Content Tagged “gaming”

• Kerbal Boom

  As it turns out, the Artemis II mission has caused a major influx of players to Kerbal Space Program. It’s hit its all-time highest number of players in April of this year. Mind you, this is a game that came out almost exactly 15 years ago! The April peak made KSP almost exceed the Day One player count of Kerbal Space Program 2, which completely underdelivered and has now been completely abandoned by its developers and players alike (even though it is somehow still being sold on Steam).

  Data from SteamDB

  With the Artemis hype, KSP has finally recovered the players it has lost to its own pretend-sequel and seems to have gained a new life with folks going back to it. There are 6000 people playing it as I write this! I feel like it’s time for me to go back to my own space program.

  

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• John Blanche Has Died

  With sorrow, I’ve just learned that John Blanche passed away earlier this week. People who know me will tell you that I’ve been a fan of Warhammer 40,000 since childhood. One of the biggest reasons for this is the way in which the world of that tabletop game and its accompanying literature and spin-off games is portraited — what is usually referred to as the “grimdark” setting. This is down as much to artwork as it is to storytelling. And nobody shaped the iconic look of 40K more than John Blanche. He started working for Games Workshop in 1977, including producing the cover for the first British edition of Dungeons & Dragons. He was heavily involved in the early art for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (the very first release of 40k) in 1987 and later editions, eventually becoming Games Workshop’s art director. By all accounts, John Blanche was almost single-handedly responsible for laying the groundwork of what 40K ended up looking like and therefore also to a very large extend of what it looks and feels like today. Warhammer 40,000 is grimdark because of John Blanche. He was a huge inspiration to many artists and the gaming world owes him a massive debt of gratitude.

  Blanche was never a big fan of having his picture published, as far as I can tell, so instead I will leave you with my favourite artwork of his. This 1997 painting is titled Sister of Battle and was the cover for the first edition of the Sisters of Battle codex. Its striking palette is typical John Blanche and it manages, in essential 40K style, to blend ’80s punk with medieval gothic as well as retro-futuristic influences. This painting is as sexy as it is scary. In one word: stunning.

  

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• Sid Meier’s “Alien Crossfire” Crashes on Windows 11

  As I noted on Monday, there’s a great sale on Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) with the Alien Crossfire (SMAX) expansion at GOG right now. After finishing my first campaign of the original game this morning, I wanted to fire up Alien Crossfire to have a go at a campaign with one of the expansion factions. I quickly discovered that SMAX crashes when run on Windows 11. Apparently, the expansion version of the game (unlike the original SMAC) accesses some unitialised memory, most likely to feed this into a pseudo-random number generator as a seed value. Unfortunately, the 24H2 update for Windows 11 prohibits this kind of memory access for security reasons, which means SMAX crashes when it tries to process the first (or any) turn of the game.

  This issue is fixed in the Thinker mod for Alien Crossfire, but this mod changes many things about this game and I prefer the PRACX mod that ships with the game version you can get from GOG. This led me to try Nathan Baggs’ Adamite tool. When you run it, you can drag your Alien Crossfire executable into its window and it will spit out an EXE with a _nb appended to its name, which then works on up-to-date Windows 11 systems. Nathan says that his fix isn’t as good as the one from the Thinker folks, because it probably messes with whatever that pseudo-random number generator does — most likely randomising the new environmental effects that are part of SMAX — but it has been working great for me so far. You can drag both the expansion’s original terranx.exe as well as the PRACX-patched terranx_PRACX.exe that GOG ships into Adamite and the _nb versions will both work. If you get a warning about the file’s hash not matching up, you can ignore this, it will work regardless. Until GOG gets its game version fixed, I am happy I can play SMAX this way! 🥰

  

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• One of the Best 4X Games Ever for 3 Bucks

  I just learned that Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri with the Alien Crossfire expansion is on sale for $ 2.99 (currently € 2.70) at GOG. This is my favourite Civilization game of all time! I loved that game back in the day! The intro cinematic alone is so amazing at establishing an atmosphere. There really is nothing like this 1990s sci-fi anymore. It was a golden age …

  

  If you have issues with the resolution the game is running in, which seems to be common on Windows 10 and 11, edit the Alpha Centauri.Ini file in the game’s directory to have these two lines to disable the intro movie (with its resolution change) and have the game run in your native desktop resolution:

  DirectDraw=0
  DisableOpeningMovie=1
  

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• Rock Smash / Rock-Solid Boulder Badge

  Retro achievements unlocked in Pokémon Red Version for the Game Boy:

  

  • Rock Smash — “Defeat Brock on Set Mode without using items in battle and without using Pokémon above level 14 at the beginning of the battle”
  • Rock-Solid Boulder Badge — “Defeat Brock and earn the Boulder Badge in Pewter City”

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• Flipper Fiend / Bombed Out and Depleted

  Retro achievements unlocked in Kirby’s Pinball Land for the Game Boy:

  

  • Flipper Fiend — “Score 500,000 points”
  • Bombed Out and Depleted — “Defeat the Poppy Brothers and collect the Star Rod piece”

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• Torrential Tomato / Not a Fussy Eater / Turkish Breakfast

  Retro achievements unlocked in Kirby’s Pinball Land for the Game Boy:

  

  • Torrential Tomato — “Activate a Maxim Tomato in the Middle Stage of Kracko Land”
  • Not a Fussy Eater — “Feed a Gordow to Kirby”
  • Turkish Breakfast — “Activate a Maxim Tomato in the Top Stage of Poppy Brothers’ Land”

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• Parting Gift / Preparing to Be the Very Best

  Retro achievements unlocked in Pokémon Red Version for the Game Boy:

  

  • Parting Gift — “Obtain 5 Poké Balls from Prof. Oak”
  • Preparing to Be the Very Best — “Assemble a full team of Pokémon”

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• Free Points / Journey Has Started / The United Cities of Kanto

  Retro achievements unlocked in Pokémon Red Version for the Game Boy:

  

  • Free Points — “Get a free sample courtesy of the Viridian City Pokémon Mart”
  • Journey Has Started — “Obtain the Pokédex”
  • The United Cities of Kanto — “Obtain a map of the Kanto region”

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• Squishy’s Shoot-Out! / Tasty Tomato

  Retro achievements unlocked in Kirby’s Pinball Land for the Game Boy:

  

  • Squishy’s Shoot-Out! — “Reach the Poppy Brothers’ Land Bonus Game”
  • Tasty Tomato — “Activate a Maxim Tomato in the Middle Stage of Poppy Brothers’ Land”

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• Triple Tomato / Waddle Dee’s Break-Out! / Flipper Fanatic

  Retro achievements unlocked in Kirby’s Pinball Land for the Game Boy:

  

  • Triple Tomato — “Activate a Maxim Tomato in the Middle Stage of Wispy-Woods Land”
  • Waddle Dee’s Break-Out! — “Reach the Wispy-Woods Bonus Game”
  • Flipper Fanatic — “Score 200,000 points”

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• Flipper Fancier / Tightrope Tomato / Back with a Vengeance

  Retro achievements unlocked in Kirby’s Pinball Land for the Game Boy:

  

  • Flipper Fancier — “Score 50,000 points”
  • Tightrope Tomato — “Activate a Maxim Tomato in the Bottom Stage of any Pinball Land”
  • Back with a Vengeance — “Bounce back from the Springboard at top speed!”

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• Forstamt Speranza

  A logo I designed for my ARC Raiders player group:

  

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• Another Morning on the Surface

  ARC Raiders

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• Returning to Speranza

  ARC Raiders

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• ARC Raidin’

  

  I played ARC Raiders for the first time tonight. Neat game! Played flawlessly out of the gate for me — which is somewhat unexpected for PC games these days, I feel — and the out-of-the-box graphics settings were perfect on my Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3080 Ti and 32 GB of RAM (the game is installed on an SSD, of course). The friend who got me into it plays on an Xbox and the crossplay is also flawless. Another nice surprise: having crossplay for Xbox, Playstation and PC in a PvP shooter like that!

  The game feels like Tarkov Light, or maybe a better The Cycle. Nice world, too. Reminds me a lot of Simon Stålenhag’s work, which I adore.

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• PoE 2 is Unplayable Right Now in Europe

  Well, it turns out that fix for the Path of Exile 2 server problems doesn’t work. I am constantly getting disconnected again and again now. It must have been pure luck that the bug didn’t get triggered when I was testing the fix initially.

  Progress constantly being wiped in an always-online game like this is absolutely unacceptable and the fact that the developers are publicly acknowledging all kinds of other problems with their game, some of them quite minor, but have said nothing whatsoever publicly about this in days is very disappointing. The thread on the forums about the problem has almost 700 posts and more than 15.000 views by now, but not a single dev or community person has chimed in. It’s upsetting me, because I really like that game, but with it being basically unplayable, I am moving on now. It’s affecting my mood and I don’t need that from a video game. I think it’s time to go back to Elden Ring.

  I will check on PoE 2 in a few months, probably. Maybe the EU servers are in an acceptable state by then.

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• PoE 2 Server Disconnects

  

  Path of Exile 2, which is still in Early Access, has just released their first content expansion after its launch in December of last year. The most recent update to the game introduced some pretty significant server issues, though. These seem to mostly affect the European servers and are causing frequent disconnects from the server that cause you to lose all progress you have made in that play session. For an online-only game this is pretty significant and makes it basically unplayable for any reasonable person.

  On the game’s forums, a workaround has been suggested that, in my tests, seems to have resolved the issue for me. Go to the in-game settings and use the button to open the folder that stores loot filters. In that folder, there is a file called poe2_production_config.ini. Open it with a text editor and search for the following line:

  networking_type=auto
  

  Replace this with:

  networking_type=predictive
  

  The latency to the server and general network performance is still a lot worse since before the latest patch, but at least I’m not getting disconnected and lose progress anymore.

  

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• Welcome to Bohemia!

  Kingdom Come: Deliverance

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• A Note on PoE 2 Crashes

  Speaking of PoE 2, if you have issues with it crashing and hard locking your PC (especially on the latest Windows 11 version, 24H2) you might want to tweak the affinity of the PoE process. To do this, go to the "Details" tab of the Task Manager (which you can call up by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete) and search for the game’s process — in my case that is PathOfExileSteam.exe. Right click on it and choose "Set affinity", then remove a processor core or two so that the process doesn’t use all of your CPU’s cores.

  

  That way, only the game will lock up instead of the whole machine with you needing to reboot. This only happens when loading maps, so you won’t lose any game progress and you can simply restart the game again (not forgetting to tweak the affinity every time). I also set my renderer to Vulkan, but I don’t know if that is needed to make this work.

  

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• A Note on Finishing PoE 2

  

  After almost exactly 4 days playtime in the game, and 208 deaths, I have just finished the Early Access portion of Path of Exile 2. That is, I finished acts one to three of the game, killed every boss and fully explored all maps — with a Solo Self Fund character. You can redo those acts at a higher difficulty and then enter the endgame mode, but I am not sure I want to do that right now. I’d rather start a new character in a new class and replay the content I have already explored.

  In any case: What a great game! I’ve been loving every minute of this so far.

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• The Magic Rope

  Retro achievement unlocked in Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo:

  

  • The Magic Rope — “Obtain the Magic Rope”

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• Axe to Grind / The Night of the Triffids

  Retro achievements unlocked in Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo:

  

  • Axe to Grind — “Obtain the Axe from the Dwarfs”
  • The Night of the Triffids — “Solo Tropicallo at the Dwarf Village”

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• The Famous Rabiteman Show / The Bankrupted Fairy

  Retro achievements unlocked in Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo:

  

  • The Famous Rabiteman Show — “Enjoy the famous rabiteman with the bankrupted fairy show in Dwarf Village”
  • The Bankrupted Fairy — “Have the sprite join your party”

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• Main Dish of the Day

  Retro achievement unlocked in Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo:

  

  • Main Dish of the Day — “Be the dinner for goblins while leaving the water palace for the first time”

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• The Old Sage Gift

  Retro achievement unlocked in Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo:

  

  • The Old Sage Gift — “Obtain the spear from sage Luka”

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• Voices in my Head / Born to Be a Hero

  Retro achievements unlocked in Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo:

  

  • Voices in my Head — “Find and obtain your very first sword”
  • Born to Be a Hero — “Defeat mantis in Potos village and obtain sword orb”

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• Timber!!! / Legacy of Mana

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Timber!!! — “Land the final blow on the Mana Tree with an axe”
  • Legacy of Mana — “Restore the Mana Tree and see the end screen”

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• The Real Meaning of Power / The End of Everything

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • The Real Meaning of Power — “Defeat Julius after his Mana-fueled transformation”
  • The End of Everything — “Defeat the Mana Tree after it is corrupted by Julius”

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• Poacher / I’ve Got the Power! / Duel to the Death

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Poacher — “Equip the best shield”
  • I’ve Got the Power! — “Brandish the Mana Sword, Excalibur, after it is restored”
  • Duel to the Death — “Defeat Julius”

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• The Way of the Wizard / Samurai Style / Dragon Slayer

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • The Way of the Wizard — “Level up your Wisdom to 50”
  • Samurai Style — “Equip the best armor and helm”
  • Dragon Slayer — “Defeat every dragon in the Mana shrine”

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• War is Hell

  Retro achievement unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • War is Hell — “Kill an innocent boy in the streets of Wendel after Glaive's invasion of the city”

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• Rise of the Robots / Larc’s Leathers / Robots Can’t Jump

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Rise of the Robots — “Recruit Marcie”
  • Larc’s Leathers — “Equip the Dragon Armor and Dragon Shield”
  • Robots Can’t Jump — “Return to the Glaive Empire for the last time”

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• Meltdown / Sierra’s Blade

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Meltdown — “Defeat the Lich and obtain the Nuke Magic”
  • Sierra’s Blade — “Equip the Dragon Sword”

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• Gemma Knight / Duck Hunter / Through the Fire and Flames

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Gemma Knight — “Reach Level 50”
  • Duck Hunter — “Equip the Zeus Axe”
  • Through the Fire and Flames — “Defeat Iflyte and obtain the Rusty Sword”

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• Who’s Your Octo-Daddy Now?!

  Retro achievement unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Who’s Your Octo-Daddy Now?! — “Defeat the Kraken”

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• Wow, You’re Rich! / The Way of the Monk

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Wow, You’re Rich! — “Collect 50,000 GP”
  • The Way of the Monk — “Level up your Willpower to 50”

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• The Way of the Tank / Defroster

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • The Way of the Tank — “Level up your Stamina to 50”
  • Defroster — “Defeat Kary”

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• Mystic Tune?! Yeah!

  Retro achievement unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Mystic Tune?! Yeah! — “Recruit Lester”

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• I Am (Not) Your Father / Glaive Strikes Back / Chocobo 2.0

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • I Am (Not) Your Father — “Defeat the Dark Lord”
  • Glaive Strikes Back — “Leave the Glaive Empire… again”
  • Chocobo 2.0 — “Meet Dr. Bowow and witness the next step in chocobo evolution”

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• Return of the Gemma / The Way of the Warrior / Drink the Blood of My Enemies

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Return of the Gemma — “Return to the Glaive Empire on a rescue mission”
  • The Way of the Warrior — “Level up your Power to 50”
  • Drink the Blood of My Enemies — “Equip the Blood Sword”

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• Kevin’s Worst Nightmare / Your Pendant is in Another Castle / Balls of Steel

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Kevin’s Worst Nightmare — “Equip the Were Axe”
  • Your Pendant is in Another Castle — “Defeat Davias”
  • Balls of Steel — “Equip the the Morning Star”

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• To Infinity, and Beyond! / Knight / Mercy

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • To Infinity, and Beyond! — “Learn the secret of the oasis in Jadd”
  • Knight — “Reach Level 25”
  • Mercy — “Save Amanda from succumbing to the bite of Medusa and collect her tears”

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• I Taste Like (Silver) Chicken / I Believe I Can Fly… / Familiar Feathered Friend

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • I Taste Like (Silver) Chicken — “Venture through the Gaia Pass and get some help”
  • I Believe I Can Fly… — “Fall from the airship”
  • Familiar Feathered Friend — “Find a chocobo”

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• RIP Christopher Lee / You Spoony Bard! / The World is Mine

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • RIP Christopher Lee — “Kill the vampire and save the girl (again)”
  • You Spoony Bard! — “Learn the true identity of the mysterious man dressed like a bard”
  • The World is Mine — “Recruit Watts after falling (again) in the mines”

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• Mysterious Marsh Man / Hail Hydra! / Squire

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Mysterious Marsh Man — “Recruit the mysterious man dressed like a bard”
  • Hail Hydra! — “Defeat the Hydra”
  • Squire — “Reach Level 10”

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• Damsel in Distress / Pearl of Wisdom / Rest and Heal Your Wounds

  Retro achievements unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Damsel in Distress — “Rescue the girl”
  • Pearl of Wisdom — “Meet Bogard and get your first mattock”
  • Rest and Heal Your Wounds — “Rest at Kett’s and learn the Cure spell”

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• Fall to Earth

  Retro achievement unlocked in Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest for the Game Boy:

  

  • Fall to Earth — “Escape from the Glaive Empire”

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• Using the Traveler's Notebook as a D&D Campaign Journal

  A few days ago, I recommended the Traveler's Notebook to my friend Halefa, who was looking for a notebook to use as a D&D campaign journal. She has now bought one and wrote a very in-depth blog post on her setup and plans for the notebook, which is well worth a read:

  → Using a Traveler's Notebook as TTRPG campaign journal, Halefa.com

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• “Kerbal Space Program 2” Stream

  I’ve put the whole recording of my first Kerbal Space Program 2 stream on Youtube.

  After heavy initial problems getting this game to not kill the performance of my computer and being able to stream it, and hours of problems in game getting into orbit and actually decoupling the satellite, I finally achieved success at the end of the stream. It made me so proud!

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