Inbetween slacking off and procrastinating from doing Corporate Financial Management homework, I jumped onto Impulse just to have a look around and see if there was an update or anything. Upon browsing to the My Desktop tab I noticed a free trial for ObjectDock. Seeing that my desktop was a complete mess and I was in the middle of making an attempt to make my PC look as new-fangled and cool as possible I decided to give it a try. After downloading it and mucking around with the themes and set...

Another case of the customer knows best. Recently you may have heard about how a intrusive form of copy protection was going to be included with Mass Effect and Spore that constantly connected to the internet (at the rate of every 10 days) just to check your serial was valid (with no check = no play). There was a huge uproar as a consequence, with many potential buyers saying that they would just simply not buy their title (or even pirate it on purpose) just to get rid of this major intrusion...

As the more attentive might notice, I have changed the version number of my mod from v0.3 to v1.0. This was a decision I made a while back (but I forgot my self-decided version change before writing the previous developer diary ). Reason for the version change was simply because to reflect the fact that my mod releases aren't really beta (they are throughly tested for skirmish / online use) with the only potential beta area being the single-player campaign which is untested. Also, the mod a...

Today marked the first day I spent on furthering development on my mod for World in Conflict for some time. I was forced to put it aside for some time because of university and lack of personal time in general. Now that I have some time to myself again I figured why not dedicate some of that to Realmod once again. The World in Conflict mod kit. Its what makes it all happen.   Since it was a while since I last worked on my mod, I decided to conduct a reevaluation of things and id...

Today marked the day I finally made use of Stardock's new digital distribution system Impulse. I purchased the second expansion pack to Gal Civ 2 and decided rather than using Stardock's website as I have in the past I would do it through Impulse. All I can say was the process was as smooth as can be. Once I got my payment sorted the game was instantly recognised by Impulse and I was able to start downloading it instantly. Even the serial and relevant registration info was automatically fil...

  As fantastic as Company of Heroes is, one must always be on the lookout for modifications which provide a different or even more fun experience.     A squad of fallschrimjager move up the road covered by armour and artillery.   Normandy 44 is one such mod. It has been around for quite sometime now (with previous releases on the original Company of Heroes). The latest version for Opposing Fronts incorporates the new game elements as well as being a slight ...

I've never been one for serious racing games. I guess its mainly because its hard to enjoy them using a keyboard on a PC, and the console systems I own are all Nintendo which means I don't really have a chance to play them there either. Then for some reason I had the desire to try and play some more racing games. Starting with Trackmania Nations Forever, I soon desired to try something a little more realistic. Soon after purchasing my X360 wireless controller for windows (since I had some exp...

Recently I noticed that there was a new release for Trackmania Nations (the free version of Trackmania that people all over the world play). This new version is supposedly new and improved, and integrates Trackmania United (the retail release) and Trackmania Nations (the free release) into one. First of all, you might ask what is this game? Trackmania is a game that involves you driving cars on surreal tracks (kinda like slot car racing except you can steer). Your car travels quite fast, an...

Lately something has been bothering me immensly with Company of Heroes (expansion Opposing Fronts included). What is wrong you might ask? Well as you probably already know, Company of Heroes is a real-time strategy game set in WWII developed by Relic Entertainment. It features highly-realistic graphics and some really nice tactical gameplay (including a dynamic cover system for infantry, and different pentration ratings for vehicles). The game has a really decent campaign with some nice...

Just thought I'd let everyone know of my little weekend project I have. Its called Realmod, a modification I have been developing for the past few months that has been enjoying reasonable success on the World in Conflict modding forums. This modification basically aims to improve the depth of the gameplay featured within World in Conflict, along with visual and aural tweaks I have made to make the game look and sound even more impressive. During my time developing the mod I have incorpo...

An interesting thought occured to me today. I have noticed that recently, there seems to be a interesting relationship between the system requirements of a game and its sales and success. If we have a brief look at some of the more recent, highly successful games (Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, World of Warcraft, Sins of a Solar Empire and World in Conflict - games I just happen to own) we can see that there is a possible relationship between their success and their system requirements. ...

Here are the 7 deadly sins which can be committed by an online PC FPS title. Heed this warning carefully, FPS titles which commit these sins do suffer a painful fate (in the form of a quickly diminishing playerbase).   1. Thou shalt not create a server browser that lacks basic functionalities and features such as a favourites list, or the ability to even stop the browser from refreshing. Explanation: No-one wants a buggy, badly designed server browser in an online FPS. The lively...

Welcome to the inner mind of a PC gamer! This is my blog which I shall dedicate largely to the thoughts, developments and discoveries I come across as a hard-core PC gamer. You will find I love playing alot of different genres of PC games including first-person shooters, real-time / turn-based / grand strategy, role-playing games and more! I hope you will enjoy reading my blog, I will try and post on it daily as much as the girlfriend, university and gaming sessions will permit.