Archive for December, 2009

GTA 4 – Reloaded

Back in April I was bitching about how annoying GTA 4 was on PC.

Time has passed so modern science and technology advanced to a point where most of the crap things about the game can be fixed.

There is the GTA 4 Native Trainer which is an awesome piece of hack. It bypasses all the retarded Rockstar Social Club and GWL logins and skips the intro animations. It also allows the user to tweak an insane amount of stuff: spawn cars and characters, access to trainer functions, teleport, change weather and tons of other features.

It can do much more than just cheat: it can help the user customize the game experience. For example I went through all the cars in the alphabetical list and did one mission with each. (Well at least I tried. Racing with a station wagon was not very fun.)
By spawning ramps and other objects, one can do basic level editing, with super run, super jump and the gravity gun, one can play a superhero, so there are many things to mess with.

But there were official updates as well, so now it is possible to use any joystick or gamepad to control the game! (I wonder how difficult it was to enable DirectInput?)

And while there is still no way to customize the gamepad control layout, the excellent XBCD driver can work around that limitation: it can assign any button or axis to any button or axis. You can change the the number of buttons and the axis reported, map analog inputs to buttons or invert them. It supports profiles which you can switch on the fly. The official driver can’t hold a candle to XBCD.

So that the annoying stuff is out of the way, thanks to the hard working members of the community. Now I can truly enjoy this very well made game.

Written on December 30th, 2009
Categories: Games
Tags: games for windows, GTA 4

Relaxing

My cat is hunting moths in the kitchen, which is one of her favorite activities. It’s about running, jumping, climbing walls, smacking bugs when they are in reach. Fun to watch and cuts back on arthropods living in the flour.

And because I’m feeling festive, I’m going to watch Die Hard.

Happy Easter everyone!

Written on December 24th, 2009
Categories: Lina

Archibald’s Adventures

In the middle of the Christmas craze with all the AAA titles coming out at the same time, I found myself playing with a nice little puzzle/platformer game, called Archibald’s Adventures.

The game is simple: leave the room through the “EXIT” door. To do that you must avoid traps, transport crates, push buttons and use your brain.

The puzzle aspect of the game is spot on: the fundamental rules of the game’s world are simple, yet they can be combined to present interesting challenges. It’s not uncommon to look at the room and go “How am I supposed to do this?”. Then after closer inspection of the game element comes the epiphany and when the plan works, one feels very clever. (And rightly so.)

The classic platformer sequences are a bit wonky, thanks to the control scheme which feels over-simplified for a veteran Mario player. Sprinting, jumping and climbing are performed automatically and while this mechanic is often convenient, it can also feel as I’m not in control.

So the game is fun, has bitesized missions (to kill five minutes or an hour), a not-too-easy-not-too-hard difficulty (with video walkthroughs helping out if necessary) and a very friendly price tag.

Written on December 15th, 2009
Categories: Games

Weapon concepts

Here are two weapon concepts I’ve made for one of my running projects:

E.M.A.P.S – Railgun

Wagner PK9 – Handgun with suppressor

For the second gun I used Inkscape extensively. It’s far from being perfect, but at least it’s advancing steadily and now reached a point where I dare to use it for work.

Written on December 7th, 2009
Categories: Gavit
Tags: concept, weapon