Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo revisited

I had only one purpose for revisiting the demo and that was to get the Chakram Launcher for Mass Effect 3.  I went about downloading the demo but the game refused to log me into Origin.  Fortunately, I found a fix here.  Go to Documents then My Games then Reckoning and look for the personal.ini file.  Edit the file and remove blaze_email=your@email.com.  Then restart the game.  It should all be fine.

To get the Chakram Launcher, play the demo and until you speak with the fateweaver in the overworld.  The demo will tell you that you have a 45 minute window to play the game.  Finish that 45 minutes and you'll receive the DLC.

Mass Effect: The K-Pop Space Diva Edition

So finally, I've cleaned up May Lee Shepard's text and re-uploaded it.  Read it here!

Mass Effect 3, Origin Cloud and Wine

So, I had installed Mass Effect 3 on my Windows Vista laptop and also on my Wine Linux box and I decided to use Origin cloud to sync up everything so I could play on the go on the laptop and at the Linux box when I'm around.  On Vista, it picked up my Mass Effect 3 saves from Wine, no problem.  Apparently, I had issues when I was syncing my saves back to the Wine box.  At first, I simply chalked it up to Wine's own deficiencies and moved on.  When I went around to copying my saves from the Vista laptop to my Wine box however, I noticed that all the files touched by Origin's cloud save on Wine had 000 file permissions.  I also checked that the files were of the same size as the Vista files I copied.

I infer that this means the cloud sync actually worked but only the file permissions were goofed up.  Next time, I will try to simply chmod this.  As an additional side note, cloud syncing on Wine only works when launching Mass Effect 3 since Origin in Wine cannot detect when the game is finished running to sync back the progress.  The only way around this is to exit Origin, then restart again.

Mass Effect 3: Multiplayer Error

I had one nasty instance where when I loaded the multiplayer on Mass Effect 3 PC version, the game froze when switching character classes.  After I forcibly killed the process and restarted the game, everytime I went to multiplayer, the game would load forever.  I tried to repair the install but that didn't work.

The only fix that I could do was pull out my backup install from an external hard disk and replace the installed copy with that backup.  I was then able to fire up the game and play multiplayer.  Note that the game did crash once after this replacement when selecting multiplayer.  Restarting the game went into multiplayer just fine though.

Wine-ing About Everything

So, the past few weeks of using Wine was interesting to say the least.  I had not realized how big this post was going to be until it was all done, so I'm putting this all after the jump!

May Lee Shepard

Reposted here.

Having left the wikia community.  The profile is gone.  I may re-post it here some day.

I had fun doing this in the Mass Effect wikia.  Hope you enjoy this profile.

Random Thoughts: Linux stuff

I've had to deal with some Oracle apps I've downloaded the other day and I needed JDK which I normally do not like to install.  I ended up installing openjdk7-jdk (don't use jre), and I needed to figure out where the Java path is.  It's in /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-xxx/.

The linux command pstree -p is good at showing a list of commands running.  I had a problem with apt-get updating packages when it got stuck on flash.  Killing package-data-do got it sorted.

Finally, I loved Mass Effect 3.  Great game!

Mass Effect 3's Endings

Yes, I'm late to the party.  Chances are, people have moved on and many others were angry.  With limited exposure to the Mass Effect series, I looked into the original cut endings on Youtube and remembered how random it all looked and felt.  It just ended and there was little of anything in it.  It was so unsatisfying, but I also pointed out that without the actual journey, the ending would be likely meaningless.  BioWare eventually came out with the Extended Cut release and the endings there were much lengthier and more effectively rounded out the ending.  It was much better when compared to the original cut, but without the journey, it would be difficult to understand the experience.

Random Thoughts: New Super Mario Bros. U and other stuff

Last night, I used the Luigi Guide on the Final Battle and I could not wait to get through this agonizing experience.  All through my time playing this game, I've felt more and more angered by this game.  It's drudgery.  It's a total drag to play.  It's unfortunately the game my nephew wants me to play.  Whoever thought of the Luigi Guide should be shot.  The idea of making players progress by seeing some scripted play through just downright sucks.  Allowing players to take control right after the segment they got stuck only partially alleviates my grievances of this concept.  I would have preferred a level having dynamically set difficulty configurations than this.  Make the player go through the level and feel like they accomplished something.  I hope never to have to play this game ever again.

Sleeping Dogs seems OK.  The game's mission structure is quite unimaginative and sometimes, just downright lousy.  It's unforgiving difficulty setting also makes for a crazy time for players, but so far, it's been kinder to me for some reason.  Unfortunately, the story just doesn't feel like a Hong Kong film.  The lines and writing feels more like Western games like GTA and Mafia than something from an Ekin Cheng triad movie.

Saints Row IV is HILARIOUS!!!  Enough said.

Mass Effect 3 has been an awesome, awesome ride.  Somehow, playing the Wii U version doesn't feel less or lacking.  Sure there are some small bits and pieces that aren't there, but they aren't significant enough to make me angry.  Great game on Wii U.  Please BioWare.  Please put Mass Effect 1, 2 and all the DLCs on Wii U.  Please.

Random Thoughts: Wii U and the Thomson Tablet

I find myself surprised at how addictive Mass Effect 3's multiplayer is.  The singleplayer story has been a great ride, but I had no plans on ever dabbling on the multiplayer part.  It seems to be very well designed in that it makes the game very hard to put down.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about New Super Mario Bros. U.

For a Mario game, I found myself slowly loathing the game the farther I got into the game.  The levels turn into a total drag to play and the Luigi Super Guide is just not a fun way of pushing the game forward when you've hit your limit.  Alas, my nephew loves the game, so I am forced to tolerate this drivel of a game.

Just got a new Android tablet called Thomson M6.  Here's some pics of the box.

Specifications

Thomson M6

It seems to be a Chinese OEM tablet released in Australia and New Zealand.  After all, how else can the NZ Herald Times app be preinstalled in this?  For a cheap 7" tablet, I found the fact it was dual core very attractive.  The tablet is plenty zippy and it also comes with Google Play Store.  Strangely, it didn't have Google Play Services which seems to be required for apps like Youtube.  You can install it via Play Store though so it shouldn't be much of an issue.

There are two main downsides to this tablet.  First is the screen.  The touch is just plain weird as it sometimes registers incorrect gestures.  Dragging icons seems to be very difficult on this tablet.  The LCD screen also suffers from colour loss when viewed from an angle.  Truly not one of its shining moments.  The second is the battery life which really sucks up fast.

Over all, it seems to be okay.  Doesn't hit all the bells, but for a cheap price tag, that is to be expected.