Why is this a one hour in review? Honestly, it was slightly more than one hour, but nowhere near completion. After 16% of the game (the save game tells you how far you're through the game), I couldn't stomach the game and uninstalled it.
Far Cry 2 is a sequel to Far Cry in name only despite Ubisoft's marketing – it features all new characters, vastly different gameplay style, a 'realistic' storyline compared to the originals sci-fi, a new engine created from scratch (CryEngine for Far Cry, Dunia Engine for Far Cry 2) and it is even developed by a different company (Crytek created the first, Ubisoft Montreal the 'sequel').
Despite how little of the game I played, it does get a few things right. The graphics and physics systems combined are fantastic – the day/night cycle gives you a feeling of 'being in reality' compared to many games that are a constant day or night depending on the level, despite how many hours you may wait. Fire looks better than in any other game I've seen, and given the dry terrain often setting things on fire results in a hasty retreat before the flames consume you!
After you get over the initial ooo-ing and ahh-ing associated with the graphics, you'll be in for a big disappointment.
While the story in the first Far Cry wasn't brilliant, at least it was present. Oh, sure, in Far Cry 2 there is some Jackal guy you're sent to kill, but you manage to mess that up by contracting malaria in your taxi ride from the airport to your hotel. From there on in, it becomes less of an assassination game and more of a mission based, Grand Theft Auto style game, just without the random fun, people, or general filling to the game. Each mission is basically the same, you're sent to kill some bad guys, well, badder than the guys you're currently working for, since you eventually switch sides. In each quest I accepted, I was always warned "nobody knows you're out there, even our guys will shoot you", although apparently they stop giving you the warning in later missions.
Gameplay suffers too, the mechanics have taken a big dive from Far Cry. I remember the fun of being able to crawl under decking and shooting threw the wooden planks, or being able to drive a car that didn't conk out the moment it went on a gravel road.
The overall world layout was very poorly designed, checkpoints of respawning bad guys (of evidently no affiliation other than "lets kill that guy") are dotted all over the map which makes driving around a real pain in the backside, breaking the flow of the game.
I tried to finish this, and I couldn't, so even Call of Duty 5 and Spore rank better from me. They took a fun, crazy game and ruined its name by making a boring game, couldn't come up with a title for it, so stuck Far Cry 2 on it in hopes it would sell.
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Setting up a HTPC for the first time can be a bit of a daunting experience. There are so many hardware choices which seem so critical, and then you have to install and configure everything – it's times like this DVR/PVR's look appealing by only needing to be plugged into the TV and turned on.
This started out as a quick seven-ish step guide to Vista Media Center, but it just kept growing. As I discover (or other people point out) any steps or general information that is missing I'll continually update the article
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Install Vista Home Premium or Ultimate.
Both the 32bit or 64bit versions of Windows will work fine. For the record, I'm still using a 32bit for my HTPC, but on my desktop I'm running 64bit which plays back every file format I've tried.
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(Optional) Vista Home Premium Network Share Interaction
If you're installing Home Premium and using password protected network shares, you'll probably notice that upon every reboot (thanks to Chris Mayer for pointing this bug out) network shares will be lost, or you'll have to reenter network credentials to open a networked folder. Unfortunately, it isn't a "bug" as such, but a "by design feature" for Vista Home Basic and Premium.
The first fix everybody will point out is to go to the Windows Credentials Management tool in Control Panel -> User Accounts, but unfortunately this is unavailable.
There are a few "solutions":
- Allow anonymous access to your media shares
- Use a script on login, net use \\server drive: /user:username password. This means your password will now be stored in a plain text file.
- Make your HTPC's user account match that of your network share. ie \\yourserver requires "foo/bar", so your HTPC's username is foo, with a password of bar. It will never prompt for the username or password.
The last is the only real "secure" option, and also probably the easiest to setup. Combine that with auto-login (below), and the username/password aren't an issue.
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(Optional) Enable Auto-User-Login
If you've got a password on your HTPC's user account, by default it will prompt every time you turn the machine on, which is disastrous for machines that are operated by remote only. You can get around this by enabling auto-login.
Into the start menu type (minus the quotes), "control userpasswords2" to bring up the Advanced User Control Panel.
Select the account you want to automatically logon, then untick "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer", and a prompt will appear asking for the username and password.
(Thanks to Vince Koser for pointing out how useful this could be for a HTPC!)
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Install all the latest drivers.
Generally you can just discard the CD that came with your devices, as they're usually horribly out of date.
If you don't have access to another computer with a USB key and Windows hasn't picked up your network card, you may need to use the motherboard/network card CD to install those drivers to get online.
- For motherboards, TV tuners, audio cards, etc, visit the manufacturers website.
- For video cards (including integrated), the three players in the game are ATI, NVIDIA and Intel.
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Setting up sound
Depending on both the capabilities of your HTPC and your sound systems, you need to set your default sound playback device appropriately.
This dialogue can be found under Control Panel –> Sound.
Analogue outputs (usually a green 3.5mm stereo jack on your motherboard) will appear as speakers or headphones
HDMI, Optical and Coax will all appear with a similar SPDIF/Digital Output Device.
Word of caution, updating your video drivers may reset your audio choice if the video card includes audio out over HDMI. This happened recently to me.
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(Optional) Enable Remote Desktop.
If you have Vista Ultimate, you can setup Remote Desktop so that you can perform maintenance without having to plug a keyboard and mouse into your HTPC.
Control Panel –> System –> Remote Settings –> Allow connections
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(Optional) Remove Password Policy For RDP
Control Panel –> Administrative Tools –> Local Security Policy –> Security Options
If you chose to enable RDP, but don't want to have a password on your user account (which RDP requires by default), change "Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console only" to Disabled. Be warned, this obviously is a bit of a security risk, make sure you have other security procedures in place. It is easier/more secure just to enable auto-logon for the HTPC.
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(Optional) Install/Configure VNC.
VNC is an open source protocol for cross platform remote connections. Vista Home Premium doesn't come with Remote Desktop (it has the client but not the server portion), so this will do the same job as in step 3.
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Install all Windows updates
The big one to look out for is obviously Service Pack 1 for the fixes to file transfers, but generally get any and everything that's available.
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Run/Configure Windows Media Player
Windows Media Center and Media Player are very closely linked – you can't have the two of them playing separate files at the same time because WMC relies on WMP for playback.
Ripping settings are probably the only that cannot be accessed within Media Center itself. In the Rip Music tab of Options, the highlighted values are what you need to change.
Rip Options
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Rip Location
Since I store my music on my server, I've changed the rip location to there, if you keep it on your HTPC, you might want to change partitions/etc.
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Audio format
Your choices are WMA, WMA Pro, WMA (Variable Bit Rate), WMA Lossless, MP3 or WAV.Personally, I use WMA VBR, because the quality is good enough but not as space consuming as WMA Lossless. I'm not suggesting either WMA or MP3 is a superior format, but not all MP3 encoders are created equally. If I was to use a MP3 encoder, it would be LAME, not a Microsoft one.
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Audio Quality
Given how cheap hard drives are these days, always push the slider towards the best quality end.
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Install codecs
Codecs allow you to decode (and sometimes encode, the word codec is short for "compressor/decompressor", although often the encoding part isn't implemented) video and audio. Windows Vista ships with a very limited number of codecs (mp3, mpeg2, VC1/WMV9), so other common files like DivX/XVid, H.264 etc won't play back.Windows 7 will be shipping (and even the pre-release versions have them) with video for MPG4 (DivX/XviD) and H.264 as well as more advanced audio codecs – all my AVI files played back fine. However, the Matroska file format (MKV extension) is not natively supported, so something still needs to be installed for that to be played back.
My codec recommendations for Vista are:
- ffdshow – either grab the latest tryouts, or the CCCP codec pack is a nice bundle/preconfigured set
- and CoreAVC Pro; its a very fast software H.264 decoder, although its not free (make sure you uncheck "Haali Media Splitter Install" disabled if CCCP is installed)
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(Optional) Install HD-DVD/Bluray playback software.
The options are PowerDVD Ultra, WinDVDPlus, or Total Media Theatre. Only TMT has integration with Media Center where it places a launcher app, and when it closes restores Media Center. The latest versions of PowerDVD Ultra (v8+) do not playback HD-DVD's anymore.
Don't forget to configure whatever application you choose for Hardware Acceleration
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(For Australians) Install and donate to FreeEPG
In Australia, the other choice is the more expensive IceTV service. Over-the-Air (OTA) EPG information is very basic/unreliable and really only gives you now/next, but with FreeEPG, you get at least 24 hours in advance, but more often 7 days in advance.
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Install Video Browser
It rocks so much, it's not optional. Okay, I'm a little biased being on the development team, but WMC's management of video hasn't evolved to keep up new media centers like Boxee or XBMC. Specifically, those other players can get/reader metadata, display posters, and generally organise better.
Default video navigation in Media Center
Video Browser, same view but with the help of posters
and metadata, its a lot more manageable.
Video Browser, alternative view, yay for the power of choice
(click any image for a larger view)
Video Brower and Open Media Library are two addins (I'm sure there are more) that give a lot more control of managing videos in Media Center.
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Run Media Center
- Use the wizard, configure TV tuner/EPG information ("The Guide")
- Add folders to monitor
- Tasks –> Settings –> General –> Startup & Window Behaviour: Set to start WMC when Windows start
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Power Settings
Control Panel –> Power Options–> Change Power Settings
- Set the computer to go to sleep after however long you like, I have it set to 30minutes.
- (Still in the Power Options) Advanced –> Sleep –> Allow Hybrid Sleep –> Off
Unless you set this to off your Media Center will not send itself to sleep
Additional Settings –> Require a password on wakeup –> Setting: No
Setting this to no means you don't have to click to log back into your media center after waking it up- Download and install MCE Standby Tool (MST)As stupid as it sounds, Media Center won't idle to sleep unless it is at the main menu.
With the help of the MST, you can set a whole bunch of options to make your HTPC as energy efficient as possible.
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(Optional) These are somewhat less recommended and if you're still having problems with your HTPC turning on/off when you don't want it to without reason.
- Windows Updates –> Change Settings –> Set to manual so it doesn't automagically install OR download.
This does mean you should from time to time install
- In Media Center –> Tasks –> Settings –> General –> Optimisation –> turn off/disable optimisation
- Start –> All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Disk Defragmenter–> Untick 'Run on a schedule (recommended)
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(Optional) Cleaning up MP3/WMA Metadata
Media Center (and most music players these days, be it portable players like an iPod or Windows Media Player) use metadata to identify media these days, and in the case of music, it's ID3 tags. You can use Windows Media Player (although I strongly recommended against it) or iTunes to manage metadata, but if you prefer to more control, Mp3tag or Tag&Rename (better but not free) are great tools for editing a host of audio formats (including but not limited to, MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, OGG).
To batch download album art, it's hard to go past Album Art Downloader
Still got problems?
There are two fantastic community sites that may be able to help you out, The Green Button and XPMediaCenter.
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Recently I've started taking photos more regularly, as well as uploading them more regularly. Before I commit too many of them to any one spot, I've need to decide where they're going. Do I put them on Flickr (or equivalent?) and pay $25USD a year to separate them from my blog? Do I run my own gallery and be forced to maintain them myself?
A lot of development in the web space these days is leaning towards "services", whether its Software as a Service or Software + Services, whatever, but in general "offering X as a service" is the new black. Or whatever colour is the new awesome. It makes sense too, in general people want things just to work, they don't want to have to learn how to set things up – let alone actually go through the process of setting it up, they don't want to have too many choices on how it looks because they want it to look largely like how all their friends things look.
For the geek or the tinkerer (or even the privacy nut), this doesn't always satisfy an inexplicable need to customise until it fits in perfectly with everything else that I've created.
Services
In the services corner you've got freebies like Live/SkyDrive Photo Albums, Facebook and MySpace; while these services are completely free and for the most part unlimited, there are some downsides - namely all metadata seems to gets stripped, heavier compression is applied, and the original file is lost forever. For me these aren't really an option – I want my photos to retain their original metadata, and their original size – I don't have a (relatively) expensive camera just to have its image quality slaughtered by aggressive JPEG compression.
Then you've got your free-but-are-so-much-better-when-you-pay-for-it-services like Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Zooomr, Kodak Gallery, SmugMug, etc. Well, SmugMug doesn't fit into this category, you have to pay a minimum of USD$39.95/year to use their service, but they do allow subscribers to customise the look of the gallery – even using customised domains/sub-domains, have unlimited uploads, and other benefits. Realistically none of these options are free. Oh, sure, there are free levels but their limitations can be painful. For example, Flickr only displays your latest 200 photos and only allows 100MB/month to be uploaded, as well as not allowing the original file to be retrieved; Picasa Web Albums only gives you 1gb total storage unless you pay for more, and so on.
Software
If I'm already paying for web hosting for my blog, why don't I utilize that space? That is one of the biggest arguments in favour of any gallery software. I'm cheap (and I know it), and I can maximise the resources I've already purchased.
The problem with gallery software out there at the moment is that there is somewhat slim pickings in terms of features, or ease of use, or other niggling problems which I really don't understand. For example, Adobe's XMP has been around since 2001, but most gallery software ignores any metadata put into XMP despite Lightroom 2 and Windows Live Photo Gallery both using that as the default for tags. For reference, it took me about 10 minutes to have a working solution in PHP to parse XMP tags using regex – it's not perfect but it does a pretty good job.
The two main contenders in the LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) arena are Gallery2 and ZenPhoto. There are others out there, but these two seemed to be the most well known/liked (there was Coppermine but that generally seemed to be frowned upon). By no means am I trying to attack Gallery2, ZenPhoto, or the others I've not listed; they are usable software packages – just not for my needs/wants.
Gallery2 comes off feeling like a behemoth – it has so many options making it so overly complex that uploading a photo can be a bit of a nightmare. I prefer to organise things by tags rather than by albums, but that isn't an easy thing to do in G2. I've also never seen a G2 skin/theme I've liked. Thankfully, Menalto realise this, and Gallery3 is aimed at reducing complexity.
ZenPhoto is a "relative" newcomer (2005), and feels much lighter weight and seems to have a more attractive default theme than Gallery2. Just like Gallery2 though, everything has to be organised by album, not by tag – and navigating by tags is completely impossible (you can view tags but you can't click on a tag to see other photos with that tag). The latest version (1.2.2) seem to be a little buggy with picking up some of the metadata too, some photos it could extract all of it, others none.
The Ultimate Answer
Is there an "Ultimate Answer"? For me, there doesn't seem to be a magic bullet that offers
- no limitations on filesize/storage
- reads all metadata
- customisability
- tag based browsing/navigation + album/sets if/when (but only if/when I want them)
- free
So what is the answer? Have I missed the one piece of software which already does all of this? Am I going to have to settle or more realistically…have to write my own gallery code?
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While working on a new version of TVScout, I've been working on adding a management tool which will allow you to choose and fetch from the variety of posters on thetvdb or themoviedb, not just the first poster found. The problem is, I'm displaying the current poster in an (System.Windows.Controls.) Image first. This creates a situation where my program wants to overwrite a resource that's already in use.The simple fix would be set the Image.Source to null first? Partially right, but the problem is with how you set the file in the first place as there there is still a file lock.
The solution I found was a weird one to say the least. You have to make sure caching is enabled so that WPF will load the image into memory, and release the file lock and then tell it to always ignore the cache. Yes, you read that right.
You have to use the cache and then ignore the cache.
If you don't ignore the cache, it won't refresh the image to the new image until the next launch of the application.
private void SetImage(String filename)
{
BitmapImage bi = new BitmapImage();
bi.BeginInit();
bi.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad;
bi.CreateOptions = BitmapCreateOptions.IgnoreImageCache;
bi.UriSource = new Uri(filename);
bi.EndInit();
image.Source = bi;
}
So you'll end up with something like this in your code
SetImage("YourImage.jpg");GetNewImage();Image.Source = null;SaveNewImage("YourImage.jpg");SetImage("YourImage.jpg");
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I've been holding off on putting thought to paper (well, keyboard to bits) for awhile because I wasn't sure how to approach this.
Without a doubt, Fallout 3 is one of the biggest titles of the year, perhaps the game of the year. Unlike other big name titles it isn't all about the graphics - but has gorgeous graphics and oozes style; it focuses on a familiar - but not overdone (here's looking at you Call of Duty 5) post-apocalyptic world; a story driven game – rather than a series of "quests" that just happen to get in your way (Far Cry 2 anyone?); and it is in the style of role playing-first person hybrid which thanks to the V.A.T.S. ("Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System") gives you the choice of manual or automated firing thus not requiring you to be a trigger-junkie.
For me the most enjoyable aspects were the sci-fi elements. It isn't the first sci-fi RPG out there but the sheer number of fantasy RPG's (quality or otherwise) eclipses those that spring to mind. There is something satisfying leveling up and being more efficient with a plasma rifle.
With advances in "gaming technology" its nice to see lots of games benefiting from it. In particular, Fallout 3 is big. I could phrase that better – its fucking big. To walk from one side to the other of the map without going indoors, you'd get no loading screens, but it would take a least half an hour ("real world" time) to do so – and that's before factoring in combat, repairs, looting, quests, and all the things you'd actually do in the game itself. I really got a sense for how massive the game is.
So seemingly it does everything right? Yeah, well almost. According to my save games, it did take me roughly twenty hours to complete, but a lot of that involved dicking around to see how many ways I could tick certain people off or explode super mutants with mini-nukes. If you drilled down to the core story of the game, even venturing out for some of the side quests the main story would be abruptly over in under ten hours. By todays "standards", ten hours certainly isn't anything to scoff at (again, Call of Duty 5 proves that), but the majority of that time involves traversing the Wastelands on foot, and storyline does conclude very suddenly and unfortunately in a way that does not give credit to the rest of the game. Okay, I'll stop beating around the bush, the ending was balls.
There are other problems too. The level cap is set to twenty, which does take some time to get to – I had finished the game at level 13 – but finishing a few more of the side quests wouldn't have made it that hard to reach the cap. The real problem however, is that at level 13 I was indestructible. Armed with a heavily (self-repaired and thus self-upgraded) unique plasma rifle, and protected with Enclave Telsa Armour, nothing but several Deathclaws could take me down, and at that stage I had only ever seen one at a time. It wasn't a matter of difficulty so much as I was single shot killing everything because of the mechanics of upgrading/repairing guns, combined with a high energy weapon proficiency.
Despite the flaws of the game, it was genuinely fun to play. I've spent many more hours going back to save games near the end and detouring to explore the rest of the Wastelands and to finish off side quests. I played it on PC so I can't vouch how the experience is on a console (available on PS3/Xbox 360), but the overall game play should be so similar that I'll give it a universal highly recommended – go out and get it, or at least find somebody who has it to take a look at it for yourself as there is no demo available.
Bottom line? If you like RPG's, get it. If you like shooters, get it. If you like a good story, get it.
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"Pocket Video Cameras" seem to be gaining momentum, much the way netbook computers did. I've even seen some people call them "netcorders" partially in reference to how the first generation's resolution was "perfect" for YouTube (some even had said logo plastered all over their packaging), and partially how they're small, lightweight and cheap (typically under $200USD) – all the advantages a netbook has over a laptop.
Despite really only being launched this year, pocket video cameras have entered their second generation, now with models touting 720p recording, such as the Creative Vado HD, Flip Mino HD or my preference Kodak Zi6.
The Zi6 is different from the two other models – it uses removable storage (SDHC, up to 32gb) and removable standard AA batteries. The others use non-removable (but obviously included with) onboard flash storage (4gb for the MinoHD, 8gb for the VadoHD) and (I think) non-user replaceable lithium ion batteries (which to their credit, give about 2 hours recording per charge)
Well, none of these models are in Australia. Heck, Pure Digitals (they sell the Flip) don't sell anything in Australia from what I can see. I contacted both Creative and Kodak via their websites
Creative's response?
As regards to your enquiry, I understand your interest in getting our New Vado HD.
As the product are new in the market, it is not widely available in other region yet.
Do visit http://au.store.creative.com/ regularly for the stock availability updates.
In case if you need any clarification, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Helpful. The first generation Vado is already available in Australian stores, but not on Creative's online store. Yeah, I'll keep checking back there. Cough.
Kodak were a little better, their live chat/help system gave me a general number to call, but unfortunately they gave a response of "it's not out now, and head office has given us no information about it".
Where does Twitter fit into this? Well I asked the Twitterverse to help me to get in contact with Kodak and/or Creative in regards with the two cameras…and I'm now being followed by about four Kodak-ians! Within half an hour Gord Weisflock was able to give me a number and name in the Melbourne offices of somebody who could help me out with Australian availability – another fantastic example of the power of Twitter.
Unfortunately, the Kodak Zi6 will not be coming to Australia at all. (Official response was Kodak Australia will not be launching the Zi6, but will be launching the Zi8 sometime around March 2009) If the camera was coming to the country I would have waited for it simply because of the awesome response from the Kodak team over Twitter, but as it isn't and I can't seem to dig up anything on the Zi8, if I want to buy locally I will have to jump ship to Creative.
Looks like it's back to waiting or importing for me :(
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In the current version of TVScout I'm developing, I'm adding in support for movies (as mentioned earlier) from TheMovieDB. I wanted a selection dialog incase multiple matches were returned went searching for a movie. Using XAML's XML binding, that's pretty simple, especially using Blend to auto-generate the DataTemplate for the Listbox.
Most of the data ends up being displayed via XAML like this:
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=title}"/>
TheMovieDB's API returns posters as an array
<poster size="original">..</poster>
<poster size="thumb">..</poster>
<poster size="mid">..</poster>
Obviously giving the full-sized poster when asking people to choose between movies is a little much – filesize difference alone would be a couple of hundred kilobytes, multiplied by however many results there are. Using XPath, that's not a problem, it would just be poster[@size='thumb'] if I wanted the thumbnail sized one.
I had just assumed that I could do an easy modification to the auto-generated binding (which selected the first result, which invariably was the full sized poster), but that wouldn't compile. Instead I had to use the below syntax:
<Image>
<Image.Source>
<Binding>
<Binding.XPath>
poster[@size='thumb']
</Binding.XPath>
</Binding>
</Image.Source>
</Image>
Not exactly as compact or as readable as it should be (I was expecting it to complain about unescaped text, until I realised it was the child content of Binding.XPath), but it works just as well.
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I've been playing with Windows 7 for the last few days, and I'm liking what I'm seeing which so far seems to be a lot of UI polishing. I know there is more going on under the hood than that, but I haven't dug deep to try and figure out what. There are lots of little things that when switching back to Vista you notice stick out.
Performance has been surprisingly fantastic, it seems just as quick or quicker than Vista SP1 (my machine is beefy-ish, Intel Core2Quad Q6600@2.4ghz, 4gb DDR2 800mhz, 512mb 9600GT). After installing Win7, I had no need to download/install any new drivers - sound, LAN and video drivers were all picked up perfectly. The video drivers weren't just "Generic Display Device" drivers either, I was able to install Far Cry 2 and play that perfectly smooth without updating/changing any settings!
Back to the UI, there have been a few changes to the Start Menu, all of which feel more like polishing/evolution than the major changes/revolution we saw with Vista. A great example of polishing the UI is that searching in the Start Menu now expands the width of the results to take up all the Start Menu.
Another nicety is each app in the Start Menu can have a list of recently opened documents, so you can launch the app directly at the file.
Progress windows now show their progress as the background on the Start Bar/Super bar, which again isn't a must have feature but is pretty and nice to have.
The "preview tab" has made a return in many dialogs, it works well now.
There are various changes to Media Center as well, it now has a more Zune-like look to it (in both the main menu and the new "music wall" visualization for music).
However my favourite part of the new UI so far is the new "Super Bar" (enabled with the bluebadge patch). It's hard to show off how smooth it is with pictures, so I've thrown up a screencast on Viddler (using Community Clips, which seems to limit video to 256 colours)
UI aside, there are a few noticable additions/changes. "Libraries" (Collections of like file types that can span multiple folders/machines) are an interesting way to sort/find types of files, but even more interesting is the ability to share them so easily on the new networking concept (for Windows), HomeGroups. The combination of HomeGroups, Libraries and auto-network-discovery will be fantastic for less computer literate people wanting to share files between computers; in theory Libraries from other computers in the same HomeGroup should appear automatically in Explorer.
I think the biggest surprise with Windows 7 so far has been that…Paint is now..useable?! It has been redesigned with the Ribbon UI (which makes its way into a few programs such as Wordpad), and fleshed out with many "new" features (aka, ones standard to any image editing application). Sure, it won't be taking Photoshop down, but when you need to do basic editing (resizing, cropping, rotating, etc) it actually looks to be a contender!
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Sam decided the shenanigans of the 10 page/103 post thread on TVScout was to come to an end, and has given TVScout it's own sub forum on the VideoBrowser forums!
TVScout started off purely as a way to stop me from using/installing the Ruby command line tool, so this both fantastic and weird to see how far it's gone.
There is also a new version of TVScout out (it has been for a week now), version 0.8
New features
- Metadata caching; caching all the data for quicker processing when updating. Cache is currently hardcoded to 'expire' every two weeks. vNext will include options to customise that.
- Customizable file extension list, ie support for DVR-MS/or any other file type you can think of, just by editing/appending the config file (you need to edit the TVScout.Exe.Config file using something like notepad)
- New tabbed GUI
- "Ignore" control files. Create a new file (blank text document), rename it to "ignore" (no file extension), and the folder will be ignored by TVScout (place it in the root directory of the show, ie C:\myshows\Stargate SG1\ignore. This is particularly useful for when a show has finished (Stargate SG-1 would be a good example)
As always, download from CodePlex
Version 0.9 is coming along nicely too, it will feature the logo above, as well as add a few new features like the ability to fetch movie metadata, a TVScout service (optional) to automagically handle all your metadata, and a show management utility.
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Which possible war could a shooter choose to focus on to become the next big success? You guessed right, World War II! This war certainly hasn't been done to death in the movie, documentary, or gaming genres. World War II games have become like a lot of sports game franchises – a new one is released every year with upgraded graphics and new players licensed.
Call of Duty World at War (CoDWaW) marks the fourth (sixth if you include the United Offensive expansion and the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube exclusive Call of Duty 2: Big Red One) game in the Call of Duty (CoD) series to focus on World War II. I suppose by focusing on World War II the game becomes cheaper to produce as they certainly don't need to employee any story writers. Sadly Treyarch also decided not to employee too people to focus on the single player either, which despite the fun of a limitless flame thrower, was still a woefully short three hours of wave after wave of either Nazi's or screaming Japanese soldiers.
Treyarch seemingly thought to very little about growing the series leaving that up to Infinity Ward, who have made the only decent Call of Duty games (1, 2 & 4). CoDWaW is a modified version of the CoD4 engine – they've added up to four player co-op to parts of the campaign, but visually and game mechanic wise it feels like a step back. The game plays more like a "rails" shooter (ie Time Crisis or House of the Dead) with a lot of invisible walls restricting where you can or can't go – I came across a few open doors that I simply couldn't walk through – and I was propelled forward to my death on more than one occasion when my AI teammates decided to walk into me.
AI might be a little too kind, AS (Artificial Stupidity) might be more accurate. My main gripe with the first CoD game was that you single handedly had to do absolutely everything as your team mates couldn't hit the side of a barn from point blank range. As the series as progressed, the AI has slowly learnt how to fire a gun and even better than that, not relied on you to do absolutely everything to win the war. Unfortunately, CoDWaW makes another step backwards here and the AI again requires every objective to be completed by the player, which seemingly extends to killing every opponent. In CoD4 I noticed my AI allies would at least throw back grenades if they were close enough – in CoDWaW my allied AI aimed their grenades at me, killing me on numerous occasions.
If you love the Call of Duty series I would still recommend CoD4 (price alone makes it better value, let alone the better gameplay and larger single player campaign), but if you prefer a WW2 shooter and have no interest in single player this might be for you.
WW2 Shooter + no visual improvements + incredibly short campaign = One and a half out of five from me.
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