Who am I?

No, this isn’t some self-exploring philosophical post. It’s a post tying up all the loose ends in regard to my accounts online, since a lot of people have wondered whether certain accounts on popular websites are mine or not. without further ado, let’s get started:

Youtube account: MikeTheFailboat

This is my youtube account. On there I make tutorials on how to use VALVe’s hammer editor and other random things. Check it out if you like.

Steam account(Currently): Fiasco

Steam is where I play all my games. Feel free to add me.

FPSBanana account: Stealthy Dirtbag

Yep, I make maps and post them on FPSB. I haven’t made many at the time of writing, but I’m currently developing gm_aqueduct.

That’s all for now – If I have anything else, I’ll add it to this post.

A few things from GMod.

Occasionally, when I have little better to do, I open up GMod and pose some ragdolls. I did a few good ones, that I forgot about until now. I thought it would be best to upload them to WordPress now, before I Forget about them. Enjoy.

HL2 Mod: Riot Act

I’m thinking carefully about how to review this, but overall I enjoyed it. That’s the least I can say. However, I will try to go in-depth with a few points I picked up, whether they be positive or not.

1: Pacing

The pacing was done well, I thought. It followed the regular linear path connecting encounter to encounter and it generally flowed well. I never felt that the onslaught of enemies was too much, however it did get a bit hard when health and ammo pickups became sparse near the centre-point of the game.

2: Map Design

Nope, the development team from this didn’t just steal the Nova Prospekt maps from VALVe(However I think they used a few pieces of the building), they did quite a lot of mapping. The bit of it that really stood out to me was the huge coastal cliffs and magnificently made bridge right at the end of the game; it looked stunning and at the same time they even managed to fit a puzzle and a strider fight in that same place as well.

3: Puzzles

The puzzles in this mod were a bit mediocre for my liking. A lot of them were just pushing a switch to pass by, or twisting a valve to release gas and then turning on the electricity running through the wire above it. They weren’t used frequently enough and they weren’t complex enough either.

4: Enemies and Weapons

The variety of Enemies and Weapons weren’t fantastic, or bad either. I think that they overused the Nova Prospekt guards a bit, even if that is what you would expect to be in Nova Prospekt, it doesn’t really appeal on the game play side of things and got quite boring. The only place were they mixed it up with the enemies was when they did a few big fights and used an Antlion guard, Combine Gunship’s and a Strider. The weapons were a bit better, but you never got the pistols at all and I think they gave you the SMG and Shotgun far too early, you get them both after about five minutes of play, which made killing guards near the start ridiculously easy, until the merciless ammo drought I mentioned before during the middle creeps up.

Well, that’s about all. To summarise: Good combat and Map design, a bit lacking on the puzzles and variety. Overall, it was fun experience and the fact it’s free only adds to the fact. I recommend you play it if you own Half-life 2.

I return.

It appears I completely forgot about and neglected my WordPress account, but worry not. I have returned. I doubt anyone cares, but I felt like stating that anyway. Oh yes and now that I’ve returned I will start posting again. I’m sure you’re filled with joy and excitement, but that will all dissipate as soon as you read my next few posts.

I’m going to post about the same topics as well, gaming, programming, etc. I think my first post after this one of course, will be about Riot Act, a HL2 Mod about you; a prisoner in Nova Prospekt ready to start a revolt. I look forward to it.

Oh my.

It would seem while I was away for a brief period of time without posting the amount of views I got was zero. This leads me to believe I don’t have anyone who regularly reads my posts, instead just random losers who got here because my post was about something popular(ODST/TF2 for instance).

This means I can take a few courses of action. I could either post more regularly without breaks, post about more popular topics or improve the overall quality of my writing. Of course, I could also do a combination of any of the above. I for one personally lean towards improving the quality of my writing but I’ll decide soon enough.

cout << "How do I code game?\n";

It’s the worst part of making a game for me: Starting from scratch.

First, I have to make a bunch of classes for monsters and characters, then I have to write all the stat calculation functions and other shit you need just to be able to make a battle system. It’s a lot of work and progress is as slow as anything, especially if you’re going to code in C++, because you’re awesome, like I do.

This is just for a text game, with a game that actually has graphics, it’d be a shit-load work, too much for me to handle, anyway.

Me.Ragequit();

A Small Comment on ODST.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet.

I really have to congratulate, and laugh at the people who bought ODST. I like how all the XBox 360 fans lined up and paid $60 for the insipid shit-fest that seems rather familiar to the old one. That’s right, you just paid $60 for what was basically a Halo 3 exspansion with some new multiplayer maps, a new gamemode and a shit campaign. I also hope I’ve angered lots of people and that they will now RAGE and attempt to troll me in the comments section.

AION Released.

Today AION was released, It’s just a shame I forgot to pre-order it on Steam yesterday. Of course, I’ll buy it some time this week, pretend I’m a critic and review it badly.

Now, the real question is “Will it replace World of Warcraft?” Sure it’s shiny and has an interesting flying mechanism, but I don’t think it’ll put a dent in Blizzards profits at all, some players will either play it for a short while, or not at all. We’ll see which I prefer when I play it, because I currently play World of Warcraft anyway.

Why TF2 is Unique Compared to Other FPS’s.

Yes, I’ve been given a toy and like a child I can’t help but play with it excessively for a while. This post is really pointless apart from the fact it’s entertaining me. I have nothing else to do now, so I might as well spam my WordPress with useless articles.

So, I thought I might as well write about something I’m interested in. That is of course, VALVe’s brilliant FPS, Team Fortress 2, or more specifically, why it’s so unique. I’ll just go ahead and list five now.

1. Classes

No, I do not mean the idea of player classes. I mean the way VALVe has made them. Each player class is balanced, unique and provides a different playing style. Surely, that would be enough, but on top of this VALVe gave every class a personality, which is built on in ‘Meet the Team’ videos. This adds to the games humor, something TF2 always amuses me with.

2. Stylised Art

TF2 looks amazing, no doubt. You could never mistake TF2 for any other game, it is truly distinct. Oh, did I mention it looks amazing yet? Oh, and it means some things that would be impossible in the real world, are now possible with this toon-propaganda poster style art.

3. Free Updates

The free updates in TF2 not only keep old players playing, but invite new players to play. Each update gives a new gameplay mechanic and can make an old class seem like a totally new experience. In addition, they also add new maps and game modes, which brings us nicely to my next point.

4. Replayability

Due to the updates, TF2 never feels old, there’s always new weapons, maps and gameplay modes to keep you playing. Also, apart from this, VALVe develops their maps to feel like a totally new experience with each class and even to feel new with a class you’ve already played with on a map.

5. Community

No, I don’t mean the community itself, I mean how VALVe values the output of their community and makes changes to the game accordingly, not only this but VALVe even releases community maps in official updates and gives recognition to those who help the community through their blog and even in-game, as they recently gave community contributors unique items, that do not give them any advantage but merely recognises the work they’ve done.

That pretty much sums up why I think Team Fortress 2 and VALVe are awesome. I don’t mean to be a fanboy, though.

So, I heard you like the WordPress.

Oh yay, I’ve made a WordPress blog. I’m somewhat regretting this now because I have nothing interesting to say, or should I say write. Well, I have twenty-four words so far, surely that’s enough, right? Heh, what do I care anyway.

On a more interesting note, I’ll be starting to code that RPG that some of you may have heard of soon. I’ll start by coding the battle system, since it’s the only thing I really have an outline of at the moment. I’m also working on developing another class, instead of the one I have at the moment. It’ll be a magic user, with some more interesting concepts behind it.

Well, that’s all for now and I got over one-hundred words, so I’m happy enough, I’ll try and update regularly too which isn’t usually the case with my other blogs.