Hiatus of Blogging

Apologies that there has not been an update for awhile, due to work being the busiest time of year and my colleague Joseph being away. I keep most of my spare time for actual gaming, once it gets quiet again though I will definitely be back posting.

Some games I've played which are up for review:

Driver San Francisco
Dear Esther
May Payne 3
Sub Rosa

And also some more commentary for Star Wars the old Republic, Minecraft and possibly Battlefield 3

In the meantime, let me serenade you with this little ditty I can't get out of my head.



JD

E 'difficile essere un uomo squadra

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: Exclusive Membership Benefits

And once more unto the breach (or whatever that saying is) I hadn’t been on SWTOR for awhile with other things to play inc a some PS3 games inc Way of the Samurai 4 and Motorstorm Apocalypse which was a change. I came back finally determined to work out what the hell these Cartel Coins are about, and it turns out there’s a lot about them I should know. I’ve just barely keeping up with what’s happening in the game updates and patches though apart from the introduction of the Cartel Market, there has been a new warzone and new heroic space missions new grade 7 starship upgrades, plus the “Life Day” celebratory stuff.

And of course free-to-play is now enabled and basically looking at the restrictions there seems very little point in playing for free though I think the main reason for the free to play option is for people to see whether they like the game and then sign up for subscription if they do. As being a subscriber both now and in the past I had been given free cartel coins! That’s right as a subscriber I am given monthly rewards of cartel coins plus bonuses from my subscription in the past so that added up to 1850 coins! And I rightly knew where to use them, that’s right no more paying credits for speeder piloting or inventory space for me. As well as having, gear, upgrade and cosmetic items the Cartel Market lets you purchase in-game unlockables which are mostly abilities that subscribers already have access but some which I previously had to pay credits for in the past I can get with cartel coins.

The Cartel Market as it appears in-game

I’ve now purchased Speeder Piloting III for Jxan, Piloting II for Kxan and an extra inventory slot for all current and new characters I create. These Speeder piloting perks allow you to use different speeders at lower than normal ranks for example you can get speeder piloting 3 at level 35, I’m pretty sure you do have to get all the speeder piloting in order so I’m thinking if Kxan is level 30 now I’ll just use the same speeder until I can get piloting 3 and a much faster one. Another thing I bought was an additional cargo bay for all my characters, Now that they all have more room I won’t need any more inventory space whatsoever and could possibly keep a large amount of extra resources on the one character if nothing it just keeps it clean as your able to separate all your crafting resources to the one tab.

Aratech Lancer bitch, that's right, though compared to the movies even the fastest speeders are still goddamn slow

 Regarding Space combat I’ve actually hit a rut as got up to the Drexel Sweep Republic space mission then stopped because it was getting too hard, might see if I can get some level 7 ship upgrades from the cartel market and try it again though most of it’s going to be for my alts speeder piloting skill. Our guild leader Nefash has brought out a Pilot Training School which is a site dedicated to Space Combat in SWTOR with movie guides on how to complete each mission which would be very helpful when I could be bothered trying them again. I do like them but dayum there’s stuff shooting at me all over the place I barely have time to scratch my bum with the force and it’s just getting too hectic though once I get some decent upgrades and learn how to use the ones with functionality I should be fine, I just don’t know how many Cartel Coins I’ll have to spare.

Drexel Sweep Republic Space Mission, done by Nefash

Well I’ve finished off both Belsavis and Voss and got my Guardian to 50! First level 50 wooo! Anyway I really enjoyed questing in Voss it had such beautiful scenery sort of like a world in permanent autumn I also liked the questline too, the Voss are some pretty interesting people. The Belsavis quests were pretty bland though I liked the idea of a jailbreak especially with ancient jails containing god knows what. I found once I was 50 there was an utter explosion of more quests to do on the fleet station including all the new space missions on your ship, all of a sudden you have all these extra heroic quests for flashpoints and world bosses and operations. And to my annoyance you could only have 25 of them at the one time, this is especially annoying as these are the kind of quests are the types you want to just leave in your log for when you might happen to do them, for example the Nightmare pilgrim as you might forget to have the quest with you. I managed to make enough space by taking out all the other quest chains that I guess were there similar to the bonus series’ for level 50’s to do once their 50. So all in all there doesn’t seem to be any lack of things to do once you’re 50 but I’ll get on to that later.

Voss, the land of Autumn

I’ve got Synthweaving and Underworld trading to 400 as well, though I am waiting till I get some higher level archaeology items before I can make the level 50 gear, speaking of level 50 gear, when I reached level 50 I immediately got 99 Tionese Commendations which I used to purchase a full set of Tionese Epic DPS Gear. I went DPS because I suspect that’s what I’ll still be doing the majority of the time I’m playing, as back when I wanted to be a tank and went defence spec I did shit all damage and I don’t want to be stuck in that rut again like everyone was before WoW introduced dual spec trying to farm and do daily quests all while in tanking or healing spec. And with the large amount of bonus quests and level 50 bonus series’ SWTOR seems to have I won’t have a lack of normal quests to do. I haven’t really done any raids or “operations” as their called in SWTOR, I haven’t really thought about what I’d do as it’d usually be with guild and If I think back to my WoW days my guild would have to be pretty desperate to use me as a tank. Partially why I healed on my Paladin instead of tanking.

My epic Tionese gear with epic Lightsabre (yes I know I'm supposed to have blue)

Anyway my New Epic Gear made pretty much any DPS gear I got on Voss and probably any other story missions to come pretty much obsolete, since I got DPS gear I’ve been trying to upgrade my tank gear as much as possible but Voss just didn’t seem to have the right gear or upgrades as the planet commendations change what kind of gear or modifications you get all the time in the later levels as it’s not just better then the last ones. It’s just the trouble that comes with having an ongoing storyline. In WoW I used to start in one area and would choose a different zone depending on what level I was when I finished that area but unfortunately with the class story missions I don’t have that luxury and there’s those times where you can either go to the planet where the quest is green or yellow but you have to do the story for both anyway which is very linear and I don’t know how I’m going to create a different experience between characters though I guess that just comes with the class storylines. Speaking of which I now understand the Jedi Knight storyline sort of, I’m currently battle and saving (or killing) the Jedi who accompanied me to Fight the Emperor at the end of chapter 2, I’m itchin’ to find out what happens in the end which really keeps me goin, I’ve got to do Corelia yet then possibly Ilum before I’m finish and I’m freakin' already 50, sigh.. hope it works out better with the way I’m pacing the levelling on my Assassin.

Our very stealthy party of Sith Assassins, why we all ran in stealth halfway across the map to get to the quest was anyone's guess.

I’ve got a lot to say about companions (as I usually do) I’ve been using T7-01 as my companion for awhile now I’m on about 6 and a half thousand affection and have had a lot of ‘conversation’ style companion quests with him but still don’t seem to have his character quest which is about one of his many previous owners or cohorts, being 200 years old I spose he would have a few, damn they make things to last in this Galaxy don’t they? I had a bit of decision whether to use T7 or Doc but to be honest I like T7 better though he doesn’t speak but I like the way he jumps around and zaps enemies and makes beeping and chirping noises, and he’s perfect choice for my good-guy playing style which continues to plague my Inquisitor. On Kxan I’ve sort of decided to use Khem Val until I get Ashara Zavros even though A. He’s an evil bastard and I’m not and B. I’ve got Andronikos Revel but I can’t help liking good old Khem, though once I get Ashara everything should be ok at least until I get her to 1000 affection.

T7 and I share a golden moment.

Speaking of evil bastards look at the two most powerful companions I have with their likes and dislikes two characters I have who are both on the Light Side of the force.

Khem Val

Likes: Killing Force users, displays of strength, making foolish people unhappy

Dislikes: Weakness in any form, not killing Force users

Lord Scourge

Likes: Using power against the weak, power, anger, revenge and spite

Dislikes: Greed, acts of mercy, Jedi and Republic authorities

I made some gear for Lorg Scourge, which being Jedi gear looks rather weird for him since he's a Sith, the combination of that and the odd-looking headgear gives him and interesting look indeed.

Wow what a friendly duo though I think Lord Scourge takes the cake for being the most evil, how am I supposed to be a good guy with these two? Bah I might even look forward to going all Dark though as a Jedi Consular as there are a couple of Companions in there which would work well with a Dark Jedi. But first I must at least try a non-Jedi class for couple of reasons 1. I can’t go straight for playing an Inquisitor to a Consular their too alike even if I’m being a Sage and using Telekinetics rather than being an Assassin and Lightsabering it up, their abilities (and first companion for that matter) are just too similar and 2. I’ve already been two Force-using classes and I might actually like the blaster users. The other decision that comes with that is what non-force class to do but that’s a decision for another time.

SWTOR classes: I like the Imperial Agent in this pic, lookin particularly gangsta'

 I’m currently doing Alderaan on Kxan and am already 32 so hopefully I can finish it off quickly before I gain too much experience. I’ve been forcing myself to wear or show this damn helmet that I have on now for realism’s sake, I look like freakin Darth Iron man or something it’s almost as bad as my Jedi-goggles but I can't have it hidden as it sounds really strange when your voice is crackly like it’s coming through the helmet speaker when you don’t have it on, which is another thing about companions that irks me, sometimes you get helmets for them or yourself where it obviously isn't blocking their mouth but their voice comes out through the "helmet radio" anyway,  ahh it’s all a struggle isn’t it?

Spot the Sith Iron Man

 Cya next time! in the galaxy y’know….

JD

Our money for your money

Minecraft Creations: The Brick Mansion Chapter 3, Less think more work

Just a little note, I've been thinking for awhile of going back to .jpeg format for my images, this may not be best format but it means I can have my screenshots at the normal resolution without being the very large .png files that Minecraft creates.Coupled with how I like to use 256x256 texture packs it makes for very big image files some of which I have are over 4meg! I've found this nice little program called Sagethumbs which lets you convert image files just by selecting them all and right clicking in a snap, similar to the image resizer addon I have which I won't be needing anymore hah! so I hope you enjoy downloading my new much smaller file size images.

“Well that’s two thirds of it done” I thought to myself as I started at the huge brick and wood laden structure that is by far the biggest house I’ve ever attempted to build , though I had done pretty well, I really need to take more shots of the stages I’ve got to but meh I usually just take them at the end anyway I have a few though as this is and I’ve really gotta push myself to get this thing done.

The house as it stands now: Entrance and Rooftop of lobby

Dining/Dancefloor area

Resource room

Relaxtion pool/spa/sauna area

There’s been a lot going on with the version releases though I’ve only been concentrating on things that are relevant to building my house. Beacons are on example which I have installed as a feature in the lobby, also I’ve made two lines of Anvils next to each other like some kind of multi-anvil and finally I’ve made good use of Item frames which make great wall features. Another great feature that has been added recently is that stairs now connect to other stairs to form corner stairs on edges which makes all uses of stairs (seating, decoration and actually stairs) look much nicer.

An Anvil

Using item frames as a wall feature

Some uses for corner stairs.

I’ve made a lot and I mean a lot of progress since the last adventures of JD post, basically I was waiting for a long period of time one of my favorite mods SingleplayerCommands to be updated so I could continue building. The main reason for this was I’d started the map in Survival mode and needed the mod basically for the commands (not just the one that changed the world mode) Though after this lengthy period I actually found that another of the mods that I use TooManyItemshad some pretty useful buttons on the top of the inventory screen that controlled, the day night cycle, the weather and most importantly whether the map was in creative or survival mode so needless to say after a lot of wasted time I quickly got to work.

TooManyItems mod adds lots of extra tools to the inventory screen, notice the very useful game mode, weather and monster options along the top left.

 After I’d left last time I’d cleared out the hill, carved out some rooms and made some roofs/floors, created the alchemy room and the indoor soccer pitch. I’d made a basic floor plan and decided to stick to it (roughly). The alchemy room I had finished first and added the potion item frames in recently as some sort of potion chart. It ended up looking pretty good with the stone brick and the mossy cobblestone, of course I’ve never actually done any potion making before so I’m not really sure what’s involved apart from needing water. The soccer pitch was reasonably ok though I had to remove the pool on the other side of the wall so the room with the soccer pitch could be properly square (or rectangle) as having that part of the field right next to the wall with the walkway on top really didn’t work or look good for that matter. Once I had made the new wall and added some more seating it looked much better. I also decided to colour the area around the pitch in blue as to get a more indoor feel.

Alchemy room with potions in item frames.

New and improved indoor soccer pitch.

 After a bit of haphazard TNT clearing work and cleaning up I started work on the club, cause every house needs its own club yo. The “Snub” Club turned out great, I love the way in the Faerielight texture pack the yellow wool really resembles carpet. I took a  lot of inspiration from the Minecraft Furniture site and server which is a delight to look around in I highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking for ideas to decorate your home.

Main room with dancefloor, bar and VIP area.

VIP area.

I liked using oak wood planks for the back of the bar and a feature wall for the VIP area as well as jungle wood planks for the pool room as there’s just too much brick around. The note and juke boxes work well as speakers and I even decorated the doorways in them, the different level for the VIP and the pool room worked well too.

Sitting area with stairs down to pool room.

Pool room.

One of the entrances to the club

 After I had finished the club I made another door in the section connecting the atrium and the soccer pitch and made a door from the pool hall part of the club into the soccer pitch as well. I had carved out the atrium but hadn’t done anything with it yet as I wanted to leave it until I finished the other areas before I planted the plants and grew the trees in the basement which technically wasn’t that much of a basement as some areas could of even had windows as they were.

The forge mining area was pretty tricky, cleared the area with TNT and decided to do the walls in stone brick instead of just stone as it looks nicer and the floor in cobble as I couldn’t really think of anything else to use. I had to build around the entrance to my diamond strip mine but it worked pretty well the new cobblestone walls look pretty cool though I wish you could make them with all kinds of stone. I created my usual lava/forge area with lots of furnaces next to it  and then made the cooling/water area with the multi-anvils next to it, though now I think about it, from what I’ve seen in Skyrim you actually have the fire and water in the same place i.e. the metal comes out of the fire, you bang it around on the anvil then cool it in the water so I may change it at some point. The rest of the area I just put chests and signs to store all the items, I managed to work around the stairway to the mine being in the middle of one part of the room as there was enough room around it to build boxes around it.

For the entrance to the forge and the wall of the atrium it occupies I built in stone brick with holes for barred windows and made some pyres outside the entrance for decoration all of which looked pretty cool when done.

One other room I had to do was the Nether room, or basically where the nether portal would go, this is one of my favorite rooms to create as with the addition of nether bricks and stairs you can construct a pretty cool looking altar. I didn’t really have anywhere appropriate to put the entrance so I just made a doorway of netherbrick with iron doors, it isn’t exactly epic but it’s the inside that’s epic and besides it’s supposed to be a house, this is just the portal to the nether for resource and possibly adventuring purposes. I just managed to fit the stairwell within the confines of the house as I don’t know whether I’m going to continue the outer wall around that side. I named the stairway down to the nether portal “The Crimson Hall” as with the Faerielight texture pack it certainly is crimson, or maybe dark red. Anyway the walls I did with netherack and made holes in the wall for fire, I put the portal on an altar and decorated it with lava and fire.

Entrance to the "Crimson Hall"

Stairway to the portal

The ominous Nether Portal room, every house should have one.

So the club, the forge/storage, the nether room and the atrium had all been done which finished off the lower level. It went pretty well, without much hassle had to change things round a bit but that was ok. I left out a few things that weren’t really needed such as changerooms for the soccer pitch though I was thinking of putting toilets in the club, but you don’t go to the toilet in Minecraft but then again you can’t play soccer either so I don’t know, I’d just rather keep it practical making sure I include all the things you can actually do in Minecraft inc rooms for crafting, forging , alchemy, enchanting and a natural water area for fishing I’d suppose.

With the lower level pretty much finished I started mapping out the lobby. I chose a certain height for the wall, then bricked it all up with tall windows and in wooden frames to counteract all the brick.

Front of house with lobby walls and windows put up.

I also fixed up the entryway which I had created earlier (6 doors was enough) and also added some more brick to the stairs. I also have a secret entrance underneath the main one in the water, this leads to what I call the “undersurface” where you can see the untouched natural ground underneath the floor.

Main entrance.

With the lobby I wanted to do sort of a entryway sitting room with a beacon feature in the middle.

An early shot of the middle level and lobby where you can see the first build of the beacon feature and sauna.

I only recently worked out how beacons worked but all I really needed to know was how to make them project light into the air and all I need for that was a certain number of iron, gold, emerald or diamond blocks and in creative that was not a problem. Getting a beacon that works is a pretty big effort in survival mode as it involved travelling to Nether fortresses for Wither Skeleton skulls  and summoning and killing a Wither not to mention getting enough blocks of the appropriate resource to get the maximum effect of the beacon pyramid my house has. After completing the beacon feature for the middle I created some seating and nature features with trees, plants and mushrooms as well as waterfall features for the stairs.

Lobby left side

Lobby right side

Lobby right side

Mushroom feature of lobby

To complete the lower atrium I planted jungle trees and ferns as well as bushes and other plants in the lower atrium and it worked out pretty well when I added a gravel path, I also planted vines wherever I could to get that more jungley feel as now they’ve grown long enough to go over the entrances to the other rooms. I then built two sets of stairs leading down to the lower level, one main set of stairs and another small set going over the entrance to the soccer pitch. Which does remind me know actually that I have pretty much finished the middle level I sort of forgot to leave room for stairs up to the top level, oh well I’m sure there will be room somewhere.

The Atrium

The first thing I made on the top level was the dining area which consisted of a long table, wooden chairs and two more complex chairs at the end. I really wish Mojang would introduce wool stairs and slabs or the ability to cover slabs and stairs with wool as it makes it hard to make a wool chair because you have to make a slab floor beforehand which sits lower than normal floors.

Dining table

Anyway so I created the table and chairs but decided I should make this little square bit that was jutting out of the main house into a kitchen, and I did, got some quick inspiration from the Minecraft Furniture server but it was pretty easy anyway. Used a variety of materials to make the kitchen including blocks of iron, furnaces, trapdoors pinewood, buttons, cauldrons and stone brick, and it’s looks pretty bitchin’ so much so that’s what I decided to call it. I added a bar next to the kitchen too.

Bitchin.

 Behind the dining table I made a  dancefloor with DJ table and speakers and a potplant feature on the wall, the reason I didn’t use the actual Flower Pots that are in the game is that you couldn’t actually stick them to the wall and they were a bit small anyway.

Dancefloor with DJ table.

 The next room was to be the resource room, I found thought to myself though the initial concept to this room as fairly bland as all I was thinking of it was just a room with lots of organized and named chests and readily available crafting tables, I then had an ingenious idea to make it a bit more like an industrial processing and storage centre, and right way I knew this room was going to take a lot longer due to that idea. It’s hard to explain in words but basically what I wanted to do was create a minecart tracks for minecarts with chests to run along from one area to another sort of like a supply line, there would be minecart tracks going to 3 different places, a mine, the surface outside the house and the forge inside the house. But of course to do this I needed a mine and one that was close by so I scouted out an area with my x-ray mod. Finding one I decided that the best thing to do would be to blast a huge hole and bore into the ground with TNT until I found a cave system (yes that’s right) which I did without too much trouble and even found an underground crevasse pretty close by.

The minecart ramp to the mine and the surface.

The 4 tracks down to the mineshaft

The mine processing area

Entrance to the main mine and underground crevasse.

I then built a huge ramp wide enough for four minecart tracks, a walkway and fences on the side which led from inside the house all the way down to where I’d stopped and turned the bottom into a sort of underground processing and storage area to go back up to house. I made a similar thing on the ground outside the house then finally dug out a tunnel for another two tracks to go to the Forge and back, I then made racks to put the double chests on and signs to mark what was in each of them and crafting tables around the general area. I decided to use the item frames as decoration again and made a large feature on two walls, funny thing was I used the toomanyitems mod to pick the order to display so I ended up having moving water and lava on a frame, hah oh well something surprising anyway.

The finished resource/storage room

Chest racks with signs and crafting tables (I can make them higher if needed)

Minecart tunnel to the forge area

The last part of the middle level was the relaxation/pool area, this was the biggest area as I’d cut the resource room off short so I could fit a large spa, a pool and a sauna, which I did. The spa worked pretty well, made in a desert theme with cacti, dead bushes and sand brick.

Desert-themed Spa

 The sauna I made with birch wood and cracked stone brick which looked pretty good with the colour of the birch wood in this texture pack.

 I love the way the pool turned out, basically I was filling it up but in order to fill a large space of water to more than one level you need to make it smaller first, so I ended up making these rows around the edges to get the water the right level. When I’d finished though I actually though the end result looked really cool as it looked like there were lap swimming lanes around the edge and a main pool in the middle, so I did that and made the middle just a bit deeper. I then added some lights to the bottom and worked on a  few nature features included a desert taiga and mushroom biome feature and a window. I’m still deciding what I’m going to do with that large wall space, whether I extend the pool via waterfall to the outside though I would have to close up the entire room but I’ll see how I go.

A very oddly-built pool.

Underwater building, only slightly slower

 The last thing to do until I had another break from this huge time investment I had to make the lobby roof, yes a roof for the lobby was needed as it is lower than the rest of the house. Basically I just wanted to make a basic dome shape with some sort of feature on the top for the beacon to shoot through so I made a small pyramid at the peak with a hole in the middle out of stone brick, I think stone brick is becoming my favorite block to use for structure other than red brick of course. I extended the stone brick pyramid out to the sides of the roof for support and put some lightstone in there as well. I was going to do a bit of overhang with the roof but then decided against it as it looked sort of messy, will definitely do it for the roof of the upper level though as that will have some balconies, I’m actually thinking of having some balconies for the middle level too. I didn’t really have any idea how I was going to do the roof so I just sort of stacked on the wood in levels which looked kind of messy in parts but mostly worked. I’m thinking it does need a bit more natural light coming in so I’ll make some holes in the stone for skylights.

Roof from afar

Rooftop (the pyramid at the top is actually bigger now)

View from inside

So that’s basically it, there’s a bit to clean up and work on but I needed a break after that effort, I’m even thinking of going back to play survival which tried out a bit of on the Mikeland survival, but on looking at their revamped website it appears they have a PvE server now!, hell why didn’t I see that before. Anyway I’ll be back here again to finish off my house, then get started on the outside I suppose, will it ever end? probably not, well I guess it isn’t supposed to, I mean what am I going to do afterwards, build a whole self-sustaining farm? complete all the achievements? kill the Wither and/or the Ender Dragon? After all there is a way to “finish” the game as the Survival page says, but whether I’ll still want to play by myself when this is all finished is yet to be seen.

JD
 
With my own two hands... and a limitless supply of resources, and flight