jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2753 Posts

A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight
A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight forward how to get your imagery from your games to upload to the web and share on Cheerful Ghost.

Recently I created a blog post about it, check it out:

http://blog.cheerfulghost.com/post/20503613172/getting-your-own-images-on-cheerful-ghost

Long and short of it, nab your screen-shots, pics, etc and upload them to http://imgur.com/ Its the easiest way to upload your images on the web. Imgur is popular on Reddit and other social sites.

Hope you find this helpful, I used imgur to upload my own personal imagery for quite a few of my posts.

Often times board games dont translate well to digital.

http://i.imgur.com/76icN.jpg
Often times board games don't translate well to digital. Haven't played a Monopoly game I liked on the computer yet. That said, some games are simple enough to translate really well digitally and on mobile such as Ticket to Ride Pocket.

Ticket to Ride is a board game where you play one of a few railroad barons that are trying to build rail roads across the United States. At the start you pick routes and then compete with other players for completing your routes and getting points. If you are blocked and can not complete a route it counts negatively against your score. There are more rules, but thats it in a simplistic form.

The board game is a favorite amongst my wife and friends and recently there was a iTunes store deal where you could get Ticket to Ride pocket for free so I picked it up. Installed it on my wifes iPod touch as well as my iPhone. That was a good idea because we play it all the time together. Its one of the rare video games we can both agree on playing and its fun. The screenshot above is from one of our games.

The average Ticket to Ride Pocket game seems to last about 15-20 minutes. The average board game seems to last an hour or so.

The game is playable via Game Center, Wifi or Bluetooth. The bluetooth works pretty well and recently we were traveling and played Ticket to Ride on the plane and in the airport waiting around. The mobile version moves much faster than the board game as the bots don't spend much time making moves. Speaking of the bots they are pretty decent. They win if you are doing badly but for the most part we are mostly competing to beat each other. Since my wife is VERY competitive we enjoy beating each other. As we started the game I easily bested her but lately she has been winning each game handily. I am changing my strategy up somewhat but I have a bit to go to catch up with her, she is pretty good already.

Recently watched a video talking about the Diablo 3 beta on
Recently watched a video talking about the Diablo 3 beta on Slashdot.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/04/03/2042253/the-state-of-the-diablo-3-beta-two-videos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2FslashdotGames+%28Slashdot%3A+Games%29

Its a bit dry but found the content interesting and afterward was really excited to play it. Originally I wanted to play as a Demon Hunter when I started but the reviewer seemed to think it wasn't quite up topar with the other classes. From his description I may try the Witch Doctor for my first play through.

May 15th can not come soon enough!

Good Old Games is offering the original Fallout for free for
http://static.gog.com/upload/images/2008/11/174652fc1e425eb0aefc66dca2cb7cc553b3d5bf.jpg
Good Old Games is offering the original Fallout for free for the next 48 hours:

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout

While you are adding that to your account, grab all the other free GoG games:

http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue/?price=free

I picked up Empire Earth free a few months back and this is just as cool. Enjoy!

Check out this cool article on The New York Times called
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/08/magazine/08cover/08cover-sfSpan-v2.jpg
Check out this cool article on The New York Times called "Just One More Game ...
Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games'."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-and-other-hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html?_r=1

Yeah ok the name isn't great, but its an interesting article. Also interesting is the HTML5 game on the page. Play it. Its a very fun idea.

PS I love silly and addictive games, they are awesome.

Genghis Khan II A Great Retro Strategy Game
I love old Koei games. Three games in particular: Le Emperor, Genghis Khan II and Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2. I only owned one of those games and Genghis Khan was the game.

Genghis Khan II is a turn based strategy game where you can start doing one of two things: conqueror Mongolia then use Mongolia to conqueror the world or just start out as Mongolia and try to conqueror the world. Both were fun but starting as Mongolia was almost always easier. Easier because by the time you conqueror all of Mongolia Genghis might be dead or very old making the world conquest harder. If you started at world conquest you could pick a different country to start as, like India or England.

Koei games are all turn based strategy games set in a particular period of time and you are left to manage your small empire with aspirations to take over all other territories or countries. You have simple controls for managing your territories, army, generals and diplomacy. Genghis Khan II kicked it up a notch by allowing you to marry and have kids. This is awesome because you can name your kids "Darth Vader" and "Jon" but lame because if your current leader lacked in an area the kids were not much better. Also, if you didn't have a male child and you died you lost the game. Women can be leaders of Mongolia too Koei!

All the earlier Koei games simply allowed you to assign up to 100 troops per general and train them and equip them. Genghis Khan II upped that by allowing different kinds of units you could train and assign. The best units in the game were the Mongols as they had all A's in nearly every category. It was fun building other kind of units, like Elephants or Catapults but you never went wrong by simply building Mongols. I guess the game wasn't "Super Knight Quest II" as the Knights Templar were not great.

I played this game for hours but didn't find many people willing to play a two player game with me. I guess an 8 hour session of a turn based strategy game didn't excite many of my high school friends. Too bad too, it was a fun game.

Next Gen Console Rumors Are Depressing. Seriously, they
Next Gen Console Rumors Are Depressing.

Seriously, they are.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/02/codename-orbis-sony-playstation-4-gets-working-title-and-other-rumors/

"The bad news is that the PS4 will not be able to play PS3 games, so users might want to consider selling their games, or trading them in."

and this gem:

"Rumors are circulating that the next generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles will also block people from being able to play used games.

Some news isn't too bad, like the Playstation 4 releasing before the "NextBox 720":

http://m.ign.com/articles/1222124

Nintendo has mentioned what the Wii U will be backwards compatible with Wii games and Wii controllers. No word if they want to disallow used games though.

All that to say, not all the rumors about the next gen consoles are bad its just that some of them are really bad. Its no secret many publishers hate used games.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57405801-17/how-much-do-industry-ceos-hate-used-games-a-whole-whole-lot/

Simple fact is used games are great for publishers! They just see a used game purchase as a lost sale so they get upset because they wanted that as revenue and view it as a loss. I buy games based off what I hear from other people(ala Cheerful Ghost) and what I play from demos. Most demos I play suck and I immediately delete them and that translates to a lost sale, does that mean demos are bad and should be abolished? No, they should have made a better game.

I have only so much money for video games so if you artificially make them all $60 I have less to spend and therefore own fewer games. Often times ill pickup a game I heard was good for $15 and love it. Often times that means ill pickup the sequel to that game on release day. The Orange Box was one such deal. I picked it up on the PS3 used for $20. I pre-ordered Portal 2 for $60 and will get pre-order the next Halflife game with no thought spent.

I wouldn't have picked up The Orange Box for more money. More money would have meant a lost sale because I had no VALUE for The Orange Box before I learned to love it. I had no idea how rad the Halflife-a-verse was before I existed in it. I had no idea how bad-ass Portal was before I played it. Now I love them all and will funnel money to buying each sequel. Lost sale? If you only think in the short term, possibly.

You can't value something you don't know about and a lack of used games OR incorrect video game pricing lead to gamers, like me, simply not valuing your product because its not priced accordingly to how I value it.

So you can say that all used games are lost sales or you can look at used games as getting it into the hands of people. I hope Microsoft and Sony don't listen to publishers here because the console that doesn't allow used games will be one I don't purchase. Reason? If you going to basically adopt the Steam model and allow me to do LESS with what I buy you are wrong.

The next gen will be living in the "half realm" of discs/memory cards AND digital downloads. Have a physical product I can buy that locks me into a console sounds like Steam but less appealing. Why? Well Steam has years of a proven track record of allowing you to buy a game and access it across your PC's life-cycle. Plus, many games run on Mac and Windows. Console manufacturers are now possibly dropping support for old gen games on next gen hardware. So, again, you have the digital only model, but its WORSE than the Steam. Imagine if Steam didn't allow people to play Halflife 2 on a Quad Core computer when you upgraded. Its as silly as Playstation not allowing your digital or physical games to not play on the PS4.

I love my Playstation 3. It ain't perfect but its pretty damn good. I can buy a game and play it used or new. I often loan games to friends and get games from them to try. Graphics look great and it plays Bluray. I am not interested in doing less for the same or more money with no benefit to me as a customer. Then again, these are all rumors.....

The problem is that it doesn't sound so far out of band for Sony or Microsoft. I hope someone in the console space can get it right though and perhaps Nintendo is the only company that can?

I want there to be a next-gen console in my future. Hope someone gives me a reason to buy one. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo its your play now.

The world must be told of the coming darkness! It has
The world must be told of the coming darkness! It has begun.

Wonder how far into the story until you save Cain?

Diablo retrospective videos:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/media/videos/?keywords=&view#/extended-retrospective

Wonder how much of that will show on the collectors DVD/Bluray?

A few days after Rage shipped I saw a video about someone
A few days after Rage shipped I saw a video about someone finding a secret Wolfenstein and Doom room. I found the Wolf room in Rage and a few days ago found the Doom room. The above video outlines how to find it, but I snapped a few pics of my own:

http://i.imgur.com/frCkc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3GW1N.jpg

Basically I remembered that someone, in some level, hit some keyboards and they made a sound. Hit enough and a Demon made a noise and then you opened some door and there was the Doom room. Recently I made it to the Gearhead level saw a keyboard, hit it and it made a noise. I hit enough and a Demon made a noise. I beat the level and on my way out the level I tried a door I couldn't open at the start and it opened to the Doom room!

The Doom room is pretty cool. The original music plays as you see the original textures from the Doom game as the level. If you pass a barrel it flips around like the original Doom art did as it wasn't pure 3D back then, just gave the illusion of it. I collected the trophy and figured id continue on a kill some pinky demons but, alas it wasn't too large a room. Cool they put it in, would have loved to have killed some original Doom baddies.

Doom 4 please. Soon?

You can finally buy a real life Aperture Science Portal gun
You can finally buy a real life Aperture Science Portal gun that... doesn't actually shoot Portals. They don't sell it very well in the video to do much more than make noises that kind of sound like the game and light up a bit. I am thinking this would be cool have on a shelf somewhere with some other video game collectors stuff like my Power Glove.

I love my sweet Power Glove. Sweet. sweet Power Glove.... Oh wait... Sorry... Im back now...

Might have been better if it could at least project a light on a wall then it could double as a rad flash light. Still, this will be rad for Cosplay and Halloween.

They are already sold out.