Gonna Settle in for Some Light Reading

 http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/ATI_Stream_SDK_OpenCL_Programming_Guide.pdf

Which will actually be pretty neat I think.

-Liam

The End of a Journey

Tonight, my friends, I feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment, but also a small sadness.   I am filled with a mixture of emotions and it is difficult to put this into words, so here is a picture.

What is depicted there is the end credits of the Throne of Ball and in essence the Baldur's Gate Series.  I started at the first game and took my party through to very end of last expansion.  From level 1 to 37 the same team stuck together and pulled through till then end.  Minsc the berzerker, Mazzy Fenton The halfing with heart, Imeon the happy go lucky turned very troubled Bhaalspawn and Viscinia the drow priestess of a dark god.  Together we actually managed to conquer all: Sarevok, Bodhi, John Irenicus and -spoiler?- Melissan.

and countless dragon

All in all, I could not tell you how long I played these games, but on and off again over the course of years, I've finally managed to bring the series to a close.  Such good games, and they sure as hell don't pull any punches.  Every step was a tooth and nail fight.

Looking back on the series, the best game is clearly the first one.  It's basically an open world D&D rpg with up to 6 players.  Years and years ahead of it's time.  At the same time, I still feel that the entire series is western rpg perfection.  You always feel like your in a wondrously detailed setting and plays fitting tribute to it's roots and background without getting mired in it.  Nothing every feels contrived and I challenge anyone to find a plot hole.  It characters and motivations are believable and the entirety of the series feels like reading a really good book.

You never once feel like you've got a solid grounding either.  You're always on the tip of a wonderful iceberg of exploration.  I once entered a random basement only to discover the tomb of an elemental litch - who happened to have a torso made of gold.  What do you do with a torso made of gold?  I never managed to find out.

I really suggest people play those games if they haven't already.  Especially if you have recently been introduced to Bioware through Dragon Age or Mass Effect.  Dragon Age was a throwback to Baldur's gate, but it does not surpass it.

"Minsc and Boo Stand Ready"

-Liam

P.S. Save the pantaloons.

Awesome Final Fantasy VI Covers:

Whoever did these is clearly aweosme:

 

-Liam

New Site!

I now have liamkiemele.com up and running!   This should hopefully provide a solid professional page for me to use in the future.  I'm not sure if I'm going to move this stuff over or not.

Stay tuned?

-Liam

New Build!

Hello!

Foxlike has a new build.  Which Can be downloaded here: Build 0.1.1.781

This one is for windows!  I recently moved everything over and here it is.  I've successfully added sound as well as an additional enemy.  All in all, the pieces are coming together.

I changed the control scheme to be more mouse and keyboard like.  I wanted to take advantage of a PC's strength as oppose to emulating a console style control scheme.  You can now move and aim seperately from each other.  The controls are given when you start the game, but they are pretty simple.  wasd to move and click to fire.

The music is currently just a place holder and the song right now was chosen because it was in an ogg vorbis format and had a permissable license.  I also get a kick out of it.  You are in space after all.  I'd really like to get some original music in there instead, but one works with what they have.

Anyway please check it out and get back to me with feedback.  I'd really like your thoughts and ideas about controls and firing.

-Liam

Foxlike on the move again

I've finally got some time and I've been using some of it keep on cranking out my Starfox Clone which is tentatively named Foxlike.

I've also managed to port it over to windows, so that's pretty cool.  Hopefully I'll be able to post a build sooner or later and people can give it a go.

The "engine" is more or less in the place.  The only things that's not quite working is sound, but I should be able to get it up and running soon.  I'm using OpenAL, so there is a bit of a learning curve there, but so far it seems to be pretty reasonable to work with.  It's also designed for 3D environments, so that's cool.  It appears to take care of all the heavy lifting - and can do things like the Doppler effect.

Anyway, I'm always open to receiving some artistic content to go into the game.  If you feel like you have a n idea, send it my way.  I'm always looking out for some storyline/plot/characters, art, models or music.  If you'd like to get something in this game, let me know.

-Liam

Socks Make People Sexy's Final Fantasy VI Review

If you haven't played final fantasy VI and are looking for incentive or if you want to know what you missed:

http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff06

If you have played it, I suggest reading this even more.  Final Fantasy VI was a pretty special game and absolutely the height of the Final Fantasy series.  It's been 17 years and three console generations and has arguably yet to be surpassed.

I also suggest reading the Chrono Cross Review.  Chrono Cross is one the best rated games of all time - but kind of falls short.  It's cool to see what happened with it.  Ludicrous ambition on the part of it's existentialist writer/director made for a pretty cool outcome.  Music is awesome though.

Mostly this Guy

And there is always Trigger.  The greatest game of all time - period.  I'm playing through it again right now and have found some new things that somehow escaped me the previous 35 times.  Which brings me to a small point on replayability.  The best way to make a game re-playable is to make it crazy fun and good so you want to play it over and over and over again.  Easier said than done.

Relatively Obscure Reference

-Liam

Dragon Age 2: Wayward Son Glitch Workaround

I can confirm this works and I've been playing along happily ever since.  I mentioned it in my last post.

1. Enable the console.  There are several guides to do this out there.  Most of them can be found here.
2. Use the command "runscript zz_dae_debug" - this should bring up a menu of options.  You will not to able to see the command as you type it.
3. Click on Plot Jump -> core/critical path -> investigate -> circle plots  -> wayward son -> more options -> the cave on the wounded coast  
4. This will set the quest to the wounded coast stage and teleport you to the cave entrance
5. Head on in and finish the quest.
   

There is related to the solution posted here, but avoids skipping over any major part of the game.  Ideally this should leave your other quests untouched.   The biggest benefit is you can still finish the quest as planned and make your choices.

Hopefully this works for people.  On a related note, these two posts have gotten me more hits than ever before.  This means the problem must be pretty common, hopefully bioware will put out a fix soon.

-Liam

UPDATE:
I don't see why this wouldn't work for other similar bugs: give it a go and explore the menu.  There also maybe other scripts for various DLC

Dragon Age 2: Wayward Son Quest Glitch + Workaround?

Update: Here is an improved workaround.  It should allow you to complete the quest and not effect the rest of your game.

Or how I learned to stop playing and get some work done.

I recently purchased Dragon Age 2 and was having a pretty good time playing it.  I know some people have some gripes with the game and while some the the choices Bioware made are disappointing, they aren't really deal breakers - at least for me.

Interesting Dichotomy

But unfortunately,  I literally cannot finish one of the main quests required to complete the game.  I'm pretty sure loot-able corpses fall through the floor of the levels after a few seconds - or otherwise disappear.  One of these corpses has a map which I needed to move to the next stage of the quest.  I can no longer get it.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.

 I sent an email off to EA's support and they said that they don't know any way to solve the problem and they suggested I post the glitch on their boards to try and get their attention.

They ended their canned response by saying the glitch may never be fixed.

Seriously?

Games have bugs, all the time.  But they usually aren't show stoppers and even then they're usually fixed.  They must have put DA2 through testing.  How could they not catch a glitch that makes the game unplayable?

Anyway, there may be a workaround using the console - if you're on PC, so I would look into that.

One particular command zz_dae_debug can let you change your state in the plot, but I'm kind of hesitant to use it because I don't want the choices I made to be wiped clean.

Anyway, that's me on Dragon Age 2.  Fun to play - if you can.

-Liam

Quite Possibly the Best Thing about JRP'S

It's not the style, the plots, the characters, the world or the battle system.

It's the character themes. They'd hit at just the right moment and it would rock so hard.

Here is a couple good ones. It may be hard to understand the context. I seriously suggest playing the games the music comes from to see how it really meshes together. These are chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI related







Of course twas the days of 16 bit, So they didn't really sound quite like this:



but more like this:



They really had the music down.

I think this is kind of missing from western RPGs. I can't really think of one with defined themes for the characters. It would be really cool. Especially since they can do cool stuff with the characters themselves.

When someone bursts in, says something awesome or even charges off, they should have a theme, and that theme should be blaring.

-Liam