You’ve probably known that I’ve been making a game. If you haven’t known… well, now you do. And I’ve finally completed it… at 3am in the morning. Dammit! Where did the day get to?! Better make this quick then.

The game is called Asteroids!, and it’s a remake of Atari Inc.’s popular arcade game Asteroids (go Google it if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few decades) – with a few tweaks and additions of my own, of course.

I’ve done it as a portfolio piece for a subject I’m doing at Uni right now, and I’ve designed it to the point that another person can download it and play it. Thus, I’m releasing the game for public play (although, this blog gets mostly visited by spambots, so I doubt it’ll be very “public”) on the Windows platform. If people want to play it on a Mac or Linux, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you with a specific compiled version of it for your platform of choice.

Although it’s a final release, there is possibly a bug or two still floating around (besides physics bugs – they’re never going away because I can’t be bothered making collisions better), so if you see one, give me a heads up in the comments so I can squish it!

The controls are simple enough: Up Arrow for Thruster, Left and Right Arrows to rotate, and Space to shoot. For the menus, use Up and Down Arrows to navigate, Left and Right Arrows to cycle through options on the Options menu, and Enter to select a menu item on any menu. Also, you can press Escape while playing to bring up the pause menu.

You can play in windowed mode (although I say you’re crazy to do that) or in fullscreen mode, in any resolution your computer can handle. A bigger resolution is better, though, as you get a bigger playing area on a bigger resolution (and more asteroids! ).

Enough blabbing, I think I’ve armed you with enough knowledge to run this virus play this game.

Download: Asteroids! [Final Release] – Win32 – 6.24MB

Purchased a $100 pre-paid Visa today (for $105.95 ) so I could buy MS Visio Pro 2007 for $70 from Microsoft’s online store, Digital River.

Went well, which is surprising compared to my previous post (I haven’t installed it yet, though. Maybe the install came wrapped in three layers of expiring passwords, who knows?). But that left me with $30 on it.

So I thought, “Hey, I haven’t purchased Counter-Strike yet! I’ll get that!”

I go to the Steam store, added the Counter-Strike Complete package to the cart, and off I went.

Now, I only had $30 on my card, and that’s in AUD. The Counter-Strike Complete package is $30 USD. Fortunately, I had some cash left over in my Paypal account, so I thought I’d attach my prepaid card to my Paypal account and use up what was left on it.

So I continue through the purchase, deciding to add the credit card when Paypal tells me off for not having enough cash in their piggy bank that has my name on it. Which it does (so predictable).

And then I continue on to the confirmation page for Paypal… and it tells me it will pay for the purchase with my existing Paypal balance and money from my bank account.

Wait, what? You’re telling me, all this time, you wouldn’t allow me to make a complete payment for a game on Steam from my bank account unless I also had a credit card attached to my bank account?! What the hell, Paypal?!

All these cheap deals I missed on Steam, and it’s all because of your fucked up processes, requiring me to have a credit card even though you would end up using my bank account to pay off the transaction when I didn’t have enough.

Ugh!

It’s not that I didn’t want it to come out of my bank account. On the contrary, I’m very happy that I now have a way of buying games off Steam at any time I want to, not when Paypal decides to complete my bank transfer.

I just wish they had told me sooner!! D:!

Here’s how the story starts: I purchased a laptop a couple of months ago for Uni, with Windows 7 on it.

It’s been fairly good to me, only a couple of blue screens from compatability issues which sprouted out of no where and disappeared just as fast… except for one problem.

For some reason, there’s the occasion where I put my computer into sleep or hibernation, and when I pull it back out- sorry, when I try to pull it back out, nothing pops up on the screen.

The only solution I know at the moment is to turn the computer off (in that harsh way of holding down the button).

Anyway, it happened to me again, so I decided to see if I could find a fix for it.

After about 15 minutes of searching the ‘net, I find a hotfix from Microsoft for the issues I was experiencing (I get the other problem too, but it doesn’t bother me as much).

So I’m reading through the page, reading the disclaimer about it being beta software and stuff, not really caring.

I go to the download link (at the top – got me for a few seconds), read through the Terms of Service without caring (so Microsoft probably own my soul or my dog or something) and then get to this:

Alright… I don’t see why I need to provide my e-mail so that you can e-mail me the hotfix when you’re just gonna give me a HTTP link in the first place… but whatever Microsoft, we all know you’re special, so I’m just going to play along to make you happy.

5 minutes pass and the e-mail arrives in my inbox (although it was a bit longer, since I got distracted with other stuff *coughporncough*), and I start reading through.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

For your convenience, we put the hotfix that you requested on an HTTP site. You can download the hotfix from this site without us filling up your e-mail inbox.

Bolding performed by me for highliting purposes

Again, going back to my previous point, why the hell are we wasting time and energy and bits and who-knows-what on this dicking about, Microsoft? Huh? Why couldn’t you just give me the link?

Get ready, though – it gets worse:

Additional hotfix information
—————————–

This hotfix package uses a password.

Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there. I’ve got three words which sum what you’re probably most likely definitely thinking right now:
 
 
What
 
 
The
 
 
Fuck
 
 
Really, why?!?! It’s a hotfix, for the love of common sense! There is no need for this tomfoolery.

You have no security or selection process for whoever provides their e-mail for the hotfix in the first place. You still want people to apply the patch if they want.

Are you scarred people are going to intercept the hotfix as it downloads so that they can also apply it to their machines? I can’t fathom what you were thinking at the time (unless you guys were stoned) as to what made you think this was a good idea.

You know what, though? That wasn’t the worst part.

…

NOTE Passwords are set to expire every seven days.

Passwords are set to expire

Passwords … expire

expire

If I was the head of one of the biggest software development companies in the world, which has it’s own Operating System, and I wanted to provide a way for people to download a hotfix for my software, if anyone working below me ever suggests the idea of having the hotfix contained in a self-extracting archive with passwords that expire, I’ll fire them, then I’ll sue them for killing off half my brain cells from the headbanging that I’ve already endured, and then I’ll sue their parents for conceiving a child when their genes were going to mix to produce a child lacking common sense or rational thought.

I’m serious. This is one of the stupidest, most retarded things I have ever come across. Let’s hope I don’t see many more any time soon, or I’m going to be vegetable before I hit 50.

I just want a game that has decent everything, but I guess that’s too much to ask for, isn’t it?

On one hand, you have Modern Warfare 2 by Infinity Ward and ActivisionBlizzard. It’s a good game all round gameplay wise, with fairly well balanced and large list of weapons and killstreaks (except those fucking chopper gunners and pave lows… at least the AC130 takes skill!), lots of different gamemodes to keep things exciting, no bugs that would distract from gameplay or make you frustrated, and all round gives a fairly decent playing experience…

Or it would if it had dedicated servers to round it all off. No dedicated servers means hosting on home based connections which, frankly, are not designed or usually capable of supporting a server for 11 other players (especially in Australia with Asynchronous download and upload speeds, with the former being 4 to 8 times faster than the latter on average) means that over half the games you join are either going to be so laggy it makes you scream and pull out hair (Ashley and Martin’s should have seen a big influx of patrons after the release of MW2 ) or completely fall over because of some arbitrary reason, like the host just failing to load, which makes you wonder “WHY DIDN’T YOU PICK ME AS THE HOST! YOU FOOL, IWNET!”.

Then, on the other hand, you have Bad Company 2. The name of the game itself is representative of my views on Electronic Arts and DICE, the makers of the game and Battlefield series. While in the past I have regarded the Battlefield series with contempt for being bug ridden pieces of CRAP, I decided to give them a chance, see if they had changed their ways at all, and purchase Bad Company 2 (at the time, I was sick of IW’s matchmaking, so I was looking for a change… that change being some fucking dedicated server support! ).

On the surface, it has potential. It boasts big sprawling maps with infantry and vehicle warfare and squad based teamwork (which, by the way, is an awesome way to promote working with other players on your team… there are still noobs in the world, though, so it doesn’t work 100% D:), and an array of weapons and possible tactics and layouts. Sounds good, and their implementation of it works fairly well…

But, and it always seems to be the same thing with EA’s games (I totally should have seen it coming, but my guard was down), the game has so many minor bugs it makes me wonder what the fuck the QA department was doing over in the DICE studios. Running around in circles? Drawing dicks all over MW2’s cover? I can tell you now that whoever IS doing QA needs to be fired from their job and then pushed off Mount. Everest with a parachute made of waffles so they can feel both fear and despair at the same time for wasting my time and money. Oh, sure, there’s nothing gameplay wise that seems to be broken, but I could not immerse myself in the single player story well enough because I’d keep encountering bugs. Oh, look, my gun is still making a firing noise while I’m reloading. Oh, look again, I can see underneath this skidmark (how the fuck was that done incorrectly?). Oh, look some more, even though my chopper died and everyone else on board should be dead, they’re still talking about landing the damn thing. What the fuck!

And I can’t even enjoy the multiplayer part of the game properly because of their very very VERY poorly coded server browser. If my family were programmers, I’d be saying my grandma could do a much better job… but unfortunately they aren’t, so I can’t. The poor filtering system allows me to find NO servers whenever I have ANY filters applied. I can’t find any Australian specific servers, like GameArena or 3FL or any shit like that, using the server browser. Oh, sure, I can add the favourites in by opening up GameSettings.ini and putting them under a certain key, but if you were about to say that, you’re missing the point. And that is I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT JUST TO PLAY A FUCKING GAME! D:!!

Screw it, I’m going to go play some Portal…

There’s two ways to look at it: either it’s for making the internet child safe, or it’s to mandatorily stop people from accessing the material.

The former will be false, because there’ll still be pornography available and shit to the kids, because it won’t be RC, and that lulls parents into a false sense of security. Really, a PC side filter, or even a parent monitoring the internet, is the best way to go about that.

The latter is also false because the people who don’t go looking for that stuff will pretty much NEVER stumble across it, and if they do, they’ll quickly click away before anything bad happens (and they can employ a filter if they’re worried). And the people who do go looking for that stuff will still be able to access it.

So, in either case, the filter will be USELESS, and that’s what Stephen Conroy can’t get his fucking fat head around.

Thoughts?

Check out the Soldat Scripts page for it.

I’m free!… to go to University D:

Nah, Uni should be good if I get into the course I want.

Check out the Soldat Scripts page for it.

It determines how strong your wanking arm is ERM I mean how long you can press the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard before you end up going to see the doctor about the RSI you’ll end up developing.