Call of Duty: The End Of PC Warfare

Hey guys, SighFye here

I have played many CoD's on PC in my day, the last big one for me was Black Ops. I did buy Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2 but I noticed a repeating pattern in them and have been told that Ghost and Advanced Warfare both have this same pattern. What is this pattern? It's the lack of a server browser and rentable ranked server.

Image from  store.steampowered.com

Black Ops 1 was an amazing game. Servers in that game are still running today and are running at full capacity. This is because people can see the servers and choose to join them. They know they are controlled by admins keeping abuse and fair play.

Image from cod.vokr.com

All the cod games I have played and been told about since have not had the server browser and on PC these games have died very quickly. Without server browsers people are only going into TDM and that gets boring quickly. There are just not enough people on PC for the match making lobbies to work. But why doesn't Activision give us what we want. Personally I think this is because we are all screaming for dedicated servers without realising what we are asking for. Dedicated servers mean the CoD will not host the game on one of the players computers.

So what do we really want? We want rentable ranked servers which are displayed in a server browser. The lobby crap does not work for PC. With Black Ops 3 coming out, I do not see our wishes coming true. I personally will never buy another COD unless it has a server browser and rentable ranked servers.


Well that's my rant for today.

Peace Out

SighFye

Emulators

Hi guys SighFye here.

I have been thinking recently about emulators. For those that do not know, an emulator is a program that imitates a machine. For example a SNES emulator will imitate a Super Nintendo. You can then get the ROM's (games) for them and play the games. My thoughts recently are whether or not they are wrong to use.

My first thought of course was that using them is piracy and piracy is illegal. Piracy is illegal because it takes away money not only from the developers or creators of the digital product, but also the industry itself. But does emulating a 2 decade old system (SNES) really do that anymore.

I can understand emulating the PS3, PS4. Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Wii U and other recent consoles would do this. You can still buy new games from the store and then the industry gets their profits. However, with a retro system, they no longer sell the games or consoles new. You can only get your hands on these second hand. So the money you spend getting these systems and games no longer goes to the industry. So where is the harm?

In my opinion, using emulators of decade old systems keeps those games alive. If I was a games developer I would be proud to see it since I have already made all the profits I could make.

I want you to know that I am NOT endorsing illegal behaviour in any manner. Downloading of ROM's is ILLEGAL and should not be done. I am just asking where does the harm lie if it were to be done for a retro system?

Leave a comment below. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

SighFye

Computer Build Heartache

Hello readers SighFye here.

A while ago my soon to be brother in law, Da-rryl,  was trying to enter the gaming world. He bought himself a PC that he thought was promising. It was missing a graphics card so he bought himself one and the computer rejected it. He was told it was because the computer was using shared graphics and you have to update the bios in order to get a new graphics card. To him that was in the to hard basket so he stripped it down and handed me the remainder parts so I could start a build.

As you all know I have been on a laptop with not such good specs for sometime. In the Call of Duty range I can play as high as World at War (On lowest settings) but anything higher and the lappy crashes. The shell Da-rryl gave me had a motherboard and a CPU inside a case. I had no idea what either of them were but thought if things weren't strong enough for games I can always upgrade them.

The other day I went out and bought and Seagate 2TB HDD and Strontium 8GB 1600 DDR3 RAM. I also bought windows 7. I didn't see the need for a dvd drive as I have window 7 on a usb stick. I only needed a new product key.

I install all the parts, plug in my usb and boot up the pc. The fans start up giving that old familiar hum of a desktop pc. The light create a glow of anticipation as I wait for the screen to start up. I wait. I wait. I wait so more. Nothing!!?

The screen won't turn on. I check all the plugs and try other monitors and cables but nothing. I open the case and check all the plugs. Everything is plugged in fine. Nothing. By this point I was getting a little worried. Was the motherboard broken? I decided to try another slot of the RAM. This time, the screen started. So...

Lesson 1: RAM has a set spot that it must be in, not just any of the RAM spots.

Now the excitement starts again. The computer boots up to this screen. It wouldn't boot from the USB.

I go to the bios and setup to boot from USB. I restart the pc and get the same screen. Ok, so its not going to boot from USB. I take Bel's DVD drive out of her PC and place it in mine to boot from that. This takes us to the next stage of my computer build heartache.

Oh My Fucking God... Now What!!!??

After extensive research I find that HP computers are installed with windows and the windows signature is stored in bios to prevent another version of windows being installed. This ranks up there in the most stupid and useless features of a computer I have come across. I found a solution that told me to turn off secure boot in computer security setup in bios.

This did fix my problem and windows installed nicely. Now the excitements started up again. I installed steam, downloaded a few games I knew worked on my laptop. To my surprise I got an error. D:

At this point I was sure it was to do with my pc. I went and did the Windows Experience Index to see how this computer would perform. The scores for graphics and 3d graphics were 1. This pc had no graphic power at all.

So now I am stuck with a pc that needs a GPU and may not be able to get one. I did, in my research, find that HP computers tend to lock the computer to HP parts only so there is a glimmer of light. I do have my laptop to play some games and build mobile apps.

So until I can get a new GPU, happy gaming for you guys, not me D:

SighFye

One Day In Linux Hell

Hey guys SighFye here.



Yesterday was a very rage filled day. Some may know that I run linux on my laptop. This started because I had no money for windows and always wanted to try it out. I was running Kubuntu. I have also wanted to start a YouTube series based on all the Call of Duty games.

Since directX games will not run on Linux, I had to install WINE. Basically explained its a windows port for windows programs to enable them to run on Linux. I've played many game through this, including Killing Floor and Torchlight 2.

So because I want to start this Call of Duty series I needed to buy Call of Duty 1. It was $35 on steam with United Defences (A CoD 1 Expansion) and Call of Duty 2. I figured I needed both so why not. My collection is almost complete.

1. Call of Duty - Got
2. Call of Duty 2 - Got
3. Call of Duty 3 - Is only on console so need to track it down
4. Modern Warfare - Need
5. World at War  - Got
6. Modern Warfare 2 - Got
7. Black Ops - Got
8. Modern Warfare 3 - Got
9. Black Ops 2 - Got
10. Ghost - Need
11. Advanced Warfare - Need

So I get WINE installed, then install STEAM, then download COD. By this time I am getting excited. Ok, its an old game, but its still fun. The Call of Duty logo comes up and then...

 I search the net for about 2 hours for a solution. The first solution I came across had me editing some file I shouldn't be. The results... no sound what so ever on my whole computer and still the error persisted.

So I needed to reinstall Linux. This time I select Ubuntu as its a larger distro and hopefully less buggy. I reinstalled WINE, reinstalled STEAM, reinstalled COD and then... BANG... Buffer Overrun.... FML.

So now Im looking for another solution. By this time I a rather upset. I find one, a simple one and things start looking up. All I need to do is delete pulseaudio and install gnome mixer or something like that. Great easy, done. Pulseaudio is gone... and now so are all the setting for ubuntu to. I now have no way of changing anything.

By this time I completely rage wipe my computer and reinstall Ubuntu.I still haven't found a solution but I did manage to delete my minecraft world, with my binary counter build I have been working on. I now have to start that again.

I have to say, I am over Linux. Yes its free and it works great. But the conveniences of windows and game just work with it instead of trying to hack your system to get a work around. I have to wait to get windows but when I do, I think I will be staying with it from now on.

Gaming & Linux = Problems

I hope you guys never experience a day like I did yesterday.

Happy Gaming Readers

SighFye

The Dead... no longer... Linger

SighFye here...

On April 29th 2012, Sandswept studios announced their KickStarter project, The Dead Linger was successfully funded and would go into full steam development. I personally was one of those kickstarters as I liked the idea they had.

Sandswept promised a planet size randomly generated world where all buildings could be explored. They claimed you could "Slay the undead hordes with WHATEVER you want." Crafting new weapons from trash around the town. Interact and explore EVERY item, weapon, object and building you see. It was to be the zombie survival game of all time. Their slogon was "We are bringing the zombie era back from the dead..." or something like that. Here's some of the concept art they provided.

Looks damn awesome right?

So finally the day came when they released a playable alpha. We were all so excited to play. My friends and I logged in for the first time and were greeted with a world with trees and houses. I could see zombies, I could pick up items. Ok there wasn't many but it's alpha lots more to come. After playing for a little while I came to the realise this was shit.

I could shoot a zombie in the distance from the hip and kill it. I didn't need to reload so I had unlimited ammo. Zombies were very predictable and the random house designs kept fucking up. So my conclusion was they released alpha too early. And I do still stand by that.

I watched development and logged in with each new build to check out the new stuff. The game started to get scary and started getting hard. Things were picking up. But things moved slow very slow. They promised new builds every fortnight, which they never kept to. They have reprogrammed every aspect of the game multiple times. They even moved the game engine from Orge to Unity. A process which took a long time and pissed off a lot of their follows. However their decision was right. Things picked up and got better quicker.

Recently they released a devblog announcing they are scrapping the planetsize random world to a set world. Ok the towns and buildings will change but its all contained in a small area. I do understand the change but they have taken away a MASSIVE part of why I was interested.

So it’s still randomized every time I play it?
Yes and no. This is a really important part, so read carefully.
In Pepper Valley, the terrain, interstates, roads, lakes, rivers, and some of the environment will be static, meaning it won’t change, but large segments of the world, such as a town, city, island, neighborhood, or even a specific building lot, will be swapped out for other layouts each time you generate a new world.

The other thing that annoyed me in their post is this...

We are switching The Dead Linger to the insanely fast and insanely powerful Unreal Engine 4 .

Yet another engine change. Will this game ever come to the completion it hoped to be.

I have recently heard of a game called 7 Days to Die. This game seems to support most of what The Dead Linger have promised and more. They have been in development for I believe a year and by the looks of things have passed The Dead Linger.

The Dead Linger may miss the boat if they do not get things into a giant swing. Games are coming out similar to them and are getting finished quicker. Most people I know who KickStarted The Dead Linger, have lost interest already.

I do believe that one day The Dead Linger will finish their game and it will be a good game. But I also believe many games will come in that time and The Dead Linger will no longer be a new style of game. It will be seen as another zombie survival.

Don't get me wrong, I would not be able to make a game like it. Its just all the time taken in development, I would have expected them to be a lot further along.

The Dead Linger was my first experience of KickStarter and to be honest, I don't think I would be comfortable Kickstarting another project.

Linger On Survivors ;)

SighFye

To Return, or Not Return. That is the question.

My name is SighFye and I am a geek.

 My fiance Bel, started this blog and at first, I decided to completely copy her idea and make a blog about being a geek. Within a few days, we both decided that it was better if we joined forces and conquered the world. That however is a different story. We also decided to join blogs.

Recently Bel returned to World of Warcraft after receiving a Christmas present from my sister Jemima (Handle: Kitfire). The condition was she played on the same realm (a PvP realm) and as a horde. This of course was a difficult thing as first for Bel to do as she has ALWAYS played Alliance and she is not fond of getting ganked at low levels. However after some thought Bel decided to embrace the horde and try it out. So far she seems to be enjoying it. She even asked me if I would return.

Now Bel has been playing WoW since vanilla. I came in at Cata. The guild she was in, and that I joined, were mainly 85's or people getting a new character to 85. So me with my first level 1 didn't have many members to play with. They did however help out a lot, gave me gold, took me on dungeon runs, but most of the time I was alone.

I eventually got a level 85. He was a draenei pallie that I used as a healer. I named him Marss. My choices for this character were simple. Bel has a draenei pallie as a tank named Venuss. So once I was 85, Venuss and Marss ran together, tank and healer, the perfect team.

I knew my character well and could heal well too. But I soon got frustrated at WoW. At 85 there is no point questing, so the other things are high level dungeons and raids. The guild constantly went into dungeons so I went with them.

This was my experience of high level dungeons...

1. Party up and get excited.
2. Fight our way through trash mob
3. Die on trash mobs. Ok that's cool, it happens.
4. Respawn, meet back up and...
5. Die on the same trash mob. Now that's not cool but still it happens...
6. Respawn, meet back up
7. Kill trash mob and get to boss

Now if you know programming I am going to explain this next bit with a bit of code.

sane = true;
sanityBarrier = math.random(1000)
times = 0;
do
{
    spend_20_Minutes_Trying_To_Kill_Boss();
    die_from_the_boss();
    add_damage_to_gear();
    respawn_and_meet_back_up();
    times += 1;
    if(times > sanityBarrier)
    {
          sane = false;
    }

}while(sane)
rage_quit();
never_play_wow_again();

For those that do not understand let me explain. Try to kill the boss as many times as your sanity barrier can handle. Dying a million times and damaging  your gear. Repeat this so many fucking times until you can no longer stand the sight of wow anymore... Then PAY FOR YOUR FUCKING REPAIRS!!!!!!

Rant Over...

So back to the question to return, or not return?

While I was playing WoW I always wanted to try a PvP server, but I liked playing with Bel and she wasn't too keen. I also wanted to try horde. Now both of these are open to play. And even if Bel doesn't continue to play there, I always have Kitfire and I can switch between the two realms.

So, IF, I decide to return to WoW, I will need to buy MoP and WoD. Which just a small rant, I basically need to buy all WoW again because they have added MoP into a single buy with all other expansions except WoD.

There is then of course the subscription, which is a little annoying. I always wanted to try the game Eve Online but never went there because of the subscription. Maybe I should try that game instead.

There is also the issue with my shitty lappy that struggles to play vanilla minecraft on lowest settings D:

So I am left without an answer to my question...

To Return, or Not Return... That truely is the question.

Until next time, Happy Gaming.

SighFye