Benie's Games Blog

EA released a video showing off their highly redesigned Create-A-Sim system, of how it’s better than The Sims 3.
I must say, the customization system is well appreciated. You can customize pretty much everything, all the way to how big your Sim’s ass looks. You can also customize their animations, more voice styles, and even how they talk and laugh. Pretty neat. I’m sure Legacy and Dynasty players will enjoy spending hours on end making their Sims for storytelling.

One thing that stands out of this video. EA seems to be backpedaling to The Sims 2’s Aspirations system, where you pick something you wish your Sim to be good at. By doing this, unlocks a special trait only available for that aspiration. In The Sims 3, you have a Lifetime Wish. It’s pretty much the same thing, except you get to pick which wishes you want to fulfill (or none ever). Where as The Sims 2, you have several knobs of wishes your Sim wants and doesn’t want to happen in their lives.

I just hope with this “new” system, they’ll have as much, if not more aspiration choices than lifetime wishes in the base game of The Sims 3. The next video(coming, I would guess in 1-2 months from now) is something that I really want to see; the new Build Mode tools, and if they’re better, worse, or about the same as The Sims 3.
I say, better. The very idea of being able to copy and paste rooms, or even the entire house if you didn’t like where you originally built it(having a bit of WorldEdit in The Sims), I want that so bad.

Today on YouTube, SpaceEngineers, the official channel for the game that shows you the latest features and dev interviews, have favorited an interesting video, showing you step by step instructions on how to do pistons in Space Engineers.

The instructions are well done, and the guy that does it, sounds like a university professor. Speaking of this, his instructions are based off of basic Algebra, and he makes my head hurt(as I failed at math in school). 😛 And I find it funny how he said “this isn’t that useful in the real world”.

Nevertheless, he desperately tries to get you to figure this out, which I like. If only all online tutorials of any game were this detailed. So anyway, here is the mentioned video. Maybe you’ll have better luck figuring out what he’s saying than me.
Still, this is a good way to have piston doors for stations and very large ships.

It’s been 6 months since the release of Space Engineers, and Keen Software House is proud to announce that we, the consumers, have purchased 500,000 copies of Space Engineers! That’s a pretty big milestone for a small development team.
With this big announcement, they’ve made a video of all the updates up to now that have been made for the game, including beautiful and well thought of Player Creations.

Kudos to Keen Software House and their game. Can’t wait to see what they make (that’s hopefully useful in Singleplayer) in the future. And Kudos for making this game more than just a Space Engineer simulator. This is more of a Space Simulator.

And lastly, here’s to seeing 1,000,000 copies sold (and game-killing bugs fixed)!

Browsing through what Steam has to offer today, I came across a really interesting game that might be considered a challenge to Space Engineers (and possibly FTL).
The game is called Kinetic Void. It’s a 3rd person ship building sandbox game set in the far future. You build ships (even fleets), launch them into space, deal with factions and either be nice to them, or blow them out of the galaxy.

From what I’ve seen, these are the key features;
– Build ships by gluing parts together. You can build tiny drones, to very large capital ships. Even build a fleet of ships.
– Friendly ships will follow you. I’m guessing ships that are part of your fleet.
– The game map is humongous. Lots of places to go, with its own planets and Suns. The only limit is how much your computer can handle. Love that thought.
– Has a Creative and a Survival Mode.
– The game doesn’t have to be played one way. You can play as a fleet of friendly traders if you wish, or as harbingers of doom.
– Doing a new game, is a brand new galaxy full of randomly generated planets and suns. You can also set the number of factions.
– Not all factions are friendly, and some actually hate eachother.
– Ships have weapons.
– Your ship can be controlled by your keyboard, joystick, or mouse.
– Asteroids around some planets.

Of course, though, what this game lacks that Space Engineers has, no 1st person view. If that thing had that, then it would be so freakin’ awesome. Maybe in the future, the devs of this game might do it.
Though I do have to caution myself. I feel when the game is fully developed, it’s going to be a real time strategy game with Multiplayer. Not something I would play, and hope they keep the theme of the game as they have it now. Or even better, have it as an optional thing.

Currently, the game is under heavy development. Not sure exactly when it started. Going by the comments, late last year. Yet I never saw it on Steam until now. It’s $20.00, but people urge anxious buyers to hold up on purchasing.
Still, I’ll pin this thing onto my wishlist and hope it’ll be as awesome as what’s in my head. Definitely something to watch.

People in North America, a warning. Terraria could be coming to Real Life in the form of a Blood Moon. Zombies could be coming in full force, and floating eyeballs could be pounding on your roof. So, get your house defensive systems active!

If that may come true or not, this rare Blood Moon is. It’s the first of four total lunar eclipses this and next year, even with some predicting “doomsday” conditions. The moon will go total on the following dates: April 15th, 2014(tomorrow) | October 8th, 2014 | April 4th, 2015, and the final one on September 28th, 2015.
The next time a Blood Moon will be seen, is in 2034.

What makes this one special, all of the US will be able to see it! Though, give or take cloud cover.

Tomorrow morning’s Blood Moon will be seen around 3:07am Eastern, and last until 5:10am. Just over an hour. It’s quite rare to have a perfect aligned total lunar eclipse, even one that will happen four times. It’s almost unnerving. Some say this could spark a change in the Jewish, since it will happen on four major Jewish holidays.
I don’t think I’ll be able to see it, due to clouds hiding the moon. But in a way, that’s good. No moon visible = No Zombies and Demon Eyes. 🙂

I’m personally for to see this rare phenomenon. Just hope nothing bad comes out of this.

I’ve had it. Enough is enough. I’ve just reached that point where even the roads I’ve built, I don’t care about anymore (due to the rules). I had said, I would make my decision after the GSM. That decision was to stay through the Mole and see how it treated me, which I got eliminated from. That was near to the last straw.
I knew I would be eventually, but to have ‘Part 2′(yesterday) go so… crappy for me? I’m not even contributing to getting the diamonds of every round, nor have I gotten an exception since Challenge 2 of Episode 1. All I did, was “Uhhh.. what’s going on here? Guys? Where are you? …. Why is this guy shooting at me?! Help!”
And here I call myself a “dragon”. Pathetic. Dragons are wise. Intelligent. Brave. I’m none of that. All I want to do is argue when things don’t go my way, all the time, and not care about the consequences of my actions. And I’m a coward, but not when you annoy me.
To sum it up, I’m a spoiled brat who has yet to grow out of being one. I also feel I’ve been “Trusted” for far too long. I want my recognition for trying to make the server a better place, and not treated poorly.

I’ve also wanted to dare the Mods to ban me when I’m ticked off, looking for an excuse to quit the server. I finally got it this morning. Though it wasn’t a ban nor even a warn, it was enough to think “you know what? Screw it. I can’t handle this anymore.”
It had to do with the results of The Mole. It was Tom1, yeamanator, and myself in Mumble. Though shocked I managed to get up to Episode 6 when I got eliminated, I was also upset due to people I felt that were “lower” than me got eliminated later. That felt quite pathetic.

I’m also half-pissed at Yoshi for making something so… stupid of a game where the Mole is immune to everything and gets to do whatever they want. And even if you suspect (or have solid proof) it’s him or her, or even get to the point where you say “Yoshi, this person is the Mole. Game over”, it really doesn’t work like that, because the Mole can never be eliminated, since there’s no voting on who gets “booted off the island”.
It all has to do with a stupid memory test, and half the questions aren’t even about the two challenges you did of that episode. Whoever invented that game should be shot! The rules are rigged that the Mole always wins nomatter what!
How about we do “Survivor”, hmm? That way it’s fair for everyone, and it’s a battle of whits, survival, and who you can trust not to literally stab you in the back (which I would lose), and not who scored the worst on a stupid test!! If I wanted to do tests, I would go back to school. ….. *sigh* It doesn’t really matter now.

Going back to what I was saying (and the main reason I left), I was trying to fake my anger on Tom1 (who played KittyCat11231 who turned out to be the Mole all along), and told me he wasn’t, and said he wouldn’t lie to me.
So I said “you lied to me. Why should I believe you now?” to get a reaction out of him, but Tom is one to do his best not to get into fights and ignored me, even though I was joking.
Tom would never lie to me. I’ve always trusted him, and he’s a good guy. Yet for him to say “I wouldn’t lie to you” to conceal his Mole identity. Knowing this was why I was half-mad. It felt like a betray of trust. Yes, it’s a game, but I always don’t see it like that, which is pretty obvious with all of this ranting I’m doing.

Moving on, Yeamanator, suddenly reacted as if I was being completely serious (yet, how could he tell I wasn’t?), and then he proceeded to shove Frumple’s rule in my face about ‘how not take things so seriously, that it’s a game’. That… that was my boiling point. The tip of the iceberg. The match to the cannon. The… you get the idea, I was rather ticked and let him know that. Also, at this time, there was a server restart about to happen. The perfect time to conceal quitting and never coming back.

He even tried to scare me by saying he was going to warn me for not treating it as a game. He shouldn’t had done that, because that just made me even more furious. And I was all “Oh?! Uh huh. Ok. Bring it on!!“(didn’t say that, but my attitude was if I did). Even said “I’m just looking for a reason to quit the server. So go on, do it”. Literally daring him. I was that ticked off. He then told me to calm down and and then said wasn’t going to warn me. Guess I surprised him there. In my opinion, he should had. He wasn’t doing his Mod job by keeping the peace. I would had if someone did that to me.

Yet all I wanted was a response from Tom, not lip from yeamanator. And when Tom finally spoke, it was in defense of what yeamanator said. I just couldn’t stand this anymore. It was a wakeup call. Though the call isn’t what you would expect me to do, which is actually see “yeah, it’s a game. I should treat it like one!”.. right. I don’t do that. Not Minecraft. Not any game have I said “it’s just a game!”

I knew what I had to do. So when the server finally restarted, I quit Mumble and the server, then proceeded to remove everything related to it. Emails, Mumble account, server IPs, Skype Friends, Steam Friends… everything. I want no part of the server and its activities anymore. I don’t even want to know it ever existed.

But yeah, you can’t help but to look back on the conversation. I could had did that better by just PMing Tom. Didn’t know yeamanator would react to what I said (should had), and even the way he reacted to me caught me off-guard.
Well, no longer a problem now. I am done, and I’m not coming back. Nomatter how much people beg. And even if they see this post and reply, I’m just going to delete it. Let’s just say it’s best you never knew me. Just forget I even showed up on that server.

And if I have so much as one thought of feeling remorseful and wanting to come back, I’ll just re-read what I said in here to convince myself I made the right decision (once again). Overall, I will never get the respect (as in a proper title and WorldEdit) that I’ve deserved when I “quit” the server as a Mod. I’m definitely not going to get it now.

Yet what’s funny? How I complained about always being in the spotlight when I was a Mod, and wishing I was a Member and treated like one. I got my wish, and I’ve been regretting it. It’s that “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it” thing. Because, mostly the “might get it” is a bad thing, and never good.
I’m just never happy. Always fighting with my emotions. That’s why I just can’t be a part of that server anymore.

It only took me four years to do it, but I finally completed that DLC for Borderlands.. *coughs and wheezes* now I can die a happy man!
Seriously, though… it seems the Borderlands DLCs can have really, really time-consuming collection quests, all for the pursuit of XP, a random gun, and an achievement.

Instead of doing what was a really bad idea of sticking with doing the side quests, I went right to the main quest, and got even further than I did. The final boss… well, it wasn’t as hard as the Destroyer, but not familiar with the fight, died twice. The third time I finally figured out what I’m supposed to hit to bring this damn thing down and when.

After finally doing the main quest, I also completed the “The Collector” achievement, where the bitch wants you to get up to 150 Claptrap parts. That took me about two hours of waiting for 10 minutes per respawns. This is something I will never… ever do again.
So fucking glad to be DONE with this thing. Had to make a post about it.

Today, Mike Rosa, developer of Miner Wars 2081 and Space Engineers, talks during a Game Developers Expo in the Czech Republic. He talks about the history between the timeline of Miner Wars 2081 and Space Engineers, what choices were made, and how they made their game good. Even all the way to why they chose the name “Space Engineers” for their game, and what they decided on the logo. Quite interesting to learn what made up to this point in its development cycle.
This video is also quite inspiring to all inspiring game devs that want to try to make their own computer games, especially when he was talking about the game engine they used and why they chose to use it instead of someone else’s engine.

Around 24:32 in the video, he talks about how he wanted first person and 3rd person in the game, and why they decided not to have first person in big ships, which was one of my major gripes since getting the game. It does make sense, if you think about it. He says, you got to see around your ship. Of course you do.
How would first person in large ships even work, if they use the same coding for the small ship first person view? Your view would be blocked, unless you put the cockpit in an area that has a view.
SMALL UPDATE: I posted in the comments of the video, and this morning I danced in my seat when I got a response from the head dev, saying “In fact we are going to add first-person for large ship cockpits. Yes cockpits” YAY! 😀 One of my major complaints will be answered!

Next, he talks about that the destruction of ships, was never planned. It just showed up, and when they saw how well it worked, they kept it. It’s funny how something that goes wrong can sometimes, be just what you needed (especially as a game dev).
They worked on the idea even more until it’s the collision models you now see today.

They talk about how they don’t “hype” the product like most game companies (looking at you, SCS/Valusoft, and EA!). They care for their players, and want players to choose if this is the game for them or not.
Right here is how all video game devs should be, especially Triple A games like CoD. Fuck your profits. Fuck your hype. Care about the people who play your game! This guy could be the next Notch, someone who cares about the gamers, not profits and hype.

In his closing, he has a message to all inspiring video game devs out there. To prioritize, have discipline, keep your goals, and most important — to make your game for the player. Well said. 🙂

I can’t wait to see what this company does in the future.

Dishonored is an amazing game, and these two DLCs that put you in the shoes of the one that killed the Empress, is also pretty good. Now, two things. You need to play the full game and complete it as there’s spoilers, and if you really want to understand the story of the DLCs, you gotta play both of them.

Reason I played them, achievement-hunting, of course. To get the ‘Cleaner Hands’ and ‘Cleanest Hands’ achievements, and not being seen are pretty challenging achievements, but doable if you watch your surroundings, such as enemy walking patterns and when to use Blink at the right moment.
Also, having a good video walkthrough with commentary, of someone saying “Ok, jump up here”, is quite helpful.

Now I’m going to hope, people that read this have already played the full game. If not, do so. Again, spoilers.
The first DLC puts you into the shoes of the Master Assassin, Daud, who murdered the Empress. He can’t stop thinking about it, and wishes he could just run away from it, especially when he helped to kidnap Emily. He knows Corvo is coming for his head.

The Outsider knows this too, and has warned Daud that his time is running up. But he mentions something that could help him; “Delilah”. What, or who is this “Delilah”, you wonder. This is where The Knife of Dunwall plays in. You eventually find who she is, but where she is, is in the next DLC. Let’s say, she’s a crazy ass painter.
Almost reminds me of that guy in Bioshock who wanted you to get pictures of corpses.

In The Brigmore Witches, you soon find out Delilah’s plans to take over Emily’s body and become the Empress, which would send the Empire into chaos.

Now is your time to help him in the path of redemption, by eventually saving Emily’s life from Delilah. Though, however, the grief of killing an Empress will never leave you.
Or, will you just fuck that and go back to being an assassin, and having no regrets? No remorse? That is your decision. Like in Dishonored, The Outsider has given you the tools. How you use them, is up to you.

How you do in these two DLCs, depends if your life is spared by Corvo or not. It has nothing to do with your actions as Corvo, at all. Because Corvo doesn’t know what Daud did, only that he murdered the Empress and its time for revenge. As in twice, I spared Daud’s life. Second time with high chaos.