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Goin' Down to the Crossroads

UPDATED -

Frank: ask and ye shall receive

So - even though I am way too busy back at work to be spending my time doing it, I didn't want to leave it unfinished. I just completed my first X360 user map for Far Cry 2.

It is called FC2dev Crossroads and it is now published and available for download for anyone who might be playing FC2 online. It is a large map, supporting 12-16 players and all game types - DM, TDM Capture the Diamond and Uprising. I was only able to playtest it with groups of a few friends at a time. But thanks goes out to Magnum PY, gregvw, XL Burrito, and Final1Option for finding some last minute bugs for me to fix before publishing.

On the whole, I found make an 'urban environment' very tiring. It take much, MUCH longer to populate buildings and structures with furniture and destructible obejcts etc, than it does to make huge fields of terrain that look beautiful. I think if Imake another map with will be a small one. Either that or it will be a much more terrain and landscape focused level with more vehicles. Crossroads is all close quarters street fighting with no vehicles.

Anyway, if you get a chance to play it online, feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

X-tra Powerful Stuff

So with the insanity of production in the past, I finally had the time and energy to start replacing all my obsolete hardware. For those who haven't recieved an email from me with the pleasantly lame default signature 'Sent from my iPhone' that Apple so humbly provides with every new device sold, I can report that I have given up my 5 year old 6GB Nomad Jukebox Zen, my horrid little Nokia phone and my Palm Tungsten C (which I had stopped using a couple years ago already) and replaced the whole mess with a new iPhone 3G, cheaper and superior to all of those things combined in all ways except one.

Having to have one *.wma copy of all my music to play through Windows Media Player and stream to my X360 and another *.aac format copy for my fucking iPhone is lame. Lame beyond belief. If Billy and Stevie would just stop fighting the world would be a much better place. Although, it looks like perhaps Steve is willing to make some compromises.

I also ditched my starting-to-fail Sony Cybershot DSC -V1 digital camera, which had served me very well for a lot of years in a lot of exotic places. I hardly ever bother to take 5 megapixel shots on it, as 3 megapixel shots always seemed just fine to me for viewing on a monitor or streamed to my X360. Consequently I was happy to get a new Fuji Finepix F100 for Christmas. It only shoots 6 megapixels instead of the now absurd standard of 10+ (something like 4x the resolution supported on a 1080p HDTV... wtf?). It also gives up some of the 'pro-sumer' features of the DSC-V1, but in exchange it is much smaller and lighter, and has a 6x optical zoom. The comparative bulk and the 4x optical zoom of the DSC-V1 (and the standard of most good hybrid cameras) were the drawbacks, and I am much, much happier to have a 6x zoom instead of 4 million more pixels I will never use.

To cap it all off, though, the real wonder purchase is what I am working on as I write this. After 4+ years of use, I am sad to report that my Dell Inspiron 700m is on its last legs. I have been watching for a good quality small (<13 inch) laptop to replace my Inspiron for over a year, but with that family of small laptops all but retired, I was getting a bit concerned. Finally, Dell has released the XPS M1330, which is not only about 10x more powerful than my 700m, it is also lighter, and well... just plain better. Sure it is about an inch wider and a half in deeper, but the form factor is nicer, the screen is bigger and its significantly lighter. Plus - though I haven't installed it yet - I am pretty sure I can run Far Cry 2 on this thing in mid-to-high configuration. The XPS machines we had in development were real beasts, but I've seen them get smaller and faster and better for a good couple years and am more than happy to be working on one now.

Connect the dots

Daniel Golding, over at Subject Navigator, brilliantly torpedoes my last post below the waterline by linking the 29 Blogs switched-on gamers should read. (and as a bonus, there aren't 29, but 39) In most cases he links not only the blog, but one or more of the most important posts of the past year from the blog.

If you're new to this, and want to catch up on the state of game criticism - or if you just had your head in the sand for the last twelve -to- eighteen months like I did, then get over there and get reading.