General Discussion [ Page 84 ]

Wreck it Ralph Review: His Fists Are So Big!

Friday my Wife and some of our friends went to see the new Disney animation studios film Wreck it Ralph. This has been on my radar for quite some time and its also fairly rare for my wife and I to agree on a film to see together so we had to go.

I am going to keep this review as spoiler free as I can, so you don't have a ton to worry about in terms of me giving away the plot.

The movie is Disney's first jaunt on their own in a zone id like to call "Pixar Country." The animation style and tone are very Pixar-esque. The movie also tonally feels like the first Toy Story film. Its hard to put a pin on why, but I believe the first thing that comes to mind is that they use a... Read All Friday my Wife and some of our friends went to see the new Disney animation studios film Wreck it Ralph. This has been on my radar for quite some time and its also fairly rare for my wife and I to agree on a film to see together so we had to go.

I am going to keep this review as spoiler free as I can, so you don't have a ton to worry about in terms of me giving away the plot.

The movie is Disney's first jaunt on their own in a zone id like to call "Pixar Country." The animation style and tone are very Pixar-esque. The movie also tonally feels like the first Toy Story film. Its hard to put a pin on why, but I believe the first thing that comes to mind is that they use a lot of solid colors and shapes. Toy Story was chosen as Pixars first film because Toy's are relatively simple to render. Toy Story one also has a lot of close up shots because scenes further away from the camera are simply harder to render, or were at the time. If you walk through Toy Story 1 through Pixars later films you see the evolution of 3D, wider shots and more detail. Wreck it Ralph visually feels like a film from the middle of the early Pixar run. All that to say, its not a bad feel, its just something I noticed.

The movie is jam packed with video game callouts and cameo's and if you are not careful, you will miss scenes where Chun-li and Cammy walk by discussing something in the background of the film. The featured cameo's and characters seem to be more Retro than modern. All the game worlds we experience in the film are Disney creations and one such modern game is called "Hero's Duty." The other games in the movie are for the most part retro callouts. I imagine the target audience for this film is people of my age and my kids as I totally know the characters from Street Fighter, Sonic, Mario, Pacman & QBert. (I don't have kids, but many in my demographic do).

Oh right and the film is good too. It wasn't Toy Story 3 or The Incredibles awesome, but it was very good. I would also describe it as super cute. I wasn't aware the movie would take place 80% in a video game themed Candy World. It's a very well done and all, its just also super cutsey. The jokes in the candy world are funny and worked on me as well as the audience.

Someone on the Itarwebs somewhere noted that Wreck it Ralph is the best Street Fighter Movie. Some truth there as most are terrible and this movie is good and does feature Zangief as a side character with some screen time.

This movie is a no brainer if you have kids and love video games. If you want a "smiling good time" and love video games you should watch this movie. If you don't like either of those things, pass this up and watch the original Street Fighter with Raul Julia and Jean Claude Van Damme. It's not very good but people do punch and kick each other, something this movie omits however Ralph does pummel many things. Just not other people.

Gaming on Linux: What you need to know

Steam for Linux is coming, folks. In fact, for a lucky 1000 people (and thousands of others who don't mind using a trick to bypass their invite check) it has already arrived. Gaming has always been one of the reasons people keep a Windows installation around. The games for Linux just aren't there. Valve is looking to change that.

So many of you may be looking to get into Linux gaming now that it's looking more viable. This will hopefully get you started. This post makes some assumptions-- I'm going to be providing information for Ubuntu, since that's the most popular and most beginner-friendly distribution around. Other distributions will have similar ways of doing... Read All Steam for Linux is coming, folks. In fact, for a lucky 1000 people (and thousands of others who don't mind using a trick to bypass their invite check) it has already arrived. Gaming has always been one of the reasons people keep a Windows installation around. The games for Linux just aren't there. Valve is looking to change that.

So many of you may be looking to get into Linux gaming now that it's looking more viable. This will hopefully get you started. This post makes some assumptions-- I'm going to be providing information for Ubuntu, since that's the most popular and most beginner-friendly distribution around. Other distributions will have similar ways of doing things.

Drivers
This is something you need to get squared away early. If you have driver issues, your games will suffer (if they play at all). If you're using Intel integrated graphics, those drivers are open source and should be handled for you pretty well automatically. Otherwise in Ubuntu 12.10, open Software Sources from the dash and click the "Additional Drivers" tab. In 12.04 and earlier, this isn't integrated into software sources, so open Additional Drivers directly from the dash.

In this window, you'll be able to select which proprietary drivers you want to install for your video hardware. I recommend going with the experimental nvidia driver. It has recently been updated for some major performance boosts. Regardless, the bare minimum here, you want the proprietary driver.

After the driver is installed, there are a couple of tweaks you'll want to do.

By default, Unity (the desktop manager in Ubuntu) is going to keep using the gpu for compositing even when there's a fullscreen program (such as a game) running. You can't change some advanced settings like this by default, so install compizconfig-settings-manager, run it, go into the "Compositing" section and check "Unredirect fullscreen windows." While you're in CCSM go to the "Open GL" section, and disable Sync to vblank here as well. It will get you some extra performance in the WM.

If you're using an nvidia card and things seem more laggy in games than they should, you should disable syncing to vblank in the driver settings. This doesn't seem to affect everyone, but if it does, it's a simple fix. In the nvidia-settings program, head to the OpenGL Settings section and uncheck "Sync to vblank." I've never seen any detrimental effects to doing this, and it speeds up framerates pretty significantly. It may cause more screen tearing though, so it's all up to preference.

Installing games
Now you're ready to jump in to gaming! There are various places to find games, but the easiest is to get them straight from your distribution's software sources. So for our purposes, lets head to the Ubuntu Software Center (more on that in a later post) to try out some free games, just to make sure everything is in working order. Nexuiz (the old version predating the one on Steam) and OpenArena are good FPS arena games, like Quake 3, and Battle for Wesnoth is a turn based strategy game that looks a bit like Warcraft. Either of those will get your feet wet, and ready to jump into more advanced stuff.

Stay tuned for more!

UPDATE: Part two of this series, Game Distribution, can be found here: http://cheerfulghost.com/panickedthumb/posts/729

Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie

""Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie" is a passion project by independent filmmakers James Rolfe and Kevin Finn, based on the popular web series. The film is being produced outside the studio system, entirely funded by fan donations. Principle photography took place in Spring of 2012, in the Los Angeles area, with Jason Brewer as the DP. Additional filming is taking place on the East Coast. Editing is in its early stages."

I am not sure what to make of this after watching the trailer. I really enjoy the Angry Video Game Nerd shorts but I wasn't in love with this trailer. I will watch this movie, no doubt, but this movie seems to go into different territory that might not... Read All

Cheap Steam stuff!

http://www.cheaptrick.com/images/CheapTrick_Myspace_Header_01.png

Get it? Cheap Trick? Am I old now?

Anyone want some coupons for Steam games? I have a few. These expire within the next few weeks, so get 'em while they're hot!

Please, for the first day or so, pick only one of these. If there are some left by Sunday morning, it's a free-for-all.

2 Killing Floor guest passes. Not coupons, exactly, but not full games either. Play it for a couple of days and see what you think!

50% off any Assassin's Creed game other than AC3.
75% off the Trine Complete Collection
3x 50% off Alan Wake Collectors Edition
2x 50% off Alan Wake's American Nightmare
4x 50% off Legend of Grimrock
3x 75% off Rochard

The coupons for Trine, Alan Wake, Grimrock, and... Read All

Lets Play: New Site Design

I think the new site re design is going well and decided to create the video showcasing a bit about it. The new design isn't a totally new shift, its a evolution and I think is an improvement over the original.

Sound off the in comments with your thoughts. I plan on starting the work to integrate the new design into the site soon so get your feedback in!

The video quality isn't stellar, for a higher res screenshot of the new design clicky click:
http://i.imgur.com/SdUBC.jpg

Travis Admin wrote on 11/08/2012 at 04:26am

Nice Half-Life 3 easter egg. ;)

Travis Admin wrote on 11/08/2012 at 04:31am

Or I guess I should be thanking myself, since I apparently posted it!

I really dig the new site design. It's going to make expanding and adding new features much easier in the future. I like the side-by-side, but I can see why some may find it distracting. If it's easy to do a toggle, that might be an option.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 11/08/2012 at 06:27am

I love the new look! I really like incorporating more pulldown menus, so there's less button clutter on the screen. The side-by-side threw me for a minute, but I think I'll like that a lot when I get used to it. Plus it'll be twice as much content to interest a new user!

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 11/08/2012 at 12:28pm

Yay I am in the video haha. So I wanted to make a few small comments. Love the new look. I personally really enjoy the side by side. However there's a small thing that I feel like can be done now because of the newly designed titles. As an ocd person I would love to be able to auto center them. I so want to see the title in the dead center of the post. Also in the new site design it'd be really cool if in the settings menu you could mess around with different colors. I love the colors right now but maybe I might want to mess around with them at some point. Colors of the backgrounds and font and such I mean. It wouldn't change for anyone else just like personal color settings.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/08/2012 at 05:55pm

@jacob I will look into centering the titles. That shouldn't be hard to do.

I will add a UI customization or theme option to my list. Not sure when I will get to it, but its a great idea!

Travis Admin wrote on 11/08/2012 at 06:25pm

If I may add a dissenting opinion, I'm not sure centered titles would look right considering the layout. With the avatar where it is, dead center wouldn't look centered because there would be less space from the avatar to the left edge of the title, and centering it in the space after that wouldn't look centered to the article text.

I do love the idea of user-configurable color/theme choices though.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/08/2012 at 06:50pm

@panickedthumb Good point. I prefer it the way it is but I will experiment with it either way.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 11/08/2012 at 10:45pm

hmm. That is a good point panicked. Hadn't really thought about that. I guess that probably would still bother me since it wouldn't line up with the text. That's a bummer. It's not a major thing I just get really ocd about titles in particular.

BR Supporter wrote on 11/09/2012 at 12:03am

I like the sleek new design. It makes the site look new and like it has a bit of depth to it. I'm back and forth on the side by side posts though. I feel like in some situations it would be nice, and in others it wouldn't. Haven't made my mind up whether I like it better or not.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/09/2012 at 12:56am

Thanks BR! I am too, I am leaning to not side by side right this minute though. Easy enough to bring back though.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/09/2012 at 02:28am

If not side-by-side, would you have it auto expand (to a certain point) so there isn't a ton of wasted space?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/09/2012 at 04:18am

Yes, it would expand to fill the entire space.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/09/2012 at 04:35am

Longer titles would be nice. "Assassin's Creed III PC now available for pre-order on Steam" was too long to fit.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/09/2012 at 04:40am

Yep longer titles would be good.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 11/09/2012 at 08:03am

Hm. About longer titles john. You think you'd be able to have like a sub context spot for the titles? On panicked's example "Assassin's Creed III PC" would be the title. With the sub-text being "now available for pre-order on Steam". There'd be a lot of instances I could see that coming in handy.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/09/2012 at 02:20pm

That's a good thought too. For another example...

John Carmack buys Zynga!
What does this mean for the future of Farmville?

Travis Admin wrote on 11/10/2012 at 04:59pm

I'm working on something for tomorrow or Monday that would benefit from the ability to add images or embeds inline, rather than just the one at the top. The potential for overuse is quite high, but it would be convenient.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/10/2012 at 05:31pm

Hmmm. I want to seriously talk more about this. Lets take it up after the site redesign.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/11/2012 at 06:23am

If you're looking for some possible inspiration for a 404 page: http://i.imgur.com/fcHae.jpg

;)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/11/2012 at 06:28am

Heh. Hmmmm. Yeah, we could do something similar.... Hmmm.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/11/2012 at 06:58am

Thank you Mario! But the requested page is in another server.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/11/2012 at 07:00am

Or,
"This page is an illusion and is a trap devised by our servers. Go ahead dauntlessly! Make rapid progress!"

http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/ghosts.htm

Travis Admin wrote on 11/11/2012 at 07:01am

IMDB has something similar. It gives you random relevant movie quotes.

http://www.imdb.com/qweljhqerjqher

Just keep hitting F5

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/11/2012 at 04:05pm

I like the Mario idea. That's really clever!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/11/2012 at 08:25pm

Adding it to my list of things to do :D

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Shove Pro

I'm excited about this game. Strange because it is an iPad and iPhone game. Check it out.

Steam for Linux is now available to 1000 users.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2012/11/download-1.jpg

http://store.steampowered.com/news/9289/

Unfortunately, I am not one of them. They are going to be gradually expanding their test, so get that Ubuntu partition ready!

This also coincides with a new NVIDIA driver release that appears to double framerates in some cases. You definitely want this if you are an NVIDIA user and do any gaming in Linux.

http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/NVIDIA-Delivers-Massive-Performance-Boost-to-Linux-Gaming-8ac.aspx

War Z Beta

http://gamergrub.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-War-Z-Zombie-MMO.jpg

So, today a friend gave me a key to the War Z beta. I had hopes that this would be a good experience but didn't really think the game was going to be amazing. Now, I realize this is in beta and they still have a lot of changes to make, but I feel like its almost too late for some of the issues.

First off, the animations are dreadful. Running and jumping throughout the game just makes me laugh because the animations are just THAT bad. It makes me not able to take the experience, a game like day z has or war z should have, seriously. I feel like the game should have a serious, life or death, feeling to it, but it doesn't. Its just a laughable clone of day z that can't be... Read All So, today a friend gave me a key to the War Z beta. I had hopes that this would be a good experience but didn't really think the game was going to be amazing. Now, I realize this is in beta and they still have a lot of changes to make, but I feel like its almost too late for some of the issues.

First off, the animations are dreadful. Running and jumping throughout the game just makes me laugh because the animations are just THAT bad. It makes me not able to take the experience, a game like day z has or war z should have, seriously. I feel like the game should have a serious, life or death, feeling to it, but it doesn't. Its just a laughable clone of day z that can't be taken seriously.

Second, the building and towns. Almost every single town in the map is exactly the same and has the same buildings with the same layouts. There was almost no effort in making the map feel dynamic. If you didn't start out with a map, it would be impossible to tell a town apart from another besides for the surrounding hills and trees. This makes the experience very dull and repetitive.

Lastly, the game in general. There is nothing in the game that makes me think of it as an independent game. I feel as though almost every aspect has been stolen from the day z mod. There is zero creativity involved in this game. The only difference is the inventory system and the fact that you can see a weapon a mile away because it glows extremely bright. When you die, you lose all your stuff and must wait an hour to play that character again. This is pointless because you are allowed about 5 characters. If they are worried about you logging back in with the same character to get your stuff back, they should of made it to where you cannot join the same server. The fact that you can make multiple characters defeats every purpose of locking your dead character from being played again for 1 hour.

Really, War Z did not have a good impression on me at all. I feel as though the day z mod is a million times better. There is really no point in me playing war z again as I feel that I would make better use of my time if I played Day Z. If any of you guys want to criticize my judgement than go ahead. I'm just stating my opinion on the game. I just wanted to warn anyone who wants to play this game to not get their hopes up before hand.

State of The Ghost: 3.0

In keeping with the spirit of the very infrequent "State of the Ghost" posts I add yet another to the mix. Going forward I plan on doing about 4 a year talking about the nuts and bolts of what's going on and what we have brewing on the site.

Overall I am really happy with how far Cheerful Ghost has come since I launched the site this year in January. Ill paint a larger picture at the year end with how far we have come, but needless to say I am really proud of Cheerful Ghost as it sits today. Since the site is still so young if you have any suggestions or recommendations forward I would love to hear them.

Last month I added a lot of stuff to Cheerful Ghost to clear out... Read All In keeping with the spirit of the very infrequent "State of the Ghost" posts I add yet another to the mix. Going forward I plan on doing about 4 a year talking about the nuts and bolts of what's going on and what we have brewing on the site.

Overall I am really happy with how far Cheerful Ghost has come since I launched the site this year in January. Ill paint a larger picture at the year end with how far we have come, but needless to say I am really proud of Cheerful Ghost as it sits today. Since the site is still so young if you have any suggestions or recommendations forward I would love to hear them.

Last month I added a lot of stuff to Cheerful Ghost to clear out some long needed features to make it easy to start up some new awesome stuff we will launch very soon. Before I get into the upcoming features currently in the works, lets discuss what I rolled out last month:

Posts now have titles. Its funny because people have been asking for this since the site first launched. I thought it was nothing important so I kept dismissing it as something we needed. Over time I realized that being the ONLY person that felt we didn't need post titles was a bad idea, so I gave you what you wanted. I sort of did it thinking no one would use it but... since its launch its has been used in 100% of all new posts proving without a doubt I can be wrong about what features we actually need :D After using the post titles myself, I can say they are an awesome addition and I am glad people kept pushing on that one. I think this proves that if enough people want something and are vocal about it, it will be added. Post titles now work with our Atom Feed, Emails & Google Searches and when you share a post to Facebook and Google+ the title is incorporated in the content.

If you come to the site on a popular Holiday you will get a trophy. So far I have added Trophies for All Hallows Eve, Turkey Day & Leprechaun Day. As more holidays approach, I will add more. If you have a holiday you think should be memorialised in trophy form, let me know. Yes, I will add a trophy for Star Wars Day. :D

If people haven't come to the site in a few weeks we send out a email letting them know the most popular conversations that happened since they were away. I send this out every two weeks as to not be annoying. We now randomize between 5 or 6 different subjects for the email. I don't want to give the impression the content of the email is always the same because the subject line was. Now the subject will be different enough to hopefully let the user know the content of the email is new and interesting.

We were having a problem with certain people posting content a few users and myself didn't think was awesome. I implemented a system to "bury" a post. Basically it means that a buried post won't be visible to anyone on the main or corresponding game page. The post will be visible to the originating user and on the users personal area. 99% of posts are fine, occasionally some are not and this is just a way to ensure stuff on the main page is awesome for everyone.

Tungsten, Panickedthumb & WhiteboySlim are site moderators. Basically this allows them the ability to bury posts and add and edit games in the Cheerful Ghost database. Wherein its not new they are moderators, they can now bury posts along with me.

I experimented with adding video embed support for Twitch.tv. Basically I can't get a good method to ALWAYS display the video feed to browsers on your phone, tablet and desktop. What I ended up doing is displaying a Twitch graphic pointing the user to the twitch content on the site. I don't love this solution, but I like it more than displaying a broken box to people on iPhones and Androids. Eventually Twitch will provide an embed that will work on all clients and when they do I will be the first to incorporate it.

I had to migrate the database of the provider we host the site with. The free database plan we were on was no longer valid because of all the data the site stores. I guess tracking 26k games all the posts and comments take up more space than they felt should be under the free plan. :D
I also fixed a few bugs and made some improvements to the overall site look and feel as well as a bunch of other stuff I don't remember off hand.

I cleared this list off because I wanted to put us feature wise in a good place for something I have wanted to do since the site launched in January.

Cheerful Ghost is getting a visual upgrade. First off I want to let you know that the site will not lose any functionality you love. I am merely taking the design we currently have and making it better. Since I am the lone developer you have been stuck with the best visual design that I could muster. For not being a designer I am pretty happy with how it turned out but I want the site to be "moar awesomerz" in its visuals.

Yesterday I started the process of working with the new design made with the amazing Twitter Bootstrap Framework(http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/) and after showing it to a friend I am really happy with the direction. What I am doing is recreating the main page in HTML and making sure it works well on phones, tablets and desktops. When I complete the initial design and mockup I will post a "Lets Play: Cheerful Ghost Design Edition" to show you what I have cooked up.

After the design is tweaked and I feel it is awesome enough, ill spend a week or whatever cutting up the site to operate with the new design. After the bugs are all ironed out ill push it out for everyone to enjoy.

The reason I want to give the site a visual lift is because I want the visuals of Cheerful Ghost to be as awesome as the community and the content we create together. For many months I have considered what to do about this and think I am on a pretty good path, but I look forward to your input here when I post the visual "Lets Play" video showcasing the new goods.

Thanks for reading and if you have any thoughts about the above, please let me know.

Another interesting article on games journalism

http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles/craig-test/1351787650.43.jpg/EG11/thumbnail/360x200/

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-02-the-games-media-must-renew-the-trust-of-its-audience