What Happened To Down Time?
So PSN is down for maintenance today between, get this, 8am and 10pm. For those with a time telling deficiency thats slightly more than half a day through the middle of the day time and in to the evening.
Now I’ve been doing IT work for approx 14 years and never have I heard any one make the statement that it’s “ok” to take a network down during business hours or during peak times. NEVER. In this case I wager during the middle of the day probably isn’t peak but I’d guess 5pm-11pm when every one is off work and home from school is probably peak. I guess I give them credit for doing it closer to the middle of the week but wouldn’t 3am-5pm have been a better time?
Yet lately both in this instance, and where I work, it seems to be increasingly more acceptable to take something down when ever you darn well feel like it. Did I miss something? Are we becoming so reliant on our network 24×7 that it no longer matters when it becomes unavailable because it has to happen some time eventually any way? Or is it that we’re increasingly bowing to what management wants? The symptom is obvious but what do you think the cause is?
Farewell Battlefield 3 Till Next Time Perhaps
I’ve all ready voiced, very loudly and very clearly, my reasons for boycotting Battlefield 3. That having been said I’m not one who can justify to myself or others talking about something I don’t know anything about or have had no part in. That being said here is my experience so far with the Battlefield 3 beta.
For starters I wasn’t even invited to the closed beta a month or two ago. Never mind the fact that I’ve beta tested for a decade or more, have run a beta for my own game, played Battlefield since it’s inception and until recently owned Bad Company 2 on every system it exists on and even on the PC *TWICE!*. All that aside, here is my experience with the current beta.
Again I wasn’t invited to the PC version. Mainly because I chose not to buy my way in to it. My buddy Chris got his invite, downloaded the game and…can’t play it. First it only works on IE(officially any way) and second when he tries to launch the game he runs it, it finds a server and then the website tries to launch the game it won’t run. I spent about 45 mins googling and trying different possible solutions and nothing fixed it. This is 2 x 45mins so a total of an hour and a half man hours and no solution. He had spent some time before I got home from work trying to get it to work too so all told I’m sure it was more than 2hrs spent trying to fix it. Not a great start.
Tonight I discover that I’m able to download the PS3 beta no key or anything required. This, unfortunately, made a worse impression than the game not launching at all on the PC. Now before you jump down my throat about how it’s “beta” etc. and I should expect some issues. I fully understand that. Recall my comment above about having beta tested for over a decade. This, this thing, is a giant pile of garbage. It’s hard to know where to begin. Being as close to official launch as it is I assume they are throwing preview code out to aid in hyping the game. But lets be honest this is not what you want the first impression of your game to be.
For starters I had a tough time discerning lag from glitches from lag hacking. On more occasions than I can count I would watch an enemy player appear out of no where and kill a team mate or, with no footstep noises or other indication of his presence he would kill me from behind in our spawn. On one occasion I turned a full 360 degrees seeing no one only to be knifed from behind in an area with out cover. I mention the lag hacking or possible exploitation of the maps because there were several times the kill cam would seem to be moving in the floor. Another occasion I was covering a door and facing a teammate who was also covering the door from the other side. An enemy simply appeared from no where in front of my team mate and knifed him in the face before he could respond. I managed to kill the guy but only after he turned around and simultaneously killed me too.
This lag, or what ever it is continued in to other areas of the game. I would frequently throw grenades that an enemy would stand directly over as it went off, he would shoot me and kill me and his kill cam would show 100% health. Also while attempting to fire, even sited, I would be struck not only by recoil but apparently by epilepsy too. It would appear that recoil was happening but also that my character was sporadically bending at the waist. The flash light is way way way over powered. From a range of 30-40 meters away it would obscure a 10-15 meter radius keeping you from being able to hit not only the enemy carrying it but any enemies in the immediate vicinity. It’s like they ripped one of the lights from the 9/11 memorial and attached it to a weapon rail. Last but not least were the weird buggy smoke trails lit like muzzle flash but with no one present. Other than obscuring vision and flashing sporadically they don’t move, they don’t do anything. Like a programmer was testing muzzle flashes but forgot to remove the particle system and lighting. Finally about every 3rd spawn or so I would spawn with no retical.
The interface has about as many problems. The outfitting menu is some what similar to Battlefield Bad Company 2′s but they’ve added so many do-dads and cruft elements that it’s just a visual mess. The kit selection menu was kind of jammed towards the bottom like they hadn’t scaled the elements for console and half covered the deploy button indicator. Weapons, as you would expect being metal, are a grey color and much of the kill indicator text is a sort of semi-translucent blue. When you’re weapon is sited the text is nearly invisible. I couldn’t tell if I got a kill at range or not due to this which essentially left me chasing ghosts on occasion.
All said this has been one of the worst beta’s I’ve ever played. I can give a lot of forgiveness to a game since I know what it takes to make one but this, I’d call this beta and probably wouldn’t let any one with out an NDA see it. This has completely re-enforced my belief that not buying this game is the right thing to do beta or not.
The Full Tutorial: How To Upgrade The PS3′s Hard Drive
When I bought my Playstation 3 one of the most enticing things about the system was the ability to upgrade the hard drive with a standard laptop drive. Having previously maxed out the hard drive on my Xbox and my refusal to pay though the nose Microsoft’s exorbitant prices, for commodity hardware wrapped in plastic, this is a key feature. While I did pay up front to get a 120GB version which has lasted me the better part of a year I was with in 20GB or so of maxing it out. Thanks due, in no small part, to the Playstation Plus program that keeps pumping my drive full of new games. If I weren’t able to offload my video on to my home server I’d have been making this upgrade far sooner. Despite the ease with which you can swap the hardware the software end wasn’t quite as straight forward which is why I decided to write this. So lets get down to business.
- Backup your data! Use a second usb drive to make a backup through the backup utility. Move important saves to the cloud saves storage. You lose your data it’s your own fault!
- Remove the old drive and install the new one. Unfortunately the person who made the video disabled embedding. Who know why but the link to the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sRkj89axOU
- When you start up the system for the first time with the new hard drive installed, you’ll get a message saying “The system software cannot be run correctly”. Don’t panic.
- Format a usb flash drive with a FAT32 file system.
- On the usb flash drive create a folder called PS3 and inside the PS3 folder create a folder called UPDATE.
- Download the latest version of PS3 firmware from here http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/pc_update/index.htm
- What you will download is a file called PS3UPDAT.PUP. Put this file in the UPDATE folder on the usb flash drive.
- Take your usb flash drive from your PC and plug it in to your PS3.
- Press and hold the ‘start’ and ‘select’ buttons at the same time briefly and you should launch in to the formatting and re-install process.
- Follow the prompts.
What do you do when EA/Dice gives you the middle finger?
So I used to be just mildly miffed at EA because they have crappy service and their tech, I’m looking at you EA Store Downloader, never worked. But now I’m down right pissed. To the point of boycotting Battlefield 3.
I bought and played Battlefield 1942 from the day it came out. In fact I still have the original discs and key. I bought and played Battlefield 2 when it came out, lost the key and just recently re-bought it on steam. I bought Battlefield 2142 twice, once on PC when it came out and when I got a Mac I bought it for that too. I’ve played many hours of Battlefield Heroes and, while I’m afraid to admit it, might have paid for an item or two on the store. I never did buy Battlefield Bad Company because, at the time, I saw it as a travesty to the online multiplayer only nature of the game. I was wrong. So to make up for it I bought Battlefield Bad Company 2 four times! Once on PC, Once on Xbox 360, Once on PS3 and then when BFBC2 Vietnam came out, to avoid the a fore mentioned crappy EA Store Downloader I re-bought it on Steam along with Vietnam. So now every one is getting invites to Battlefield 3 Alpha, except me, and as you might imagine after countless hours and dollars I am way way way beyond pissed.
I believe part of the problem is that I have two EA account. Each under my very very old yahoo account and under my newer(2008) gmail account. I’ve tried adding all the games to my games lists under both accounts. I’ve tried the tips outlined here http://bf3nation.com/2011/07/battlefield-3-alpha-bypass-anyone-can-get-in-get-your-invite-now/ and so far no luck. When I try the second suggestion from that site it tells me my account is not suitable.
It’s just about the last straw. I’m going to Quakecon next week. If I don’t have an Alpha invite by then I’ll hate EA with even more passion than before and I’ll say good bye to the game series that has brought me so much pleasure for so so long.
Now I know many of my friends are going to think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I have principles, balls and I’m more than willing to communicate with my cash, or with holding of. EA/Dice, fix this or lose a long time paying customer.
The Uncanny Valley Is Moving–LA Noire Is Proof
On the eve of Rockstar’s latest game release LA Noire I ponder the concept of the uncanny valley and I wonder if it’s moving. For those not in the know here is a little excerpt from the wikipedia article.
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics which holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.[1] The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.
They busted out a pretty slick graph as well that shows where certain things fall on the scale of awkwardness. Have a look.
So what does all this have to do with LA Noire? LA Noire is sporting new technology that maps faces to 3D models in a level of detail never seen before. This maps real performances from actors in to the 3D world and delivers a much more convincing, human, performance in to the game. Check this video of the technology in action. (more…)
Epsilon & PlayStation Network Security Recommendations
Image via WikipediaI amongst the 70 million have been effected by the PlayStation Network hack that took place between April 17th and April 19th. While there isn’t much we can do right now there are some steps you may want to consider taking to protect your own security and financial well being. I’m sure some would like to think they are extreme but after the security breach with Epsilon recently and now this there is no good reason to take chances.
I will state clearly I am not an information security professional. I have however been working in the Information Technology industry for 13(going on 14) years. I’ve suffered similar security breaches before and I’ve heard of them happening many times before. I am also a member of the US Military who under goes security briefings anually on protection of data and while deployed served my section as the Information Management Officer. While my primary role is not information security I have enough experience to know that the bottom line is that information security is every ones problem. What follows are some recommendations. Some vital, some, may be only if you are paranoid.
First and fore most purchases online can only be made if all the pieces of information line up. Your online account information(username & password), your card/account number, your PII or Personally Identifiable Information, and typically a physical marker for your card(that 3 digit number on the back). So your first line of defense against security breaches that have all ready taken place is to change as much of this information as possible.
The easiest of course is your username and password on sites that contain financial information. That’s Amazon, Ebay, Newegg and any other online retailers. Thats service sites like playstation, xbox, netflix, redbox etc. If you can change both your username and password then go for it. The absolute “must change” is your password.
While you can’t change where you live you can change your card number and the three digit code on the back. In other words go to your bank, talk to them, cancel your card and get a new one issued. While it isn’t a comfortable process it is a fairly easy one. Some banks will even let you do this process online. I mentioned briefly your address which you may be able to change through the post office box service at your local post office. Be sure to do some research before going this route because some services will not let you use P.O. Boxes as your personal address. Lastly, and most drematicly is to change your PII or personally identifiable information. This includes your name, social security number and other bits of information like your drivers license number. These are much harder to change. Changing your name will involve both the state and fedral government. Like wise changing your social security number(this is especially hard to do). I don’t recommend going to this length but if you are really that paranoid it can be done. I can’t outline here how to do it as the process will differ from state to state.
These changes should be more than enough to safe guard your security. When changing username and password ensure you use good security practices like long complicated passwords. If you can come up with something you can remember and don’t write it down. Change your passwords frequently, every couple of months at minimum. Last, keep an eye on your accounts. Know whats going on with them. If anything looks suspicious report it to your financial institution immediately.
Expelling the Section 8 Prejudice(s)
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Section 8 is a game by Timegate Studios featuring first person shooting and a host of innovative and different game play mechanics. Sadly this fact was not clearly communicated and was thus lost on the general public. Most, I think, came looking for a PC version of a Halo experience. What they got was a game so different it required a learning curve to great for the typical Halo player to handle. PC gaming vetreans who have mastered the learning curve behind a game like Starsiege: Tribes had little problem getting in to the game but only after spending some time learning and doing some reading on forums to discover the pieces left out of the game tutorials.
The biggest detractor wasn’t any one game mechanic but rather a mentality. One that Halo and Call of Duty fans have had to deal with very little until recent itterations of those games. That being management. Section 8 required you to passively manage your armor configuration, weapons load out and even your spawn location on the map. Things that see limited use, and some times don’t appear at all on other games. Then once you are “on the ground” you have to manage not just shields but your movement power and timing while you move. As well you need to manage your weapon choices as you go along. Plasma isn’t useful against a physically heavy armored targets where physical rounds are more effective and vice versa for lightly armored heavily shielded targets. Once you pile on item and mission requests the game becomes a rough learning curve and a much more tactical experience.
Unfortunately it appeared Timegate’s dev team did not effectively communicate to their PR firm/department the nature of the game and it was advertised in the same manor as other pick up and shoot FPS games. So when the masses arrived they found they were shooting their shielded opponent with full gattling magazines and doing little damange which became frustrating so they left declaring Section 8 a terrible game. If only they knew you needed to drop the enemies shields first with plasma based weapons before inflicting the physical damage.
I played Section 8 and loved it while it lasted. Unfortunately it didn’t last very long with both the PC and PS3 console versions dwindling to almost nothing with in a year. I did in fact buy it twice, once on PC and once on PS3 and I wager folks like me are the reason Timegate has been able to make another game. They do say they’ve made many changes to the new game. Their marketing doesnt look much different so here’s to hoping their tutorial systems are better and that they haven’t stripped the game entirely of it’s tacticle essence that was so amazing the first go around.
Timegates website can be found here.
The Section 8 Prejudice website is here.
Go grab your copy on:
Steam (releases 4 May 2011) Pre-order nets you 10% off for a cost of $13.49.
Xbox (all ready released)
PS3 (No date set yet “coming soon” on Timegates Buy Now page)
Hot New Xbox 360, Just a Year Too Late
I don’t mean to be negative but it’s really hard to stay positive about what Microsoft has been doing with Xbox 360 lately. It looks like one step forward and three steps back. Guess what, the original Xbox was black. The Playstation 3 is black. Why Microsoft thought a white console was a good idea when almost every TV and stereo component in THE WORLD is black is beyond me. Black is the new black.
Built in Wifi!!!! Oh wait, everything for the past three years has wifi built in. My phone, my portable game devices, and my laptop. Nintendo managed to put it in their console that was $100 cheaper and in their hand held device that was $160 cheaper. Oh wait, the free phone I got from IWireless(Iowa’s t-mobile affiliate) has built in wifi. There is no good reason that the Xbox 360 up till now hasn’t had built in wifi. This is really just unacceptable PERIOD!
It’s smaller! Once again, WTF!? Why the Xbox 360 was so huge is beyond me. I’ve opened the original machine and there is a ton of open empty space in the case. So much so that there is ducting in the case to ensure good air flow due to all that empty space. If MS has taken a little more time to think out their system layout they could have released the original as a much smaller package to begin with.
The final, actually positive, piece is Kinect and the leap forward it represents for motion gaming. No controller, the thing can determine depth and track on things as small as fingers. Seems to be pretty spectacular all around but it still remains to be seen if this is going to be put to truly good use or if we’re going to get the same flood of gimmicky games on the Xbox as the Wii has received.
Getting Pictures Off the Playstation 3 the Internet Way
As most of you know I’ve been playing the snot out of Modnation Racers. One of the sweet features that the game includes is the ability to screen shot your creations and in turn use them as your Playstation 3′s wallpaper. Playstation home, Little Big Planet and a ton of other games have this feature as well. The Playstation 3 is super flexible in what it can do and yet there seem to be some pieces missing. For example I can copy the pictures to a thumb drive or external USB drive but I can’t send to e-mail accounts from the communications section so there is no networked, internet based way to get this content off the system. I’ve done some searches to try to figure out how to do it and all suggestions are to use the sneaker net approach. I wasn’t having any of that. So here is how to get your pictures off the system using the wonderful world of networking and the internet.
Go to the Playstation 3′s browser and navigate to your favorite e-mail service provider. Mine in this case is Google GMail. Fill in your own e-mail address. Then click on your link/icon to attach files. You will now have access to the file browser on the Playstation 3 and be able to select any images you like. Attach away! Google e-mail lets you download multiple files as a zip attachment so I can attach a bunch of pictures and then on my computer I can pull them down in one download. Super simple and effective.
Below are attachments of some of my creations in Modnation Racers as well as some of the other hard work from other players.
Review: Modnation Racers for PS3
“If you build it they will come!” More iconic words are rarely spoken and that concept seems to be built in to every line of code in this game. It’s all about having tons of options for making your own Mod, what they call the driver, kart and tracks. Imagine fourteen or sixteen pairs of eyes to a page and twenty or so pages. On top of that color, position and size are all variable. This is the case for virtually everything in the game. As far as creativity goes the sky is truly the limit. The top three mods yesterday were very accurate Mario, Ironman and Spiderman recreations that looked like they were made by professionals. All from the basic sets of tools and options made available through the game. To keep you coming back for more most of the options are locked from the get go and can only be unlocked by racing.
I’ll elaborate further on the racing piece shortly. To get these items unlocked you complete challenges for each race. The first level is simply finishing in the top three and then the next two increase in difficulty and usually involve finishing in first and completing some task. I’ve found my self playing a track over and over and over again. While it’s kind of frustrating to not be able to get that challenge completed the game play is so engaging that its continuously fun despite the frustration.
Speaking of the game play, you like what I did there? I’m very tempted to put it on par with Mario Kart over all. It has, and then builds on the solid base that Mario Kart set forth with out going to far over the top or finding some way to break the game play. You have your occasional line of power up items you can grab but this is extended by having each consecutive item pickup level up your weapon. Drifting, drafting, bumping, spinning and attacking opponents all fill your boost meter and earn you points and XP. The boost meter is used for both turbo and a very short lived shield capable of blocking any attack for it’s short duration. To top it all off like a cherry on a banana split they scatter tokens around the track that you can collect and they also unlock items for your Mod, Kart or Track. The end result of all of this is that the game never seems to repeat except in career mode where you’ll play a track over and over again to complete the challenges. When you play online or even with friends tracks rarely repeat because tracks are downloaded randomly and then purged from memory unless you explicitly tell it you want to keep the track. This is going to extend the longevity of the game far beyond what the venerable Mario Kart was capable of sustaining. Long live Modnation Racers!!!
First 48hrs with the Playstation 3 GJ Sony
Ok so up front I have to let you know I owned an original Xbox and have had an Xbox 360 for the past year and a half. Being an original PC gamer I’ve never much liked the idea of paying a monthly charge to play a video game. It just kind of blows my mind. I suppose the advent of DLC might have made it worth while but then why am I paying a third party plus paying the developer for that DLC. Regardless I’ve done it and it was good. Definitely a solid experience from Microsoft. But…with the exception of the money from my wallet I really didn’t know what I was missing.
First what you need to know is that we’re about half way through this generations life cycle. Both Microsoft and Sony have stated they plan to keep this generation of consoles for 10 years plus. That means 5 more years of the 360 at $50 a year. That’s $250, give or take 5 games worth of cash. May be some of you make enough money that it is inconsequential but I think for most of us thats a tidy bit of money. An while we’re on the subject of money Microsoft points are designed to generate that non-round amount that leaves you just short of the amount you need to buy that next game or avatar item. The PlayStation charges real money at set amounts. No need to worry about left over cash on your account that you can’t use. Score 1 for the PlayStation. The other effect this has is the ability for any one who uses the system to create a free login/profile on playstation.com and log in to the system to maintain their own Trophy record, use their own financial information to buy games and avatar items and to maintain their own friend list. The girl friend is much happier getting in to the online action and I can barely tear her away from Fat Princess.
Second is in the social aspect. While PlayStation Home is definitely a unique and fun way to interact with people and view certain types of content its just worth mentioning as a unique point of interest. My actual point is that I had the Xbox 360 for a year and a half and I’ve met precisely zero people online that I play games with. Every one I play 360 with were either met online but not on the Microsoft service or were people I know in real life. Day two with the system and I’ve all ready added one friend, who is some one I’ve never met in real life, just from sharing a squad in a game of Battlefield Bad Company 2. It’s not clear yet if that says something about the nature of gamers who choose a PlayStation 3 or if it says something about the folks on the Xbox 360 or may be its just happy coincidence. No matter how you look at it I’m up one friend and team mate over a year and a half with the Xbox. We’ll see what the future holds.
The system uses Bluetooth. If you’ve used a cell phone then you probably know what that is. It’s a standard wireless technology for connecting things in close proximity. Controllers, keyboards, and headsets are the most common things connected to a console via this technology. I saw bluetooth headsets at Walmart for $13. How much is a 360 wireless headset now? The PS3 also supports other standards and functionality like USB ports front and back with the ability to plug in standard FAT formatted hard drives for things like video content, music and even full system backups. While the Xbox 360 can do the first two it doesn’t do the last one. Throw in user replaceable internal hard drives for easy upgrades in the future using standard cheap SATA based hard drives. I can drop $100 for 1TB for my PS3 or I can drop…oh wait the only option is a 250GB for the same price for the Xbox 360.
Many of the games on the PlayStation 3 are more unique and more fun than those on the Xbox 360(I do realize thats subjective) and the majority of big title games are cross platform and thus available on the PlayStation 3. The Blueray player is great when the compressed HD from netflix just won’t do it justice or if you have to have a physical medium in your possession(*cough*avatar*cough*). It’s far more quite than the Xbox 360 and consumes less space. I could go on but alas a geeks gotta sleep. I look forward to more posts about the awesomeness of the PlayStationo 3 and all the new possibilities it provides over the Xbox 360.
P.S. While I was shopping around for my Playstation 3 I found a few places selling the 250GB for only $50 more than the 120GB version. Hard to beat a deal like that.
