Lemegeton

Well I’ve been puttering around in Dark Age of Camelot for the past few days.  It’s been a lot of fun in the battlegrounds (PvP) but it’s also brought up a few annoyances that I guess you just have to live with for going back to a game that originally came out in 2001.  No mailboxes, no “quick selling” of inventory, a make-shift auction house (via the housing markets), etc. etc.

But there have been a lot of improvements - levelling up isn’t nearly as “grindey” as it was “back in the day.” And it’s graphics, while not up to the standards of say LoTRO or AoC, are still quite nice. Plus there is so much content to go explore - it’s almost daunting how big the DAoC universe is now. I’ve decided I’m going to level up a 50 in Hibernia and/or Midgard this time around.  I’ve never done that, and I’ve been playing (off and on) since Spring of 2002.  I think I’ve got about ten max-level Albion characters on various servers (mainly Percival and Lamorak). So I think it’s about time I get some exploring done in what has traditionally been “enemy territory” for me.

I’ve already got level 30-somethings in Hib; a Vampiir, a Ranger, and an Eldritch - personally I’m liking the Ranger and the Eldritch the most.  There’s just something very satisfying in watching those blue-black balls of death flying toward their target and obliterating it that I just don’t get tired of watching and smiling - with the occasional evil wizard laugh, for effect of course, LOL. And I’ve always like archers too, so the Ranger was a natural choice; plus that character also seems to hit VERY hard compared to other characters, with the side benefit of actually being able to engage in melee, unlike my Alb. Scout.

In Midgard, I’ve got a 30-something “Cave” spec’d Shaman, and maybe a Bone Dancer too, but I think I’d like to get a Thane paired up with my Shaman - I’ve always liked playing a Thane, even though they seem to get A LOT of bad press for some reason.  Oh, and I always “dual box” when PvE’ing in DAoC, but since I play on the “classic” servers there’s really no reason to “buff bot” in RvR since they made buffs range-limited (thank goodness). So I never dual-box when PvP’ing, it’s just too much of a pain keeping track of a ‘toon stuck to your butt.

So I’ll probably let the Vamp be my pharming, PvE toon, while using my Ranger and Eldritch for RvR engagements.  If I keep at it, I’m sure I’ll keep y’all up to date here.  For now I’ll let you know that my Ranger is pretty much a full sniper spec (Fully trained in Archery) and my Eldritch is full Void.  Pretty much standard fare there and both should be viable RvR ‘toons.  We’ll see.  I’m hoping to have them goofing around in Molvik by this weekend (the Lvl 35-39 BG). Have fun and, as always, Enjoy!

From a quick cruise around some of my favorite gaming blogs, it looks like a lot of folks are shuffling around their MMO game regime trying to find something to tide them over unitl Warhammer comes out. Just recently I cancelled my LOTRO and AoC accounts and re-subscribed to CoX and DAoC.  I’ll probably dump my EVE account as well, for now.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be going back into AoC, but I may check back with LoTRO someday, and for some reason I always go back to EVE eventually.

I’m going to try and get a max level character in CoX, I think the highest character I ever levelled before was in his early 20’s, and I’ve already surpassed that with two characters since last week. So I guess things are going well there.  I’d also like to get a max level Hib and Mid.  I don’t have either on the “classic” severs, and I think I’ve got 3-4 max’d Albs there.  Not counting any of my 50’s on other servers, ‘cuz I don’t play on those any more.

Oh well, just seemed interesting that so many people are doing the MMO-shuffle.  Hope we can all find something we like to play!

So I’ve been gaming with some new buds over in City of Heroes/Villains, but they prefer Skype as their Voice SW of choice…  So I dl’d the latest version and got it up and running… sort of…  They could hear me fine, but no sound was coming out of my side.  (Yes I set the in/out options correctly to be the headset - at least Skype saw that there was a headset, and had the correct ID).  This is a “Skype only” problem, since this same USB headset from Datel works beautifully for Ventrillo, Teamspeak, and even “in-game” voice apps (Like LOTRO). Eventually I got it to sort of work by setting the output to the external speakers while using my headset as a mic.  Meh. 

Plus Skype is like total “nag-ware” trying to get you to buy upgrades and all kind of other intrusive behaviours (like sending you to a whiney web site after you uninstall the crap) that are not evidenced with either Vent or TS. And it didn’t even look like it supported “push to talk” functionality, so we had to listen to one of the guys munching on his potato chips half the night - grrr.  So if you’re ever in the market for gaming voice-ware, DON’T use Skype! LOL - I think more of your buds will have better success with TS or Vent.  Just my .02

Well I didn’t do anything particularly 4th’ish this year.  Mainly due to the fact that it was raining most of the day and evening here, so instead I played City of Villains and did some flying around in FSX.  I did get my assault bot in CoV, and then my gaming buds talked me into trying a “Radiation Defender” trio over on the Hero side.  Wow! Three RadDefs do some sick damage.  We were owning things 5-10 levels above us with no problems at all. 

The trick is in the group - I don’t think this build would work so well as a solo build, although being a natural solo’er, I’ll see how it works out.  The group tactic is for all Defs to pop Accelerated Metabolism at the same time (it stacks), then run into the mob group (near enough to each other that your AoE heals hit each other), hit Enervating Field, then spam through a trio of powers; Irradiate (aoe damage),   Radiant Aura (an aoe heal), and a bolt of some kind that I can’t remember off the top of my head. (hey I just started this guy last night! LOL).  Anyways it was a lot of fun.

I also goofed around with my soldier based Mastermind - got him up to 24 so he has his second “Special Ops” soldier.  Dunno about this guy, his medic dies if anything looks at him funny, and of course it’s the medic that always seems to run right up to the biggest baddest mob there is and die immediately. Note to Cryptic - medics need different AI algorithms than soldiers!

In FSX/TileProxy, I mainly flew around Flaming Gorge and the upper Green River area of Utah. I also did some prelim. flights around the Gunnison River in Colorado, and all a few excursions over the San Rafael Reef and Zion’s Canyon, both in Utah.  Beautiful stuff!  After flying around those places, I’m not too sure what my next video will be, but I liked the terrain and stuff up around Flaming Gorge the best - with Zion’s a close second.  So I’ve done a lot of terrain-downloading flights over the Flaming Gorge area, and have started doing some barnstorming runs to verify the downloads and get more familiar with the topography.  I probably won’t get around to making another movie for a week or so…

Anyways, hope y’all had a great 4th of July!

I did a little bit of shifting around in my gaming landscape last month, most notably discontinuing Lord of the Rings Online (for now) in order to pick up Age of Conan which was meh as far as I’m concerned - so I promptly dumped AoC in favor of a return to City of Villains.  EVE has been running in the background, mainly just keeping up my training there - haven’t run any missions or done any serious mining for awhile, but I can see a return to EVE in the not too distant future, probably once my CoV fix is worn out again…  I also did quite a bit of flying around in FSX and made my first gaming YouTube video using FSX, TileProxy, FRAPS, Nightwish, and Sony Vegas Platinum - with hopes to make some more, it was kinda fun!

As for the monthly stats, my top five were:

1. Hellgate Mini-Game and other goodies with 71 views
2. EVE Mission Running with 29 views
3. (A Tie) Hellgate London vs. Guild Wars and Enter the Maelstrom of Mining with 10 views
4. An Oblivion Roller Coaster? with 4 views

So Helgate was far and away my number one hitter again.  Not really a surprise there.  

I did get a bit of reading done this month, and that was a nice diversion.  I read Eldest  (Inheritance, Book 2), and I’m just finishing up Knife of Dreams (Wheel of Time, Book 11) - so I’m caught up on both of those series until their final books are released later this year.  I’ve got a couple more books queued up on the shelf, “The Last Templar” and “American Theocracy,” which should both be interesting reads.  

In Music about the only new thing I got was the latest Judas Priest album, Nostradamus, and some more Nightwish (Once, and End of an Era). I did a very little bit of work on a couple of my side web projects and learned how to do virtual hosting on my web-server - not too difficult at all.  So now I’m hosting two domains from one machine.  One of these days I really need to get my web-based jukebox beyond its current Proof of Concept phase…  Between Gaming and reading filling up my leisure time, however, I just haven’t allotted any time to that, or any of my many other projects that seem to be stuck in perpetual limbo.

July will bring about a few off-days that I’m clearly looking forward to.  No real plans over the 4th- just relaxing, reading and gaming.  Then later in  the month I’m planning a little jaunt up to see my folks in Utah, so that should be fun.  Sometime before that trip I need to update/consolidate my cell-phone plan. I was hoping that the Verizon-Alltel merger would happen quickly, but apparently that’s going to take awhile.  My old co. was Alltel, but the city whom I work for uses Verizon so I now have two cell phones and two cell phone companies to deal with, not fun!  I’ll probably just drop Alltel, even though I actually like their service better, but since I work for the city, I get a much better rate from Verizon.  Oh well…

Guess that about wraps it up for June, hopefully July will bring adventures fun and interesting to us all, Enjoy!

I spent the weekend mainly flying around in FSX or in CoV.  In FSX I’ve been flying over the San Rafael Reef/Swell and Waterpocket Fold to get the tileproxy scenery loaded in preparation for making another FSX Movie with some more canyonlands barnstorming - definitely my style of flight.  I would really like to download or learn how to re-skin some of those airplanes though.  Yet another project to look into…

In City of Villains, I got my MasterMind up to level 23 I believe, so I will get my second “protector bot” soon.  I’m hoping to get to level 26 and my Assault Bot by this weekend.  I was finally able to connect up with some buds in game, so that was fun - we’re all running robotics MM’s, so we had quite the robot army running around! 

I ordered a few things from Amazon as well to assist in my movie making.  I decided I liked Sony Vegas Movie Platinum well enough to order it (and it was significantly cheaper from Amazon than direct from Sony’s site) and I also picked up an analogue to USB A/V converter.  I already had one of these from Plextor, but it’s been on the blink, so I’m going to try one from Diamond and see if it works better.  I’d really like to get my VHS collection converted over to DVD before the summer is out.  And the project list just keeps getting bigger, LOL!

And of course I’m drooling all over myself since Blizzard’s announcement of Diablo III.  All I can say is I hope it’s at least as good as D2:LoD which was my “big intro” to PC Gaming.  I had pretty much been a PlayStation kind of guy up until then.  Hope y’all had a great weekend and it looks like I’ll be posting my “month in review” later today as well - Jeez who keeps setting the calendar ahead each month! 

Well I’ve been trying to put together my FSX/TileProxy/FRAPS videos together into a singular “music video” type format to upload to YouTube and all I have to say so far is that it has been somewhat of an exercise in frustration.  FSX and TileProxy work fine, FRAPS works fine, what’s being a thorn in my side is the video editing lack-ware that I’ve been trying to use - namely Windows Movie Maker (which is pretty lame) and some version of Nero that came with one of my DVD burners (and isn’t much better than MM).

The first attempt I tried was with MM, since I’m pretty sure I used that with my first YouTube test video (just music and a “visualizer”) and that seemed to work fine. But it didn’t like all my FRAPS/FSX flight clips for some reason and it wasn’t a simple matter of just telling MM to treat all the clips a single unit, so I had to render them all as one file. I think by this time I was mad enough at MM to do this “clip condensation” in Nero.  But MM did have one feature that I wanted, and that was to speed up the playback of the video, since the whole FSX flight lasted 30 minutes in real time and I wanted to compress that down to something that could be played within the time constraints of  a single song… 

So after I got my now condensed/stitched into a single clip rendered, I threw it into MM and doubled the speed - twice, making the clip play back at 4x speed, making my final clip just under 7.5 minutes.  I dragged the MP3 file over that I wanted to use as my background music and hit save or render or whatever it is that’s supposed to create a final movie clip in MM.  10 minutes later I open up my final movie and no sound.  Tried it again, and again no sound.  So getting all P.O.’d at MM again I pulled up Nero, plopped in my new 4X non-sound movie and added my MP3 file and rendered from there.  Thump, thump, thump….  The new video had audio, but it had a very annoying “thump” or “click” throughout the whole soundtrack - GRRRR!

After doing some GoogleResearch, I found that both of these problems are quite common to both MM (no sound from MP3’s) and Nero (bad audio from MP3’s). So I’ve now downloaded the free trial of Sony’s Vegas Movie Platinum to see if that will actually do what I’m hoping to do.  It looks sort of promising just from the 15mins I’ve played around with it. It still doesn’t look like it will “auto-magically” stitch together all of my clips and treat them as one, so that will still have to be a two-step rendering process. BUT it will let me dynamically adjust the playtime of that one clip after I get it rendered, so I will be able to force it to match exactly with my chosen soundtrack.  And it also looked and sounded like it didn’t distort the MP3 file that I quickly tested with.  I should have a final output sometime this evening and I’ll add a link to this article if I actually get something usable. Until then, Enjoy!

Think I got it to work here’s the YouTube Link, and below should be the embedded object if I did this right…

The flight starts at “Mineral Canyon Airstrip” on the Green River and ends at Hite at the Northern tip of Lake Powell.  Midway through the flight you pass over the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers.  This flight took appx. 30 mins to complete but has been sped up nearly 4X to make it fit within the song and youtube time limits.  The song is the instrumental version of “Meadows of Heavan” by Nightwish from their special 2-CD version of “Dark Passion Play” (an awesome album, if I do say so myself). I think that about covers it.  I think my next ventures will be the San Rafael Swell and it’s twin, the Comb Ridge which sit on either side of Utah’s canyonlands (they’re opposing anti/mono-clines about a hundred+ miles apart from each other, with Utah’s canyonland in the rift between them).

Well I didn’t get a whole lot done this weekend.  I did some running around in City of Villains and in Conan.  I’m enjoying CoV more though, so I spent more time there.  Probably the biggest turn off I had on Conan this weekend is that I’m supposedly on a “care-bear” PvE server, but as soon as I ventured forth from Tortage I was summarily ganked by a Necro 12+levels higher than myself for no apparent reason other than I was running the opposite direction as he was.  I think AoC is getting shelved for now - it’s not that fun and if you can’t even grind without getting ganked then it’s definitely not for me.

CoV, on the other hand, is shaping up to be at least sort of interesting.  I’ve got my MasterMind up to where he has his third “battle-bot” (level 18 ) so I might actually get him at least to 26 where he will finally get his Assault-Bot.  The highest CoH/V character I’ve ever made was a level25 something-or-other, and I’ve had the game since it released, LOL!  Oh well, Like I said it’s mainly a diversionary tactic for a few weeks, I’ll probably be heading back to EVE sometime next month.  We’ll see.

I also did some more flying around in FSX/TileProxy.  I really want to get a FRAPS video made.  I’ve been flying all over southern Utah to get the scenery loaded on my new 500G HD - so hopefully that will help the frame captures speed up a bit.  I think I’ll be doing a flight down the Green/Colorado rivers - from Mineral Canyon on the Green River to Hite Canyon at the Northern end of Lake Powell.  I’m going to fly it again this evening and see how it goes.  I’d also like to find some kind of video editing software where I could force the video to fit into a particular time-frame (like the length of a song, for example). I’ve done this before on “slide-shows” using Nero, but I dunno that it will work with a video source…  Sony Vegas would probably do it, but I don’t have access to that.  Oh well, hope y’all are having a good Summer! Enjoy!

Ok, well I broke down the other night and bought Age of Conan.  It was kind of late by the time I got it all installed and patched (about 2-hours total, with high-speed DVD and ‘net connection).  First bug was that I wasn’t getting any of the voice acting - apparently this happens to A LOT of folks and I quickly found the solution through a Google-Search (basically setting the sound to Stereo and then moving the slider bar to the highest quality possible).  I’ve only wandered my Necromancer to Tortage and haven’t done any of the quests there.  I apparently need to up my graphics settings ‘cuz it just doesn’t seem as “pretty” as I keep hearing other people say it is.  LotRO seems MUCH more graphically intense to me, so maybe I’ve got to mess around with my graphics settings a bit. I’ll try that this evening, and I’m sure I’ll have more to report sometime later this week or over the weekend.

I’m not not terribly impressed with the necro, although his spells definitely seem powerful. But like many people have noted, the games true “cool factor” shines for melee style characters. So I’ll probably crank up a Dark Templar or whatever they’re called to try my hand at melee. If I decide to stay with AoC for more than a month I’ll have to cull at least one of my other subscriptions or two - most likely under the axe would be LotRO and/or CoX - or maybe I’ll get all of my EVE characters on some 40 day or longer train and close them down for the summer.  Of course I gotta see if I’m gonna stick with either AoC or CoX for the summer.  Really I’m just killing time until Warhammer arrives.

In other news, I did get my new MP3 player, a Cowon D2.  I also got a new car stereo that takes USB, SD-cards, and Line-In inputs.  So I’ll have to review those products sometime in the near future. I will say, having 16gig SDHC cards full of music is WAY COOL!  I’ve even got some of my DVD Music Vids converted over - very cool.  Anyways, that’s about all the news so far - Enjoy!

Well I just re-subb’d to City of (Heroes/Villains)….again… The nice thing about CoX is that you can just login and start blasting.  That is once you get through the costume maker, which the first time you play will probably hypnotize you for hours upon hours while you customize your character.  I’ve never run into ANYONE who looks exactly like me in that game, which is a refreshing departure from most MMO’s - although they’re starting to get better at this nowadays.

So what made me re-up my subscription?  I think it must be the summer heat that’s just started kicking in! hehe.  But seriously, a co-worker just started playing again and invited me to go back in and take a look around.  Being a “pet-class” kind of guy I knew I’d be playing a Mastermind - I’ve already got several of them, I had to try out all the various henchmen, ya know. Anyways, I started up a robo/dark-MM and sort of started following this template.  I’ve got him up to level eight or so, I also goofed around with a couple of my other MM’s, a soldier MM, who is my highest CoX character ever at level 25, and a “goons” MM who’s in his late teens.

As another weekend activity, I also flew around a bit in FSX and got the latest TileProxy (which was actually released last March, I just haven’t been keeping up) - I also took some screenshots. I still need to pare them down a bit before posting them in my screenshot section.  I’ll try to get some of them posted later this week.  I found a new little dirt airstrip that I love taking off from - I think it’s called Mineral Canyon.  It’s right next to the Green River and makes very easy access to Utah’s canyon country - it’s a gorgeous place to fly! 

In EVE I did keep up my newbie’s training, but didn’t fly any missions or do any serious mining either.  I will probably run a few mining jobs this week just to replenish the coffers.   Not much else to report, Enjoy!