Got quite busy last months with studies and some other stuff… Now it’s summer and I’ve got something to say maybe in the next time (personal stuff and povs, opinions…)

But there are also some projects I will try to compile here, get you a bit insight or asking friends for commentary.

Or you just stumble in and browse… whatever, have fun and give feedback!
Much appreciated…

And stay tuned, so long
marquisor

After that a little background of the naming conventions, history and real Pen & Paper RPG startup.

SSI Dragonlance games

The DragonLance series published 1984 is the first D&D brand given to computer RPGs. The world Krynn consists of several continents, the main location is Ansalon. The story here is about war between good, evil and neutral powers. The Heroes of the Lance are the protagonists of the chronicles of DragonLance series. They have a major influence on the World of Krynn esp. to Ansalon.

Pool of Radiance series

The Pool of Radiance series, better known as first part of the “Gold Box” series, because of the games published in golden boxes, is the first computer-based RPG featuring the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) ruleset. It’s also part of the Forgotten Realms series.

Released in 1988 it’s faced to compete with the famous Ultima series by Origin. Being not that open frameworked and more structural it gave / should give a more computer compatible RPG experience.

Forgotten Realms world

The Forgotten Realms world is the successor of the D&D Greyhawk world. Its campaigns are settled in medieval Europe with a continent called Faerûn. It features all classical fantasy RPG settings, from archmages to rude secret societies over dragons and the so called Drow, a tribe of dark elves from the undrentide.

The Forgotten Realms are also theatre of todays modern RPG releases by Wizards of the Coast (at least til they revised it completely in 2007).

All Amiga D&D / AD&D licensees

A word about D&D / AD&D name convention

It’s a bit confusing, at least for me, what those name conventions stand for.

So an easy explanation is, that the “Advanced” in AD&D (abbr. for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) is simply just a marketing issue and stands for the 2nd edition D&D ruleset. After the release of the 3rd edition D&D ruleset the name affix “Advanced” has been dropped again.

Note: As further recherches tell me that’s not quite true, as the AD&D was a parallel product line to D&D series, but for keeping it simple, I’ll just let it explained as is above. Look here for further info.

The newest D&D ruleset currently is the 4th edition. Visit the website Wizards of the Coast Official Homepage for more information and introductions to the new ruleset!

Releases

Short overview of revised D&D editions:

• 1974 – OD&D – initial release of Original Dungeons & Dragons as cheap amateur productions in booklets
• 1981 – 1st edition D&D – Basic Dungeons & Dragons
• 1989 – 2nd edition D&D – aka Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
• 2000 – 3rd edition D&D – name affix “Advanced” dropped, major ruleset revision, more usage of d20-system and less restricted gameplay
• 2003 – 3.5th edition D&D – revision of 3rd, minor rulechanges, expanded core books
• 2007 – 4th edition D&D – most recent release of the ruleset, more streamlined game, core books released 2008

Get here for a very detailed list of releases and parallel concepts or products.

Pen & paper RPG

My two cents:

As I came to serious roleplaying around 2000, I also recommend the releases from that time for pen&paper RPG. Esp. the 3.5th edition is very good to start with, but also very complex.I don’t know yet about 4th edition, but what I read so far it’s got more modern and less complex, what I don’t prefer I think… But I have to give it a shot sometimes maybe.

There’s a starter set describing on few pages how to get started and into P&P RPG in a fast and easy way. You’ll also get some maps, a simple story, character sheets and cardboard cut-outs. You can find pre-owned ones of 3rd/3.5th editions on ebay or local RPG stores for sure. They give you an inexpensive start into real roleplaying. Go to a store and you’ll often meet players there having just a “game” you may spectate at.

Just try it with your friends! But you have to have the ambitions and some experience in computer RPGs for that as well.

Get yourself some various dice, you’ll always need a D20, D8, 2x D10, D12 sometimes D4/D3. A D6 everyone should have, as they’re very common.

You could build your wargaming tabletop terrain for yourself very inexpensive by using papercraft buildings and walls. More advanced and professional are modeled tiles from f.e. the Dwarven Forge.

More about RPG related and communities? Visit the huge RPG.net forums: forum.rpg.net

Happy RPGing!

marquisor

JKDefrag v3.36 – FREE!

This is the tool you want for all your defragmentation and maintenance needs. Forget Windows built-in and other commercial products, as this is small, smart and does a very good job, speeding up your entire system, single harddisks or even folders or files. And it’s for free!

First of all get the appropriate version of the software regarding to your OS. It’ll work on any Windows above 2000 to Win7, 32/64bit versions.

• JKDefrag v3.36 32bit
• JKDefrag v3.36 64bit
• Homepage

Yes, if you visit the homepage there is a newer version resp. re-branded MyDefrag. Tested that and I don’t like it. Display flickers, technically not as smart as this latest JKDefrag and even not portable. Context integration? I don’t know. So keep up with JKDefrag.

Unzip into any folder you like, I recommend “C:\jkd”, as C: is my Win7 OS on.
Go to the JKDefrag.exe (JKDefrag64.exe) properties/compatibility and select “Run as Administrator”, apply and OK.

Now, everytime you doubleclick on the .exe it’ll defrag ALL your harddisks with default optimized settings. But we want to get it more detailed, to only defragment folders or single files, f.e. a game folder.

Integration

To get a context menu integration create an empty .reg file “jkdefrag_int.reg” with following content:


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Defrag File\command]
@=”C:\\jkd\\JkDefrag64.exe -a 3 -d 1 %1″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Defrag Folder]
@=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Defrag Folder\command]
@=”C:\\jkd\\JkDefrag64.exe -a 3 -d 1 %1″

For “C:\\jkd\\” use the folder you unzipped the stuff. Also choose the correct .exe file for your OS, 32/64bit. Everything else can be left as is! Don’t worry about the wildcard. Notice the double backslash!

Doubleclick on the .reg file to import, accept, and you’re done with context menu integration. Now by right-clicking on a file or folder there’d be shown the option “Defrag File” or “Defrag Folder” resp. For further options read the included docs or go to the homepage.

Short description of the options:

• -a 3 = “The action to perform. N is a number from 1 to 11, default is 3:” … “3 = Defragment and fast optimize [recommended].”
• -d 1 = “Select a debug level, controlling the messages that will be written to the logfile. The number N is a value from 0 to 6, default is 1:” … “1 = Warning messages [default].”

And else…

You may also add other and further settings, such as close the program, if all done, etc and add the options to the resp. .reg file.

Also a good idea is to use this in windows task scheduler for daily/weekly, whatever special optimizations.

Questions? Feel free to add comments.

Cheerio!

Finally an update here after more than two weeks. Yeh, sry, but the picture placement and some other “non-WYSIWYG” here pretty annoys me…

What the hell are you doing, marquisor?? Well, besides other things I recently got into aviation and want to let you take part in this review.

Updates

As I update this post more or less regularly here’s a short version list:

• 0.1.2
  Added “Questionable Addons”, slightly more review experience added.
• 0.1.1
  Added “Known Issue” in 3) … Recommended Addons for Ulitmate Terrain X
  Minor changes, links added
• 0.1
  Initial release

Microsoft® Flight Simulator X

I installed FSX again. That is the Microsoft® Flight Simulator X. And I recently bought some or even some more addons for it spending ~ 200 EUR. But it’s looking pretty good now.

I also managed to finetune it to get decent framerates of my taste and beyond the magic 10 FPS rate.

If you consider buying this simulation (it’s not a game!), be sure you got at least quadcore rig 2,83GHz++ with fast harddrive and a mid-range gfx board, f.e. ATi 4000HD/nvidia 9xxx+ series.

You’ll be also unlucky with your new software, if you won’t dig into websites, forums and blog posts all about aviation and pc-tuning, as this is the first you have to do. Without the ambition to fly or old hardware I don’t recommend this flightsim.

- Get a Trial version of FSX -

1) Getting the sim running decent on your PC

Which takes some time, also with every addon you install you have to check all settings over and over again and keep your filesystem clean (defragmented), OS “houskeeping” is mandatory!

Initial setup recommendation

1. Think about where to install FSX.It will take at least 5-6 GB of disk space. With addons I have now about more than 40 GB used. I also recommend to install on another physical harddrive than your OS is running on for speed issues.
2. Get yourself some hints/tools for maintenance your OS and HDDs.I recommend TuneUp Utilities 2010 and/or JKDefrag. They’re both smart, not annoying, stable, integrate seamlessly and most important: IT WORKS! Best of all, JKDefrag is FREE!
3. Clean your OS, install newest gfx board drivers (updating 9.x to 9.12 ATi -> FPS improvement by 50%).Get rid of unwanted software/drivers, check processes running and not urgently needed as well.
4. Install FSX and all Servicepacks SP1/SP2.
5. Since it’s the (very) first time you’ll use this sim you may also install addon meshes if you’d bought some with default settings.
6. Defrag your FSX drive with tools mentioned above.

Now, first part done very easy, it’s time to fire it up and see what it has to offer.

DO NOT ALTER ANY SETTINGS YET!

FSX scans your config and sets default quality more or less appropriate for your PC.

Fire it up!

Run the introduction to get a first peak of what awaits you. I recorded a video about this, but it’s in german. No matter it gives you a preview of about 1/4 of the game. Let’s have a look:

.

Benchmarking

Now this introduction shows how FSX might perform on your rig, so we use this and the other two Introductions for benchmarking, as they use widely used scenarios of your flight experience you’ll have.

You may later setup some special presets for regions you actually fly VFR / IFR or high detailed mountains, but they may go far away from an overall smooth basic setup.

First of all you want to get some information on how fast/smooth FSX is running. To control this objectively I recommend you running Fraps and some CPU usage display. I use the display of my G15 keyboard with built-in performance monitor and Everest to track temperatures and GPU load. But just a simple CPU monitor will do it. You can use the windows taskmanager as well and start FSX in windowed mode.

Note: Many, if not all modern gfx boards run at way lower clocks in windowed mode, f.e. mine @500MHz. Switching to fullscreen clocks raise up to 800MHz, that’s an increase by 60% in clockspeed. Also SLI/CF might work/not work in windowed mode. You’ll then have to choose another method monitoring your CPU/GPU usage.

Optimization process

First of all set “Target Framerate” to UNLIMITED! It will always get you better FPS than with turning any framelimit on! The mystery of FS9 to turn a limiter on for keeping spare power for loading resources is definately gone. Run the introduction again.

Also set up FSAA (Full Scene AntiAlias) and AF (Anisotropic filtering) if you got an ATi 4000HD+ series/nvidia 9xxx+.

For the gfx setup inside FSX I recommend following recurring methods:

1. Check your performance with tools and benchmark with the introduction mentioned above, keep framerate and CPU usage in mind. Notice stutters etc. and get a feeling for what settings do which load to your rig.
2. Play around with FSX presets and notice the change in performance, this is a rough process to get you a feeling for the settings and their performance hit.
   Note: All of your settings are instantly used if going back to simulation, you don’t have to restart.
3. After roughly set: Alter sliders manually regarding to “Highest performance hits” table below.
4. Do 1-3 while determining the optimal settings.

That’s all! Note: With Shift-Z repeatedly pressed you can also display the built-in FPS indicator.

Highest performance hits (in descending order)

• Autogen density
• Target Framerate limitation (TURN OFF!)
• Water Effects
• Light bloom
• Cloud detail / distance
• Scenery Level of detail radius
• Shadows cast from scenery/airplane
• Ground scenery shadows
• All traffic >20-30%
• Mesh detail

And overall for older gfx boards: Antialiasing.

Raise, lower or switch these options off/on while fine-tuning FSX. Always save settings and only alter one option per benchmark!

- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED PDF -
thx to Mathijs Kok – aeroSOFT forum
Use it in addition to my benchmarking method and setup process!

This is a great, short and WORKING tuning guide of how you have to set your sliders, what effects they have and why. 

Following both, you’ll manage to set up your FSX running at decent performance, I’ll promise!

2) Choosing the “right” addons

For getting the most excitement and eye-candy out of your FSX, I’ve made a list of in my humble opinion definately must have addons. Note, that they all affect framerate and performance more or less how you set them up and use them.

You’ll always have to fine-tune your FSX gfx/performance setting again, after installing a new addon.

A rough rule of thumb: Every new addon you install will drop your fps by 3 with medium-high usage on a 2,83GHz quadcore. You can say 10% or whatever…

Also remember to defrag your FSX / Addon drive after installing addons!

Real Environment Xtreme™ (REX 2.0)

First and most valueable addon for me is the Real Environment Xtreme™ 2.0.

Featuring enhancements: (Click for overview)

• Sky Theme
• Cloud Theme
• Inland Water
• Ocean Water
• Tropical Water
• Wave Animation
• Runway/Taxiways
• Airport Environment
• Sun/Lighting

As you can see, nearly everything but meshes, airplanes and other ground textures. BUT! Have a look at these pictures:

- Click to enlarge! -

Pretty awesome, isn’t it?

This addon installs to another directory/harddisk. It integrates seamlessly into FSX and features realtime live weather updating while running FSX. You can create own themes or use some presets. Every Feature mentioned above has 5-100 options/presets to select, so the combinations are wide.

It’s also customizable of what features shall be enabled and in what quality depending on your rig.

Ground Environment X enhanced (GEX)

“The first region of the Ground Environment Legacy to give the flight simulator enthusiast the most realistic generic ground textures and autogen ever created for Microsoft® Flight Simulator.”

I was using both, the GEX USA & Canada and GEX Europe enhanced. Now I prefer real VFR Scenery or create my own. But for getting started this is optimal. Also see UTX addon below, which combined gives additional features to both products. Click links for overview incl. all features.

Summary:

• USA, Canada, Alaska, Europe, Greece, Arctic
• New autogen layouts
• All seasons
• Night lighting updates
• Highly detailed textures 1024×1024
• Special features with using UTX

Look at REX and GEX USA & Canada in action, flying over the Grand Canyon:

- Click to enlarge! -

Mesh data – Resolution of heigth

There are two main providers for mesh data. Their products are FS Global 2008/2010 and FS Genesis.

Benefits of updating mesh data result in higher resolution terrain in hilly and mountainous regions. It has something to do with the details of the mountains.

If you think about an area of 1 km² with 100m mesh data, the heigth resolution would be 10×10. Now these addons increase this by 10 times! in using 10m mesh data for most mountain regions and increasing by 2-3 at most hilly regions. Flat regions aren’t covered, because flat is flat.

Comparison table:

I’m not sure what addon will fit my (and your) desire, so I didn’t select and install one of them yet. But I consider FS Genesis, as I already got FS Global 2008.

FS Genesis offers digital download, 25 GB, 60$ (~42 EUR).

FS Global 2010 full around the same size but incl. FS9 support, too for 70 EUR (~100$). Upgrade from 2008 version 50 EUR (~70$).

As soon as I decided I will post some comparison shots. For now you can view them on their resp. product pages.

Conclusion

Choosing the right update is defined by various factors and desire. However, you should keep these things in mind considering new updates/addons:

• Valueable: Price-performance ratio
• Compatible: Visual and some background (weather, traffic, communication etc.) addons drop your framerate and performance!
• Updateable: What do you get? Free updates, how often are they offered? Is it developed further?
• Reliability: Does/might it run stable on your hardware, does it offer the features you want? Is it realistic??
• Integrity: Is the vendor trustworthy, read product ratings, but better read non-official forums like avsim.net and ask there or read reviews!

3) Get into Aviation

For getting further into aviation you’ll not only need the ambition and interest in the “flying planes”, you also have to learn about theory! That’s the most important and time-consuming effort you’ll have to get. Besides optimizing and setting up your hard-/software… this all can be really annoying.

So I say it again, if you’re NOT familiar or ambitioned to fly or aviation in general, better go playing Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. or any other Arcade FlightSim.

Getting started

I recommend the book: Microsoft Flight Simulator X for pilots – Real World Training. On 744 pages you get nearly everything you have to know about flying and aviation in general. Good thing about this is it’s affinity to realism. Topics and details described are seamlessly valid for FSX and reality.

• Wikipedia – Good topics for all global overall information, even in your prefered language.
• FSX – Get into missions and built-in flight school, print out maps and briefings, dig further informations on the web using Google™ and/or forums mentioned below.
• Get yerself some books/print media from trusted sources. Real maps/papers gets you into aviation as fast and realistic as possible.
• Consider buying some periphery for controlling your aircraft. It really helps you to “feel” the simulation and making theory more practicable. I recommend some controls in the last topic of this review.
• Hang on! Configuring controls and performance in FSX is most annoying, sometimes theory of aviation second, but -> if you get through you’re rewarded by beautiful scenery, realism and you’ve learned some real stuff comfy at home and can say “Hey, I just landed a Boeing 737 without crashing!”

I’ve read on forums, experienced reallife pilots saying they’ve got experience in FSX with other airplanes, sceneries than on their daily duty, get into airplane failures for training or just for helping others in a flight school. The ATC (Air Traffic Control) feature is also a variety of aviation to get experienced in for them.

Help/Aviation forums

• Easy Tuning Guide – As mentioned above, short and valueable information in addition to my method
• AVSim Online – One of the biggest site all aviation related, huge software archive of freely downloadable addons as aircraft, scenery etc.
• AVSim Forum – Very good forum, many topics and helpfule nice users. Even pretty much reallife pilots hanging around there!
• FlightSim.com – Big site, reviews, also file archive and forums.
• FlightSim.com Forums – Also a big community site with forums.

Some interesting links

• Live Flight Tracker – Track airlines/airplanes in the US – LIVE!
• Walhalla – Freeware FSX scenery archive
• VATSIM – Online community preserving realistic communication and flight experience, ATC – Recommended only for advanced pilots for SERIOUS simulation.
• simMarket – Get yourself a brief overview about what is available on the market for your FlightSim demands! HUGE collection!

Recommended Addons

• Real Environment Extreme™ (REX 2.0)
• Ground Environment X
• FSUIPC and WideFS – Toolbox and networking enhancements (f.e. outsourcing weather engine, AI traffic to networked computers)
• FS Genesis – Mesh data  / OR similar … FS Global 2010
• FTX – Scenery currently mainly for Australia, but very high quality. (Better than UTX sets imho, but only for Australia yet.)

Questionable Addons

Reviewed addons (mostly trial versions or tested elsewhere). It is questionable, because these addons do not meet my needs in quality, stability, reasonability, realism or personal slant! Many recommend these nevertheless, but it’s more like “love or hate it” in my opinion.

• Ultimate Terrain X – Scenery for USA, Canada, Europe
  Known issue: Roads and railroads go straight through textures of Ground Environment X or FSX default. On selfmade Photoscenery it would be correct (tested that).
  But read external VERY detailed Review on avsim to see if it would annoy you or not.
• Wideview – Addon for getting additional views over a network, i.e. you setup another PC with another FSX license and all scenery/aircraft/weather addons and may configure it for additional cockpit/whatever view possible in FSX.
  Dislikes: As bolded above, another license and ALL addons to get the same view. For cockpit panels the computer has to run as server and without further programs there go the controls in.
• FsXPand – Panels, gauges, glass cockpit display via networked PC without another FSX license. I’m currently testing this and if it meets my needs I’ll write a review.

Other maybe interesting addons/sites (not reviewed by me yet):

• TileProxy – Photorealistic ground textures in VERY HIGH quality
• WidevieW.it – Nice tools, esp. FS Earth for tracking your flight LIVE in Google Earth
• FSPassengers – Adding some load to your airliner

4) Recommended Hard-/Software

To get your experience even to a high or higher levels I recommend some Hard-/Software for more realistic simulation immersion.

Most users, me included, have run FSX on various hardware and OS scenarios. To what conclusion this leads, see below.

The short things first:

Software

Recommended:

• Windows XP Professional 32bit
  Advantages: Resource friendly, relatively fast and stable OS for running FSX on. Even on low-/mid-end hardware.
  Restrictions: <4GB RAM usage, no DX10.I don’t recommend using the 64bit version of XP, as there might be driver issues (I got some hassles). Only Professional (and above) version has support for multiple CPU cores, if I remember correctly.
• Windows 7 32/64bit any version <- BEST!
  Advantages: >4GB RAM usage, DX10, mostly up-to-date, also for newer games. Future development and servicepacks. Many users reported a speed-up in framerates and overall performance in upgrading to Win7 from any windows before.
  Restrictions: I don’t know yet?! Eats up more resources than XP, software incompatibility of addons developed for XP.
• TuneUp Utilities 2010
  As mentioned above some OS tools are neat and keeping you comfy to stay away from doing that all manually.
• JKDefrag v3.36 – FREE!
  For defragmentation of all HDDs or just the FSX folder/addon folders alone!

Not recommended: VISTA! – I don’t get ANY further into this discussion. It simply … well, insert random bad word here…

Also keep out from annoying heavy CPU using virus/spyware live scanners. There are some around, that really use 50% of your CPU. I’m using Microsoft Security Essentials and i’m happy with that.

A word about virtual boxes, linux etc.: I’ve got enough “work” to do in setting up FSX, tuning it and keep it all at a decent performance. I WON’T set me into further issues, hassles, pitfalls and whatever else using emulation/virtualization software with FSX.

Hardware

Your rig should consist of the following:

• CPU
  FSX is very CPU intensive! Multi-core processors are mandatory imho. With latest Servicepacks it really squeezes all performance out of my Intel Q9550 quadcore.
• Mainboard/HDD
  Second performance hits are reported by cheap/bad mainboard chipsets as they really unburden CPU load during loading textures, scenery, well everything into FSX. As I got an Intel CPU, I also recommend mainboards with Intel chipset with appropriate numbers of PCIe slots.Modern SATA harddrives with 500GB+, NCQ and 16/32 MB of cache are usually good enough. You may also try RAID and/or 10.000 RPM or SAS/SCSI combinations as well.
• RAM
  I’m using 4GB. Users report OOM (out of memory) issues with using less than that. Best use a so called kit of 2x2GB or more for “dual-channel” mode increasing access times.
• GFX
  As written before, any currently mid-end gfx boards will do the job here. I’m using an ATi 4870 x2 (4 GPUs CF), but cards below should also work more or less flawlessly. There aren’t much gfx board depending bottlenecks reported if using ATi 4000HD/nvidia 9xxx series and above.
• Power supply
  Calculate generously and use branded hardware. Cheap PSUs only wreck your nerves, as they can be the reason for every failure in the whole system!Thermaltake has a neat PSU calculator online. The results are a bit overstated, but it gives you a rough range of wattage required for your rig.
• Case
  Same as above, don’t use cheap cases. Cooling is most important with high-end machines running at their limits and keeps your parts longer lifetime.

Conclusion and further prospect

As many things in the world also with Microsoft Flight Simulator X you can go from simple to complex. You may enhance your visual experience as well as your technical and communication skills, but most important this simulation does what it’s intended for and covers it mostly and realistic where possible today: the aviation. In all overall matters.

There are tons of scenery, airports, aircrafts, communities to discover. Think about the book mentioned before with its 700+ pages. It covers only an introduction to further adventures in your aviation experience, though it’s very detailed. Also this review is a very small swissknife to cover about 50% FSX/Simulation is capable of. But it gave you a better prospect of what awaits you.

ToDo

Some things I may add here are some videos and controller recommendations, also VFR/IFR flights, flightplans, weather effects and so on if I dug further and deeper into this stuff. Also a picture comparison of higher detail meshes will come.

I’ll have to setup my triple-head monitors and some more addons in the future, maybe you check over again here.

What else?

You can also SUBSCRIBE! to this blog if you like and also visit my YouTube RetroHD channel for more FSX videos and retro stuff.

Have a good flight!

Some short wishes for you to have a very happy healthful new year. The next year everyone of us gets one year older, guess!

And that’s the point: Our experience grows, not only our sorrows! The time of “Rien ne vas plus” has gone, cards get shuffled again and everything might or seems to only can get better, as we grew up even more last year! Now ladies and gentlemen, place you bets again, you can’t always lose!

To have it not that dry speech here of course I got some fancy beat for ya…
It’s from Golden Dawn, an american psychedelic rock band (yeah, again! you know I love this kind of music!!). As read on wiki they’re similar to my real favourite garage psychedelic rock band 13th Floor Elevators.

Maybe give it a shot and think about above words. It also contains some of a message and therefore an addition: You don’t have to be starving, sometimes you just have to eat something that not seems very tasty (experiences)… IT’S EASY!

Enough of philosophical speech… Here it goes:

Best wishes! And let’s face it what awaits us in very new experience in 2010.
Keep cool, always in groove and smooth. Stay the way you are!

Yours
marquisor

- real C64 8bit pic of me -

Greetings to:
Jens, Martin, Markus, Chris D., Melli W., Alex, Frank B., Wolli, Sebastian, Ingo, Toni, Matze, Kay, all my fellas at technician school esp. Stefan, Andreas, Jethro, Toni, all my fellas at BA and BiBu school esp. Rudi, Ralf L., Heiko, Markus L. and also Gero and Manuela, my old colleagues and fellas at the wagon factory, and of course my parents!

Onliners:
Myself, Chris D., John B., Seb. N., M.W., lottinger, Hank, SpaceRat, MFS, Babs, T-Low, DH, CH, sys2074, CL, Lander, Shawn, Predseda, Cerium, night_creature, turricanx, SarahKreuz31, EvilCensor (brute force!), Yojimbo, Krowbar, Papa_Shango

Great thing! I just had one of those in the 80s for myself. But even then it was vintage from the 70s or some time around there.
I miss it, beside the antenna i’ve seen mounted on every roof in the early 80s. i’m remembering that …

And also when I walked around with my daddy I got these catchups, when I was 3 or 4 yrs old. I love and loved it!

One can’t describe, it was way way awesome and truly the 80s, really! i’m really really into it if I’m thinking about back these days walking with my daddy, – “Kraftwerk – Antenna” – in my mind, seeing it FOR REAL IN THE 1980s and thinking about that ’til NOW!

Note:

I know, Kraftwerk performed this song a slightly way before… but… you know… it was playing on the radio “SWF3“, 94,8MHz UKW, analogue, FM, stereo.
Of course we didn’t have a radio equipment with us when we were walking. it’s just because the atmosphere, I thought about it. it was back in 1982.

My dad surely has got this flip-clock in the cellar somewhere, he keeps everything. Sometimes it’s annoying he keeps everything, but in this case it’s really cool and for vintage reasons!

These synthie sounds from the video above remembers me fully to the 1980s as i could see this age in my childhood and it’s still there until now! I know and see this stuff if it was just yesterday listening to that music.

But that’s not all… I also FEEL like I’d be in the 80s if I listen to this song. I then see and FEEL everything about the EARLY 80s then!

Get a flip-clock screensaver by clicking on the picture:

It is multi-platform, available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Great thing!

So of course I had to try that, as there should be widely available poker players around the world, not registering on the typical online casino spamshit with losing their hard worked money.

Just poker for fun!

Key Features

Reviewed version 0.7.1 (release date 2009-06-25) – latest stable -DOWNLOAD-

• Open source, so it’s “free” for everyone
• No registration needed yet, so no fees, spam-mails or else
• Local play against up to 9 CPU players
• Network/Internet play against up to 9 human/CPU players also in mixed mode! Empty slots can filled up by CPU players
• Multi-platform: MacOS, Windows, Linux
• Decent default setup
• Very handy fine-tuning, a lot of settings available

The game

Running with default settings and chosen “Start Local Game”, you play against 9 CPU players.

That’s the starting playfield (click to view fullsize).

So let’s breakdown the table. I assume that you know the rules. If not, read them here on Wikipedia or for short here at the PokerTH – Wiki. On the bottom left you can see the possible hands with their cards and their rank in the Texas Hold’em poker game. Quite self-explanatory. If in online game, there’s also chat displayed in another tab then.

On the middle you see your options in buttons. The really nice thing here is, you can play it with mouse or completely with keyboard shortcuts shown on the buttons. You can also queue a decision, as (even in a networked/internet game) it may take some time to go round the table. But the queue is intelligent, it only saves the safest button i.e. “Check” as long as others do check. If someone bets or raises the pot, it’ll switch back to manual. Pretty neat.

On the right there’s a log which displays what happened bets/raises/folds in game). It also got tabs. The “Away” tab, which is for setup the “auto-pilot” and the “Chance” tab which I describe below. As you can see is that after the dealer a small blind and a big blind was set before it’s your turn. Blinds raise as setup in settings after an amount of time or hands played.

Now let’s have a look further in the game and on the “Chance” tab here:

There you can see the chance on how possible it is to win the pot with the kind of hands you got combined with the current flop. F.e. getting the pot with “One Pair” is 50% so 1:2 chance to win the pot, because everyone would have the “One Pair” as it is on the flop with two aces. The hands would win if you got the highest card of all (i.e. King of clubs).

Internet game

For playing on the internet, there are by now (9 p.m. CET) around 500 players connected to the lobby and 20 games running.

As you can see the chat is quite crowded and the flood protection is on often… You’d better find your permanent place on a table with regular players or meet your mates there.

You may also create a networked or private game instead of an internet game. But then you have to tell all your buddies your IP-adress.

So in the lobby search for open state games and join them, you’re then in the game’s room and wait for the game creator to start the game. You might also want to use the filter function on top of the window. There you could choose f.e. “3 – Show open & non-full & non-private games”.

The game itself then runs like a single player game besides that you get a timer to choose your options. You only have a limited time, it depends on the game hosts settings, the default is 20 seconds. If you not choose your option in the limited time you get fold and the next player’s on.

If you create a game you can set some options. To get familar with your fellas I would set:

• “Game Speed for computer opponents” to 3
• “Timeout for player action” to 45s – quick enough and long enough to think and choose
• “Maximum number of players” to 6 – to have a better overview, you can fill empty seats with CPU-”buddies”
• Any random “Password” – to make the game private, so only your fellas may join it and no nagging pokernerds disturb you
• “Start Cash” of $5000 – is a good choice for medium time the round ends

Further plannings

As on the games homepage roadmap, they plan some further enhanced features including registering and so on. This could be great, because then your wins/losses are saved in a database and you play for online ranking and so on… But those have to come, don’t know when…

Conclusion

This is a really neat poker game, easy to get into, technical simple but decent and a lot of fun even in single player mode. The internet option without registering is also good to do one or two games against real humans or spend some time with your mates at home without leaving the house. I’m know on to get into it further…

Listen to Pinball Wizard from “The Who” while reading this post!

About

The famous Gottlieb, Williams and Bally arcade game creators ring a bell? And you spent some time with pinball games on Amiga/PC or the real deal in the past?

I discovered a really neat possibility to “emulate” real pinball tables on Windows. As I don’t really know a decent pinball game recently released for any non-console system, I crawled the web for any news on this kind of games.

The results are, there are two decent pinball emulators which you can load a helluva lotsa real tables in and play them in decent smooth speed.

I’ll give you a shot on one of them and how you could install and use it.

Visual Pinball

Also VP for short it is a decent editor, emulator and display tool/manager for any imaginable pinball table.

First of all get some files:

• Visual Pinball – The main “emulator” program install package
• Update v9.03 - Updated .exe
• VPinMAME Binary v2.2 – The LCD display emulator
• A demo table – used in my example table installation below

If you want a sneak peek what awaits you resp. what tables VP could run (besides many more), click on the screenshot below:

Installation

It’s a bit tricky to get this bitch running, so I tried to figure out how it’s the best way to get it installed with the right directory structures and registry setups.

1. Download & install the “Visual_Install_Pack_8.1_2.1+NT_3C.exe” file to any folder. Prefer a folder on any partition on top of their root: f.e. “E:\vpinball”, not “C:\Programs (x86)”.
2. Download & unzip “VP903.zip” package to a temporary folder. Pay attention on that all new files have to be in the root of the in 1.) created new directory!
   This is not the default in the .zip archive! And don’t overwrite “VPinball.exe”, rename the new/old one to their respective version e.g. “VPinball 9.03.exe” resp. “VPinball 8.1.exe”.
3. Download & unzip “vpinmame_22.zip” to a temporary directory and run its setup, click install. That should be all. Keep the files/archive for later troubleshooting.
4. Go to the install-dir selected in 1.) and set run as admin in properties menu for the vpinball*.exe files.

Usage & Troubleshooting

First of all ATI videocards do have issues of incompatibility to Visual Pinball. There’s not (yet) a fix or workaround for that. Main bugs are strange looking transparencies, dithers, jerky pinball and some glitches with gfx overlays. So if you got an nvidia gfx card you’re lucky!

Fellow sys2074 from H1DD3N.R350URC3 tested it on nvidia board and reported smooth gameplay along no glitches. Thx for testing!

If all is setup correctly you have to simply start VPinball.exe (i’d always recommend v9.0.3!), load a table, and “PRESS PLAY ON TAPE”.

Running the right .exe depends on the requirements of the chosen table, v9.0.3 is always slower but with fewer bugs.

Example Table installation

I highly recommend it, as I describe it step by step HOW TO SETUP this table with table-data and ROMs:

• Get the table here: SCAPINOSVPINS Twilight Zone
• Put the .vpt into the PROGDIR:/Tables folder, the other files where you want or trash.
• Run VP, press play
• You’ll get errors, if VPinMAME is installed correctly it displays what’s missing

• Now guess what we’re doing: The ROMs are on ipdb.org. Go there and have a look what’s missing!
• You’ll need the tz_94h.zip ROM set and put it into PROGDIR:/ROMs
• I did not find any documentation who says tz_92.zip is also needed for music, extended sounds AND smoother gameplay. So also get this and put the .zip into PROGDIR:/ROMs
• Regarding to ipdb.org and VPinMAME Game Info you’ll need the Revision L-2 Sound ROMs. Since its not “ROM set conform naming” you have to EXTRACT this to PROGDIR:/ROMs
• Start VP over. Should run now. If not repeat the above steps.

I like it! Where to get more stuff?

Main

• Old visual pinball original site
• Most recent visual pinball actual site

Help

• Very good help forum, table downloads, tutorials (also for creating own tables!) – Great related site

Some table creators

• Scapinosvpins
• JP’s pinballs
• Roney Pinball

Other download pages

• Pinball Nirvana
• IR Pinball
• Pinball Originals

Essential ROMs (IMPORTANT!)

• Essential for running some tables, especially VPinMAME ones – Internet Pinball Database

Installing new tables

The rules for getting new tables to run are:

1. Get the table package, mostly a .zip file and extract it to a temporary folder.
2. Copy the .vpt and .vps (if any) files to PROGDIR:/tables
3. Copy any fonts to SYS:/Windows/Fonts. Backup any existing fonts!!
4. Check if there are ROMs for this table on the internet pinball machine database
   VP table = no ROMs; VPM table = needs ROMs
   Download the PinMAME ROMs and maybe samples (if any), leave them zipped and put them into PROGDIR:/ROMs resp. PROGDIR:/samples
5. Startup VP, load table, check ROMs, play.

Troubleshooting

If any errors, check what error is displayed?

Be sure to run “VPinball.exe” as Administrator!

If it’s VPinMAME related you might not have got every needed rom in the ROMs dir, go back to step 4.) of “Installing new tables” and check what’s missing, maybe you have to extract the sound ROMs or downloading some more .zip ROMs for the same table, it is a little bit fiddling around and not much documented.

Second common error: VPinMAME isn’t setup properly, repeat the installation as described above in the installation topic. It runs properly if you can see the “Game Info” screen after pressing play in VP and an LCD scoreboard etc. on the table ingame.

Always leave ROM SETS ZIPPED! Sound ROMs may need to be extracted. Documentation needed!

You can also try to extract the VPinMAME  .zip archive to the root VP directory and integrate its folders, overwrite existing files etc.

Don’t see the LCD score/FX table ingame? Press Alt-Tab to switch windows to get it to front/overlay.

Feedback

… is appreciated. Feel free to comment and tell me your problems with installing/running this. I’ll try to keep it up to date and helpful for users installing/using this from scratch. I might upload a complete working set with one table (the one described in the “example installation”) if it won’t work at all.

HAVE FUN!

I’ve got an idea to generate some random maps in 2D and then use them in 3D. For example for RPGs like Ultima / Wizardry. The following screens/videos were done on a C64.

This is a random map generated in 2D.

And this is the 3D map generated from the same 2D data above.

I’ve uploaded a video to show some of the features. There’s a similar map at the same size as above and a bigger one (to the max!):

This shows a little program running written in pure BASIC similar to the two pictures above in action. This is “live” and the real speed of C64 BASIC.
Of course this could be done easily in assembly language, and of course it could be compiled (tested that!), and of course i could and should write more about it…

Not to be confused this is NOT my code! It is a program from a C64 demo disk. My idea is to use it further for such game types. It inspires me for an RPG project i have in mind.

…to be continued…

As far as I can see, they’ve done that with a game creator tool named 3D Gamestudio and its programming language Atari lite-c.
I surely have to check THAT out if I get further into C/C++ in the next time. It looks very interesting and seems to be the right tool for us “casual” programmers.

Nice work, let’s see how and when the final version performs.