstaller
  • a startup manager (similar in function to msconfig, but a lot more user friendly )
  • a memory optimizer
  • a context menu manager
  • a history wiper (or privacy tool if you like)
  • a 'file shredder' for permanently deleting stuff
  • a special util just for restoring IE to the way you want it after settings are hijacked by something (for all those luddites still using it that is…)
  • an encryption suite
  • a disk space analysis tool similar to treesize but better
  • a duplicate file finder
  • an empty folder finder
  • a file splitter / joiner
  • a process manager which is better than the standard windows task manager

and finally, a link to all the windows leftovers like defragmenting and system restore

Theres a free version that never expires, and a paid upgrade. The free version does ALL the stuff I just listed. The paid version also does some trojan and spyware blocking, lets you schedule operations, and probably gives you back massages and cleans up around the house aswell.

This is an amazing set of utilities, many of which were already available to pc users, but not in a collection this neat, and not this well designed. It's clear that a lot of thought and care has gone into designing the interface, which is  something that's often skipped over, or ignored.  Take the process manager for example.

side by side screenshot of GlaryUtilities' Process Manager and Windows Task Manager

The first thing you'll probably notice is the colour. the GU version has icons for whatever processes have icons, and a color bar showing a rating of how intense the processes are. Under the number in the CPU usage column it shows a tiny, constantly updated bar-chart, if thats your thing. It more columns you can add, like process start date or company, and it even has a ‘google it’ so you can look up a process you’re not sure about straight away.

Glary Utilities is a fabulous collection of utilities for all kinds of situations. I only have two criticisms of it. The interface they've gone for on the dashboard doesn't resemble a typical windows app, which is both good and bad. Good in that it's very funky looking, bad in that I, at least, have an immediate distrust of apps that look like that. A lot of apps I've seen that deviate from the windows standard tend to be a bit dodgy, ie either unstable or a plain old spyware. Thankfully this is not the case with Glary Utilities, but I can see people being hesitant to give it a go because of this interface choice. That's criticism number one. Criticism number 2 is that it's missing a defragmenter, a strange absence given all the other apps that are included.

Overall Glary Utilities is an excellent package that combines loads of useful utilities into one neat solution, making it essential freeware.

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