So, as of tonight I managed to complete Shadow of the Tomb Raider (just going to call this Shadow from now on for this article). I was a huge fan of this most recent Tomb Raider reboot, and happily played through the first two instalments of this trilogy (Tomb Raider, and Rise of the Tomb Raider). They detail, tombs being raided, and artefacts being ‘restored’ notwithstanding – the character growth and development of Lara Croft.
I have to say that I’m both a tad relieved I got to see the conclusion of the trilogy (perhaps not of this Lara’s tale though) but also slightly disappointed at the way the story was told, the writing it had and the overall gameplay. In terms of gameplay, I was a little bit more forgiving, it’s the third game in the trilogy, they were pretty much stuck with the whole same-same-but-different play on things; and quite literally it was a lot more of the action which did make the first two games a hit. There were a lot less QTEs which was great; but I found the game super buggy, and almost every time I died, it was because of the camera-angle-meets-movement-to-a-random-tangent syndrome.
What got me was the writing and the story. Shadow is very evidently, a game of forced passion. From the very beginning, you can tell the team starts out strong with some production values, which seem to peter out and it’s as though they ran out of steam at the 90% mark. There’s some incredible attention to detail displayed in the game’s language settings – NPCs can speak their native languages, the subtitles are nicely coloured and even with multiple characters speaking I never lost track of who was talking. Animations for the most part were good, but Rise of the Tomb Raider’s animations seemed to be so much better than this game’s – Lara’s facial expressions, the overall polish of it, felt much nicer than Shadow‘s efforts.
Environments, truly they were stunning, but adding in glitchy movement, with a camera I had to fight with on a few occasions – only a few, but they were memorable (probably due to rarity, but just frequent enough to be in recent memory) – as well as a confusing underwater enemy element at times due to their glitchy animations – I found myself dreading having to deal with water parts of the game.
I find myself constantly saying that there’s great things… but etc. And the negatives are almost on par with the positives. This game is still a worthwhile play for anyone invested in the story or whom completing a storyline is quite important. But I can’t find myself recommending people play this game over the other titles in this reboot. You can see that there’s so much promise there in the game, with the way certain things are told, how key plot points are revealed and the way the characters interact. But… they just left them. You can see the gleam of a fantastic game underneath the muddy, crappy covering that Square Enix has somehow managed to leave coated all over the game.
I love the effort that has been put into the game. Single player games with big stories, and production values are a dying breed. It’s clear though, that even more effort than the (most likely outrageously) big budget this game had could provide. There were all these changes I saw along the way that I thought could have made this game superb, but knowing a little about the coding side of things, I can imagine it would’ve been pain staking to fix, and difficult to catch from a developer’s perspective.
I find myself constantly saying that there’s great things… but
I want to say this is a great game, but sadly I can’t. Perhaps, the campy writing was an excerpt from their dev blog (see the line in the opening picture at the top).
6/10 from me. Get it on sale, if you’ve got the other games.
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m going to be launching a Conan Exiles server personally for friends and family to play on. As a fan of the survival game genre – Conan Exiles offers a pretty unique blend of resource gathering, adventuring, and exploring a wilderness filled with monsters, animals and gods.
Just for my own reference – the server settings (in their unedited form) are below. An explanation of the settings is available here:
MaxNudity=0
ServerCommunity=0
ConfigVersion=9
BlueprintConfigVersion=19
PurgeNPCBuildingDamageMultiplier=(5.000000,5.000000,10.000000,15.000000,20.000000,25.000000)
PlayerKnockbackMultiplier=1.000000
NPCKnockbackMultiplier=1.000000
StructureDamageMultiplier=1.000000
StructureHealthMultiplier=1.000000
NPCRespawnMultiplier=1.000000
NPCHealthMultiplier=1.000000
CraftingCostMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerDamageMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerDamageTakenMultiplier=1.000000
MinionDamageMultiplier=1.000000
MinionDamageTakenMultiplier=1.000000
NPCDamageMultiplier=1.000000
NPCDamageTakenMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerEncumbranceMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerEncumbrancePenaltyMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerMovementSpeedScale=1.000000
PlayerStaminaCostSprintMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerSprintSpeedScale=1.000000
PlayerStaminaCostMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerHealthRegenSpeedScale=1.000000
PlayerXPRateMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerXPKillMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerXPHarvestMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerXPCraftMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerXPTimeMultiplier=1.000000
DogsOfTheDesertSpawnWithDogs=False
CrossDesertOnce=True
ThrallExclusionRadius=500.000000
MaxAggroRange=9000.000000
FriendlyFireDamageMultiplier=0.250000
CampsIgnoreLandclaim=True
AvatarDomeDurationMultiplier=1.000000
AvatarDomeDamageMultiplier=1.000000
NPCMaxSpawnCapMultiplier=1.000000
serverRegion=0
RestrictPVPTime=False
PVPTimeWeekdayStart=0
PVPTimeWeekdayEnd=0
PVPTimeWeekendStart=0
PVPTimeWeekendEnd=0
RestrictPVPBuildingDamageTime=False
PVPBuildingDamageTimeWeekdayStart=0
PVPBuildingDamageTimeWeekdayEnd=0
PVPBuildingDamageTimeWeekendStart=0
PVPBuildingDamageTimeWeekendEnd=0
CombatModeModifier=0
ContainersIgnoreOwnership=True
LandClaimRadiusMultiplier=1.000000
BuildingPreloadRadius=80.000000
ServerPassword=
ServerMessageOfTheDay=
KickAFKPercentage=80
KickAFKTime=2700
OfflinePlayersUnconsciousBodiesHours=168
CorpsesPerPlayer=3
ItemConvertionMultiplier=1.000000
ThrallConversionMultiplier=1.000000
FuelBurnTimeMultiplier=1.000000
StaminaRegenerationTime=3.000000
StaminaExhaustionTime=3.000000
StaminaStaticRegenRateMultiplier=1.000000
StaminaMovingRegenRateMultiplier=1.000000
PlayerStaminaRegenSpeedScale=1.000000
StaminaOnConsumeRegenPause=1.500000I’m a bit of a purist and don’t want to detract too much from a vanilla experience. Likewise, I may also work towards doing a server reset on a fairly long schedule (unsure yet, but I’m thinking every 90 days).
Before we begin, I should point out that I’m writing this article because I love Factorio, the game. This isn’t a review, more an article documenting my impression of the game.
I’m a huge fan of base building and management sim games. They occupy a lot of my ever-constricting gaming time, especially games like Rust, Conan Exiles, Minecraft, and such. The problem is while I enjoy a peppering of PvP for some spicy gameplay moments, I’m always enthralled with the tech trees of these games, building them up, and finding the ‘best way’ to do things to survive and thrive in these sometimes harsh games.
24 hours of gameplay time in the space of 3 days, this game has its crane claws sunk deep into me… I see conveyer belts when I close my eyes!
Enter stage – Factorio. I’ve actually seen a number of people on my Steam Friends list enjoy this game for many many hours, and yet I never thought to take a look, until Dan (the “Wee Scotsman”) from my Final Fantasy XIV Guild pointed it out to me.
The game starts with a top-down view, of your little engineeer, and a simple premise. Build a factory to produce enough technology, and components to launch a space shuttle to get you off the planet; while surviving waves of hostile aliens. This game is complex despite its overarching goal.
Factorio’s gamplay, is deep. The technology tree is huge, it’s nuanced in how each step affects gameplay, and there’s so much to discover, research and learn that it can extend the lifetime of a single play-through exponentially. For example, Inserters (Cranes which move things from point A to point B) are customisable, they have their own set timings, different models have different movement speeds and create different “rhythms” of items on conveyor belts. A true master of automation could get the timing right between their orchestra of inserters to create a symphony of whirring and dancing to move items at the perfect speed for their production facilities, and maximise that item output.
For a game that does away with the AAA graphics, and ‘polish’ of those titles, it’s incredibly functional and the game’s mechanics, design and artistic direction don’t hold back with letting you control the flow of information you receive.
Factorio also supports the operation of a headless dedicated server, a huge bonus in my book, and in fact, I operate a private server for myself and close friends to connect to and play with. It’s been the most fun I’ve had with a building based game since… well, ever.
You can get Factorio on Steam and despite the $30 USD price tag, it’s well worth the price of admission. I can’t recommend this game enough to anyone who prefers technical, puzzle-like games, with a casual element of PvE.
So, primarily to get away from my desktop (see my previous post below) – the solution appears to be resorting to Cloud computing in some shape or form.
Gaming Entertainment
The biggest issue currently, that will dissuade me the most from becoming a citizen of the cloud is that I won’t be able to play games with my low-spec terminal (in this case, in my room, it’ll be a 2012 Mac Mini).
Luckily for me; I actually stumbled across a wonderful solution! Parsec.tv – an amazing, free, 1080p 60fps cloud gaming application. Steam In-Home Streaming has never worked well for me, but this evening I gave it a go with a brand new release Sea of Thieves!
The experiment worked spectacularly – the quality of the game is more than adequate. My Laptop (off-site) reached on average about 40fps; and the input lag was more than acceptable for adventuring, fighting the undead and firing cannons to deal with opposing pirate crews.
The image quality was great – it was slightly higher than an average 60fps 1080p Twitch stream. Here’s a couple of example screenshots:
The strange blue ‘honeycomb’ icon in the top-left, is Parsec’s hot-spot; you can click that to disconnect/connect with the host machine; or you can recalibrate your gamepad controller – which gets input into the host machine as an XBOX Controller.
There was only one real concern – my laptop reaching 95 degrees in CPU temperature (Speedfan told me it was 88 degrees, but NZXT Cam monitoring told me it was 95). It looks like I’ll need a laptop cooling pad 🙁
Movies & Media Entertainment
The other thing I’d like to do, is somehow migrate my personal media collection, into the cloud. Something that’ll let me stream no matter where I am, should I be on holidays, or working.
Cue, Plex Media Server – a system so consistently awesome in delivering movies and shows across both a network and the internet, with built in media conversion and on-the-fly media management, I can’t really see myself needing any other system to deliver access to my collection of media to friends and family.
Whilst the quality isn’t terribly awesome (it’s slightly worse than Netflix is), it delivers a more than watchable result provided the source files themselves are of a high quality.
Here’s an example of one of my favourites, Kingsman: The Secret Service:
As you can see, it’s a little murky, but still delivers on the visuals enough. The source file isn’t in a 1080p resolution, but it is still clear enough to watch!
So, all in all – we got through all the fun stuff; being a netizen of the Cloud is a doable thing in Australia – provided you have a 1Gbit internet connection, I suppose.
I’m aware that I’m in an extremely fortunate position to be able to do this; and will continue my experiments and foray into being more integrated into The Cloud™ in time for when the NBN reaches (if ever) my residence.
I’m going to be updating this blog again shortly with some thoughts about being both a “Cloudygamer” and a “Low Spec Gamer” to better handle and optimise my graphical usage; so please stay tuned!
Some Interesting Reading
eLeague.gg is rapidly growing behind the scenes, and this is especially true in regards to the tech development team behind the scenes.
Our current development team consists entirely of one person (yours truly) and my duties involve:
- Coding behind all the site’s actions (more on this later)
- Designing everything visitors see on the site
- Writing all the content on the site
- Designing the structure of the site, processes and user flow
Not to mention all the maintenance involved…! So the obvious solution, is to bring on board more people! The exceptionally talented1 :
- PSmith a long time LAN party regular at my events and volunteer admin both at my events, and at PAX Australia
- SirSquidness the well known server/network/LAN guy from Respawn LAN, Melbourne (also same for PAX Aus PC Area)
So…. What’s the problem?
Well, since I started out running LAN parties, and doing gaming events – all my sites have always been bespoke, from the ground up creations. All involving myself as the sole designer, and sole developer. I’ve never had to answer to anyone and in fact, never had to consider that someone else might come in and develop on my sites/projects. Again, this is certainly horrible practice and not something any developer should really do.
And so again, as eLeague.gg started up – guess what I did? Haha…
And now? What is the solution?
Git branches. I already develop everything and store it through a personal Git repository system (I use Phabricator for my Git repo management needs).
As it currently stands, I keep:
- A branch called staging: this is for testing, development and experimental content creation.
- A branch called production: this is for everything that is on the live eLeague.gg website.
While this stops me from accidentally implementing broken features (sort of) it’s still not ideal for three developers working all at once on eLeague.gg’s core code. So we’ve developed a way to organise ourselves in such a way that each developer is independent, but bases their code off a singular source of truth.
This looks like:
What’s more important is the flow of code as signified by the arrowheads in the diagram above. Developers should in theory, only ever be pulling and pushing features in both directions from the Dev(elopment) Branch. And all features should be internally vetted within the Tech Team before being pushed to the Pre(flight) Branch, and then onto the Production Branch if all goes well with the rest of the team.
Some caveats:
- No more than a single developer should be working on a single feature at a time. If multiple developers are needed, then one dev needs to stop working on said feature, before another dev takes over.
- There is a degree of potential data and code entropy over time between all three branches – dev, pre and produciton. As such, only JT (me) will have access to being able to merge ‘backwards’ from Production > Pre > Dev.
- Setting up for three developers simultaneously also means we now have a bigger delay in rolling out features as everything needs to now be spec’d, documented and planned out.
I suppose it’s a great little situation to be in that I can start working on eLeague.gg in earnest with a team, and now I should hopefully be able to focus more on not just the technical development of eLeague.gg, but the rest of it too!
1: This list of people does not use names they uses their drivers’ licenses. Our team has many people with the same given names so to help differentiate, we refer to each other by our gamer nicknames.
Hello.
For the past half decade I’ve burned through my financial resources, time, energy and even health working towards running and building a gaming community. Learning scraps of everything I needed to get by on and then having to relearn things to master them. It’s been one heck of a journey.
This blog is my personal thoughts and feelings only as I build my gaming community; and it’s my way of recording this great adventure.
On March 19th this year, I managed to execute the first BYOC event of our gaming community brand, eLeague.gg – we had spent the past 5 years as Multiplayer United (and still continue to use this name to help other communities) but it came to a head with this new brand, and this new concept.
eSports Gamers
Community Gamers
Quirky Competitions
Incredible Modders
Loads of swag and prizes
It all came together; and as we near the approach of our next event – we face more challenges. Fixing the (hopefully mostly unnoticed) mistakes of the first event, improving our event’s features, and on a personal level of obsession that’s now infamous on our team – our online platform to support the burgeoning community.
As this blog continues, I hope you guys will enjoy the insight, efforts and lengths which the talented people I’m blessed to both work with and call my friends at eLeague.gg go to, in order to deliver an amazing gaming experience in Sydney, Australia.
One of the big gripes I have about my current to-do list with eLeague.gg is that I’m almost buried in the work required for developing the website. It actually genuinely gets in the way of something that I think might be even more important to eLeague’s operations — communicating with the community.
We haven’t quite explained it clearly although people can probably guess from our event naming that eLeague.gg operates on a seasonal calendar – with our BYOC acting as the ‘launch’ event of the season. Contrary to popular belief, these events are not our grand finals although they do host them, for example:
- Autumn BYOC – hosts Summer Finals, launches Autumn
- Winter BYOC – hosts Autumn Finals, launches Winter
- Spring BYOC – hosts Winter Finals, launches Spring
- Summer BYOC – hosts Spring Finals, launches Summer
With such frequent, eSport level events; there’s a lot to learn that some existing market players already know very well. Even though eLeague.gg’s focus is not on top tier teams; a lot of what we’re learning I can only imagine that the premium tournament organisers have had to go through many moons ago.
Coming from a strictly community BYOC background – means I’ve had to learn (and am still learning) the pressures of organising a consistent, regular tournaments with our community.
This includes bringing on specialist members into our team who are knowledgeable about games. Let’s use Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as an example as it’s our most popular title (currently).
I’ve been playing Counter-Strike a long time. In fact, I was there at release day of beta 1 some time in 1999 (I was in year 9 at high school at the time and had little else to do but play games). However, the times they are a-changing. I’ve been playing CS:GO but only occasionally, and my reflexes aren’t as fast anymore. The community’s attitudes have changed. The concept of eSports as a serious venture is now much closer than the distant dream on the horizon it was when I started doing LAN gaming.
We’ve brought on two very young members on our team, they’ve got the energy and drive to help eLeague.gg truly deliver an amazing experience for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The sensationally talented:
- FISHY well known for his contributions to LAN based tournaments at Respawn in Melbourne
- Karath a well known member of the Australian CS:GO community, he’s in fact already smoothly run our first tournament at our Autumn BYOC
And with them, a whole swathe of volunteers who are passionate about CS:GO and the gaming community to support them.
They’ve been working to develop rule sets for us, and to try and implement our first seasonal tournament that we shall be announcing over the next 48 hours! And I hope the community will, on some level, understand the stresses they had setting up a great looking tournament, while struggling with an online platform that’s literally in the flux of development and constantly changing around their organisation.
It’s been a team effort between the tech team, our CS:GO team and even our other game organisers coming up, to get things running.
There’s a great journey ahead for eLeague.gg as it continues to deliver ever evolving resources to support the community. And I’m glad that there’s a team that’s so supportive, passionate and ingenius; and a community that’s incredibly supportive, understanding and passionate – about the games we play.