The Jungle Greenhouse I am proud of as it won me the
Lanslide 4.0 Minecraft Competition and even then it was only half finished, of
course I must admit I was only competing against one person as we didn’t quite
get the number we had last time but even so this time I was determined to make
something, and make something good. To be honest that did mean I spent a lot of
time in Minecraft but I didn’t really have a problem with that, just glad I won
something to the chagrin of my colleagues who were trying to win at least
something the whole night, I do remember last Lan I was trying my hardest to
win the Armagetronad comp but ended up
coming second by a very small margin but anyway, all’s good. The screenshot below
I took with the default texture pack, the rest were with the Faerielight
256x256 “Resource” pack as they are now called.
Where I got up to at the comp
For the competition I had an idea in my mind about a Jungle
Treehouse, just what kind is all, I did originally want to Make a sort of
series of houses along platforms that connected with bridges, but when I saw a
group of jungle trees on a high hill I just knew it was going to be something
similar to what I usually do lol, so I made various platforms of jungle wood
planks on different tops of trees as I usually do but instead of making all of
the individual rooms I ended up buildings frames out of jungle logs making all
of the platforms apart from the tallest one into one large open room, I also
built around one of the trees so that it would be inside. I made the roof in a
similar design to what I usually do, I was going to try something else, the
topmost level I made into a sort of penthouse with a balcony intending it to be
my bedroom and that’s basically where I got up to for the competition, I reckon
I did pretty well for the time limit. After I got home I decided to work on it
some more where I then got the idea of it not actually being a house but being
some sort of greenhouse a jungle
greenhouse.
Front and back view of the completed Greenhouse
My usual layered rooftop
And thus I fashioned huge windows andgrew more jungle trees in every square space
in the big room that I could find, I also worked out how to make the taller
jungle trees (4 jungle saplings placed together then add 2-5 bone meal) I
turned the upstairs “penthouse” into a sort of wilderness Herb/Alchemy lab
similar to Dr
Earnhardt’s lab from Farcry 3, except mine is purely for research purposes
and not for creation or hallucinogenic drugs (well mostly) I included a
sapling/flower garden plus a covered mycelium mushroom garden and an alchemy
section with 3 cauldrons and Alchemy tables with an additional garden bed
outside.
Indoor jungle trees!
My drug Alchemy lab
Sapling/Flower and Mushroom garden
The next problem I had to deal with was how the hell you get
up to the Greenhouse/Lab as in case you didn’t know Minecraft jungles (and
jungles) in general are notoriously difficult to navigate as they are very
dense with bushes and are hilly so creating a decent looking entrance on the
ground would not be that easy, so I had a look around the general area down
below the house and found a nice secluded spot where the Jungle biome meets the
forest/plains biome which was nice and clear and had some stone showing
through, I decided this would be a great place for a (semi) secret entrance and
began to dynamite a tunnel upwards towards the bottom of the greenhouse where I
eventually came up right under it, of course the place was still a fair way up
so I made a downwards extension from the bottom of the house to connect the
with the tunnel and built a narrow staircase up. I made a stone staircase from
the entrance up through the tunnel as well as some iron doors for the entrance
and decorated (and hid) everything I could with vines.
The shady entrance
Stairway up to the... well other stairway
The stairway up from the tunnel into the house.
I then got a fantastic idea for making the whole place blend
in a bit more with the rest of the jungle, yes that’s right I covered the place
in vines which looked good coming down the walls both on the inside and outside
of the greenhouse. I also added them to the upper tiers of the roof (as you can
only hang them in edges or corners not hanging from the bottom of a block
itself) and this made a great “hanging vines” effect, I might have put a bit
too many around but meh it’s supposed to be jungely and wilderness isn’t it?
Vines
More vines!
Even more vines! (may have gone a bit overboard)
So when I finished that the place was looking pretty good,
but I needed to fill it with a few more things, I decided to continue the
greenhouse/natural alchemy lab theme down below and put logs of various tree
types with bushes on top for collecting ‘samples’ as well as tables and chests
around the lower area for examination and storing. I created another alchemy
lab in a corner and made another plant and mushroom garden with examination
table at the bottom of the stairs up to the main lab, and that was pretty much
it.
Logs and bushes for sample and chests and tables for storing and examination.
The "corner" alchemy lab
The lower sapling, flower and mushroom garden.
I was in a bit of a hurry to get this thing done so didn’t spend too much
time on every little detail and did forget a few things like more glowstone for
the plant gardens and alchemy labs and I did actually forget crafting tables
but I guess crafting tables really aren’t needed in retrospect as this was a
Greenhouse and also one of the very few things that I’ve made which isn’t
supposed to be a proper Minecraft house.
So I’m happy with it in that regard and I’m glad that I did
end up finishing it, stay tuned for more Minecraft shenanigans on Angrathar’s
Amarthine Minecraft server that he very nicely set up and paid for us all to
come on and play on a server to ourselves.
Well it’s official, it’s been official for awhile actually,
the news regarding the fate of the Oceanic servers has
been announced with further explanation here.
I’ve got to admit, I was kind of disappointed with Bioware’s decision as were a
lot of other people. Their choice to close down the Asia-Pacific servers and
transferring us into 3 US servers was not well received though their reasons
for not merging the APAC servers were:
Certain players would lose their preferred gameplay type
i.e. PvP, RP/PvE
The current population issues would still exist.
I do understand the first reason but I would hardly think
that PvPers and RPers would care that much, as the players on the PvP server
would only lose open-world PvP and the players on the RP server would have to
mingle with people from PvP and Normal and possibly cop some harassment or
abuse but I think that’s completely tolerable.
The second reason, I along with the reason of the Australian
SWTOR community it seems really don’t understand, the representative from
Bioware, Eric Musco claimed the below:
“To clarify a bit more
about this decision. We did previously ask what folks on the forums would like
to do as an APAC solution and some, but not all, offered up the solution of
merging all APAC into one. The other option on the table was to merge APAC into
the NA servers. When we discussed the options internally we looked to address
everyone’s primary issues with APAC, low populations were creating a less than
optimal game experience.
We went and looked at
what current server populations looked like across all of APAC and to put it
simply, even merging all of APAC together into one server would not solve the
population problems. Even with that solution you would still see long queue
times for things like Warzones and Group Finder. It was because of this that we
decided that moving APAC into the NA servers was the best option.”
A lot of us were baffled by this, almost all of us were for
the server merge, and as player keltzy replied:
“So having 100+ on
coruscant, 150+ on fleet, 3 instances of Ilum for gree event is not considered
Population? Each planet while questing had at least 30+ on it and that's just
PUB side on Dalborra”
Which was true in a way that Dalborra never really had that
much of a population problem, it was the other servers which had the issue and
merging the three into one would most definitely fix the issue. But as people
have said it seems this is more a financial move by Bioware rather than a
considered response to the community as I could see how shutting down the APAC
servers would be a more profitable solution then keeping them up.
I decided to stay with Academy Exemplar and move to Bergeren
Colony as I had been with them for a while now and didn’t really mind that much
playing on an RP server, I am not and have never been a Roleplayer but I didn’t
mind it and it’s pretty fun to see in action. We’re all on there now and are
setting up the Guild, getting people invited and organising operation/etc the
ping isn’t that bad (usually around 170ms) and I don’t really have that much of
a problem with it as I used to play WoW and I also don’t PvP at all really
though it is still a shame as the low ping was one of the main things SWTOR had
going for down this end of the earth.
But anyway we can’t dwell on the past and life goes on. I’ve
actually missed a month where I was playing and trying to remember what
happened So if I remember correctly I finished off Voss with my Jedi Guardian
Jxan, reached level 50, got my Tionese gear and was currently up to Corellia
which might be the final planet of the Jedi Knight storyline but was thinking
Ilum might be. I also finally got to grips with the last (non-heroic) space
missions and with the help of my Guildie and friend Nefash’s Pilot Training school which
has great tips (like using the movement keys to doge enemy fire while aiming
with your mouse) and also I shelled out the Cartel Coins for the three Grade 7
ship upgrades pack which made things much, much easier especially with the specific functional ones.
Unfortunately though when I tried some heroic space missions, it required you
to have grade 7 ship armor so you can guess I failed hard and pretty much gave
up doing Space missions until I just want to either farm the old ones or try
harder with the heroics but goddamn there SO MUCH STUFF SHOOTING YOU
aaaaaaargh! but anyway practice makes perfect.
Regnant Station Assault - Republic Heroic Space Mission by Nefash, damn he does it well
I had finished off Alderaan and helped House Thul to conquer
this time instead of House Organa and started Taris on my Sith Assassin Kxan.
Taris is interesting on the Empire side as one of the two planetswith dramatically different questing levels
for the Republic and Empire (Balmorra is the other) it seems that Taris though
is in a completely different instance of the world as it contains the same
locations but the npc’s and setup are different and it always seems to be at
night time. The end of the Sith Assassin questline on this planet was quite
important as I finally was able to get Ashara Zavros
as my companion and could start gaining light side points to my hearts content
without fear of affection loss though recently it put me in deeper thought
about it yet again, it’s becoming the most contentious thing about my SWTOR
playing.
Republic Taris, happy days in the ruins
Empire Taris, moonshadow
I had a good think about the issue of Dark/Light side
favouring when I was faced with the situation again after getting to 10000
affection with T7 on Jxan as I though the logical step would be for me to use
Lord Scourge as he’s a tank but he does quite a bit of damage too possibly more
than T7 and plus I could make gear for him having the Synthweaving skill, I
then realised though that I was almost full light sided (9650) and It would be
a shame not to get the achievement and see the purchasable items once I was
full light though to be honest I did look at what was available from the Light Side Vendor but apart from a
vanity pet and speeder that I didn’t want anyway she doesn’t really have much
apart from some pretty good relics.
So the bottom line is I’ll probably just be
striving for full light just to get the achievement which is enough I guess, I
would have gotten it not so long ago had it not been for the time I was trying
to use this Lightsabre that I got which need Dark I (1000 points in Dark side)
and ended up getting 600 points in Dark side which I now regret as before I
even got up to using the sabre I replaced it with something better. I think
that I might just go light or Dark depending on the situation though I’ll still
try and get to full Light or Dark with a character before going back down (or
up) again just for the affection of a companion as it seems the best way to do
things though I get the idea that doing Dark side choices all the time might get
a bit disheartening, and doing all Light side choices would seem a bid bland
and boring but I haven’t really experienced that tbh.
Is it worth the toll on your conscience and good reputation to gain the affection of some slightly evil or ill-intentioned companions? I'll find out when Lord Scourge is my companion, he even wins the "evil-off" between him and Khem Val
So my Sith Assassin now has Ashara as his companion and I am
free to choose Light side and the “good guy” number 1 options to my hearts
content though I’ll still have to watch what I’m doing not just blindly pick
good options like I do with T7 on my Guardian. I have some regret that I didn’t
just go Dark as soon as I got Khem Val as now I have kinda decided to just go
dark when he is with me and I lost so many points picking light side options
with him around but anyway live and learn and I’m not going to start my
Assassin over again I’ve done that twice already lol. When I stopped at level
40 I had just completed chapter 1 of the Inquisitor storyline (or 2 I can’t
remember?) and have finished Alderaan and Taris and am currently heading to
Quesh to save my new apprentices.
Ashara Zavros, don't make her go against her teachings as she repeatedly says, fortunately I have no intention of doing that.
I’ve noticed though that lately the Sith Inquisitor campaign
that the character you play is kind of stupid, especially if you pick the Light
Side of the force though it seems you’re forced to do foolish things
regardless, I don’t want to spoil the story but repeatedly walking into Sith
Lord’s Tombs and confronting powerful Sith Lords when you’ve been warned not to
(only to be beat down on) is not a good idea I’ll admit that my preference for
Light Side makes me a bit naive especially when you willingly follow her orders
and never question but I’m not really enjoying the Sith Inquisitor storyline
that much anymore. It was great fun when you started on Korriban as a slave and
I kept humble picking non-threatening conversation options and Light Side
decisions and it was funny to see the reactions to my unusual kindness, but now
it’s all “I’m out there for myself and am going to destroy all opposition: (and
fail a bit too) but nevertheless I’ll see how we go with the rest of the
storyline.
This is an old shot of Kxan, but it's SO COOL
WARNING: JEDI KNIGHT STORYLINE SPOILERS AHEAD
I finished off Corellia with Jxan and managed to get T7 to
max affection, I also managed to finish off T7’s questline which involved doing
nothing at all really just a whole series of conversations of some kind of
conspiracy in the Galactic
Republic Senate and then T7 “worked it out” then that was it. It turns out
that Kira is one of the “main” companions or perhaps “the” main companion in
the Jedi Knight storyline, whether or not all romanceable companions have
multiple side quests remains to be seen. After Coreilla there was pretty much
just the finale with the Battle against the Emperor and there was some
interesting conversations with all of my crew members and I had to be careful
not to lose any affection with any of them. The finale of the Jedi Knight
storyline was a pretty easy affair we ended up making a 6 man assault on an
instanced version of Kass City and the Sith Temple which was pretty lame as the
security was very minimal, it’d be funny if they asked you to storm the place
in real-time on the server as you’d have to pick a time where almost no-one
would be online heh.
During this final mission you were forced to use T7 as your
companion as anyone else would fall to the Emperor’s powerful will much to the
annoyance of many players who hasn’t used T7 since level 15 unlike me who had
recently gotten him to max affection and upgraded his gear. The actual fight
with the Emperor was pretty straightforward and kind of un-epic as 1. I had
Epic Tionese Gear 2. I was level 54 and 3. My T7 had up-to-date gear. The
Emperor splits into many clones who attack and I died the first time but the
second time you could actually start with your focus on the real Emperor so you
just attack him and let T7 tank them all and that’s pretty much that though
Lord Scourge gets kind of angsty depending on what you do after you have
defeated him. And so after all that you escape and fly back to a hero’s welcome
about one of the republic starships with Master Satele Shan and a crowd of
other people you’ve met doing the storyline missions in various planets which
pretty much looks like every other ending in the Star Wars movies with you and
your crew being exalted with your efforts, even Lord Scourge your reluctant
Jedi-buddy.
Unfortunately this isn't me, I kind of forgot to take screenshots during the one-time-only ceremony. go me anyway this is a shot from it.
The thing I want to know is, if in the Jedi Knight storyline
you’re the one who defeats the Emperor, how the hell do the other Republic
class storylines finish? I suppose they are all separate from each other. Also
I now have 10000 Light side points from finishing the storyline but apparently
you still don’t get the achievement for being full Light side until you
“alignment” is 100% so what that means is I’m going to have to “reduce” my
remaining 550 dark side points which seems to be what happens when you are full
light but not zero dark.
THE SPOILERS BE ENDED
So basically what this thing is saying it, I'm not Light V yet cause I still got some Dark in me but apparently I can fix my "alignment" by doing more "good" things. Who says you can't fix your past?
So all’s well that ends well, next stop: Ilum and maybe some
actual High End stuff like Operations etc, if I’m going to get all the extra
non-daily stuff done on other planets I’m gonna have a heap to do really, what
I’d give for a larger quest log. Finally in some somewhat related news a US
Academic has rewritten
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in Shakespearian, which is sure to be a
lot of fun to read plus the illustrations are pretty cool too.
Release Date: September 24, 2008 (HD) October 15, 2009 (Fury) Genre: Futuristic Racer Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Developer: Studio Liverpool Platform:Playstation 3 Players: 1-2 (Splitscreen) and 1-8 Multiplayer Classification: E 10+
Playing this title again, It never occurred to me how much
impact this title has now despite being almost 4 years old, since Sony announced
the closure of Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) in August last year it
is essential the last WipEout game to be released for a Playstation Console
(apart from WipEout 2048 on PS Vita) and thus ends the Wipeout series. I
can still remember playing the original WipEout game
on PC the late nineties using a joystick as well. Back then the only racing
games I had played before were SNES titles such as Mario kart, Biker Mice from
Mars and Rock’n’Roll racing, but this was something else. The first Wipeout
defined what the whole "playstation experience" was with a single
game. It also defined a lot of current day "club culture" At the time
the WipEout soundtracks were also, for a lot of younger people, the first time
they were exposed to artists like The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, LFO,
Underworld or Aphex Twin which could possibly have been my first influences
into Techno and Dance which I love today.
Of course the main point of Wipeout was the awesome speeds
you could reach with the Wipeout “ships” which blew away any car racing game
out there, ships being the operative term here as they obviously didn’t have
wheels they hovered above the racetrack and used ‘airbrakes’ to turn corners
and there was a small backstory about the Anti-Gravity “F” titled racing league
and mock press releases in the booklets for each game
The original Wipeout game released in 1995, oh the memories. by mastes1
I was only in my early teens at the time and was a bit young
to realise but the original WipEout
revolutionized gaming for the older gamers who were around when it all
started, it had a non-cutesy futuristic setting with ultra-fast ships and
bangin’ dance beats, it was like it was made for that generation hence why the
directors of the movie Hackers
saw it as something they wanted to include in their film which had a dance
music listenin’ cyberpunk culture of young people which WipEout appealed to the
most and represented in the gaming world. I kind of never saw it this way, I
just thought of Wipeout as a cool futuristic game and spent many hours zooming
along trying to win all the races and not hit the damn sides, and it was a
blast to play especially when I got the PS1 version which worked perfectly
compared to the PC version which I had a bit of trouble sometimes getting to
work properly being DOS and all.
Shortly After that came Wipeout 2097 with more
tracks, classes and music, the second game in the series smoothed down both the
graphics and the physical racing gameplay making the racing experience much
more enjoyable, it also added shield energy to the game for the first time,
meaning that the weapons as well as stalling your opponent now drained their
shield as well which they could recharge by flying into a “pit lane” which was
adjacent to the starting grid and losing a few seconds. This added weapons such
as the Quake disrupter which fired a ripple down the track and the Plasma bolt
which destroyed opponents in a single hit. The game also introduced the Vector and Phantom being the slowest and
fastest Speed Classes
in the game with the original Venom
and Rapier being in the
middle. Wipeout 2097 was probably best known for its soundtrack which featured The
Prodigy, The Future Sound of London, The Chemical Brothers, Fluke, and Underworld. There was also a popular soundtrack album. I now know
that the reason for all the Red Bull advertising was that the game was featured
and played in various nightclubs as a promo in conjunction with Red
Bull Energy Drink though it wasn’t till years later that I actually started
drinking the stuff lol it seemed that back then Wipeout was more in the club
scene than ever.
Wipeout 2097
In the interim of Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3, Wipeout 64 was released which was basically a port of
2097 but had two very distinct new features such as steering with an analogue
stick (digital control was disabled even) and split screen multiplayer which is
written as supposedly being 2-4 players though I only ever played 2 players
with a friend myself, this is still a massive improvement over 2097 where the
only way you could play two player was the ridiculous Playstation “link cable”
which you need to purchase as well as requiring two television sets, two
PlayStation consoles, and two copies of the game. It was the time where the
Playstation multiplayer functionality was laughable compared to N64 which had a
greater number and quality of (albeit kid-friendly) multiplayer games and most
important 4 controller ports whereas I had to buy a multitap for both my PS1
and 2 to be even able to play 4 players. The benefit with that though was with
some games you could get up to 5 players but that another story.
Wipeout 64 vertical split-screen gameplay by jk7201b
I was much looking forward to the release of Wipeout 3 or “Wip3out”
asseemingly any 3rd game of
a series which has an E in the title always turns out to be i.e “Driv3r”, one of the most
ludicrous version of this I’ve seen was Thief 4 or “Thi4f” I’ mean seriously since
when does a number 4 look like an e? Also they didn’t do it with the previous
game as there was no number in the title, figures. Anyway Wipeout 3 was a
pretty clean package, it’s wasn’t that much different in terms of features, it
retained the same ship/teams and most weapons from 2097 and added a couple
more. The tracks were different this time in the way that they were not based
on real world locations but in the fictional “Mega City”. The soundtrack was as
good as ever being composed of techno and electronica tracks selected by DJ
Sasha and features contributions by Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. Probably
the two most prominent features of the game were for one the inclusion of a 2
player split-screen mode which after finally getting the feature I was only
able get a few friends to play with me regrettably. The second feature was its
unique graphical style which I really can’t explain, it was sort of like 2097’s
graphics but much smoother, brighter and funkier (with most tracks) with a much
better level of details then 2097 and was the first in the series to run at
high-resolution mode (720 x 480, or 480i).
Wipeout 3
The Designers Republic who had
worked co-operatively with Psygnosis on the first three Wipeout games’ visual
style including menu’s, text, load screens and in-game billboards and screens
really gave Wipeout its edge where other games may have had great looks
vehicles and tracks but bland landscapes for the backgrounds, their designs
were especially prominent with Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3 with the
ultra-minimalistic menu interface.
Some shots of the Wip3out menu screen designed by The Designers Republic, minimalist is an understatement
Wipeout
Fusion was the premier Wipeout game for the Playstation 2 and the first
game made after Psygnosis' name change to SCE Studio Liverpool. The main
changes (apart from the obvious graphical upgrade with the PS2) brought in vast
changes to the track layouts which now instead of being a single track was a
giant one split into 3 creating a short, medium and long circuit of a
particular location, also for the first time trackless sections where I have
slammed into a boulder and blew up a lot of dust in my time, it also included
hidden-wall shortcuts or ones that required a turbo-boost power-ups to get
over.In Fusion weapons and combat
suddenly became huge, the proton cannon, grav stinger, flamethrower, and
gravity bomb was added and each team was given a unique super-weapon, as you
progressed through the different leagues the cpu players got more and more
aggressive, sometimes it was such a clusterfuck of ships firing everywhere that
you barely got through the first lap without being blown up, it became less of
a race then a survival to just see who could finish and the only time you could
repair yourself was in the pit lane.
Wipeout Fusion gameplay featuring a trackless section of the course.
Apart from the pilot aggression there were a few other
things I didn’t like firstly there was the way that there was no Speed classes
anymore, when you did the various leagues you were given credits to spend on
upgrading your craft which you needed to do to stay competitive, this was
alright it’s just that then you end up stacking all the points into the one
ship. What confounds this even more is the return of the Pilot characters from
the first Wipeout which was evident as there was much more storytelling
elements and backstory in the game, but instead of putting points into the
team, you put points into either the first or second pilot and the more points
you put into a pilot and their ship it got bigger and “meaner” looking with 3
variations. This kind of thing really irked me as I enjoyed the way Wipeout
2097 and 3 just had the teams though it did add a bit of character to the game
but I liked the ships stats staying the same and changing accordingly so it was
a bit off-putting. Also the way the ships had obvious damage I didn’t like
either but I guess it was more realistic.
After Fusion I had quite a long break from the Wipeout
series and really consoles in general, until we happened to get a PS3 and I
course decided to purchase and download the Wipeout HD/Fury package, I’d only
played it a bit before on a friend’s PS3 but buying it myself and having a good
go made me realise what a nice tight package it was for a Wipeout game, it was
quite similar to Wipeout 3 in terms of teams, tracks and controls so pretty
much all the gameplay, and the grid style Campaign was excellent, I did the HD
campaign first as you did all of the types of races including: Single Race,
Tournament, Speed Lap, Time Trial, and Zone. Zone mode, which first appeared in
Wipeout Fusion, has you piloting a ship with full stats in an awesome looking digitized
track with minimal textures and a graphic equalizer in the sky moving to the
current music. I was glad to see that pretty much all of the unwanted stuff inc
individual pilots, new teams, credits-for-stats, super weapons have been taken
out.
Wipeout HD
As you play through the campaign all the different modes of
play are randomly laid out in a hexagonal grid, you start from the middle and
gradually unlock the surrounding hexagons, you can change the difficulty at any
time before/after a race if you are having trouble.After acquiring a certain number of points
unlocks the next , as you progress through the events the modes get harder i.e.
faster speed classes, more aggressive opponents and more challenging medal
goals. I reckon this a great addition to the series and much better then the
Fusion version as what Wipeout really needed was a single campaign that created
a fun and balanced way to play most of the singleplayer content in the game.
The new tracks were pretty damn cool, the first track Vineta K situated on the
beach with a classic underwater section, Metropia dodging around
skyscrapers with breathtaking drops, Ubermall, a new incantation
of Mega Mall from Wipeout
3 and Sol 2, a track
suspended in the air with a dreaded open-sided section. The tracks included a
reverse option but were not divided into 3 as before, also there were no-more
trackless sections or shortcuts in any of the tracks.
The Sol 2 (sky track) Phantom class time trial by HellfireWZ
The ship roster is made up of all the ships from the
original Wipeout to 3 with new ones (Triakis, Mirage and Harimau) taken from Wipeout Pulse I was
pleased to find out that the Triakis
team is Australian and true to Australian form our ship is built like a brick
shithouse with maximum shields though their quite hard to handle but I don’t
care I go them all the time in multiplayer. As I had gotten the Fury expansion
I already had access to the Fury ships which I used through the HD campaign
where I should have been using the HD ships though it didn’t matter all that
much as I used the Fury Mirage ship almost all the way through I wish I
researched all the unlocks and ship skins etc properly before I played I used
the same team for most of the HD campaign thinking that you had to get full
loyalty for a team to get all their ship skins but it turns out all you need to
get is 8000 for each team to unlock two alternate skins and 10000 only once for
a team to unlock the classic Wipeout HUD (which I wasn’t going to use anyway) I
ended up getting 26000 points with Mirage and although they are a great
all-round ship it was kind of a waste as apart from achievements all the other
skins are unlocked via the Campaign
Wiepout HD Ships/Teams
Reading the reviews now I notice that lots of people are
saying how smooth and great the graphics look, I must admit I didn’t really
notice this as all PS3 games look equally good to me really though I admit as
the Wipeout games got better quality they also a bit harder to see where you
are going as before there was just a plain coloured track and bland walls and
scenery, now there’s intricately detailed track grids through Las Vegas
entertainment complexes with lights (flashing, neon or otherwise) all over the
place. But I suppose it’s not exactly that hard though I found though that when
the lights went green (or whatever happens) on your first race and you thrust
forward your eyes go kinda fuzzy and have to re-adjust to the speed, especially
at the higher levels, the graphics look great though any way you look at it.
Wipeout HD - The Amphiseum - Phantom Time Trial by HellfireWZ
As I mentioned before the fury expansion brought new ships
(with upgraded stats), game modes, tracks and another campaign. The new ships
looked a bit sleeker, newer and somewhat chunkier/blockier then the previous
ones. Three new game modes were added inc
Eliminator: Which
is basically an endless single race where the objective is to damage and
destroy other ships until you get to the targeted damage count.
Zone Battle:Which is a twist on the original Zone Mode.
Rival pilots appear on the track as you race to reach the target zone. Drive
through zone pad to charge your zone bar and you can use it to either boost
your zone and come closer to victory or absorb it to replenish ship energy and
activate your shield. The first to reach a target zone wins.
Detonator: Which
is again similar to zone mode except you are in a ships which fires laser bolts
and have to destroy objects on the track in your path.
Eight new tracks were introduced for the expansion with 4 of
them being zone mode only, this made things a bit repetitive as with the whole
campaign you only had 4 tracks for doing Single Race, Tournament, Speed Lap,
Time Trial and even when they were reversed sometimes I still reckon they
needed at least 1 or 2 other tracks for the normal modes.
On my recent foray back into HD/Fury to finish the Fury
campaign, I’ve had a grand old time playing multiplayer and getting my ass
kicked by Japanese punks, strangely enough even playing people from different
countries, the game still seems to play pretty smoothly though sometimes I
don’t see ships moving at all and certain modes like Eliminator can get fairly
laggy though most of the time it’s just single race or tournament being played.
I’ve done pretty well for myself though getting seconds and thirds though
there’s always one lightning fast motherfucker who creams us all, one instance
I was doing pretty good and got 2 minutes 14 seconds for a race in Ubermall but
the guy who came first beat me by 13 seconds. As I said before my favourite
team used to be Mirage but now it’s Triakis cause their Australian, the ship is
hard to manoeuvre but is fast and tough as cause of the full shield stats.
I can honestly say that together Wipeout HD/Fury has been
the best Wipeout game ever, yes it even beats 2097 and 3 and that’s in terms of
overall features, gameplay and obviously visuals and for the mere fact that
it’s the first Wipeout which I’ve been able to play online rather than having
to make people play 2 player with me. I encourage anyone who hasn’t experience
Wipeout to spend that 20 or so dollars and get a digital copy or get Wipeout
2048 if you have a Vita, and experience it as with a Wipeout game,
you can’t really get any betteryou’ve
never seen racing like this before.
So sadly that would appear to be it, Studio Liverpool has
been closed down by Sony so it seems unlikely we will see any new Wipeout games
in the near future. Of course I haven’t mentioned all of them in this post just
the ones I have experienced myself, the full list can be found here, feel free
to have a look and more importantly “like” the facebook page
to spread the love. I’d just like to say thank you to Studio Liverpool for
creating one of my favourite racing game of all time and will hopefully see
Wipeout again in the future where it began.
JD
Image from Studio Liverpool's final post on the Wipeout facebook page.
Oh gawd, 3rd level pretty much done, well it’s
almost there, I’m beginning to think what will I do after this damn thing’s
finished as the whole point of this endeavour and post topic was to finish all
of the achievements which meant getting to the end with limited use of mods and
no giving free resources to myself but that abruptly ended once I decided to
make this massive mutha of a house. The other thing I regret is destroying the
current resources I had when I decided to build the house, I should have just
left them somewhere and come back to them once I’d finished the damn thing
though I’d probably though I’d never go back to doing what I was doing before
but I reckon I will. Annoyingly I’ll have to give myself some supplies and try
to remember what I had in the past when I got to that stage but that’s just my
fault, I should be able to do most of the achievements without cheating though
some are quite hard and would take awhile (especially the End ones) so I may
have to lax a bit on those.
Top level of the house pretty much finished.
I actually have done the whole process of getting the
required resources (almost), travelling to the end and defeating the Dragon
while trying not to cheat with resources. I did this pretty much in a single go
I got to the point where I had all the Blaze
Powder I needed but I cbf trying to find 12 Endermen to get their Ender
Pearls so I gave myself those, I also didn’t play the end properly as I
just wanted to see what it was like and what happened so I just loaded the fack
up in highly enchanted diamond armour and weapons, turned flying on and fought
that Dragon which still took awhile having to destroy all the towers first, I
can’t image how long it would take doing it the right way though it seems it
would take a while though it appears from this
man’s series that it’s a lot easier and safer in numbers. The ending is
kind of weird though, I won’t spoil it but ohh the dialogue.
In other news patches 1.5 “The Redstone Update” and
subsequently patches 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 have arrived, I found this cool little short video explaining
most of the new features and yes I am too lazy to do it myself. Not being a
user of Redstone at all really the most prominent new feature for me was the
introduction of Quartz
which funnily enough I started using after Richard showed it to me when we
started our Underground
City and have used it thoroughly throughout my building process, and it
works wonders for bathrooms, pools and toilets where the only real option you
had was stone slabs or white wool. Embarrassingly until I viewed the info about
the update myself I never actually knew where it came from , gawd I have so
turned into a Creative mode “artiste”
Minecraft 1.5 Trailer by TheFarLands
A brief recap of what I had done in the
last post. I’d finished and roofed off the lobby and completed the middle
level complete with some balconies and the huge outdoor mine entrance and
Minecart system, and it was now time to work on the top level which may or may
not be the very top level as I may decide to include an attic or sun room I
suppose the better word for it may be.
In the interim I had made a nice little balcony for the
dining room/dancefloor and shortly after it started rainingso I realised that almost every area outside
was going to need some sort of weather protection so I extended the balcony
across the minecart tracks entry/exit and made sure the docking/packing
stations were covered too. I also added a trim to the front of the house which
made it look a lot better. This was possible due to wooden slabs being around
now which make decoration and building so much easier, I just wish that they’d
make wool slabs and stairs.
Ballroom balcony
Resource rails balcony and shelters
Front roof trim
So the first thing I had to do was create the floor/roof
which wasn’t too hard really just too quite a while coving the entire bulk part
of the house in a layer of spruce wood planks which is the official roof/floor
of the house and remembering leave a gap underneath as I then had to build and
design the roof for the second level. The second level roof wasn’t going to be
anything fancy like the lobby as it was just going to be flat though I did take
a bit of time deciding how high it was going to be.
Man that took a lot of time to cover
I built the roof over the
dining/ballroom and atrium in spruce wood planks then designed light that was
built into the roof using oak logs and lightstone, I also used some lightstone
to make wooden chandeliers similar to the stone ones in the lobby.
Dining/Ballroom Roof
I did the roof over the pool, sauna and spa in birch wood
with birch logs as a feature with lightstone, I also made some changes to this
area which involved replacing the birch plank floor with the new chiselled
quartz block. I actually used Quartz quite a bit
once I discovered it had been put in as of 1.5, I not only used it for the
floor of the general area I used blocks of quartz and quartz stairs as the
stairs for the pool and I also used roman-esqe pillar quartz blocks for the
edge of the spa as well as normal quartz blocks for the floor. I also had to
change the chimney for the sauna and right angle it out the wall as it was
originally protruding up through the space where I had designated for my
bedroom. I made the resource room roof just out of the same oak wood and made log and torch chandeliers as it didn't really need anything fancy.
Pool/Spa/Sauna room roof
The newly quartz'ed Spa
Chiseled quartz block floor
Adjusting the Sauna vent
Once I had all that done, I then remembered I had to make a
stairway (or two) up to the top level, I didn’t make them too complicated, just
spruce wood planks and stairs and fences, I’m using fences quite a bit actually
I kind of which they were in the same colour of the wood. The stairs took me a
couple of tries to get right as when I first made them going on an almost right
angle they both came up at the same place so I had to lengthen one with a flat
part. I even had a crisis where the fire from the forge entrance down below
caught onto the stairway and destroyed the stairs as well as a chunk of the
upstairs library corner, managed to fix it without any trouble though, I also
added some extra supports for one stairway. I found for some reason when I looked in the
direction of the Alchemy room it was draining my FPS like a bitch so I took out
all the item pictures of the alchemy potions and the brewing stands and it seemed
to work better but still lags a bit though, dunno what it could be, maybe the
mossy cobblestone? as it’s the only place I’ve used it.
East/West stairs
North/South stairs
Now that the lower floor had been done with a few minor
thing being cleared up and I had the stairwells entrance/exits made I now had
the difficult task of planning out the rooms, this is probably one of the
hardest things to do as you have to work out, what the F is each room going to
be for and what is going to be each room and how much room and how many rooms do
I need? This took quite a while but eventually I got the place planned out and
had a rough idea of what I was going to make.
North/South view of house plan
Birds eye view.
Viewing the house from the perspective of the Rei’s Minimap
the southwestern room will be split into two I made one room the entertainment/games/lifestyle
room complete with arcade machines including pinball, table soccer, airhockey
and a train set as well as a stereo system, a tv and a gym corner. I originally
had a secondary door to my room but then decided to take it out and haven’t
thought of anything else to put there other than a bookcase but I’ll think of
that at some other time. The other side of that room I decided would be a band
room so I built a stage with speakers and creative use of daylight sensors and
redstone torches. On the stage I made a piano, a drum set and some er
microphones as I don’t really know how to make Minecraft guitars but anyway
that was enough, but anyway, I made some surrounding couches and jazzed up the
dancefloor with blocks of iron and gold which happen to look pretty shiny with
the Faerielight Texture pack. I then decided to change the walls to a single
bright wool colour and add some lighting, I should still add a balcony area if
I can find the room to make doors outside as every good entertainment area
needs a way to get outside heh.
Entertainment/Gym room
Band room
Before I started on the library area I needed to work out
what colour carpet was going where so I laid the carpet out in the library and
various rooms to make sure I wasn’t doubling up anywhere (though eventually
this was inevitable) For the library I carved out a fairly large rectangle of
the floorspace and covered the wall with spruce logs and created a fairly large
clay and stone brick fireplace with a flue. After trying various abstract
methods of stacking the bookshelves (triangles and single block towers like I
usually do) I decided a more traditional way would be better so I changed the
bookshelves to be inside the wall which looked much better. Due to the size and
height of the fireplace the library ended up being tall enough for two levels
so I made some stairs and balconies with more rows of bookshelves all the way
around the edges of the room, on the bottom level of one side I created a row
of enchanting tables which went from having a full stack of bookshelves to
having none. After that I made some tables and chairs and some brown couches in
the middle of the room, I also made a display of the egg spawners on the wall
and portraits of some of the rarest items in the game (Blaze Rod, Eye of Ender and Nether star) as the
centrepiece for the fireplace.
The Library
With the two northern rooms I had the idea of making one the
home cinema but had no idea what the other one would be and after thinking for
a while I decided to make it into a sort of tabletop/games internet cafe with
computers, card gaming tables and a bar, I made the home cinema next mostly out
of red and black wool and made the screen out of white wool with sound block
speakers all around. I made two levels of couches for seat, popcorn and fairy
floss machines and a shelf for snacks.
Internet Cafe room
Home Cinema
With the living quarters I had originally mapped the area
into 8 rooms but decided i should make one them into a toilet, I used quartz
column blocks for the walls and chiselled quartz blocks for the floor.had to move the wall of the entertainment
area over a bit to make room for the 4 cubicles and I also made a urinal, the
toilets themselves where pretty ludicrous made of white wool, trapdoors and
cauldrons full with water, and the hand dryers are just dispensers that I
suppose are supposed to blast hot air onto your hands (and face) and yes this
toilet is unisex and come to think of it I have to find a way to put doors in there. It’s all a bit silly but but this is Minecraft isn’t it? If I
only included facilities for the items in Minecraft that you use I would have
never been able to fill the whole house.
Sink, urinal and hand/face dryers in the toilet
Top view of toilet
The rest of the rooms I decided that they needed a way to
get outside so I made a long balcony across one side of the house, with the
rooms having windows both to the inside and outside of the house, I tried to
make the rooms a bit more private with 1 block high windows but really I could
just pretend they had curtains, I made the inside and outside entrances to my
room out of jungle logs and lightstone to look slightly different to the rest.
I messed around with the balcony roof design a bit as at one point I had to
remake the whole roof as it was too low and I wanted to put in glass to let
some sunlight in but keep the rain off obviously.
Shots of the balcony
I sort of wish you could put
glass panes in horizontally as I can’t really put the wood slabs and
glass
blocks together so it looks kind of chunky and I still think it’s a bit
too low
but anyway I think that’s only because the roof bit over my room is
higher
because of the higher jungle log design. I used some brick for the base
of the ballroom balcony but didn't for this balcony as I thought it would
make it look too bricky with the whole wall of the house being brick and the balcony being larger and not straight..
My private balcony
I decorated the rooms with a different colour wool floor
with two of the rooms having spruce wood walls, 4 having oak wood walls and my bedroom
I decorated with a jungle theme of jungle logs and a green wool floor, I was
originally going to have a room made with birch but that became the toilet. I
had a hard time deciding what to put in each room but basically they all have
the following.
A Double bed
Storage chests
A Fireplace
Bookshelves
A Jukebox
Flower pots
A crafting table
At least one window
Two doors one to inside one out to the balcony.
Girly room
Nature room
Cozy room
There was a myriad of other things I made just to jazz up
the rooms a bit including closets, shelves, tables and chairs with designs from
the Minecraft Furniture server
and site but overall I think my guests would be fairly happy. With myown room I made a levelled area for my bed
with the usual amenities around. I put my chests and crafting tables around the
edges. I had a bit of trouble decorating the rest of the room as I wasn’t quite
sure what to put in there, I wanted a fireplace and a spa/pool though I think I
made them a bit too big, I managed to fit a chair in nicely though my computer
gaming station and the fully stacked Enchanting table took up a bit of room as
well so I had to make do with a 4x4 meeting table instead of a 6x6 but I
suppose I can change that in the future.
My room in all it's glory
The last bit I had to work on was the middle main hall and
the hallway between the rooms, I carpeted it in yellow wool as with the
Faerielight texture pack it comes out as looking a lot like real carpet
compared to the other colours, I didn’t cover it to the edge and left one block
of the edge to make it more rug-like and it worked really well, I decided that
the house was lacking a central TV so I made one with speakers and a couch in a
corner near the games cafe. I continued the carpet down the hallway of the
living quarters and decorated the whole area with paintings, shelves,
lightstone and pot plants though there’s a bit too many around, I think I did
need more natural plantation as there’s not much on the third level so I
designed one of the rooms to be a “Flora” style room and might make some more
natural potplants around or even a tree.
The main hall between the rooms.
Living quarters hallway.
So that was pretty much it, there are still a few things I
need to work on. Need to add some windows on the upper wall to pretty much
every room and maybe a balcony for the entertainment/band room side, but that
can wait till I’ve done the roof which looks like it’s going to have no less
than 7 chimneys, 8 if you count the light beacon coming out though I might
think about adding a fireplace to the lobby if I can find room, also might add
some more vegetation around though there would be a hundred things I could think of by just zooming around looking at it.
Stay tuned for what could be the finale of this made scheme if
I can possibly get all of the exterior designs done as well as the roof and surrounding
wall.
