Collins’ Onovia

I’m sitting here watching Fox News and they are talking about GTA4. They are again pointing the finger at Rockstar and retail stores. They want to make sure that there’s no hidden content like the “Hot Coffee” mini game mod that there was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and that the game isn’t sold to minors.

Let me say that most kids under 17 don’t have money trees. The money comes from the parents. If a parent gives their kid $50 to go buy a video game, they need to be more aware of what they are buying. It’s so damn annoying to hear that yet another parent is suing because their already fucked up kid happened to play a violent game and then shoots people up. I’ve played violent video games my entire life, along with all my friends. And here we all are, many years later. None of us are violent killers, drug addicts, or car thieves.

My whole point here is that there is no one to blame but the parent and child. Anyone that carries out the actions in a fictional game needs to imitate Mario, and smash their head into a brick.

I had Verizon install their FiOS service that has been available here in my neighborhood for little over a year now. I talked to a few neighbors that currently have the service, and they had no gripes about it. I’m interested in seeing the difference in speed. So, here’s the results:

Comcast Speed Test:

Verizon FiOS Speed Test:

Looking at those results, I’d say that Verizon is definitely the way to go.

I’d also like to mention that the Tech that came to install the system was professional, and prompt. He did his thing, asked if we had any questions, and that was it. in all, it took about 1 1/2 hours to install the system. Mind you we already had all the in-house wiring required.

This past Friday night I got an invitation from Hulu to start beta testing their service. Hulu, a venture shared by NBC Universal and News Corp, offers full feature sitcom episodes, clips, and other video content free of charge.

The layout of hulu is astoundingly easy to use. There’s no hunting down what you want to watch. Just look for the logo of the show or network, and click. A slick flash interface for the player blows away any other flash video player I’ve seen. Check out the screen shots below.

The quality of the flash videos is top notch. Here’s a shared video clip of The Simpsons.

Of course, not every one is happy with hulu. There are reports that people out of the United States are not able to use the service. This is probably due to some stupid export rule. Something like this is probably going to come back and bite hulu in the ass. For example, Udo Schroeter talks about how restricting access will only lead to people obtaining the videos illegally. Perhaps the team at hulu should rethink their blocking access?

Anyways, head on over to http://www.hulu.com/ and register for the beta access.

I saw on XFire, and advertisement for a game manager chat for Drift City. I’m a racing game fan. So after checking out some screen shots and seeing that it was a free racing mmo, I had to download the client, and take it for a spin.

Graphics
This is the first cell-shaded racing game I’ve ever seen. The graphics aren’t top notch, but for cell-shading, they are pretty good. There’s plenty of tweeks for people with slow machines, which is a plus.

Controls
The controls in this game are amazing. It’s WASD movement. Seems simple right? Well, you’ve also got the shift key, which will allow you to drift around corners and on-coming traffic. Typically, I stay away from racing games on the computer, for the same reason that I stay away from FPS’s on consoles. The controls are usually hard to master. Steering is easier on an analog pad, for the reason that it’s “pressure sensitive”. Drift City by far has the best controls for any racing game I’ve played on the PC.

Game Play
The cool thing about Drift City is that your not stuck, racing around the same maps over and over again. There’s an entire city that you can explore. Race people, crash it up, hit some jumps, pull off crazy bonuses, get items, and go on vigilante missions to destroy the S.U.V.’s. See, I knew there was a world where Anti-SUV people could unite! All that is just in the open world. There’s also a battle mode, where you can race by teams, or solo. The maps in the battle modes are actually portions of the city, so they are places that you will recognize.

Upgrades
You can upgrade your vehicles by buying or acquiring items. There are 4 basic attributes to upgrade. Speed, Acceleration, Durability, and Booster. Every few levels, you can change out your items for newer things with better bonuses and sell your old items in the auction house.

Final thoughts
If your a racing fanatic like myself, this game is well worth the download. Here’s a quick video I threw together today. Thanks LP for the tune-age.

I spent some time on my site today. I haven’t really sat down and worked on it for along time. The most obvious thing I changed was the layout. The green color was nice and all, but it didn’t reflect my personality. “Lite and pretty” just isn’t me. I chose this dark theme called slate by Dan Cameron.

Once I got the new theme online, I figured that it would be a great idea to update my plug ins too. Spend a little more time, getting everything up to date. Why not? Well crap, it didn’t go as planned. It’s been so long since I’ve tinkered with things, that I forget what files rely on what, where certain things need to do, etc.

Plug ins I Broke:
Ultimate Tag Warrior: I dunno what the hell happened here. It’s working, I can tag posts, but I can’t click on the tags. It comes back with a 404 error.
WebSnapr: This showed a little thumbnail of external websites. More of an accessory than a necessity. This is the last on my list to fix, if even at all.
WP-Cache: This is supposed to speed the website up by creating a static page instead of having to query the database every time a page is loaded. Not happening, Haven’t a clue why.

Everything else running on here upgraded to the latest version just fine. Guess I’ve got more work to do!

Moving on, all the work that I’ve put into UFIGaming.net never ended up paying off. It ended up being more of a learning experience for myself than a business. Poor planning, and lack of help contributed to the failure. Once UFIGaming goes off line, I’ll be posting the source to the back end that synchronized steam id’s from phpBB3 to our CS game server.

I managed to get back into Rappelz again. Once an addict, always one right? This is the 3rd time that I’ve given into the urge. Damn I’m weak. I’ve promised myself however that I’m NOT spending any more money on the game. It’s pointless to spend my real money to get virtual money. Over the years of my MMO gaming, I’ve probably spent well over $1,000. While that doesn’t seem like much, there’s not a thing to show for it.

Enough rambles for now. Goodnight.

In your php file, you will need to run a database query, for example:

Now that you have the required data, you can use the [url=http://area51.phpbb.com/docs/code/phpBB3/_includes---functions_display.php.html#functionget_user_avatar]get_user_avatar[/url] function that’s in includes/functions_display.php

Assign $avatar to a template variable.

And finally, add {USERS_AVATAR} into the template page, where you want it to show.

Running two Archlord clients may be simpler than you think! Create a new account, and a simple hex edit of the window title enables the game client to run side by side. Here, I provide directions to get your dual clients running.

As with any files you download from the internet, you should virus scan if it makes you feel more comfortable. Please note that as of this posting there is no anti-cheat built into Archlord. So, hacking this file SHOULD NOT get you banned, but I take no responsibility for what happens.

First, you will need to download a hex editor. This allows you to edit the window title that’s displayed on the client. I used one called WinHex, but any editor will do. You can google the term Free Hex Editor and there are several results.

So, here we go…

Open into the program directory (Usually C:\Program Files\Codemasters\Archlord). Copy the original client alefclient.exe and paste it in the same directory. By default, it’s called Copy of alefclient.exe. Rename the client to alefclient2.exe. Open your hex editor. With the hex editor, open the new client you just created.

Don’t be alarmed at the gibberish text that you see. We are just looking for one text string. Open the search feature, and run a text string search on the term Archlord. Most searches are case sensitive. Pay attention to that. If possible, specify that you want it to be case sensitive, as the string we are looking to change only exists in the program one time.

Add a 2 after the string so it will read Archlord2.

Save the work, and you are done.

The best method for running two clients has been to run the first as you usually would; with the Launcher program. After you are loaded and logged in, run the new client you created.

I hope you have success with this. It’s made my Archlord experience MUCH easier. Post any questions you might have in the comments, and I’ll reply when I can.

I’ve been maintaining a Ventrilo server for sever for quite some time now. Lately, there’s been a ton of “connection spammers”. These people will use an annoying phonetic and connect to the server over and over again causing tts (Text to Speach) to speak over and over again. Surely you could just set a password on the server to avoid this, however I like to allow anyone into my Ventrilo server. This is really a shitty thing for someone to do. Not only does it lag the server out, but also causes some clients to lock up and error out. There’s no connection throttle built into the Ventrilo server, but fear not, there IS a solution.

Ventrilo allows you to create a channel, and move each connecting person into that channel automatically. Go ahead and create a “Welcome” channel. Call it what you want. Open the admin interface, and set the ‘Default Channel’ option (Circled in red in the image bellow) to the channel you just created. This will force all connecting users into this channel automatically. Next, you will need to set a channel spam filter. Click the ‘Channel’ button (Circled in blue in the image bellow) in the Spam filters section in the admin panel. Set the Action to ban, Interval to 2000, and the Times to 3.

What this means is that if a client changes channel more than 3 times within 2 seconds (2000ms), the user will automatically be banned. This ban will show in the ban list, and be listed as an auto ban. I hope that this solution is a quick fix to your problems. It’s been active on my server for a month now, and I’ve already got 9 bans.