Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category
A Timely Update
As usual, I’ve been very slack in updating this site. This is more of a general catchup post detailing what’s happened between the last post and now.
epic.LAN
With 5 larger events, including our first with over 200 attendees, and 5 smaller events under our belts, epic.LAN is going great and is getting better each time. at epic.FIVE we brought back competitive tournaments with £2,000 prize money on offer.
It was the first outing of the epic.Tournament system which manages almost every aspect of running a tournament. There were some minor problems but overall it worked well. The next event is epic.SIX which has even more money on offer and should be a great summer event!
Work
I’m still working in the Web Development team at Fasthosts, bringing some great products to market. Some of the projects I’ve worked on include Virtual Servers, updated Broadband offering, hosted networks and I’m currently working on a large project that will take me through to the Summer. It’s great place to work with excellent co-workers, fully outfitted break rooms with soft drinks on-tap and a proper coffee machine.
Most of the time I’m writing PHP with the large codebase that makes up our Control Panel being my primary focus. There’s some other internal systems that are PHP based and plenty of Python used as well, so lots of opportunity to learn new things.
Web Development
The past two years have been hectic with epic.LAN taking up most of my own personal time, with the bulk of the development work done for now, I’m looking into getting involved in some open-source projects and some interesting web development for my own amusement. I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the likes of BarCamp London 8 and HackCamp and aim to attend a few of these events this year. In the meantime, I’ve set up a projects website for any small and random projects I decide to write.
I’ve also updated my GPS tracking website for the third time in about 5 years. This takes GPS data from an Android phone and plots it on a map alongside Google Latitude and also draws a trail of my position. There’s more details on the website for it.
Upcoming Events
It’s looking to be a busy summer for events, with the following already lined up:
- 22nd April – Multiplay insomnia42
- 28th April – DunceLAN 3
- 6th May – StratLAN
- 27th May – epic.lite 4
- 3rd June – LAN 42 1
- 10th June – Florida Holiday
- 30th June – StratLAN Summer Party
- 7th July – British Grand Prix
- 28th July – epic.SIX
- 26th August – Multiplay insomnia43
As with everyone else in the world, I can be found on Twitter @MurrayMintUK. I tend to tweet irregularly as I’m not partial to blogging or micro-blogging. Feel free to follow and I’ll probably reciprocate.
I’m currently finding Twitter most useful for SMS alerts. Anytime anyone pays for an epic.LAN event, the website automatically tweets to a private Twitter account followed by myself and other members of the epic.TEAM. It’s a really cheap way of mass notifications and was a great place to test Twitter API integration.
That’s it for this post, but stay tuned for I have some good content lined up including some analysis of web development in the year 2011, a defence of PHP against critics and some articles covering the technical side of epic.LAN and what goes on behind the scenes.
Plants vs. Zombies
Popcap, purveyors of digital crack have unleashed their latest game: Plants vs. Zombies. It’s basically tower defence where the creeps are zombies and the towers are plants. The game is a great mix of addictive gameplay, great visuals and some absolute comedic moments with Crazy Dave (He’s CRAZY!).
The game isn’t without its flaws however. One of the biggest ones is that there are no hotkeys, you have to move your mouse to the top of the screen to select new plants. There is a solution to this – AutoIt, the Windows automation tool that has been helping me in MMOs since Star Wars Galaxies. It is able to simulate any input (mouse movements, keyboard presses) and has basic support for hotkeys.
I’ve put together a script for AutoIt 3 that will set up hotkeys on the top number keys to correspond to the 10 seed slots. You can view the script here.
Edit: Gir489 from the Steam Forums has taken the script and improved it beyond all recognition. It now features windowed support, an update checker and numerous other changes. You can find details on the Steam Forums.
Red Alert 2 Multiplayer on Vista
Red Alert 2 is one of the best RTS games that has ever existed with some of the craziest most fun multiplayer I’ve seen. We used to play it a lot at LAN Parties until last year when everyone started moving to Windows Vista. It is one of the few games that uses IPX for network games and Windows Vista does not have IPX available.
We thought that this was it and Red Alert 2 was dead, however, Scorpio9a has released a patch. The patch makes Red Alert 2 use IP instead of IPX and I’ve tested it and it’s working under Vista! How to get it working?
- Download the patch: ts_ra2_lanpatch_1_00.zip
- Extract it to your Red Alert 2 directory
- Edit ra2.ini and change the ‘NetCard’ setting in the [Network] section to 0 (If you have more than 1 network card, you may need to try different values)
- Run Red Alert 2 and choose ‘Network’ and you should end up in the lobby!
Some common problems you might come across are:
- Network button doesn’t do anything and just returns to the main menu
You haven’t selected the right network card, just edit ra2.ini in the Red Alert 2 directory and change the NetCard setting in the [Network] section.
- You can’t see any games or connect to someone else’s game
Make sure you’ve allowed Red Alert 2 on any firewall like Windows Firewall or Zonealarm. Also make sure everyone is running this patch regardless of operating system, otherwise they might be hosting an IPX game which your IP broadcast can’t see!
If you find this post helpful or have more problems/solutions, then please post a comment and let me know and if Scorpio9a reads this – if you come to a UK LAN Party, let me know and I’ll buy you a drink!
i34 Feedback
So i34 is over and Multiplay have some time to reflect and work out what to improve for PC Gamer Showdown in September and i35 in October. My thoughts on the event are very mixed. Click to read more on my feedback!
Video from i34
Enjoy!
i34 is here!
Well it’s that time of the year – Multiplay‘s summer gaming festival, i34, is here. It’s a new venue and a new style of event for MPUK and UK LAN Parties. In the past few years, the i-Series events have become more and more commercial and more of an expo/event tournament LAN with less for the traditional casual LAN gamer. Recognising this, Multiplay have upped their game and have now turned their typical large UK LAN Party into a gaming festival.
I’m here with Box ‘o’ Win and will be taking photos and putting them in the gallery. We’re on rows U and V on the far side of the hall so come and say hi! I arrived about 4PM and with the rest of the box, we set up the Tent ‘o’ Win – a 30ft x 10ft gazebo for drinking and general socialising. After that, Shazz and I went to Leamington and found our Travelodge with the largest room I’ve ever seen in a Travelodge, with room not just to swing a cat, but an entire zoo! We then went and joined the epic queue for checkin. It was only 30mins or so waiting when we queued, but there were people queuing for almost 2 hours to get checked in.
First thoughts on the event? It’s OK. Having everyone in one room is interesting and with the lights off there is a bit of atmosphere, but it’s not a patch on DreamHack. The trouble I think MPUK will have is that the tournament gamers will not want the lights off during their tournaments, and they definitely won’t want loud pounding music. Both of which are important in bringing the atmosphere to DreamHack.
The MFestival exhibition isn’t open yet, it’s scheduled to open at 9AM with all manner of exhibitors and an epic stage, that by all reports, dwarves anything attempted at a previous i-Series.
As always, photos and video can be found on the gallery as well as on YouTube.
Team Fortress 2 T-Shirts
I like Team Fortress 2. It’s a game I’m finally good at, so I’ve decided to get some T-Shirts made for it, if possible. The two T-Shirts are below:
Update!
I’ve had these shirts made and they’re great. The company I used was AKAK, however any T-Shirt printer should be able to do these. They worked out about £12.50 each ($20 or so) . I’ve also considered getting a Sandvich T-Shirt made:
i33 – Day 1
So I’m finally here at Multiplay’s i33 event in Newbury, Berkshire. Possibly the last event here! After arriving at 2PM and checking in (although not allowed to go into the building), I set up a pro sleeping space in the red room and finally at 6PM managed to get into the Box o Win. It’s not bad, quite a decent size, good mix of games.
Not much else happening tonight, so off to bed. Quite glad I’m not staffing this event as a number of things have made it trickier for staff. Anyhow, I’m off, but the first lot of photos are up on my gallery now.
Wembley
Hi from Wembley Stadium! I’m here with the CentralanUK team and some great guys from EnemyDown running the £50,000 Unreal Tournament 3 National Championships.
A 5AM start for setup, and we’re finally kicking off with only an hour delay. We’ve had fun with power connectors, delivery, wireless keyboards and all manner of venue difficulties, but it’s all working and we’re ready to go!
I’ll try and get some photos up along with some coverage throughout the event.
Read more : Comments(0) : Apr 03 2011