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I just finished my second playthrough of the new Deus Ex game, Human Revolution. It has a few bugs but is generally the best game I've played in a while. Though, I must say that the original Deus Ex is still a smidge better. So far I haven't given a full review, but if I did so it'd be on Metacritic where I've been doing my other reviews.

Also, in my last playthrough of DX:HR, I took a bunch of screenshots of the weapon mods and Praxis Kits that I found and then gave descriptions of where they're located. With Steam's nifty new screenshot management, I was able to easily upload them all to my Steam page for your reference. It's probably the beginnings of a new DX guide.

So I'm still doing a ton of gaming since I started working full-time and less of being productive. However, one thing I've been contemplating is converting my site to WordPress for a few reasons. It would add commenting features for all my posts and other content, and I'm hoping that getting more feedback would be a good motivator for me. Also, having a slick backend should help me post more often. Plus I've been using WP a lot at work lately and I'm pretty comfortable developing for it now so it shouldn't be much trouble to extend it to my needs.

The only thing I'm stumbling on is the design of the new WordPress site. I've been toying with a mockup for the last month but I'm not sure I like any of it. I've been trying to keep some of the colors and graphics of the current site's style. Maybe I need to start over from scratch on this.

-Snake

Tags: website, gaming, Deus Ex, guides, graphics

I'm crazy psyched about the upcoming Deus Ex game. Maybe I'm just being a fanboy, but I think the trailers Eidos Montreal have put out for it are the best I've ever seen for a video game. The style, clarity, music, action, and glimpses of story are all hyper-intense--a couple even get me choked up at times. In the HD trailers, it's hard to even tell the difference between pre-rendered CG, in-game cutscenes, or actual gameplay footage.

Beyond the feel of the game, the play sounds like it's shaping up quite nicely as well. PC Gamer has a couple of good articles about all the gameplay aspects up:

-Snake

Tags: gaming, Deus Ex

Fa la la la la...

It's been a mixed enjoyment holiday season this year. I won't get into all the personal details, but here's some things that were delightful recently.

I finally released my little map for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts earlier in the month. As mentioned in previous postings, I decided to call it "Hurtgen Forest". I've only published it on two sites other than my own for the moment, trying to get some initial feedback in case tweaks need to be made. So far, the lurkers on my RelicNews thread have been rather useless douchebags (I think they feel threatened), but the review on Filefront both praised my map while giving helpful feedback to consider. More info and download for Hurtgen Forest.

I also did a snazzy trailer video to promote the map (and because I LOVE editing video). Although I've embedded it everywhere the map is, here's the video again:

I did another video to demonstrate how to use my program, File Lister, as well. It shows how to use it to do batch renaming. To limit the number of videos I have embedded in one post, just see the File Lister page to watch. I'm quite surprised by how often I end up needing File Lister at work and at home. I think it's almost as essential as Regex Buddy for any geek. I'm also finding more and more sites publishing or linking to File Lister since it's naturally the most advanced and feature-rich program of its kind.

And finally, the obligatory 100% completion screenshot for Lego Harry Potter. The girlfriend and I just finished it last weekend. Also, 100% completion for all the other lego games we've played. Can't wait for Lego Pirates of the Caribbean so we can continue our addiction. Actually, co-oping with your girlfriend is probably half the fun.

-Snake

Tags: modding, video editing, gaming, Hurtgen Forest, Company of Heroes, File Lister...

I've got a Lexmark X4650 wireless printer/scanner and as such, I've naturally installed the software provided by Lexmark which includes drivers and their Lexmark Productivity Studio. However, I've noticed ever since I got this printer that one of the processes (lxdxcoms.exe) for the associated software leaks a lot of memory. I've seen it easily get above 250MB in just a few days. So I've come up with the following batch script to restart the necessary services and processes and thus get the memory usage under control without the need to restart Windows.

net stop lxdx_device net start lxdx_device taskkill /f /im lxdxmon.exe start /D"%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files\Lexmark 3600-4600 Series" lxdxmon.exe

This script is certainly applicable to a large number of Lexmark printers, but depending on the printer you have, you may need to change the path to start the executable on line 4 of the script. Good luck.

-Snake

Tags: printers, hardware

The new version of File Lister is available now. Download here. Changelog follows.

added counters to output format with pattern %i
added the option to use regex capturing groups in output format with pattern %v
added option to match full path in regex instead of only filename
added option to invert matching behavior for regex
rewrote output format parser to be pre-compiled for speed improvement
optimized regex matching for significant speed improvement when using regex
removed default pattern option from pattern selection menu, added "Default" buttons to some dialogs
fixed crash if output file in use by another program
fixed a bug with groupings in filesize pattern
fixed missing use of default options for date, size, and attributes patterns without parameters

-Snake

Tags: File Lister

A new version of File Lister is in beta now. I've been repeatedly finding it useful both at home and at work, so I figured it was the most deserving of an update. Besides a few bug fixes, there are also performance improvements, some more regex matching options, and the addition of counters and regex capturing groups in the output format. I'm hoping to release a final version within the next month. And this next release may not even be the end of the updates to File Lister as I'm also looking at adding features like command line modes in the future.

I'm also trying my hardest to get my Company of Heroes map finally done (damn me and my perfectionism!), even if there's no one around to play it anymore. It's just too good and too close to completion to let it go unfinished. There's just 1/8th of the playable area left to create and some of the out-of-bounds yet to be filled with trees--it really shouldn't take but another concerted effort of a weekend.

And I've finally decided on a name for the map: "Hurtgen Forest". Since my map is pretty much a fictional setting, I didn't want to be too specific with the location. Though, I had always considered that it would probably be named after some area in Belgium or northwest Germany.

-Snake

Tags: mapping, File Lister, Company of Heroes, Hurtgen Forest

I often notice people coming to my site from search queries asking how to use my program Cursor Lock. Of course, Cursor Lock comes with plenty of documentation for most users' needs. I think most of those people are either noobs that can't find the documentation, or they want Cursor Lock to do something it doesn't actually do.

Anyways, there is one circumstance where I haven't documented how to use Cursor Lock, mostly because I only just realized it myself. However, it can be rather tricky, so here's how to lock games that must be launched with Steam. These instruction will work for the new version that just came out on April 26 and the previous version.

Open Steam and go to your list of games.
Right-click on the game in question and select "Create Desktop Shortcut".
Find the shortcut on the desktop and right-click to examine its "Properties".
For the new version of Steam, look at the "Web Document" tab and then the "URL" box. For the old version, look at the "Shortcut" tab and then the "Target" box. Copy the 5 digit number you see there.
Open Cursor Lock Setup.
Select "Open Program" and then find the path to the Steam executable, usually it will be something like C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steam.exe
Select "Open Program Args" and put in -applaunch xxxxx where xxxxx is the 5-digit number you copied earlier.
Select "Lock Program" and then find the path to the game's main executable--this would be what one would usually set as the "Open Program" when Steam isn't involved. If you don't know where it is, you should start looking under C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\. You can also use Task Manager to help you find the executable name when the game is running.
You're done! Hit the "Create Shortcut" button to create a permanent shortcut to the game with Cursor Lock.

-Snake

Tags: Cursor Lock, gaming

Going to try to do a less epic blog post today. Realizing more and more that I just don't have it in me to work on the site much anymore--stupid day job.

I just updated my mods for Diablo 2 to support patch 1.13. Really there wasn't much difference between 1.12 and 1.13 as far as the modded files were concerned, but I diligently checked all the files regardless. Only the Balance Better Drops Mod needs to be updated to work with 1.13, although I'm betting it'll probably work fine regardless as the changes were so slight. Find the mods here.

Also on game mods, I did a small mod (more of a hack really) for Tropico 3 a couple months ago that lets you put your own music into the game. The hardest bit was decompiling the compiled LUA code that controlled what music files could be played (a playlist), which I did by hand since no existing decompilers worked. Then I wrote my own LUA script to load whatever music I wanted and modded the LUA compiler to make Tropico-compatible compiled LUA files. You can find all the hot details of the efforts on this thread of the official Tropico 3 forum, and a guide written by another member that sums up my process on this thread.

While I'm on gaming, I'll just go through what I've been playing recently. Obviously, the girlfriend and I are playing Diablo 2 coop again. In between that, I'm back to trying to beat The Witcher (Enhanced Edition this time). I also replayed Halo (action is still good, but shorter and uglier than I remembered), Titan Quest with Kaylen, and Startopia. Fallout 3 ruled December, except for the part of winter break where Kaylen and I got 100% on Lego Batman (screenshot at right).

-Snake

Tags: gaming, modding, Diablo 2

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