Super Mario Maker: My Levels

Hey Guys

I want to share a new game I have been getting into. For all those Mario fans out there this is the gold nugget of the series. Super Mario Maker for the Wii U.

In this game its all about creating Mario levels from scratch sharing them on the network and then playing other peoples levels. But if that was not enough to blow you away then listen to this...

After you have made a level you can switch it between four different Mario styles with the click on a button. Everything changes to that style from the game mechanics to the monsters.

Now you may be thinking that the uploaded levels will be flooded with shit levels and you are not wrong there are a few of them, but Nintendo has a trick up its sleeves to prevent too many shit levels. When you first start playing you can only upload 10 levels. If you want to upload more you need to get stars. Stars are collected from other players starring you levels. So if you only put up shit levels you will only ever get 10 to upload, limiting the shittiness of the levels.

The good thing is you can remove levels you have uploaded and upload new ones. So if you later on get the hang of things and make some new, BETTER, levels then you will take down the ones that are not doing so well and put up your new good level. This help increase the quality of levels.

I have a few levels of my own I am particularly proud of.

The first is Star Run. Its all about getting to the next star before your time runs out.
Name: Star Run - ID: 3E30-0000-008F-9860

The next is a chase game. Grab the shell, throw it and chase it. If you can't keep up you won't finish the level.
Name:Shellie Chase - ID: B94C-0000-00C4-4564

My last and favourite has to be my escape room. You are dropped into an empty room, can you find the exit.
Name: Escape Room - ID: 7394-0000-00C6-131A

Well thats it guys, if you like my levels give them a star :D

Geek it up Readers

SighFye

New PC Build - Assembly and Setup

So all of the parts arrived in the mail, so I thought I'd share how the build went and how good the improvement is in the games that I play on a regular basis.

Aw yeah! 4k gaming screen and 2 supplemental monitors :3

So first of all, I had to strip out most of the components from my existing case, leaving the power supply and hard drives for recycling. This was a very cathartic experience, having held on to the motherboard, CPU and RAM begrudgingly for like 6 years now because I didn't have the cash to upgrade until now.

I donated those parts to a friend of mine who repairs computers for people on welfare in a deal with centrelink, so i know they'll find an appreciative home with a jobseeker or a senior in need of a cheap computer.

Then I had to figure out how to fit all the new components into the case. The motherboard was a little larger than my existing board, so I had to move a few motherboard riser screws and the CPU cooler was tricky to install, so I had to install the CPU and cooler before installing the entire lot on the motherboard in one go.


Then I ran ionto my first issue. When installing the RAM, there was a small cable that leads away from the IO faceplate that was too close to the RAM slots. I had considerable trouble tucking it away since whenever the RAM was in place, I didn't have access to the cable anymore to tuck it out of the way. Eventually, I managed to get it tucked out of the way, but it seems like a design flaw that needs changing in any future releases of this board.

The CPU, CPU cooler, RAM and motherboard all installed fine and I got the radiator installed on the rear of the case with a little experimentation to find the right orientation for the cooling tubes. The only issue I really had after the motherboard was installed was getting the hard drives plugged into the SATA ports on the motherboard. They're located on the front edge of the motherboard parralell to the rear of the motherboard rather than sticking straight out from the face of the motherboard. This made it tricky only because it forced me to re-route the sata cables underneath the motherboard tray and use tweezers in order to get the cables plugged in right because there's not a lot of finger room left over on that side.


After installing the other components without issue, I found a significant increase in performance compared to my old PC. I can now play in 4k resolution with roughly 4 times the frame-rate I used to get in 1080p on my old PC. Minecraft runs much smoother at 130fps @ 4K instead of 30fps @ 1080p and GTA 5 now runs at 100fps at 4K when before my CPU couldn't even handle the game with more than a few frames a second at 1080p.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with the new build and besides a new case, there's really nothing else I want in the short term for it. The 20cm fan didn't quite line up with the radiator screw-holes on the top of the case and I had to hot-glue it in place instead. Hopefully when I get a new case, it should accommodate higher airflow fans more readily.

Gluing components just feels dirty... >.>

The performance of the new system is good enough that I should now be able to play and review much more modern games and record lets plays for some as well. Leave a comment and let me know what you'd like me to review next and if it's in my library, I might just play it next! :D


*EDIT: The 20cm fan that I hot-glued in place unfortunately got it's cable tangled in the fan of the GPU and was pulled free of the hot-glue, breaking two fan blades in the process. The GPU fan however was fine. Once I get a new case, it should solve all the airflow issues.

New PC Build - Planning Phase

It's that time of year again, when the Tax Return fairy visits and leaves a giant wad of cold hard cash in your bank account. I got lucky this year starting a new job and not quite hitting a certain tax bracket before the end of the financial year ended, so my tax return will come out to just shy of $5,400 this time around.

Since my PC is about 5 years old and I bought it initially at Harvey Norman (so it's probably even older than that, especially since it was the floor model :/ ), it's about time to upgrade! :D

So many parts to choose from!

Since I still have to wait about 2 weeks before the Tax Fairy visits my particular bank account, I've been looking for a list of parts that will work best for me. I'll be updating with progress on the build as parts arrive, but it's likely they may all arrive at once anyway.

Initially, I decided to go all out and spend as much on graphics power as I could, but it quickly became an expensive list and the rest of the parts suffered as a result. The final list I've come up with is a good balance of power and affordability, specifically focussing on making sure that my upgrade path is as wide as possible in the future.

The Case - $150 (Recycled)

The Cooler Master HAF XB EVO case is a different case than you would normally get. It manages to be a great gaming case by providing space for the largest graphics cards and plenty of options, yet somehow also functioning well as a test-bench case by providing quick access to parts through three removable panels and a motherboard tray.

I bought it a little while back and it should serve fine as a shell for the new components, so I can save some cash by not fixing what isn't broken here.

The Power Supply - $149 (Recycled)

The Cougar CMX1000 V3 1000W 80 PLUS Bronze Modular Power Supply is nothing particularly special. It was the cheapest power supply that I could find above 1000W. I can always upgrade this later if I end up getting more power hungry components, but at least it's a modular power supply so there won't be a mess of unused power cables dangling inside the case.

Also, it has a switch...
Frankly, I'm surprised you can still purchase power supplies that don't have one by default...

The Motherboard - $759

The MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming RGB Motherboard is the best x99 motherboard for the 2011-3 series of CPUs that I could find. My reasoning is that you need to have the best motherboard you can get in order to make sure you can upgrade for a long time without having to swap it out in the future. The rugged looking armour, built in wireless, bluetooth and high quality audio would be enough to sell me, but there's also a cool RGB lighting system that resembles those found in modern keyboards and it has the ability to expand all the way to 4 way SLI in the future, should I want to go to that extreme.

The CPU - $539

I chose the least powerful of the i7 CPUs available for the 2011-3 socket, the Intel Core i7 5820K, simply to lower the price of the overall build, but for the extra 2 cores it didn't really seem worth another $1000 to get the Intel Core i7 5960X Extreme Edition. Especially since the clock speed is the same anyway.

Should they release more powerful CPUs for the 2011-3 socket, I can always upgrade anyway.

CPU Cooler - $89

Since this is my first self-assembled PC, I've decided that a full water cooling system would be a bit too risky. Instead, I opted for the Corsair Hydro Series H55 CPU Cooler enclosed water cooling loop for just the CPU until I have a better understanding of what I'm doing.

This should allow me to test the added benefits of water cooling without altering my graphics card/s or risking water getting in the components when putting it together. 

The RAM - $490

The number one reason that I didn't pass my Information Technology course was helping other students or playing games when I should have been more focussed on my own work.

Close second, however, was the fact that I could never run a virtual machine of Windows 8 Server Edition to do a majority of my work at home because my computer only has 8GB of ram. 

This would be fine for most people, but when you're running a virtual machine that needs a bare minimum of 4GB or higher to run faster than a crawl, your own operating system, and perhaps you need a client virtual machine to test your work... Well, you can see why RAM has taken such a priority for me this time around.

I was actually hoping to get the 128GB kit of ram (8 x 16GB sticks), but the overall budget decided on 2 sets of G.Skill Ripjaws 4 F4-2400C15Q-16GRR 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 instead, for a total of 32GB.

The Graphics Card - $1089

The MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6GB was a design choice mostly. You may have noticed that the majority of the parts I've decided on are MSI or red. I decided to go with an MSI GTX 980 Ti instead of a Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti, which has a higher clock speed, simply because it matches both my MSI motherboard and the secondhand GPU I'm testing Phys-X with. The RAM just happened to be red even though I chose the cheapest RAM available.

With an almost identical card to the Titan-X, this seemed like the logical choice since I can get roughly the same performance for 2/3 the price.

The Phys-X GPU - $519 $350 (second-hand)

Initially, I had decided just to get a single GPU, but a friend of mine is upgrading to a Titan X, so I'm getting my hands on a MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4GB for considerably less than the retail price, even though he hasn't had it all that long.

This was going to be my primary GPU for a while, however another friend told me that you could have two mis-matched GPUs from the same manufacturer (Nvidia/AMD) and set one to take over all the physics calculations by allocating it as a Phys-X card instead. This pulls the physics processing away from both your primary graphics card and CPU, and thus should provide a noticable performance boost.

I haven't tried this before and my current GPU is AMD, so this secondhand GPU seemed like a perfect fit, both thematically with the rest of the build, and to provide a dedicated Phys-X solution. Should be fun to experiment with :3

Storage Drives - $350 (some recycled drives)

So I'm splurging a little bit and getting an 8TB archive drive from Seagate, since I keep filling mine at LAN parties, but I already have a 128GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive to use as my primary and secondary drives, so I'm not spending a great deal on new active drives.

Since I'm also getting a capture card, this will provide a good place to stick raw footage until I get a chance to edit it and produce a YouTube video from it.

Additional Case Fans - $39

Grabbed myself a new 120mm fan since my existing one has blue LEDs and I got myself a 200mm fan for the top panel of my case and two 80mm fans to go behind the hard drive rack.

Blue LEDs don't really mix with the existing theme of red, so the new fans are all black as much as possible.

Mouse - $79

Originally, I wanted to get a Razer Naga, however after recently purchasing it and giving it a try, I realise that the grid of 12 buttons for your thumb is actually really poorly designed for general computer use. The grid is over the space where you would typically put your thumb when you lift the mouse to turn around in an fps and would often cause mis-pressed keys and just wasn't really useful for me. 

The Corsair Vengeance M95, however has the area where you would normally place your thumb free and places a similar number of buttons around the thumb space in what seems like a much better thought out design. It should be cool to use with macro keys and stuff :3

Keypad - $135

I've had my eye on getting a dedicated gaming keypad for a while now. Mostly it's because I love the feeling and sound of a mechanical keypress for gaming, however when I'm typing I like a quiet keyboard.

My current keyboard is not super noisy, so the Razer Orbweaver 2014 should be good for gaming sessions.

I also grabbed a PC toolkit and a USB drive and a few other items, so the total came to just under $3,645 plus $45 postage.

Keep an eye out for my next post when I'll be unboxing and assembling each part :3

Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions or improvements.



*EDIT*

Since this post, I have also purchased a Logitech G710+ Keyboard, a professional recording microphone and a 28 inch 4k Monitor, so most of my tax return is now spent...

I'm kinda bad with money :/

But, that does mean more cool things to play with! :D \o/

The Stanley Parable - Review

I've been playing The Stanley Parable over my birthday. I have played it over, and over, and over again... you may ask, why would I play the same game over and over? Well in The Stanley Parable, it's kind of the point.

You play as a everyday worker called Stanley. Stanley works in an office building at a computer terminal in room 427. He is given commands on his monitor. These commands tell him which buttons to press and for how long. One day he finds all his coworkers gone. Where did they go? Maybe Stanley missed a memo. From here, Stanley's fate is in your hands. Will you follow The Narrators instructions or will you destroy the game he spent so long making? Maybe you will help him test out a new game he is making.

When I first started playing The Stanley Parable, I thought it would be a puzzle game. From the trailer I knew it would restart again and again with slight changes so I assumed I would be finding the things that made those small changes in order to reach a final ending. I spent time and time again doing slightly different things, taking notes of numbers to access codes and paying close attention to the small things.

It took me some time but I soon realised this was not a puzzle game. This was an adventure game. Maybe an art game. I'm still unsure. The Stanley Parable has multiple endings. In fact the point of the game is to find all the endings. There is no right or wrong way to go. Follow the narrator's... well narrations... or don't. Its really up to you.

The Stanley Parable is full of comedy. The humor reminded me of Portal's humor. The narrator basically tells the story but as time goes on he can get a little annoyed or frustrated at you not doing as he says. I had a real laugh when I went into the broom closet in two games and on the second time he said "Oh not this again.". The 3rd time around the broom closet was boarded up to prevent me from going in there.

I do like this game a lot, however, I like games with a little more... I don't know... direction I guess. I wanted to actually have a true ending I was aiming for. I loved the idea of starting again and again with slight changes. I suppose I expected The Stanley Parable to be a puzzle game so I went into it, trying to "complete" the game. But there is no true ending. Its just lots of different endings.

So how do I rate this game.

Graphics: 6 / 10: I don't really know what to write about them. they were okay.

Music: N/A - There wasn't really any music. Except in the... other game part (without giving too much away)

Story: 8/10 - This was an interesting story because is was every changing. Is the narrator bad or good? The comedy in the story is what really made it.

Gameplay: 8/10 -The gameplay was fun. It is fun trying to find different ways to change the story.

Overall: 7.3 / 10

An interesting and funny game. Gets you addicted for a few hours but you don't know why?

Beyond the Veil: Demonic Invasion

Well I just finished update 1.3 of the Beyond the Veil HUD system for Second Life and everything seems to be going really smooth. With thirty seven demons already roaming the lands and twenty one Angels holding them back, the battle is on the verge of an all out war. The demons are taking over so if you know anyone that wants to be an Angel get them on board.

I want to first start by saying Thank You to all the players of Beyond the Veil. This game is my passion and to see people playing the game, competing with one another and being excited about updates really gets me fired up too. I have a lot of ideas for this game and I really want to see it become one of the biggest games in Second Life.

I want to start with a quick chat about an issue with Bloodlines players. These people are getting upset that a Beyond the Veil players have stolen a soul. This is a misunderstanding about the term soul within Second Life.

A Beyond the Veil demon was in a club cursing people and taking souls. Someone in the club had a device that allowed them to see all hidden chat and saw that a soul from a person they know was stolen. They thought that it would effect the bloodlines stats.

Avatars in Second Life do not have a soul. Linden Labs never gave them one. Bloodlines emulates this with a piece of information in a database. Beyond the Veil does the same thing however both "souls" are not the same. A soul can be owned in Bloodlines and owned by someone else in Beyond the Veil. They do not effect each other.

Now to prevent this confusion from happening again, when the HUD tells you you have taken a soul, it now does this in an IM to you. I was using llOwnerSay displays the message in local chat but only to the owner. My guess is his device could read Owner Say. I am not 100% sure if people can access private messages but I would think that would be a violation in privacy so wouldn't be possible.

Another frequently asked question from non players to me is the collection of information about non playing avatars and how that information is being used. I thought I would address that here.

The only information I collect about an avatar is the name. In the database I would have something like Name: Sigh Parx, Soul Condition: Blessed, SoulLocation: Raiden Faxel. If a player was to join the game then their avatar key would be stored also for in game reasons. Any and all information kept is solely for Beyond the Veil's use and will never be used for any other reason. The only time a non player will hear from us, is when a player speaks to them about the game and asks them to join. Non player's information will not even be shown anywhere except when they are scanned by an avatar and they must be within range. The information will not be visible on our website or any other location.

Okay, with that out the way lets have a quick look into what is coming. The next step for me is to build a Website to get all the stats for all to see. It will take some time to design and build so you have to be patient with me. I have a designer to do the design work. Some of you may know her as Bella Parx.

After the website comes the big update, the battle system. A lot of people have been asking me how this will work. Well to be honest, I don't know yet. We have started designing it and I'll give you an insight to the thought pattern.

First of all I do not want the battle system to be just target click dead. Although that would work I think you guys deserve a little more than that. I want to have more than just 1 button to click.
I am hoping to have multiple skill trees. These may be something like Range, Melee and Protection. You wont have to select a class and will be able to select skills from either skill tree. I want to add an experience bar which will give you skill points. These skill points will be spent on skills.

Range: Battle from a distance safe from harm of Melee attackers.
Melee: Up close and personal.
Protection: These spells will be things like heals, shields and things that can protect other players.

Now all of this is just theory. It's what I want but it's not a promise. Things may change. Also, when the battle system comes out, if it is done like this, only one of the skill trees will come out, then in a later update another skill tree and so on.

The next thought, and this as well is not a promise, just a thought; is animations. I want these battles to look awesome. Now my biggest fear with this is lag. If we get too many people doing these amazing effect it could cause bad lag. We will see what I can do.

The last thought, and my most favourite, a battle sim. I want a FULL sim where all Angels and Demons can come and kick arse. But it won't just be a place to kill angels or demons. No no. I want to add another objective to do on the SIM. This WILL be kept a secret though so until then, thats all the info you will be getting.

Okay so that's it guys. that's the plan and the idea with absolutely no promises.... except to the non players. I promise I will not use your information for any reason other than the Beyond the Veil game.

Ori and the Blind Forest - Review

Well I finally did it, I finished Ori and the Blind Forest. There were happy times, there were sad times and there were times I wanted to throw my keyboard across the room. But it is done.

Now normally I don't have much expectations for arty games. I have played my fair share of them and have found that a majority of them are just that... arty. The developers want to make something very artful and they do. Looking upon them in that perspective, they succeed. Limbo is one of those games. Yes it has some challenges and the gameplay is so so. I enjoyed it. I really did. But a game needs more than a few minutes of play. I found Limbo lacked bulk. It was over before it really began.

Now I was worried about this when starting to play Ori. Bel got this game because she likes pretty games and, well look at it, Ori is beautiful.

But unlike a lot of pretty games that is not all. You play as a little creature who is trying to bring balance back into the world. He is the last of his kind as all others have died off. You must go to all corners of the world and restore the elements.

The game itself has really good gameplay. The controls are smooth, and there are so many different kinds of movements. Some are locked at the beginning. As you kill enemies you get experience which fills up a bar. When the bar is filled you get an upgrade point. These upgrade points can be used to give Ori a new ability for a full ability tree.

The abilities in the ability tree are not required but really do help out. You also get skills through the world. These are all required to progress in the game.

Now the game isn't small either. The world map is a lot bigger than some pretty games I have played. Okay lets be honest, its bigger than ALL pretty games I've played.

The red arrow I have drawn is where this next image is...

 

When you get to restoring the elements in each area it is not an easy task. They took me a lot of turns before getting them right. I won't go into what is required because that may be a spoiler.

So my score for this game...

Graphics: 10/10 - These are some of the most beautiful graphics I have ever seen.

Music: 10/10 - The Music paints the mood for the game so well.

Story: 8/10 - I have had better stories but this is a good one. It pulls the emotion strings and has twists and turns.

Gameplay: 9/10 - I would have given this game 10/10 but when I completed the game I couldn't continue to play. It should have offered me to start again with a harder setting or something.

Overall: 9.25/10

 Well Done Microsoft. This game was worth every penny spent.

Tinkering with Windows 10 - Preview Build

Oooh! It's so pretty! :D

Microsoft have done something unprecedented this month and made a public statement that states any preview copies of the latest build of windows 10 that are installed before launch next month, will become a free activated copy of windows 10 once it's officially released!

The only catch is that you have to create a windows insider account (which is free) and log into the copy of windows 10 preview using that same Microsoft windows insider account. A small price to pay for a free copy of the latest and greatest operating system :3

Go get it! :D

As a response to this, I have decided to install the preview version of windows 10 again and see if the issue I was having was fixed. Since I was able to access my Network Atatched Storage device, I figured it was ok and I've been poking around it for a few hours since. Here's a few of the things I've noticed

Multiple monitor support is fantastic. The new workflow changes that allow you to snap a window to any of the sides or corners of a screen have been fixed to work with multiple monitors now, rather than just letting your windows drag straight from one screen to another. Now, if you move the window from one monitor to another in a fast motion, it will pass through, however a slower movement will instead pause at the edge of your screen as if you want to snap to that side of your monitor. I didn't figure that out straight away and was annoyed that it wouldn't move to my second screen, but after some furious mouse shaking, I finally figured out what was happening :3

I also noticed that some key settings that I would normally have to tweak manually with a registry edit or other hacks were just available as drop-down boxes or options to turn on or off. Over-all it seems as though windows 10 has been thoroughly improved, based solely on changes that were suggested by the users and it eliminates a lot of the hassle that was associated with acclimatizing to windows 8 or 8.1.

Long overdue changes!

Every windows should have this option! :D

One of the largest and most welcome changes to the operating system of choice for the 21st century, has been the addition of a native screen reader in the form of Windows Narrator. No longer do blind users have to rely solely on third party applications that cost hundreds of dollars (sometimes upwards of a thousand bucks!) or have small teams that barely ever update, in order to use their computer for daily tasks! This is also a boon to developers who wish to make software that is compatible with blind accessibility solutions, as they no longer have to buy the expensive software in order to test their own software. Small game developers will now be able to make games for blind users that require nothing more than windows in order to play :3

My house-mate is completely blind and will find this insanely useful :3

All-in-all, I'm quite happy with how Windows 10 has turned out for me, however results may vary as with any software, so we'll see how it goes. It's still early days yet.

Messing around with Skyrim Mods

For the best part of the last week, I've been in mod-hunting mode for The Elder Scrolls V: Skrrim. I eventually bogged my game down to the point where it was unstable and I could barely play it, but it was fun whilst it lasted :3

Here's a few of my favorite moments.

The moment I realised that fire magic starts actual spreading fires thanks to the Ice and Fire overhaul mod. D:

The Tropical Skyrim mod makes the entire game look super cool and warm :3

Ridable Husky Mounts! "Mush!" :D

Everything looks lush and green with Tropical Skyrim on. I love it :3

I wish I'd been able to get a full playthrough out of it or at least completed a few acheivements, but after roughly 100+ mods installed, it just gets rediculously laggy and crashes quite often. I might try again and remove some of the mods to increase stability. Tropical Skyrim will probably have to go as it adds a ton of foliage and reduces performance significantly but hopefully I can kep some of the other sillier mods :3

Beyond The Veil: Overview

Overview

Beyond the Veil is a HUD based MMORPG in Second Life. It was release on 24^th June 2015. It is a battle between Angels and Demons to control the souls of humanity. To be immortal a demon or an angel must drink from a Spring of Youth. These springs are connected to the Fountain of Youth.

Each day your immortality fades. You have thirty points of immortality. Each day you lose one. If your immortality reaches zero you will no longer be immortal and in turn no longer be able to hold the souls you have collected. All the souls you have collected will be released back to their bodies.

You can play Beyond the Veil alone or in a group. Being alone will be harder to level and harder to defend yourself against the opposite race. So it is better to find a group to join. To grow your group you can ascend avatars to join the battle for your side. Once they are ascended, offer to be their Guardian Angel or Liege. If they accept, it is your responsibility to help them and teach them how to grow. After all their soul count is included in yours.

Each Host and Legion has a Soul Crystal. These crystals hold all the souls your group has collected. If a member of the opposite race manages to touch your Soul Crystal they will steal a soul from that group. The more they touch, the more souls the can steal. An unguarded Soul Crystal is the fastest way to gain Souls.

In a soon to be released patch, a battle system will be included in the HUD. If you stumble upon an avatar of the opposite race, you can attack them. If you win the battle, they will be disabled and must return to their Hosts/Legions Soul Crystal to be reactivated.

 Getting Started

To play Beyond the Veil you will need the HUD. There are two HUDs to choose from, Angels or Demons. The only way to get hold of the HUD is to have a demon or an angel ascend you. Once they ascend you, the server will send you the welcome pack. This includes your HUD, a set of wings and either a halo or a pair of horns. There is a free 30 days trial of the HUD which starts once you are ascended.

The HUD 

1. Immortality Points: The green dots show how much immortality you have.
   
2. Scan Area: This will scan the current area and give a list of 10 avatars around you.
   
3. Attack Target: This button will be the attack button when the update is released.
   
4. Settings: In this button you can see your stats and your progress to the next level. More settings will be added in later patches.
   

The Soul Crystal

The Soul Crystal is the requirement for all Hosts and Legions. This is where all the souls you group collects are stored. It has the power to reactivate you if you have lost a battle. It can promote you to a new level if you meet the requirements are you leader is present. It is also a great place for the opposite race to come and get some quick souls. So make sure you guard your Soul Crystal. Soul Crystals must be placed on land which is accessible to all. If you find one that is guarded by a security system or blocked land, please report the clan to Raiden Faxel.
The Soul Crystal displays your Host/Legion name, the race you are, how many members and how many souls in total you group have.

 The Spring of Youth

The Spring of Youth is what give Demons and Angels their immortality. To drink from the spring all you need to do is touch it. Each drink will give you one point of immortality. The owner of the group may lock the spring to a clan or lock it from everyone. The Spring of Youth also acts as your groups donation box. No commission is taken from donations so everything benefits your Host/Legion.

If you are interested in getting into this game, please contact the creator Raiden Faxel for more details. Alternately you can contact Sigh Parx to become a demon or Warfina Tisch to become an angel.

Steam Sales

Hey guys SighFye here

I wanted to share with you all my Steam Sale buys. Now keep in mind, I missed a lot of the really good ones because Bel and I are moving interstate and need what money we have. We were looking for the under $3 kinda deals.

So here is my list. Some were gifted to Bel and some were mines so I'll keep them categorized. Mine first...

My new games

As you all may know I am a fan of the Oddworld series and recently bought New & Tasty. Well there are two games in the series I have not yet played (I know, I know, as a fan I should have played them by now. But I didn't so leave me alone.)  So the first two games on my list are...

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee - $1.24 USD

 

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD - $2.49 USD

When I was younger I was a big fan of the Tomb Raider series. I haven't played them all but I love the adventure puzzle style gameplay. It's what got me into the Uncharted series too. So when this game came on sale I just had to get it.

Tomb Raider - $3.99 USD

Now I am a massive fan of Portal. The comedy, the puzzles, its an amazing game. When I saw this next game it reminded me of it. Seems to have some comedy aspects to it.

The Stanlet Parable - $3.74 USD

Now moving on. I have always liked a big scare. So I thought this next game would be a good one.

Slender: The Arrival - $1.49 USD

And my final game is a genre I am obsessed about. The Zombie genre. So my last game is...

How To Survive - $0.74 USD

So that is my total of Steam Sale games. It all came to a total of $13.69 USD or $17.69AUD. Its like getting all these games for free when you buy a good game :D

So now we have Bel's list.

Fez - $1.99 USD

 Kings Bounty: Crossworlds - $2.99 USD

BattleBlock Theater - $3.74 USD

Antichamber - $1.99 USD

For a total of $10.71 USD or $13.84 AUD

For the whole sale Bel had her eyes on Cities Skylines. She is a massive fan of Sim games as you may have read in her post. So I surprised her with it. It kinda fell outside the cheap rule, but I couldn't help myself.

Cities Skylines - $22.49 USD

So our total Steam Summer Sales came to $50.89 USD or $65.77 AUD. The best part of it all. I paid for it all out of either Second Life earnings or Ebay sales :D

So comment below and share you Steam Sale list. Don't forget to 1+.

I love Pentatonix

Pentatonix are a highly talented A Capella group. As well as harmonizing amazingly, they also create their own music using their voices with bass sounds and beat boxing. They're the full package and I can't get enough.

Check out their latest vid, the Evolution of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.

Take a looksy at their Grammy Award winning Daft Punk Medley.

Here's their take on the evolution of music.

I can't tell you how many times I've listened to their cover of Royals.

I know it's not Christmas but their cover of Drummer Boy sends chills down my spine.

Check out more covers and originals on their official YT channel here.

I <3 PTX!

Cities: Skylines

SighFye surprised me with Cities: Skylines, a game I'd been eying off since its release. I love simulation games such as Roller Coaster Tycoon (Did you know there's a new one on the way? Check it out here), Sim Tower and the Sims.

Cities: Skylines is a fun, addictive and complicated city building simulation game. You must not only build your city to your citizens heart's content but you must also plan ahead. Every decision you make affects your city and it's dwellers. These decisions range from your road layout and where you put houses, shops, offices and industry etc. etc. Also where you place water intake and sewage outtake, landfill, and power sources. To what policies you, as Mayor, will decide to put in. Will you place a smoking ban to better the health of your citizens while slightly decreasing their happiness or will you create a no smoking zone? Will you make green decisions such as wind power or will you pollute with coal? 

All of your decisions affect multiple factors and have ripple effects. For example if you don't provide adequate power to your city, people become unhappy and as people become unhappy you begin losing income.

As I unlocked levels, some of the decisions I'd made had to be changed. Since I'm a perfectionist I kept restarting with the knowledge of the future unlocks and problems I'd accidentally created and would plan ahead accordingly.

Sometimes you will come across problems which counteract each other or you have no idea why they're happening. For example, yesterday I created a forestry industry and there were not enough workers. This was apparently because I had adequate education so the educated citizens didn't want to work there. I researched the problem and people had tried creating areas of people who were well away from schools, however, those people would make the trip to receive an education. I found two things which helped, the first was to put more people to create a higher population with less jobs available and the second was to wait it out because the industry levels up and eventually requires educated workers. At the same time, I had a problem in my low density commercial zones, they were complaining that there were not enough educated workers. What!? How was this so if the apparent first problem was over-educated people?

When you're building away, you put residential zones, commercial zones, industrial zones etc. Build build build, up up up, your city goes.. hurrah! Then you realise by the time you've unlocked and put in adequate education, the people you first put in are too old for school and missed the boat and some of them aren't having children either, they're seniors! So the timing of your zones counts.

As I unlocked and put in offices, high density commercial zones and high density residential zones, I noticed the low density commercial shops were going down. As I'd click them to find the problem, they were complaining that they didn't have enough educated workers. I added in Universities and made sure there was adequate education as in elementary schools and high schools but this didn't help. I ended up demolishing them and changing the zone area to high density commercial which seemed to fix the problem, goodbye local deli, hello large corporate takeovers.

I now have a problem with my roads jamming, another learning curve about planning ahead. The game becomes more and more complicated and in-depth and I just can't get enough. Everything is well thought through and as you zoom in you can see people going about their daily business, kid's playing in the park and the fire brigade putting out house fires. The wind turbines turn and face the wind, the power cables sway in the wind and the trees die if too close to pollution. There's enough different types of houses to satisfy without it looking like houses are just cloned down the street and the small details are great such as backyard swings and garden chairs.

The game is confusing at first, but you easily catch on and as you watch your decision's ripple effects, you soon learn your best plan of attack plus it's a lot of fun being Mayor to your own city.

Guild Grumps

Guild Grumps is a series which I've just discovered on YouTube, about 4 people who have never played World of Warcraft and their friend who thinks it will be funny to start them out at level 90. With his slight smirk trying to conceal his inner troll, Ross soon discovers his plan backfires and he's the one to lose his cool.

This YT series will have you laughing out loud and cringing at their noobyness if you're familiar with WoW. Even as someone who was a WoW player, I still get lost trying to play a boosted character I'm unfamiliar with, now imagine 4 people who've never played an mmorpg let alone World of Warcraft and you have Guild Grumps.

Planet Coaster Tycoon: Simulation Evolved

Frontier Developments, who brought us the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, has announced Planet Coaster Tycoon: Simulation Evolved which will be released for PC in 2016.

Check out Planet Coaster's reveal trailer:

Personally I loved Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2, however number 3 left me disappointed. While riding the roller coasters was fun, it just didn't appeal to me like the first two did. Still to this day, I can jump into Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, be hooked and have fun.

While the reveal trailer for Planet Coaster is brief, it gives a feel of fun and excitement as well as humor. I'm looking forward to more trailers and the release in 2016.

Modded Minecraft Monday - Week 1 - Farming

Hi everybody. We're a week into the lets play, so I'd like to show you what I've been up to.

I've mostly been playing it safe and trying to set up a defensible home base with renewable food supplies before I venture out into the wilderness.

Tree-houses are super defensible! :3

Initially I collected as many different types of seeds as I could get my hands on. I quickly realised that the Moso Bamboo that grew nearby was extremely useful as building material as it can be replanted anywhere, grows quickly and can be harvested quickly as well. I used it to set up fenced fields and lit them with torches made from coal ores in a nearby mine shaft.

Quick growing crops, plentiful and useful as building materials :3

You can barely tell that's a Treehouse on the left! :D

Having established a base, I decided to explore my immediate surroundings and found a nearby village with an empty house, a Tinkers Construct Forge & Tool-house and a MystCraft vendor's house. For now I will leave this village be so it doesn't get taken over by zombies, but I might come back for that forge later. There was also a floating sky village and a floating dungeon, that could both be seen from the village on the ground, but for now they are out of my range.

It's a village.. but in the sky... :O

 There were two minor changes to the mod-pack during this first week. 

First, I found it extremely easy to locate loot bags, which seemed to drop from every second or third enemy and often contained quite powerful gear, including enchanted diamond armour and tools. This obviously unbalances the game severely, especially since the Lycanite's mobs mod was removed last week, which made surviving aggressive mobs much easier at night time. I tweaked the config file for this mod so that the chance of a loot bag being dropped by any mob is 10 times less likely.

The second change was to add the mod called Natura, which simply adds some grow-able food crops and bushes and spawns great, huge, Redwood trees into the game, which make great tree-houses.

Now that I've established a nice home base, I'll be highlighting a particular mod for a week at a time so that anyone playing along can explore all the nuances of the individual mods, that they might have missed otherwise.

If you are playing along at home, I have updated the download link below to include the extra mod changes and the map that I'm playing on, as it is now. You can use it to see what I've been up to yourself and explore all the stuff that I've been toying with. I always loved seeing how other people built their worlds in Minecraft servers online and I figure you guys would like it too :3

A word of warning though. My computer may be 5 years old now, but it has a decent graphics card, 8GB of ram and an i7 cpu. My computer plays it ok given plenty of ram and patience, however it's extremely slow and laggy when new areas are loading for the first time and it can take several minutes to start up every single time. One of the main reasons for settling in and setting up a home base was to give the rest of the game time to generate and settle so it could be played smoothly. If you have the patience (or a super-computer?) go for it! Otherwise, you might want to pass on it.

Updated Download Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/76107282/GettinMyMinecraftOn.zip