Overlord II and franchises

Just finished playing Overlord 2 on Xbox 360, and very enjoyable it was. The first version felt a bit rough round the edges and I didn't complete it. I played that on PC. I seem to remember getting a bit lost in parts of the game, especially after you return to it after not having played it for a while.

After playing the first version on PC I thought the 360 version would be really difficult to control without the mouse and keyboard, but it works really well. The difficultly level was about right for me. I'm more of a take-it-or-leave-it casual gamer, than a hardcore gamer; no time! So impossible bosses and engrossing 4 hour games get played rarely. Overlord 2 felt a little easy to stroll through, but I enjoyed the journey and if it had been more difficult I don't think the control mechanism would have coped that well.

This version has more help with the mission structure and generally feels a lot more polished. It's interesting terms of development because it seems this is what you have to do now to release a relatively big game now, especially as an indie developer, due to the enormous costs involved. You really need to build a franchise to cover any loans or expansion costs, and to reduce future risk, providing the game sells.

It's very easy for game developers (or anyone writing software for that matter) or aim too high on version 1.0 and not deliver. Estimating costs and complexity are complicated matters with large cumulative margins of error. If you develop in an agile manner you should be able to provide something and increment. If you come out with some interesting USP you can afford to release first version that's a bit rough, but in a crowded market this is very high risk.

FEAR 2

Finished FEAR 2 a couple of weeks ago. This is one of the best first person shooters I've player since Doom 3. It has a added horror bent, which was interesting, but didn't interrupt the game flow too much. It can be irritating when the side story keeps butting in when you're enjoying the game, or you don't find the side story that interesting.

Controls were great: weapon switching and reloading was easy. Movement was easy. Difficultly level was good for me, as I'm not really a hardcore gamer. I started on "normal" and somehow ended up on "hard" towards the end, which I didn't think was that hard. The game flow was excellent, it just kept on going and the length was good. Engaging, constant, and easy to follow.

It was quite refreshing to not have ridiculously hard bosses every hour or so. Instead, there are levels where you are trapped and have to shoot multiple foes. This was more of an enjoyable challenge. Sometimes you get a boss which is just too hard and you spend 2-3 hours and multiple attempts killing it. This just become on exercise in frustration. For example, in Metroid Prime 3 on Wii, Mogenar is too difficult. Perhaps that just tells you something about my level of skill :-). But non-linear difficulty is frustrating for players. Mind you I should have another go now I've found that walkthrough. ;-)

Some of the weapons were a little similar. Not really the variation you get with Doom/Unreal, but usable and change your attack strategy. Climbing into the armoured shell and blowing things up was also fun.

I haven't played the first FEAR, but playing this has made me want to search for a copy.

Spotify

It's funny, I was having a discussion with a friend recently about how the music industry is out of date with it's listeners and needs a new revenue model. The current one is decades old and doesn't benefit many except the record companies and a few large artists.

People want free access to music that they have payed for, and want to pay a reasonable price. We already got ripped off with "indestructable CDs" that you can spread jam on and they still work. Ha! One tiny scratch and they're coasters! Vinyl is much more resilient; and better quality sound. Also, the price is too much. 12-15 quid for CD with 8-10 tracks on it is too expensive unless you're a real fan. To get the real money you have to bring more people in, which means getting people to experiment, but people won't at those prices. 6-8 quid and you're talking.

I've heard about Spotify recently, but there is a lot of buzz on the internet and a lot of things don't really pan out. But I really think this will. This is the new model I was talking about. If you are a casual listener it's great for skimming songs, finding new artists and listening to old stuff that you lost; the catalogue is huge!

Ahhhh.... I'd forgotten just how good Daydream Nation is. Silver Rocket is my favourite.

Riddled with viruses

Whilst updating my media server I did a virus scan and discovered it's riddled with trojans and various viruses! Oops.

I use AVG free version but it seems to have circumvented that. Even after a full virus scan various strange things still happening, including getting redirected to Windowsclick repeatedly whilst trying to fix the problem. Seems other people had the same problem.

Running Malwarebytes Anti-malware (free version) initially didn't work. You have to rename the mbam.exe to get it to work! The trojan is blocking it running. Clever. So after a rename, a quick clean and a reboot that seems to have gone. Wonder what else is left.

So, lesson learnt:

• Update Windows automatically. I had this turned off because I don't want the server resetting randomly.
• Run full virus scans regularly. I was just running quick scans occasionally.
• Viruses are getting more devious.
• If you can't follow this link then you have it too.
• I post stuff like this because I found what other people put really useful. Thanks!

Mac usable coloured terminal

When using a terminal window on the Mac (or on any system!) if everything is the same colour it is difficult to tell the difference between file types. E.g. there is no difference in presentation between a file, a directory and a link.

If you are using a bash shell (it tells you in the title bar what type it is), you can configure colouring using your profile. This lives in the file: ~/.profile. Add your changes to the end of the file.

There are some helpful blogs with information on what to add, but I found the bold lettering difficult to read. You achieve something more readable just using 'ls -G'. So add:

alias ls='ls -GF'
alias ll='ls -hl'

The -F option also tells you what the object type is (man ls), and ll adds an extra command to save doing ls -l.

You might also want to change your terminal prompt. The default is the machine you are logged into, which is a little pointless if you know it, and takes up a lot of screen. I find the following quite useful:

export PS1='\t \w> '

\t gives you the time in 24 hour format. It also gives seconds and can be a useful way of timing commands roughly. \w tells you the current directory.