Blog - Henley

5 comments by Henley on Sep 23rd, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Holy crap there is Dust everywhere! I woke up today to see a bright red sky, and the inside of my house was covered in dust (the room-mate left the back-door open). It sucks, I'm sneezing and all that all the time. Apparently this dust storm travelled all over the east of Australia being all dusty and stuff, just goes to show how dry this country is... Enjoy the photo.

Damn my nose... On another note I have finally got off my ass and started to put together the portfolio website, its mostly there so I can keep track of all my stuff I do that is note-worthy, most of the stuff you will be able to find here on this site but its nice to have a place to put all this. Anyways you can find it over at www.DaveTraeger.com awesome address eh? Still needs work but it is a start!

Anyway look forward to some more ModDB stuff soon, lots of things being worked on!

3 comments by Henley on Aug 4th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Since I work in a house that house more than one person, being loud and having loud sounds from my work PC can be bothersome to both my room-mate and my neighbours. It's an even bigger problem since I don't really keep normal hours of work either, some nights I might work through to dawn in order to get stuff done. That's just what my role on ModDB has become, I'm a dude who will get shit done *throws out some gang symbols*! So in-order to not piss-off everyone around me I use headsets for 100% of my time in-front of a PC so a good headset is important for me, it needs to be functional, needs to be comfortable and it needs to have a decent mic to boot.

My last set was the Speedlink Medusa's. Now this was an awesome 5.1 headset it had a externally powered A/B switch (for all those who don't know it basically means duel input and output with the ability to switch with the press of a button) and AMP along with a fairly decent mic to boot. The thing is, because of its design (6 speakers per ear) and the fact that I used it so often the ear cuffs (on both ends) snapped from the support of the headband more than once. But thanks to some crafty work with glue and small pieces of metal I was able to save them time and time again.

So the new headset that I purchased had to be better than the Medusa's and have a better design all together. After a long session of searching for possible candidates I came across the Astro A40 Audio System which suits all my needs and is a much higher quality product then the Medusa's where. The main reason I purchased the A40 was because of the very powerful Mixamp which supports high (Digital Coaxial, TOSLink) and low (RCA L+R, 3.5) quality input sources, meaning I can have more than one input plugged in at once and the system will automatically change the source over once a connection is found. Using high quality inputs also means the Mixamp will be able to replicate Dolby Digital surround sound, which takes a strane off the headsets weight.

That being said the A40 headset looks and feels great with the design of the headset having a major focus, the weight of the ear-cuffs are taken off from the bands and replaces by plastic cylinders which house the cabling for the cuffs. The cuffs themselves fit around my ears very nicely unlike the Medusa's cuffs which sat on top, they also curve under the ear and have a option to have an open or a closed cover (open meaning that you can hear outside sources) which is a simple as removing the cover.

The only problems I have encountered with the A40 system is in the Mixamp. Because of the ability to have the Mixamp powered by batteries (4XAA) if you don't have any placed in the system the electronic circuit will not be complete making a cracking noise from you mic over any VOIP service. A pain but a simple fix none-the-less just throw in a couple of rechargeable AA's and your good to go. The other personal problem I have with the system is that you cannot have two inputs simultaneous into the Mixamp as one will overwrite the other, I would assume a splitter would work for that but that's just a pain.

In the end it's a great system, a little on the costly side of things all up $339AUD plus $69AUD for shipping and $49AUD for the high quality cables but for myself personally that cost will soon cover itself with the amount of use I will get from it.

0 comments by Henley on Jul 31st, 2009 digg this super bookmark

I hate having to change things, as a video editor once I have my patterns locked in I like to stay there, content with not having to move on to new things, but the programs I used screamed at me for an update. Fraps for example is a program I use quite often, as it is the main program I use to record content for the site, Fraps was updated recently to include a new codec and higher quality audio and video recording, how could I say no to that?

The problem being that the new audio codec was not supported by Adobe until very recently in fact, it was only supported in the CS4 version of the suite. Since I use CS3 it was apparent that I needed to update that as well, so I stretch the budget and grab the new suite only to find out that all my presets for my animations within Flash don't work with CS4 as the new suite has a different means of motion tweaking. Damn you Adobe! The new animation style itself is really good, just means I have to re-make everything again. Sigh.

So as I write this I'm not a happy chappy, the suite itself is great, lots of new things to play around with, lots of things are different like the normalising options and exporting program within Premiere Pro. It seems now that Adobe has built a dedicated render program I wont have to worry about having Prem Pro open to do the render which is a big plus for my line of work.

I guess all this is basicly like moving house, its always a bitch to do it but in the end your in a new house and that new house rocks. So I guess I'll be happier down the road when I have re-built everything again.

7 comments by Henley on Apr 7th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

As some of you might or might not know, I have a deep burning passion for Dungeon Crawlers, good examples of this are the Diablo series, Etrian Odyssey series, and basically anything CRPG. I tend to overlook most JRPG's though as they tend to have quite a few character stigmas attached, i.e. young boys who look like young girls commanding huge army's filled with veteran adult warriors who at first despise the young boy but then grow to respect him. Yeah I'm sure your all well aware of all that.

Persona 4 on the other hand has two of my favorite gameplay elements combined into one, the above mentioned Dungeon Crawling and a collecting element similar to that of Pokemon only cooler. This is going to be a very difficult thing for me to explain to you all so you're going to have to bear with me. Let's just start from the top shall we?

Persona 4 is a story about a high schooler (whom you can name anything you want) transferring to an isolated town to for a year, only to be swept up in a murder mystery. Someone is throwing people into a different world found within ordinary television sets, where the victim's hidden personal problems will manifest into a shadow. The victim will then have to face there "true feelings" choose to either deny or accept the truth about themselves, denying the existence will enrage the shadow leading to a gruesome death. The perfect crime right? Not really...

Stuck in a TV eh?

Playing as the Protagonist grants you the power of Persona Zero, which in short is the power to control multiple classes of Persona in battle. Persona's in a nutshell are peoples shadows that have been accepted by the victim which the player and his companions can use in battle to fight the shadows of the alternate reality that victims create upon entering the world inside the TV. With great power comes great responsibility meaning it's up to you to save anyone who falls inside. Saving people means you're helping them overcome their problems, and once they accept that they have a problem they too gain the power of Persona and are able to help you save more from the clutches of death.

Saving people is not the only thing you can do to become stronger, you can also create bonds with characters within the game that are both NPC's and PC. Each character has their own Persona Class. Developing bonds with these characters means you can create stronger Persona's that can be used in battle. The higher your social rank with that character the more bonus EXP that Persona Class receives upon creation giving it a boost from the beginning, which grants extra levels and extra skills.

Let's do this!!

So the aim of the game is to create powerful Persona's that will help you in your quest to put an end to the killings in your new home. Now that you all (hopefully) understand the idea of the game let's get into the combat system a little bit. The combat in Persona 4 is turn based; as you attempt to save people within the TV you will fight monsters called Shadows which can make up any Persona Class. These monsters will sometimes have weaknesses to certain elements i.e. weak to fire attacks but strong against ice. The Persona's you create and the Persona's that are assigned to your team mates will also have elemental weaknesses and strengths so the idea is to find the weaknesses of your enemies and exploit them while you protect your teams weaknesses in the process. Exploiting your enemies weaknesses means that character that just attacked can have another turn, if you manage to knock down all enemies you and your team can attack all at once doing massive amounts of damage and in most cases is a finishing move. Keep in mind though your enemies can also do the same to you.

Developing bonds with Playable Characters that you have saved from being killed in the TV allows you to unlock extra non-persona abilities in battle. A really great example of this in action is once you have ranked up the social rank of the character Chie she can do a "galactic punt" which she will kick a non-knocked down enemies out of the arena, this can only happen if another character knocks down an enemy. This is a very powerful move as it kills the enemies she kicks instantly, in one case it was a boss enemy that was killed in 1 move because of this awesome power. So as you can see creating bonds is very important but the game never forces you to create bonds at all.

Chie kicks it up a notch!

The social aspects of Persona 4 involve you managing your time between classes in high school and days off. You are free to spend that time doing whatever you want, working jobs for a little extra coinage, developing bonds with characters by spending time with them and exploring the inside of the TV world. The only time the game really gets stressful is when the time limit is imposed on when you can save people from the TV world. In the town your living in a fog will arrive after several days of rain, which means it will be too late to save the victim (obviously there is quite a lot more to it than that but explaining the specifics will be a massive spoiler so find that one out for yourself :D). You will end up managing your time between developing Persona's and getting combat experience.

Check out my Social Ranks

The last thing I want to mention is the story and the characters personalities. Persona 4 is a complex game but it is also very rewarding as well. The personal stories that the major character go through in this game can be quite sad and do really pull on the heart strings, so you are rewarded with helping characters through these problems and then being able to create powerful Persona's. The storyline of your team as you grow closer together is quite funny, which anyone who enjoys Anime will love. I'm currently in the last leg of the game, and can honestly recommend it to anyone who enjoys long rewarding story based games. Also sorry if you didn't understand anything that was talked about in this review as going any deeper into what everything is and what there meanings are would ruin the experience so if you want to know more. Play the game.

6 comments by Henley on Mar 12th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

There are a few reasons that point to NeoTokyo coming out soon, one of them being that I myself have played the mysterious mod and can comment on how great the entire presentation was (mind you this was going on 5 months since I played it), how great at that point the gameplay was. There is more other reason which only came to me today, by post infact. 

Ed Harrisons fantastic soundtrack for NeoTokyo arrived at my door step today, and it was not just a non-labeled white CD like you would expect but a well presented folding out case that really did shock me with the amount of care and love put into it. With 27 tracks spanning 2 CD's I can honestly say it's worth the pennies to both support the developers and to get your hands on some amazing work. Listening to it now reminds me why a good soundtrack does not disappoint and can only benefit a mod. So you can find more info and place your orders here for Ed's new CD. For now here is a sample track so you can have some idea on what to expect!

3 comments by Henley on Mar 8th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Most linear games have a difficulty that will scale the more you play it; leading up to an encounter that will hopefully have you prepared as far as gameplay knowledge in order to complete it. Games like Half-Life 2 normally do this quite well. It's when a game crosses that very thin line of fun verse arse kicking that we have a problem I like to call the "fuck you" point. This is something that everyone must have experienced in one game or another, it's a point in the game where difficulty escalates way to quickly and you find yourself not enjoying what the designers are asking you to do in order to progress and in most cases you will never play the game ever again.

This is mostly found in RPG's where a significant amount of grinding is needed, which is not so bad; it just means you need to prepare more. Though it is a problem if you have played for going on 10 hours and this is the first real point in a game where everything is kicking your face in. The second place the "fuck you" point is found is in FPS games. The idea having difficulty based on your skill not on a number is fine, and if developers decide that throwing a small army at you as a road block which you will only struggle through is a stupid way of extending playtime.

If you're a mod developer and your reading this, keep that in mind, chances are quite a few people will never give your mod and the experience that it offers a second chance.

2 comments by Henley on Feb 8th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

I happened to visit Game Trailers today and I was greeted by a new Developer Walkthrough on Wanted: Weapons of Fate (which everyone can view here). I though great another game I'm hanging out for as the movie was great and this game looks like it will kick arse! The problem is 30 seconds in the developer is showing his skills at shooting "exploding barrels".... Awesome exploding barrels. Like that has not been done before.

What is it about generic shooters that needs exploding barrels? Does every game that involves shooting need some sort of environmental interaction where the only mean of interaction is from a virtual bullet piercing a tank filled with flammable liquids? God.... Give me something different, give me like Deus Ex environment iteration or Bioshock's. Give me a puzzle that dose not end with barrels exploding. Give me a way to kill my foes without shooting the amazingly well placed hazardous containers. Also while your at it make support for window mode jackasses!

In conclusion exploding barrels are assholes!

6 comments by Henley on Feb 4th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Okay over the last few months I've played some very amazing mods, and they are not just amazing because they are fun, they are amazing because they are a treat to just about every sense we hold dear as gamers. The one thing I want to talk about more then the others is the soundtracks that these mods have. These are unbelievable scores that in my personal opinion rank up quite high with professional scores from big budget movies and games, and the problem is I only notice them once the music is out of the game. And that sucks, why? Because the music compliments the gameplay and the art directions so much that together as a whole package it only improves the game itself.

Am I just not paying attention to the music? I notice it but it never seems to stand out, I realised this after playing The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex which involves quite a bit of walking around, needless to say the down time is when the music really stands out because I'm currently not preoccupied with other things. Another example is when I play Project Reality for Battlefield 2 the music only plays during the times when your accessing the menu and loading a map. During the time when I'm in the menu I don't notice the music but during the loading screen its a different story.

I like to think of myself as an average gamer who is in a position to let people know about my thoughts on things (ie the Podcast work I do), and I hope I'm not the only one who feels that the music in mods are being almost waisted, sure a good score helps the overall package but its not needed, you can make a mod without music yet it will remain the same. There must be a better way to show off the music within a mod, make the music apart of the game not just a side dish.

2 comments by Henley on Jan 30th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Yep it was recently the 30th of January, which is a date. Amazing. But some shit happened on that day which I am currently writing this blog about. Awesome. So on with the blog. First up my new pc arrived, it came in 2 boxes, 1 had the pc, all shiny, black and awesome. The other box contained all the other boxes that the parts originally came in.

I shall never order a PC to be built from Umart ever again... Why you ask? Because they suck, they screwed up my order so much. You would think using there systems on there website that they would be able to read it and say "Okay lets email this guy all the info he needs in order to make a direct payment and get this pc out as quickly as possible because its clear here in the note section that he needs this for work". But no. Life dose not work that way when you order a pc.

So I phone these guys up about a week before hand and ask them about payment, the guy I was talking too sounded like he didn't care about anything I said so it was like talking to a brick wall, a dense one at that. So I rang up the next day after I followed his crappy instructions, talked to someone else, they told me what I needed to hear and said the other guy was a douche (his words not mine). So 3 days after I ordered the PC I was finally able to pay for it, the ETA at this point was 1 week.

3 Days before the PC was supposed to arrive I call them to see how its coming, and I'm greeted with this "Oh we don't have your case that you wanted, so we are waiting for it to arrive before we build and test it". Great why didn't these guys just say this when I ordered this PC (more importantly why didn't the web sites order form tell me)? So I tell them to use a more expensive case instead and I'll just pay the difference (I picked the Antec P182 for an extra $94 AUD), he said sure and we were back in business. So I pay by direct deposit and it should take 2 days with an email the day before to confirm the extra payment. The next day came but no email (great). After some ringing around it turns out that it was some banking website fuckup, so I ring Umart again and the phone was answered by some lady who can barely speak English, I explain my problem and ask if I can pay by credit card so the PC can be sent out the same day, she says yes and says that they will deliver it today. It turns out that what she said really means "We will deliver it to the deliverers who will delivered it the next day". If I ever own a computer shop, everyone will speak English, so this shit never happens. Screw you Umart.

Now the pc itself is fantastic, so fast. I'm to hungover from last night's party with my old Uni mates to type any more today. I'll end this with some photos from the pub. Enjoy.

4 comments by Henley on Jan 18th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Just like in the end of terminator where the robot slowly sinks into the liquid metal, my current rig is slowly dying. Yes its true the very same pc that has survived through Uni, a bad break up, a death in the family and countless new apartments and lan games is dying away. Its a sad sad day for myself and all those effected by its overall leetness (I cant really think of anyone). But in it's place will be a better, more awesome pc and right now I will go through and explain why I'm picking the parts that will make up Ripper number 2 (yeah yeah I called it Ripper so what). Note that these are the parts I feel comfortable talking about without sounding like I know nothing. I'm not a hardware junkie, to me if something works for what I need it to be then I'm all for it.

Alrighty first just have a look at that thing right there, just look... Does it not look like it will freakin fly away if its not bolted down once it recieves power? Yeah I know crazy right? Anyways this beast is not the best in the pack but there is only 3 cards right now that can topple this thing. And the proof is in the benchmark. The reason I choose this card say over the GeForce GTX 260 was because of the price, I could pay an extra $150 for 6 extra FPS, and it could be noiser. So I think that alone justifies my purchase.

With my focus mostly on gaming and rendering both video and images I would be crazy not to get a Quad Core. That means 4 little beasts doing my bidding for everything my pc does. Which means faster everything. Granted that most PC games don't take advantage of the amazing stuff this thing can do (keeping to 2 processors only instead of 4) but with only a slight drop in FPS for gaming means a massive increase for production of renders. And I'm all for that!

This case may not look awesome, but the functionality outweighs the looks and to me that is all that matters. One problem I'm faced with all the time is hard drives. Either I'm running out of virtual space or I don't have any room to install any more, so I'm forced down the external road. But with this case swapping HDD's is easy and tooless. Which is great!

And now the full spec's for all those who care:

• Intel CORE 2 Q6600/2.4Ghz/2x4MB/1066FSB/LGA775
• Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L P45+ICH10 DDR2 1200 1600MHz PCI-E 2.0 SATAII GLAN 8Ch Audio ATX Ultra Durable
• G.Skill DDR2 4G(2x2G)PC6400 800Mhz(F2-6400CL4D-4GBHK)
• Western Digital 750G SATAII 7200 rpm HDD Green Power(WD7500AACS)
• MSI ATI Radeon R4850 OC 512M DDR3 HDMI D-DVI-I HDTV
• LG GGC-H20L Blue Ray Combo OEM
• Coolermaster RC-690-KWN1 690 Case Black with Side Window(NO PSU)
• Corsair HX-620 ATX Power Supply 120mm fan  Dual PCI-E Graphics Card Connector 8 SATA Connectors

All in all the whole thing will cost just under $1500 AUD which is not bad. After I receive the pc, I'll be running some benchmarks to see how great (or not so great) my latest venture will run.