Multiple running instances of nm-applet! OH NOES!!!

I've always had the notion that wifi support on Linux just plain sucks. And perhaps that's because the few times I have tried to make it work has turned into a tedious exercise of setting SSIDs, whatever keys and what not, not to mention the multitude of security options from WEP to WPA. I've also never particularly bothered with trying to improve my wifi solution on Xubuntu Gutsy install in my Acer Aspire 5920g laptop. That was until yesterday...

The weather yesterday was extremely terrible and with power failures and intermittent internet connectivity issues, I had a chat with a co-worker on how his experience was with wifi and Ubuntu. And he was being straight serious that it was a very painless affair. That perhaps got me thinking of what the bloody hell I was doing with my Xubuntu. I thought it was worth a try to dive in and see what was happening.

I remember having installed wifi-radar a while back as it was, I made a mental note of, the only way I could check for existing wifi hot spots. My friend never had a look at what his Ubuntu was using but after a short inspection he said I should be using NetworkManager.

What's strange is that I already have that running and wifi has always been a nightmare. Checking a bit further, I had noticed from Ubuntu documentation that my wireless setting did not have roaming enabled. And while this was happening, I had tried to manually run NetworkManager from commandline (Mental note: a BIG no-no! That's why this article is entitled like that).

After a reboot, I had found out that I had managed to get the wifi to spot nearby hot spots and connect to my brother's WEP-secured hot spot. I also remembered at that point I had foolishly disabled roaming when I freshly installed Xubuntu. That was real sweet to know, except I had two instances of nm-applet running (you know, the network icon on your system tray!).

After much trouble, I had realized two things. Apart from Gnome having its own startup sequence, XFCE storing my desktop sessions played a part in duplicating nm-applet. Second was that when I ran NetworkManager, it inadvertently let XFCE make a note that I needed to have it running. So, while Gnome would launch the nm-applet as planned, XFCE would start its own. Sweet to know how these problems happen.

In case anyone wonders how to fix that, check your ~/.cache/sessions/xfce4-session-* files. Open them and remove nm-applet entries inside. Save and log out without saving your session.
When you login, you should have only one running nm-applet instance (the one gnome starts).

Alright, that's all for now.

Notice on Gutsy Gibbon Users on Apt-Get Repositories

This is a short note. As we all know, Ubuntu has dropped support for Gutsy Gibbon. As we all know, at that point, your Synaptic will also stop operating. Open your /etc/apt/sources.list and update the Ubuntu URLs to point to: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com.

Here's a sample:
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted

This works for all other older, no longer supported releases of Ubuntu. Bear in mind though, if you want to upgrade distributions, you may have to change the url back to the URLs Ubuntu uses for their support distributions.

Just thought I'd just put that reminder out there.

Apple eMac and Ubuntu: The Journey into the New World

The Journey into the New World

For many years, Linux has been a part of my computing world and it has been almost impossible to part with it. It is one of the most versatile and customizable operating systems I have ever had the pleasure of using. For sure the Linux user base is not as dominant as other operating systems, but the one thing I have learned through years is that we Linux users have been strong as an online community. This community allows us to roll up our sleeves and solve the challenges in Linux as we encounter them, but never are we alone, nor are we without the knowledge to undertake that challenge.

Before you read on, I would like to remind you this is a real lengthy account of what mostly, I hope, transpired. If you are just looking for help, that comes at the end of this sobby and long, drawn out boring article. Check the Full Monty section.

All it takes is a little push...

Most people who hear Linux often view it as an enigma. A mysterious unknown world that will only be useful to a niche audience. Perhaps there is truth in that criticism, but if you have someone to guide you through this journey, you may find yourself discovering a new and interesting world unfold before you. Some may never see Linux as an option to their personal computing, but you will never know if you never even try. And to try and see it for yourself, sometimes all it really takes is a little push.

I often visit Mixed Martial Arts forums to read view points and get into the countless debates on who is king of the hill and who is king nothing, but what I did not expect was to find someone who wanted to try Linux. Someone who wanted to get his feet wet. For reasons only he knows, he has taken that little push towards a new experience.

I could not say no to a plea for help on embarking this sojourn. How could I ever say no to it? To share, and to give someone a chance to learn a new platform, is one of the things that gives me satisfaction. Soon I realize though, as with all things in life, that this would not be an entirely familiar and ordinary affair...

The journey begins...

Thus our correspondence began. Introducing people to Linux is never a straightforward affair, even more so when all you know about the person is a faceless alias. And unlike helping someone who knows and already has gotten his first leap into Linux, throwing a bone is often never enough.

This person, who fondly calls himself 'Simple Jack', has started to give me the details of what he wanted to achieve. As it turns out, Simple Jack had wanted to dual boot his old Apple eMac with Ubuntu. Since I have never really owned anything Apple-related I knew it was going to be an interesting journey for the both of us. But was he biting off more than he can chew? Half of me was convinced that he may not get it done, the other half, was more hopeful. One thing was certain, deep down in my gut, I was sure as hell going to bloody try and help.

For the most part, installing Linux on the normal x86 architecture has been a streamlined and mostly smooth affair, and I was completely expecting powerpc architectures. And as if I needed a hard gut shot as a reminder, it was anything but that.

I had done a few light readings and he had burnt the PowerPC release of Intrepid Ibex. There, the first obstacle had made itself known. The bloody disc would not even boot! To make matters worse, I could not see what was actually happening save for descriptions Jack had thrown through forum private messages roughly at fifteen to twenty minute intervals. If this was our means of communication, I had hopelessly thought that by the time we get the bloody disc installed, an asteroid would have hit the Earth.

The remarkable thing I realized was that while Jack was seemingly always in his self-deprecating mode, this setback did little to put him down. I was going to do my own research, but he was more than willing to go the extra mile and do his homework (Bravo Simple Jack!). As the saying goes, it does take two to tango.

Our initial setback had taken us from one Ubuntu powerpc Desktop CD to a multitude of live discs all of which turned out to be fantastic failures. As he and I quickly realized, the powerpc machines that Apple concocted had been quite the wild beast, as if Apple had devised it to run amok if it had an iota of non-Apple operating systems.

The initial success...

From readings we had pinned our hopes on Feisty Fawn, ye old Ubuntu release and first of the non-official PowerPC builds by Ubuntu, I think. Thankfully, we had upgraded our communication channels to something more instant (ahem, instant messengers). At that point in time, I had already started thinking of alternatives to Ubuntu and the only one that came to mind was Yellow Dog Linux. It was an unfamiliar release to me, but if there was a last ditch effort, it was going to be from blokes who had been building Linux releases on PowerPC platforms.

Before I delved deeper into that, Jack had reported something that was a little different from the norm I was quickly getting accustomed to. Feisty did boot. And for a disc image that was bloody hell difficult to find, it was well worth this first tiny ray of light!

I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and that it had not been a train all along. Once Feisty booted, I was back into more familiar grounds. But that machine I was beginning to think of as Apple's Little Devil had more in store for us. The next problem was the graphics display.

From early readings, I had come to note that these are known issues and as Jack's Apple folks mentioned, X and the Mac hardware have always had their share of grief and conflict. We spent at least a few days walking through Linux commandline debugging work, hoping to manually hack that xorg.conf. As usual that little devil refused to give in. I was also realizing that finding articles talking about Apple eMacs and Linux was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Houston! We have a desktop... sort of...

I advised Jack to start asking around for help on the Mac communities he knew. If we were going to resolve this, it was likely to come from someone who knows the hardware more intimately. While we had several links to sample xorg.conf files that supposedly should have worked, none have been that silver bullet I had hoped, and manually dictating what to write on the xorg.conf was in and in itself a time leech sucking away at the short number of hours we had in common from the dreadful timezone differences. At the very least he had now become accustomed to the often feared by the ignorant Linux terminal. So much for being the 'Linux for Humans'.

The response when we laid out our cards before his Mac folks had been interesting. When one of them claimed one of the files looked good, I took a thorough look back at the links and fingered the one that made the most sense.

We were going to have another go at this thing, and I was a bit confident it would work. Jack, who to this day I wonder if he ever gets enough sleep, had enthusiastically reported the second victory we garnered over Apple's little devil. But this would not be an entirely smooth one though.

In many instances, the desktop would freeze upon start up which at first boggled me. Thankfully, the two brief and at that time, not very helpful Ubuntu articles on the PowerPC releases had shown their usefulness. We had managed to pin down our issue as the Linux Enlightened Sound Daemon, which did nothing to enlighten our desktop. Worse, it made sure all we had was a very dull brown screen. To be fair, Ubuntu desktops have always been very brown!

The little devil's last stand...

Oh but the little devil for sure did not like the progress we had made through the week's toils. I thought we had been through the worst but the devil had one final trick up its sleeve.

After getting the desktop up via Live CD, we had started talking of how to go about installing Linux. Jack did not like losing the OS X install, but I did not see any other option as repartitioning the disks was not going to save his Tiger. He was adamant about keeping it and I thought maybe there was something that could be done. Boot camp certainly achieved that when Apple decided to open its gates to other popular operating systems.

As we went through a number of articles and readings the name Intel Macs were starting to irritate Jack, as they were blessed with the Boot Camp capabilities. All the Mac-centric articles on non-destructive repartitioning I have come across had been for these machines that, in my opinion, had helped in making powerpc architecture such a neglected platform on Ubuntu and most other popular Linux releases for that matter.

Finally, we had an agreement. The Tiger must die. Blowing the partitions to kingdom come has always been easy, but trying to set the partitions up for our final step into this install had, expectedly, been many times more complicated.

I was not familiar with the means of which Ubuntu needed to boot into Apple hardware. We had learned, a tad bit late if I may add, that not only was the partition editor in the Tiger Install disc a piece of garbage, but also that we had to work with it and at the same time, figure out what sort of setup Ubuntu would deem usable. It was a battle long drawn out and it was back and forth with articles and different things. So close, yet so far.

While I had learned a few things about what Ubuntu needed, the manual partitioning that I liked to use so much was not cooperative. For some reason, it kept babbling about Apple_Bootloader of which I had no clue. It put us on a merry chase and one that I did not always know where we were heading.

The finale...

I would suppose that at the end of things, Jack had to use a different approach than what I normally like doing. The benefits of thinking outside of the box and having a person not afraid to pull that trigger. Instead of doing that bloody manual install that I kept harping about, Jack had gone through Ubuntu's guided install (of course, after OS X was reinstalled with a smaller partition), which at that point I was not betting any eggs on noting the success rate we had with Ubuntu. But then like magic, the install went through and we had two OS installs on the Apple eMac. It was not the result I had expected, but this entire journey the both of us had embarked had proven to be at the very least interesting and definitely an educational experience for both of us.

From there, I knew there were going to be issues with Ubuntu, especially since it is a fairly out of date version, but it was going to be a more familiar battleground. I firmly believe we had finally mastered that wily little devil. And I think at that point it would be more straightforward to advise what to do.

For Jack, he seems to like Ubuntu. There are a few nagging things but this is just the first step into Linux. I can only hope it proves to be a viable platform for him to be productive and at the same time learn more and have fun with it.

Had I not helped, we may not have achieved this goal, but as important as having a community that helps in Linux there was another important element to this. That is having someone willing to learn.

As a side comment, for a machine noted to have been under the so-called 'New World Macs', it sure seemed to be pretty old, and pretty stubborn. Like a grumpy old man. Take that you little devil!

So why did I have to read all this?

Actually, I do not think you needed to. But if you did, a trite thank you and at the same time an apology for being such a time vampire. The article you just read was really a personal rambling of sort. One that I like to do once in a while. But the true purpose of the writing is just around the corner.

The Full Monty

I have always wanted to use that phrase. And now, you will be spared of the colourful words, at least I try to make it sound like. Let us go through the hardware:

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: eMac

Machine Model: PowerMac4,4

CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)

Number Of CPUs: 1

CPU Speed: 700 MHz

L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB

Memory: 640 MB

Bus Speed: 100 MHz

Boot ROM Version: 4.4.0f1

eMac Display:

NVIDIA GeForce2 MX

Chipset Model: GeForce2 MX

Type: i2c

Bus: AGP

VRAM (total): 32 MB

Device ID: 0x0110

Revision ID: 0x00b2

ROM Revision: 1105.2

Display Type: CRT

Resolution: 1024 x 768 @ 89Hz

Depth: 16-bit Color

Built-in: Yes

Core Image: Not Supported

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

Burning Device - NEC DVD RW ND-3520A

Firmware Revision: 1.04

Interconnect: FireWire

Burn Support: Yes (Vendor Supported)

NOTE: Internal Optical Drive is busted. So we had to use his Firewire Optical Drive.

Hard Disk Capacity: 38.29 GB

Feisty Fawn PowerPC Image Download:

http://mirror.linux.org.au/ubuntu-releases/7.04/?C=M;O=A

Supplemental Readings:

Booting from firewire CD drive:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=320690

Notes on the Graphics Xorg Problems:

Article on xorg.conf: http://www.linux.com/feature/58044

Apple eMac xorg.conf (From the Article Above):

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/georg.koe/XF86Config/XF86Config-4.emac700nvidia.working

NOTE: Be sure to change keyword from "de" to "en" unless you are Deutsch.

Gnome Desktop ESD Problems:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCKnownIssues#Gnome wont load

Specifically, this area:

Sound problems

There is a kernel bug that causes processes play sounds to hang. When Gnome plays its startup sound it hangs. You may hear the first fraction of a second of the sound.

Press CTRL+ALT+F1. Log in at the text terminal, if needed. Type

killall esd

and press enter. Press CTRL+ALT+F7 to return to the desktop. Go to Gnome's Sound Prefs and uncheck the 'ESD' box, this will allow stop the hang in future log ins.

Partitioning Supplemental Reading:

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/powerpc/partition-programs.html

http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/yaboot/doc/mac-fdisk-basics.shtml

Brief walkthrough of what had transpired

I hope this gives you a good idea of what we did and hopefully this will arm you for your own adventure with the Apple eMac.

Booting the Live CD:

1. When you put in Feisty and attempt to boot, you need to do somethings to boot the Live disc using the firewire drive. Of course at that point you need to have the disc in the drive! When the computer is starting hold down command (apple key) +option+o+f and then type the following:

boot fw/node/sbp-2/disk:,\install\yaboot

2. When the LiveCD starts, you will not have a desktop but instead a black screen. To get the terminal, press (and hold) CTRL+ALT+F1

3. We need to kill the esd sound daemon. Type in: $ killall esd

4. Copy the xorg.conf file from the supplemental readings part to /etc/X11/xorg.conf. (You can use wget to download it, or you can type it in its entirety if you're a glutton for pain). $ cp xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

5. We need to restart gdm. Do the following

   1. To stop gdm. $ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

   2. To start gdm. $ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

6. In case there are prompts that pop up, all we want is the desktop, use that to determine any decision it asks from you. I seem to remember something like that. To forcibly go back to the desktop, press CTRL+ALT+F7.

7. The desktop should be up on Live CD.

Partitioning Notes:

We unfortunately did not take enough notes down to definitively say what had happened but we can sort of make some vague guidelines.

1. You need to wipe clean the disk. We used Ubuntu's installer to erase all the partitions.

2. On Apple's disk utility, we create three partitions, one for Apple OS X's swap and then the other partitions for Ubuntu and OS X. By my best guess, it should look like something like this:

• 2.8~ GB swap partition

• 17.7~ GB Apple HFS (for Ubuntu, I think)

• 17.7~ GB Apple HFS (for OS X, I think)

• Bear in mind that by the end of all this we will have two swap partitions, one for Apple OS X and the other for Ubuntu.

3. Install OS X and be sure to select the partitions you are going to use for installing!

4. Install Ubuntu immediately after OS X (To boot from Live CD, check above)

5. Use Ubuntu's Guided Install. It does not seem to like the manual partitioning and we could not get the Apple_Bootloader partition to get recognized. So this was what worked.

6. By the end of the install our disk setup looked like this:

• /dev/hda1 - partition map (31.5 KB)

• /dev/hda2 - (28 KB) - AppleDriver

• /dev/hda3 - (28 KB) - AppleDriver

• /dev/hda4 - (28 KB) - AppleDriverATA

• /dev/hda5 - (28 KB) - AppleDriverATA

• /dev/hda6 - (256 KB) - AppleFW

• /dev/hda7 - (256 KB) - AppleDriverIO

• /dev/hda8 - (256 KB) - ApplePatches

• /dev/hda9 - Apple_Bootstrap (977 KB) --> not created by the OS X installer , maybe by Ubuntu's Guided Install. Required by Yaboot.

• /dev/hda10 - (2.8 GB) HFS --> Apple Swap partition. In OSX, Swap - diskOs10

• /dev/hda11 - Ubuntu install - (17.0 GB) Detected as Apple_UNIX_SVR2

• /dev/hda12 - OS X - (17.6 GB) --> 17.56 GB. In Mac OS X - diskOs12

• /dev/hda13 - swap (806.5 MB) --> Ubuntu's swap. Detected as Apple_UNIX_SVR2

• /dev/hda14 - (128 MB) free

• /dev/hda15 - (8 KB) free

Hopefully, this helps you install Ubuntu on the Apple eMac. If this helped you dual boot, then fantastic! And good luck! Never give up!

Some quick thoughts

I just wanted to drop a few thoughts from an interesting week...

Firstly is the new module I released.  'Nightmares to Dreams' which is in NW Vault.  The aim was to have something roughly playable to be released and that is finally out of the way.  Have not received much of any feedback but I'll let that sit for awhile there while I ponder on what to do next.  I plan to reinstall the NWN toolset into Linux.  I don't like working on Windows.

Second thing to get out of the way is the texture map task my brother keeps wrangling me about.  Hopefully by the end of the week, it'll be finally finished.

Third thing is how I have been indulging a bit on Witcher by reading short stories and watching the Polish serial.  It has been quite interesting and I fairly enjoyed the short stories.  The TV series seems to have some pretty laughable effects but I am still remotely interested in watching it.

Fourth thing is how more videos of Tatsunoko vs Capcom are finally going around and this game is looking like a winner.  One game for the holidays that is for sure.

Lastly, I had a good couple of hours with Tomb Raider Underworld on Wii.  In a word, it's a mess.

Anniversary had a very good control system and she was very agile.  The camera, while not perfect, was something I could adjust to.  The Wii exclusives also made Tomb Raider a much more enjoyable experience.  I have used the flashlight for so many times even if I do not particularly need it.  It was very nice additions and added to the immersion.  

Underworld was a straight up port sprinkled with even less Wii additions.  I am boggled why and how Underworld for the Wii got several steps behind Anniversary.  This game has an atrocious camera system, the motion capture moves makes Lara look like a clumsy lady.  The wall scaling system needs improvements and her acrobatic moves are gone.  One thing I liked about Anniversary was that Lara looked perfectly confident with the leaps she makes.  It makes for an exhilirating piece of acrobatics.  Underworld makes her seem ordinary.  That is not what it should be.  Furthermore, the control scheme seems to have been changed for the worse.  I always liked the nunchuck shake as the action for Lara to throw her grapple.  Now it's the 'B' button.  Less Wii immersion.  The swimming part is also incredibly bland and weak.  Also, there have been multitude of bugs in this game.  One puzzle had me scratching and I decided to exploit physics to solve it.  Hey Eidos/Buzz Monkey, did you playtest this game at all?

What did I like about Underworld?  The idea to use more of the Wii remote speakers.  The sound samples they used have not worked out though.  Sounds more like a broken speaker sound.  The graphics are alright even though I think Lara kind of suffered a bit.

Over all, if I were reviewing Anniversary, I would give the game a solid 8.  Underworld deservedly gets a 5 or a 6.  Granted I have only played the first few levels, that might end up being a bit higher to say, 7, if the changes dramatically make this an awesome game.  I doubt it though.  I am not sure if Buzz Monkey did Tomb Raider Anniversary but I am positive they did Tomb Raider Underworld.  If Buzz Monkey had nothing to do with Anniversary, I would suggest Eidos not to hire them again.

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight put together

After the critically acclaimed Batman Begins ran its course to fairly tepid box office returns, I had always looked forward to what a new Batman flick would be with Nolan at the helm. In my opinion, Batman Begins is pretty difficult to top, where every minute is important and every decision made, whether that is cinematography, to effects has some reason behind it. It is refreshing to see a movie that treats you as a person with a brain and that movie engages you very well.

Fast forward to a few months back, The Dark Knight came as Nolan's second entry into his opus, and while it is definitely a hefty follow up, I have always come to think that Batman Begins was a better movie overall. We have seen so many articles that deal with The Dark Knight as a movie and how it has been the best of 2008, but this article is not about that.

Having watched Batman Begins numerous times, (and making it a point to watch it a day before seeing The Dark Knight in the theater), it is interesting how Nolan's vision of making that film every part linked to Batman Begins without really telegraphing it.

The first striking theme is how Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent are similar but due to different circumstances turn out differently. Harvey Dent was driven to madness when he saw how he had lost Rachel and everything else. Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins was also driven by similar circumstances, with the loss of his parents and the hunger for vengeance. It is thereby an interesting quote in Batman Begins that I think echoes very much what Dent lacked.

Henri Ducard tells Bruce during his time in the mountains, "Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you." Who would have thought that such a line could ever ring so true in The Dark Knight when Harvey Dent feeds into his anger and ultimately let it control his course of downfall. Dent had no social support structure Bruce had during such a pivotal time. If Bruce had not met Ducard and had not been redirected from that path in the prison cells, Bruce would have been truly lost as Ducard said and as Harvey became. Harvey rejected what little help mentally he could have had and found himself directed only by madness, a perverted sense of fairness and the barrel of a gun.

In its definition of villainy, the League of Shadows and the Joker seemingly operate with similar means. The Joker often mentions how man's morality is a joke and that at the end of the day, every man is at heart evil. While the League of Shadows operated under a different rationale, Ras Al Ghul in the final act of Batman Begins mentions "Create enough hunger and everyone becomes a criminal." The League of Shadows had always been in a moral check in society and they have thereby noted how easy it is to fall into criminality. Like the Joker, they intend to create destruction and chaos because of man's evil, although they have different intensions in mind whilst serving that function.

It is also interesting to see Bruce's evolution from the creation of Batman to the man who now has that power and presence in Gotham. In the beginning, Bruce is a troubled soul, guided by his own morals as well as the tutelage of Henri Ducard. As Batman, Bruce channels all that rage and negative energy towards combating and defeating criminality. By the time The Dark Knight unfolds, you sense how Bruce has moved on from the brooding and incredibly hurtful place into one where he now sits more comfortably in his place as an experienced crime fighter. Gone is the psychological pain although he still remembers what drove him to be where he is, and in its place, the yearning to move on from that. The journey from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight that Bruce takes creates that natural progression that Bruce knows why he does it and he also now knows why it has to end at some point for him.

In the final act of The Dark Knight, Bruce realizes the sacrifice he is needed to take to help rid crime in Gotham as the same sacrifice he has done when he embarked on that journey to be Batman. He knows that because of the path he chose, there will not be the path for him to come back to normalcy. That is how Batman Begins ends, and that is, apparently, also how The Dark Knight closes.

Quite a fit for the two movies and I have no doubt that both will create such a strong connection when viewed side-by-side.

Understanding Castlevania Judgment

Castlevania is perhaps one of the longest running game series. It also did not have much of a story aside from a character or troupe embarking on a trip to Wallachia, Transylvania to rid of Dracula who by now has to be recognized as one of the most idiotic villains in the videogame world (How the hell can such a revered figure lose big everytime he is reincarnated every one hundred years?). I have learned from the old days of Castlevania never to take Castlevania stories seriously. They never seem to produce anything substantial even though the writers at Konami think they have something epic going on.

Trudging through the Castlevania games have been a relatively happy one although there are a few Castlevania games I wish to forget. Castlevania 1 was maniacally difficult with Simon possessing such an incompetent jump of which the game was literally filled with jumping sequences. Castlevania 2, my personal favourite, took the series to a different direction and one that I welcome. It has its own problems but frankly, I could care less. There's been quite a few Castlevania games since then and most of them are fairly similar. I have played Castlevania 3, and Bloodlines from the old days, respectable efforts I'll say. But needless to say not different enough to make a very powerful impression except for characters they introduce.

I liked Circle of the Moon but I did not appreciate all that much the "SotN-ish" approach. By the time I played Harmony of Dissonance, I was sick of it. And every game I saw that used that same template, I have skipped. I wanted something desperately different. I had even gone as far as say the brand needs a reboot of sort. Really. It is getting pretty ridiculous with the things they are doing with it. Also, fire your artists, Konami.

Anyhow, Castlevania's journey into the 3D realm has not been a smooth one in comparison to other franchises like Super Mario 64, the Legend of Zelda, and Metroid Prime. Castlevania 64 was a decent game, but it was nothing to write about. When you have a game as tight as Super Mario 64, it is hard to see the things Konami did right with Castlevania 64. I thought a lot of problems of Castlevania 64 had been ironed out with Castlevania Legacy of Darkness, but it is a shame because the game is too late. Castlevania 64 should have been this game and that was not what we got. For all the good things Legacy of Darkness achieved, it was for naught. It was a decent action game, far better than Castlevania 64, but largely went out unnoticed and also was not a strong enough entry to have an impression on gamers.

Fast forward to a few months ago, Konami riding high with Order of Ecclesia (aka yet another SotN-ish game), unveiled the mother of shockers to Castlevania fans (and gamers) all over the world. The Wii Castlevania game is a fighting game. Unlike the rest of the world weeping over this circumstance, I found it to be very good news. I was going to get something different and it is going to get a release on a console I find to be a good system too. Castlevania Judgment was born. The scorn of the many, and apparently the only person defending the game is Igarashi. I'd like to think the day they unveiled Judgment to be the fateful day the game would be doomed to failure. It was not the game rabid fans were expecting, and ultimately, I believe that most of the gamers have already made up their mind about it. Such an unfortunate circumstance, but I applaud Igarashi for trying hard and pushing into very unknown grounds.

Castlevania Judgment released a few weeks ago and I had expected it to get murdered in reviews. It did. Most of the reviews slagged this off, and complained again and again. Castlevania Judgment will largely be seen as a travesty to the series, but I have spent an entire day plowing through the game and I find that I have been largely right to stick my nose through all the bad reviews and try it for myself. For the Wii, reviewers are more often than not the most unreliable source of information. And I have learned to trust my own instincts over games I like and would be interested playing. I always felt that I "got" what Iga wanted to produce.

Let us get something out right now. Castlevania Judgment has one of the most horrible art directions ever. There is no question about that. But that is just a piece of the entire pie. Sure that Eric Lecarde looks horrible in the game, but that should not be what negative reviews are about. They should ultimately be discussing what the game did right, what the game did wrong, and the entire discussion should make sense. Every negative review I read left me with the impression that they approached the game wrong. Think of it like playing Fallout 3 expecting it to be a shoot-fest action game.

That is not to say Judgment has issues because it does, but I happen to see that the issues it has does not greatly deter from what the focal point of the game is. It is not a great game by a long shot, but it is a fairly decent effort from Iga and co.

Castlevania Judgment is a fighting game more of the ilk of Powerstone but tuned to the non-frame counting, combo-system-analyzing folks. You want a full fledged fighting game, go knock on SNK's doorstep. This game is a very nice entry-level fighting game with some of the more complex concepts (guard crush, juggles, combo cancelling) tweaked for a more accessible take on the genre. Each character does not have a whole lot of moves to do and frankly, I like it that way. After a few practice runs on training, you would have figured out some basic strategy for most characters. I had a kick out of some of the combos I was doing, though at times it does feel a bit oversimplified.

The game gives you the option of playing with the Classical Controller, Wii remote nunchuck combination, and the Gamecube Controller. I have only tried the Gamecube controller. It was readily available and I decided to give it a try and it works very splendidly. I definitely do not miss using the Wii remote at all. One of the few Wii games to make me feel that way about the Cube controller.

The character designs, I repeat, are horrible. And I also feel the necessity to reiterate that Konami needs a dose of artist change. In fact, get someone like Alex Ross or Clyde Caldwell to supervise art direction. Missed opportunity also is that the characters are redesigned so drastically that whatever nostalgic effect they were throwing in with the, mind you very awesome soundtrack, is gone. Carmilla looks terrible. Eric Lecarde does not look good either. Grant Dynasty design gets murdered. There is a whole lot more characters that the redesigns get really wrong but I do not need to go through each one.

As I said earlier, the soundtrack is amazing. It still gives me goosebumps listening to the classic ones and playing the games with the songs tuned to the max is not a problem. I feel Konami poured the most work here and it does really show.

The gameplay itself does have issues. Balancing is a problem. Some characters are incredibly cheap while others seem like they do not really belong there. Camera issues do exist here, especially in the heat of the battle and your eyes get lost as to what is actually happening, but it is not insurmountable. In fact, after a while, you get used to it, though it is never really problem-free. The Powerstone style of fighting where you roam free running around the background is an intriguing concept but one that needs more time to develop. It is not that easy to determine distances between items and sometimes it is not easy to face your opponent you are trying to kill.

Lastly, the problem with Castlevania Judgment is one that is handed down from one game to another. The writing is incredibly bad. The dialogs are incredibly stupid. The voice acting is cringing (I switched the voice acting to Japanese so I could not understand a thing they were saying). And lastly, whatever plot Castlevania Judgment ever had is lost inbetween horrible banters from Aeon, and other pointless pre-fight dialogs each character has, most of which do not really make sense unless you are familiar with the Castlevania lore. Entry level? Definitely not an entry-level game from the Castlevania lore point of reference.

There is also multitudes of stuff to do, of which the Castle mode needs a special mention for being a very interesting spin to the already quirky twist Judgment is for the Castlevania series. Castle mode plays a bit like the traditional Castlevania game where you go room to room until you face Dracula. It can get tedious but it is a welcome addition. One problem I see is that there is no real sense of location with the castle as the backgrounds are fairly limited. I would have rather had save points more often than the "save room" style they lifted from the SotN games but well, what the heck. The core game works. It plays fine and there is good fun here, especially if you have the not-so-fanatical fighting gamers around for you to joust with.

I feel Judgment deserves a sequel so as it can really spread its wings and soar. But it will not get the chance. Because everyone had already made up their minds on the game, most of them having not even been able to play it. It is a shame, but Iga should have known the sharks he was going to wade through to get this game out. Me personally, please give it another go, Iga. This is a welcome addition to the series. And I hope gamers keep an open mind and try it. It may not be a game everyone will love, but you will never know if it is from just reading at some media reviewer hacking away at his computer.

Some Thoughts...

I must admit I've not found the inspiration to continue blogging for so long and this post should not be an indication that there will be regular updates. There is little to talk about, which makes a couple of months of activity crammed into a single post a fairly lengthy article.

I have been trying different games and I think we can go directly to that. I was intrigued by this title called 'Culpa Innata'. It is a PC point and click adventure game with a dash of non-linear gameplay sprinkled on it. You're this female cop in this fictional futuristic world and seems off on a personal journey of sorts. I am always up for a good story so I thought I'd pick this up and figure how it fares. As in my previous blog posts, I very much do not like the standard formula for adventure games with developers seemingly hoping to add challenge by squeezing academic mental puzzles into the game. Culpa Innata is no exception. It has some challenges you would normally find beside the 'Tower of Hanoi' and I find that quite frankly rubbish. It does not seem like a very realistic rendition and I hope developers do try a little harder to make for a more believable setting and more believable and playable challenges without turning the game into a mental course quiz. While we are on the subject of puzzles, some of them are so abstract you may need to give up and attempt a trial-and-error style of play, which is so reminiscent of ancient adventure game design. We are already more than a decade older than King's Quest and Legend of Kyrandia. I think us adventure gamers deserve more than being introduced to these kinds of puzzles.

Moving on to other aspects of the title, I wish to touch on its production values. Firstly, the visuals of the game are eye-gougingly terrible. The character models are barely passable and the backdrops are extremely plain. I tend to think that if you cannot produce good production values for the visuals, you ought to try something else. Get creative and try a different presentation, perhaps using a full-blown animation video like what the old Broken Sword games did or perhaps use a graphic novel type cutscene. I would say games several years back like No One Lives Forever 2 can boast of better visuals. Culpa Innata's use of in-game cinematics also do not help its cause to tell its heroine's travails. Character animations are extremely stiff, and the cutscenes lack the punch to deliver the emotional stress of the protagonist. Add to that the very bland soundtrack that coupled with the bland visuals is bound to put you to sleep and you have a title that has some potential but never fully lives up to it, which is a shame.

Culpa Innata is not without its intriguing implementation. Its design for non-linear events make for a fairly good way of making sure players do not experience the same events over. The actions you make have very real consequence over what happens in the course of your game session. Its dialog system, allowing your character to call up her friend for a chat and touching on multiple of the game's plot points is a very good idea as it allows the player explore several insights over the game's progression.

Ultimately, inspite of this, Culpa Innata in the end is just not a title that lives up to expectations. It hobbles around its limitations while making a poor attempt at showing it does have some luster deep within its core. If you choose to make this journey, be warned that you may have to dig deep to find that satisfaction. While perhaps adventure gamers would be very much delighted with Culpa Innata and ignore my complaints, it ultimately shows that the title plays to a narrow niche and that majority of gamers will see its cracks from the word go and probably toss it in the bin, as I have.

After that supreme disappointment, I journeyed to install Neverwinter Nights. Yes, it is an extremely dated title and I was dying to get a game to play on Linux. This game fit the bill pretty nicely, and inspite of age, the game really shows it is an incredible journey. Very good story-telling and the game's production values age pretty well. Of all the three expansions, I have to say that Shadows of Undrentide is the worst, the plot is something I do not particularly care for and the NPC henchmen do not resonate with me. Hordes of the Underdark is the best of the campaigns but it is incredibly unforgiving, giving out very tough challenges and very tough puzzles for players. The kind of roleplay it provides has been lost in this day and age of gaming. Only Bioware seems to understand what it really is. For that I am extremely thankful for Bioware's existence. Unfortunately, it seems like NWN is the final Linux entry in Bioware's portfolio of great titles. Atari is not a Linux-friendly publisher and I do not think EA is.

Speaking of Linux friendliness, over at Phoronix, I found a funny story where a poster mailed EA asking where he could find the Medal of Honor Allied Assault Linux port (it exists here). EA's personnel had a very interesting quote:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

The minimum required specifications for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Spearhead are as follows:

* Windows XP, ME, 98, 95 and 2000 (Windows 2000 Server and NT are not supported)
* 450 MHz processor
* 128 MB RAM
o 256 MB for Windows XP and Windows 2000
* CD/DVD-Rom Speed: 8x
* At least 1.2 GB of hard drive space
* Sound: DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card
* Keyboard
* MS compatible Mouse
* A video card with at least 16 MB of video RAM with DirectX 8.0 compatible driver and one of the supported chipsets.

Supported video cards:

* Nvidia Riva TNT or Higher
* ATI Rage 128 or Higher
* PowerVR Kyro

If you need any further assistance regarding your question, please let us know by updating this incident.

Link to actual post is here.

Perhaps this is a clear indication that the new owners of Bioware will not even consider Linux a platform even though they did announce they were doing Mac ports of their Windows titles. Even with that, it is certainly a funny scenario.

While we are on the subject of Linux games, what about Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux taking an extremely long time to get released. Ryan Gordon had released teasers on it but there has not been much visible progress other than that. Hopefully they sort out those proprietary software libraries keeping it from release. Linux gamers need decent Linux games.

Over on the Wii side of gaming I got to play Ferrari Challenge and it has been quite a good product. It has a very serious and solid racing engine coupled with some pretty visuals to boot. It is nothing close to high-definition, but why buy the Wii if you are hoping for that? As a sim racing gamer, I have been hoping for something like this on the Wii for a very, very long time and no, Need for Speed does not do it. The AI is incredibly terrible in this game. Your opponents seem to run on rails and never really react to your car's presence. That is a shame, but I have seen few games do it right.

Perhaps what is most baffling with Ferrari Challenge is that they have a pretty moronic controller setup on Wii. I remember Bruno Senna remarking how he prefers a controller or steering wheel over the Wii remote, but I'd say he ought to try playing other racers on Wii and see how the controls stack up there. Eutechnyx's control setup has been the worst I have ever seen on a Wii title and the motion sensing code is not up to EA's efforts. Wii games need to have some leeway on controls because different gamers move differently. Ferrari Challenge does not offer that customizability on the controls and that is just common sense. I cannot believe they play-tested the controls and passed it as playable. Control issues aside, the racing is very good as is the sensation of speed. Any sim racing Wii owner should have this title, as these kinds of title on the Wii are far and few inbetween.

Last game is an interesting journey of sorts. I played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on DS, Wii and a tad bit on Xbox 360. First of all, it goes without saying that the Xbox 360 version boasts the most incredible visuals among the three. There are a lot of background interaction and lots of special effects that go into this title which makes for a very good visual show. However, I found the gameplay to be severely lacking. In terms of gameplay I found my home on the Wii version especially when you and your opponent's lightsabers lock and having to twist the remote to win the joust. After a while of playing with the Wii version, you get engrossed and simply the visuals do not matter anymore. I can forget Xbox 360's wow visuals in place for what I believe is the definitive way of playing a 'Lightsaber game' or sorts. Both the Wii and the Xbox 360 versions suffer from similar things though, and that is perhaps that the game levels are simply too long and tedious. That right balance of gameplay and length is what I found on the DS game. The gameplay is solid with the touch panels being slid to produce different moves is pretty good and I am at awe with nSpace's efforts as of late, pushing the DS to its absolute limit while capturing the essence of what its brethren's games are (Look at their Call of Duty 4 on DS and this one). Force Unleashed on the DS has that right balance of difficulty and the gameplay to keep me going back to it. Also interestingly, because the voice acting and 3d model acting is just not good on both the Wii and Xbox 360 game, I like the way the DS version handles the story telling, which is through plain text. That leaves so much to the imagination and I get a kick out of seeing the scene much cooler than what the console games do.

My verdict for Force Unleashed is fairly straight forward, despite its hardware limitations, the DS is the best of the versions. It has some very impressive visuals for a DS title and it handles everything very solidly while never really frustrating the player. The Wii version takes second place for the very engrossing gameplay that I prefer over Xbox 360's visuals. The Xbox 360 version is a solid title, but I do not agree with using the conventional controller on this game. It needs that much more now.

I have been busy with Neveredit, which is an open source NWN editor for Linux and Mac (and Windows). My main objective has been on this are:

1. Dusting off my OpenGL coding which has taken a very big degradation, the last time I have coded on it has been at least five years ago. Coupled that with forgetting some of the math concepts and I have had a much harder time dealing with it.
2. Second is to learn Python which is an interesting and easy to learn language. I am not a master by any stretch of the imagination, but I can work my way in the code.
3. To have an editor available for us Linux folks (Peter would perhaps lean on Macs instead. :)). It has been fairly frustrating to see that the only way I can get to use the toolset is through Wine. I try to avoid Wine when possible so I hope this project gives us some options.
   

The code is pretty complex and I have not had a good handle on it yet, but I have managed to iron out some graphics issues and some map issues. It has been a very interesting journey thus far and I have many, many thanks to extend to Peter Gorniak for his help and support.

As part of that work, I have delved deeper into NWN Toolset, writing a short module though it is surprisingly still a large undertaking. The story is mostly done on a general note and I have just been quite busy going through the module's most critical scenes first to get something functional. It's very interesting in that it is a very good exercise in game development, in terms of designing the level and how you would go about telling the story. The NWN scripting language is very much reminiscent of C and that is a very good thing for sure. Sometimes, it feels like a strange cross between C and other scripting languages such as TCL or Python.

Well, that is all I have to say as of the moment. Pretty lengthy blog post and I am not sure when the next update will come. When I feel like it, that is what I can say.