Content Moved to My Own Website

A lot of content has been moved to my own website - 

https://alinuxuser.com/

Remaining content will be slowly migrated. This blog will receive no further updates. 

Cat School Gear Upgrade Diagrams - Part 2 - Enhanced Feline Trousers Bug

This is a bug you could encounter if you are using the Fast Travel From Anywhere mod.

In order to find the Enhanced Feline Trousers, you will need to go underground through an iron grate on the floor in a house in Oxenfort, however but the grates are closed. This is because a cutscene that was supposed to trigger after the Get Junior main quest, was skipped because I used the fast travel option out of the compound in Novigrad.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to trigger it once it is skipped.

The only way to finish Cat School Gear Upgrade Diagrams - Part 2 treasure hunt at this point is to use the game's debug console to add the Enhanced Feline Trousers diagram, and manually set the quest status to complete.

Here is how it is done.

NOTE - Ensure that you got all the other items before you attempt this.

1. Enable debug console

- Go to E:\GOG Games\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt GOTY\bin\config\base
- Edit general.ini file
- Add the following line - DBGConsoleOn=true

Enabling debug console in The Witcher 3 (PC)

2. Start the game and load a save game

3. Hit the " ~ " key

4. Enter the following commands in order -

additem("Witcher Lynx Pants Upgrade schematic 1", 1)
addfact(th1003_fdb_pants_upgrade1_explored)

This will add the diagram, and set the status of Cat School Gear Upgrade Diagrams - Part 2 to Completed.

Here are some screenshots -

Battlefield 4 Launch Fiasco

[MIGRATED] 

 

 The launch of Battlefield 4 was very disappointing. It felt as if those who pre ordered the game were paying to beta test it. It was such a broken mess at times, that I find it hard to believe they released it in such a state. Problems in the beta are present in the release version. Makes me wonder what the beta accomplished.  

To an extent I understand the server side problems which were taken care of as quickly as they possibly could, but some issues with the base game are hard to justify.

After their PC patch, things seemed to have gotten worse. Apart from the usual problems with the game (crashing to the desktop at random), they managed to introduce a new bug in the patch which could cause the screen to blur every time the commander deployed an EMP. So not only does EA/DICE make customer feel silly for pre ordering the game, the game now causes eye strain.

The battlefield twitter and Facebook feed is full of advertisements ranging from merchandise to review scores, apart from a few employees at DICE who have taken the time to respond to messages (my sincere thanks to them). One wonders why they didn't publicly acknowledge the problems and apologize, instead of carrying on with the shameless promotion and self congratulatory posts.

I wonder what game these "journalists" were reviewing...

After the terrible launch, instead of reaching out to the customers, EA took the classy route and advertised hoodies.

Understandably, customers were not pleased. 

This launch has validated the cynicism towards the gaming industry in general. If they were in tune with the community, they would know that the community doesn't care about when the game launched or if it beat Call of Duty at sales figures. They care about having a playable game.

I am sure this is hard for an executive to comprehend, because for them, its all about sales figures. They throw around buzz words like "seamless reality", "immersion", and best of all, "levelolution" without knowing the first thing about gaming. Publishers do not care about the what they are selling, as long as they are selling many of it, and will say anything to reach their goal - even lie to the public. Case in point, Patrick Bach's interview with Jack Frags about how the game features "improved netcode" and how people will notice the difference because its better. In reality, it was far worse than Battlefield 3.

So here is the bottomline, I will not pre order the next Battlefield game (rest assured that there will be another BF game. The series has gotten too big to not have many sequels), or an EA product. I blame myself for not waiting to see how the game turns out. They have given me no incentive to support their product (No, battlepacks aren't incentives - a working game is.)

I hope someone at EA who is in a position to change things will read this, and hopefully put out better games. Its unlikely, but no harm in trying. I also hope that we all will remember this when the next Battlefield game is announced.  

Microsoft & Sony - The Used Games Situation

For those who are unaware, here is some background:

We are at the verge of new generation consoles. The new Microsoft console - the Xbox One - has tons of DRM in order to prevent gamers from buying & trading used games. They constructed an elaborate system of blocking second hand games by tying them to Xbox Live accounts. It is not possible to trade Xbox One game discs - even for single player games because they are all tied to Xbox Live account. Its essentially like Steam on PC.

Sony on the other hard, made things a lot easier. By not having any DRM on used games.

I imagine there was a conversation between the companies that went something like this:

Microsoft: Hey Sony. We came up with this awesome new plan to make a ton of money!

Sony: Oh yeah? What is it?

Microsoft: Well, seeing as how with the current consoles, we do not get any share from second hand sales, how about we implement a system that would block them from trading games by tying them to an online account? This way, gamers cannot hand over a disc to a friend! We will make it mandatory to enter a serial code, which we are totally going to sell. This is going to bring in tons of second hand revenue!

Sony: That sounds like a great idea! You guys should totally build a system!

Microsoft: But for this to work, we both need to be in on it. This will mean a lot of money for both of us!

Sony: Oh yeah! Absolutely. We hate it when gamers decide to give their discs to their friends - like they own it after they paid for it once!

Microsoft: Yep! We are also thinking about making it mandatory for the console to have to be online at least once every 24 hours....just to make sure the gamers aren't up to any mischief.

Sony: That is a great idea! The more control we have, the less control they have! What could go wrong with that! Nothing, I say!

Microsoft: So we can count on your support?

Sony: Oh yeah man. You got it.

Meanwhile they are thinking

Then E3 happens, and Sony releases this video: 

And in their conference, they totally screwed over Microsoft in a dazzling display of capitalism:

At the end, I imagine this is what Microsoft is thinking:

And the rest of the world is thinking:

Windows 8 Release Preview - Error code 0x80070570

When installing Windows 8 Release Preview using a VMWare Player 4, if this encountered:

Windows 8 Release Preview - Error code 0x80070570

The fix is fairly simple:

• If the ISO is being used to to boot directly from the hard drive, change its location on the hard drive

Or

• Mount the ISO into a virtual drive (I used Daemon tools), and that virtual drive as the boot drive for the VM. 

That should ideally take care of the problem. If it doesn't, leave a comment below.

Open Letter to Crytek

Dear Crytek,

With the news that a sequel is coming out in 2013, which isn’t very surprising at all, I figured, I’ll make a list of things that will make me want to buy the game. This is for PC gamers of course. This is my way to saying, I’ll give this series one last shot. Please don’t disappoint fans this time around.

So here is what the ideal game is going be like:

1. Support for DX 11 at launch & better graphics options – DX11 support from the get go. Kindly do not repeat the same mistake that was made with Crysis 2. The original game had a ton of options. It was very disappointing to see that Crysis 2 was a huge step backwards.

2. No more re-spawning enemies – After a high quality game like Crysis, it was just disappointing to see this in the last game.

3. No invisible walls – Kindly do not resort this! It is terrible, and you are far too good to be doing that!

Invisible walls in Crysis 2

4. Support for quick save – PCs are capable of quick save, and I believe that this should be included in the game. Trying to tell gamers when to save and what not to is very annoying. If you want to use checkpoints, go ahead, but let gamers save wherever. Crysis did this, not sure why this had to be removed in the next game, considering this functionality is already built in!

5. Stop trying to ape Call of Duty - Really…just stop. Asking for $60 at launch and making a Call of Duty clone is not a way to make gamers happy.

6. Make your game available on Steam – Unless Crysis 3 received a really good review from PC Gamer, I doubt I will be buying the game on Origin at launch.

7. Avoid day one DLC – You are not helping yourself here. You haven’t done that so far, there is no need to stoop so low this time.

8. Stop worrying about piracy - No matter what you do, your game will be pirated. Give gamers the incentive to buy your game. Here is the best way to do this – make a great game!

9. Don’t ignore PC gamers - Considering that Crysis sold 3 million copies, you really shouldn’t be ignoring this platform. Make a multi platform game by all means. If that means your company will make more money, so be it. That doesn’t mean you have to make a bad port for the PC.

10. Make your website work - It is not possible to create an account on mycrysis.com.

11. Rethink multiplayer - I don’t really care about multiplayer, but it seems there is a lot that is lacking here the last time. Perhaps you should concentrate on making an amazing single player game, and not worry about multiplayer at all? I know that is one bullet point less on the marketing checklist, but if it helps you make a better game, then its worth it.

12. Option to skip ALL cutscenes at the start of the game – We know that EA are the publishers, Crytek are the developers, the game runs best on Nvidia and so on. There is no need to make us sit through these promos EACH time. Deus Ex Human Revolution let users skip cutscenes, and so should Crysis 3.

This is really all I thought about for now. I am a huge fan of the series, and there were parts of Crysis 2 that I thought were amazing, but its nowhere near as good as the first game.

Please, don’t disappoint PC gamers this time around. I have already lost faith in most AAA titles being any good.

Sincerely yours,

RC.

How to make STALKER: Call of Pripyat (Steam) work

S.T.A.L.K.E.R is one of those weird games that is so awesome when it works, and frustrating as hell when it doesn’t. I am putting together a little guide here that should help you get your Steam version of the game work almost flawlessly.

I am sure most of what I write here can be applied to the regular version as well, but I haven’t tried it. I am also going to be assuming that you are using an Nvidia GPU, because that is what I have.

Here are the problems I had initially when I downloaded the game from Steam and tried to start it:

1. X-ray 1.6 crash – The game would start, and then it wouldn’t respond. If you end the game from the task manager, you will see a X-ray1.6 crash dialog box.

Quick fix for this – Disable Steam In-game overlay. The game will definitely start after doing so. There is still no guarantee that it would work right after that.

2. Extremely long load times. We are talking 10 minutes to load the game. 30 seconds to get to get the menu after hitting escape, kind of choppy frame rates.

Follow these few very simple steps, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat should work great for you.

1. Download and install the game from Steam

2. Get the complete mod. Click on this LINK to read more about it.

Download it HERE.

The complete mod does a fantastic job of improving the game in many ways. I can’t imagine playing the game without it.

The mod can be installed in two ways – Normal and Advanced. I installed the Advanced version because I have a good enough setup (Q9400, GeForce GTX 680 & 8GB RAM). Depending on the configuration of your system, chose the version that suits best.

Here are few screenshots before the mod was applied:

Here are some screenshots after the mod was applied:

It must be noted that previous save games won’t work after installing the mod.

3. Make sure that Steam is not running in compatibility mode. I was surprised to know that my Steam instance was working in Vista compatibility mode. I never knew this because until now, I had no reason to check.

Also, make sure you are running Steam as an Administrator.

4. It is important to remember that S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat should not be launched from Steam. Instead, do the following:

Go to this directory:

D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\stalker call of pripyat\bin (Steam maybe installed on C drive on your machine)

Right click on xrEngine.exe and create a shortcut on the desktop. Go to the desktop, and right click on the shortcut, and change the Start in field to this directory:

"D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\stalker call of pripyat\"

5. Start Steam, let it load fully.

6. Start S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat from the shortcut on the desktop.

If you did all these steps right, including installing the right version of the complete mod, the game should work fine.

FYI, here is my system configuration:

Processor	Intel Q9400  @ 2.66GHz, 2667 Mhz, 4 Core(s)
Motherboard	Gigabyte EP45-UD3R
RAM	8GB of GSKILL DDR2 RAM @ 800MHz
Graphics card	EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 SC

Hope this tutorial helps. If it doesn’t, feel free to email me, and I will answer your questions.

Enjoy!