Comparing to the hammer editor, UDK can be harder for first, but after while the UDK has many advantages over the Hammer editor.

Hammer editor is much easier to start with, because on UDK you need to use one special box to insert every brush. It is bit confusing at first.

But after I realized how the brush stuff worked, UDK became much easier. Inserting materials is awesome. Content browser is much better and faster than the Hammer browser. And lining materials automatically is just so useful feature.

Kismet is also much better way to create scripts/events to levels than the Hammers own I/O system. It is also very easy to make animations with Kismet+Matinee.

Only problems that I have with the Unreal editor is mostly just the amount of features. There is just so many options to setup

The play in editor feature is also nice, but it is not so awesome as it could be. It makes developing faster, but it won’t remove compiling…

On the code/mod side. UDK is MUCH easier to start with. With Source SDK you need to install Visual C++, extract the source, configure it and compile. With UDK you can code with unrealscript and compile that. Unrealscript is much easier than c++ and it won’t explode the whole game if you forget one variable somewhere.

Valve has to make some serious upgrades to Source to get more developers to use it. Unreal engine is very popular engine and there is only couple of non-valve source games.

I am going to play with the UDK some more. Maybe make my own mod or something. But only problem with UDK is that I don’t want to make maps for UT3 only I have to use Hammer if I want to make maps for my favorite games.

Let’s get some good things to the start. Menu graphics are nice, game looks nice and runs smoothly. Sounds are also good. And well, it is kinda fun deathmatch game.

And then to the bad things… Yes, it is beta, but there is way too much problems for me to even think about wasting 50$ on this.

It is a goddamn console port. There is a screen to “adjust my television”! Is developers that lazy that they can’t remove one damn menu? The whole ui is also not designed for mouse. And the server browser is even worse than the first browser on bc2 beta. I don’t even known if it joins to the server. It does nothing for 2-5secs and then it joins or not. And why I cant see pings of players? Is it so hard to display the numbers? Sigh… The text chat also bugs on the beta. If I press talk key, the input field is stuck on the field and I cant do anything with it. Developers, please, dont do shitty console ports.

Gameplay is not bad, but I have already enough games like this. This is some kind of bf/bc game that tries to be cod… It just feels too much like a MW2 mod to bc2. They have just changed some skins and maps, etc. Some of the animations are taken from bc2!

Some of the ingame icons are also from the bc2. There is also lots of models also copied… This game just feels like quick clone to make easy money…

And the gameplay? Yes, it is mostly ok random deathmatch… Gameplay is mostly ok, expect that I already have 3 games that are similar to this. Levels are just way too static. After bc2 destructible environment, this game has annoying feeling… I can see that somebody can have fun with this for sure, but I don’t see reason to spend money on this game.

It can’t be so hard to support custom maps. Looks like EA just wants to sell DLC rather than having community making custom maps…

And for competitive gaming, this isn’t going to work. REAL dedicated servers are necessary. Not these restricted shitty “rent-only” things. Also, where is the record functions? Every modern game-engine has record-functionality build in! Source,goldsource, unreal, quake(Id tech), Call of Duty(custom)…. And why I can’t spectate from first person??

And looks like all game companies have started to ruin competitive gaming. Dedicated servers most likely only for rent… No custom maps… No console…. And after couple of months we get a freaking dlc for 10$. And then couple of moths and they are selling next big game for 50$… No thanks.

I can see that somebody would like this game. But for me this isn’t worth of wasting money. I already have MW1 and MW2 for fast deathmatch. (And quake for REAL deathmatch) And I already have BC2 for more team-based battles. So yeah… I am not very happy about this game or where the gaming industry is going with this kind of games.

But why? Content on Digg wasn’t the best that I would expect. Lots of duplicated links and power users ruining the system, etc, etc. Digg tries also to make money more aggressively. There is only couple of ads on Reddit and half of them are there just to thank that I have adblock disabled I can’t even use Digg without adblocker. It is so bloated with many ads.

I also feel that Reddit has better content for me, partly because I can customize my Reddit feed with “subreddits”. Anybody can create their own subreddit for anything/anybody.

Reddit also has better app for iPod/iPhone “Blue alien” app works without any problems, but the Digg application is unstable and slow.

The new Digg beta is heading to interesting direction. Concept is really good, but so far it haven’t been so great for me. I don’t have friends/followers on Digg so my feed is little quiet…

For me, Reddit feels more open way to share stuff on internet. It feels more like a forum than a link sharing site…

And reddit is open source <3

Good gameplay, great story, interesting world. I can’t say anything bad about this game. It doesn’t even have any of those boring RPG elements that Mass Effect 1 had.

Importing saves from me1 can changes lot of scenes on the second game. It is always fun to remember some things on the first game that comes up on the second one. Example meeting Wrex on Me2 is one of the best moments.

Well yeah, yet another post about game that everybody already knows.

Great game that you should try if you haven’t. (and don’t do the mistake I made, just play the me1 first)

I will keep this blog under this domain. This blog has been running for almost 2 years and I am happy with it. Maybe new layout or something.

Sometimes I have thinked about closing this site down… But I get stable traffic and I like to post random stuff on my blog when I want to.

I have issues mainly with the main site where I place my projects. I have tried couple of CMS systems and now I have build my own files.pelikoira.net system, but I am not happy with it. I want some kind of site that I can use to show my projects more easily, current is not good for it. It just lists my projects. I want some kind of portfolio.

As I have finished the Gamingstats project recently, I can continue with other projects. Upcoming project ideas for me:

• New layout for blog
• New system for projects
• C++ game-engine / game
• TF2 map

So if I don’t post anything new, it doesn’t mean that I have abandon this blog, I am just busy with other stuff.

(And this is my 100′th post to this blog! \o/)

Edit: and yeah, forgot to mention. The vps is down. Host had some issues with the connection to the datacenter and it was lagging/bugging all the time. So vps/ts3 server is down. Maybe new vps in future? (Maybe even tf2 server?)

I played the first Mass Effect, I had some technical issues with it, but nothing big. (First I managed to delete my saves after 9 hours played… then the game had 2.5meg corrupted files and it took while to find the problem and force steam to redownload those files (verify cache didn’t work first time I tried))

Mass Effect is single player RPG-FPS game that is very much story based. The story is awesome, but the ability to change the way it goes makes it even better experience. If some character dies in the game, he/she is permanently death. He/she is dead even on the Mass Effect 2. So there is some big choices to make, and the results can change the dialogs lot.

The RPG is system is not very good, the inventory is broken and it is not fun to change weapons/mods to weapons. It is slow and annoying to use. (good that they fixed this to ME2.) Good that I dont need to use it lot. The leveling up system is also somehow broken. I really don’t care what level I am, because it seems like all enemies scale to my level so it is never too hard for my level. (And scaling of enemies is actually good thing) Skill tree is only RPG element that is not broken. (But it is better on ME2)

Combat is fun, but there is some features that I barely ever used, like commanding squad members to position/attack/etc. I only used the pause menu to activate skills. However the cover system is good. Works very well after some playing.

Most likely everybody knows that Mass Effect is good game and they won’t need more obvios stuff about the game. If you don’t have Mass Effect, just get it. It is one of the best games I have played.

Because some users have lots of games (100+) It creates lots of data to database. (Played time for every game, every day = lots of data) And because it generates lots of data, I have created steamgroup. To enable time tracking for games, you need to join to the steamgroup. This way I can control growth of the database.

Project is still in beta and there can be some bugs. I may add some more stuff to it in future, like better layout/design and forums signature system, but now I just want to make sure it works.

System doesn’t currently work with the steamcommunity profile id’s (eg 76561197974577294), but it works well with the custom profile urls.

http://gamingstats.pelikoira.net/

Warhead has some improvements from the first Crysis, but basically it is the same stuff. Enemies are the same and there is only one (?) new weapon. Engine is improved lot in the optimization. I can run all at enthusiast (aka very high) without any problems. (30+ fps almost all the time)

And yes. It looks damn awesome. Still the best graphics I have seen on a computer game.

The gameplay is also better than on the first Crysis. Levels are more fun to play and the alien part doesn’t last too long. I never got bored with the campaign. Fights are also more balanced and fun to play.

The biggest problem is that this game is way too short. It took only 5 hours to play the single player campaing. And the multiplayer is horrible, don’t even bother to try it… Way too big levels and confusing gameplay. I am currently playing the game for second time in the Delta difficult.

It doesn’t have anything new to fps games, it is just a damn nice game. And way too short. If you find it for good price and you have computer that can run it at high/very high, buy it.

This weeks game for my One week, One game project is Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter.

Serious Sam isn’t regular game in anyway. It is very weird game, from it names to the gameplay. I can’t really say that it is a good game, but I can’t say that it is a bad game either.

The story is horrible, some levels are extremely boring and gameplay is only about killing everything. I could easily write whine post and tell how horrible this game is, but I don’t.

Because I like this game. There is LOTS of stuff to shoot. It isn’t about the aiming skills or reflex, it is more about managing large groups of enemies. I really can’t say why I like it. It is just so fun to sometime just play something so stupid.

There is also a multiplayer that makes the game twice more fun. There isn’t much players on Serious Sam, but when you find server full of people, the game is seriously awesome. 12-24 people running and shooting everything that moves on same server is just so damn epic. Btw, I uploaded some demo files from game where I played on a 12 player server. If you want to see them, you can download them from the files section.

One thing to note, the game-engine is AWESOME. It can draw hundreds of objects with LONG view distance without any problems. Effects, textures and all the other stuff also looks nice. The engine is also very lightweight. (And it has nice console with some kind of lua stuff on it )

Just for note, I have not finished this game. I have played trough the first encounter in coop. But this is Serious Sam and nobody cares about the story. I just like to join random server and kill everybody.

I am building my engine very object oriented way. This way it is easier for me to manage the system, and makes it faster to create complex code at the later process of the development. But I also want to make the system flexible enough to allow me to change the way how the engine works if needed.

I have just finished cvar system that the engine can use. (get,set variables) In future I will add ingame console that can change these variables. I will also add way to store the variables on config files.

Right now I am finishing logging system. It is not very complex system, but it is very important to have. The logging system takes advantage from the cvar system I have build, storing filepaths and settings there. It can log events to console, file or both.

To filter important messages from random game events I have designed 4 level system to filter messages.

• 0 = debug message (Example: ai debug messages, small changes, etc. Can be bit spammy)
• 1 = game events (Example: kills, deaths, inventory changes. Good information for statistic parsers)
• 2 = engine events (Example: map change, engine start, etc)
• 3= Critical error (Example: missing textures/files, failed to init SDL/engine. Game crashing bugs)

User can choose level for the logging. Example if user wants to only see engines messages, he could choose 2. Then he would see engine events and critical errors.

Some users may want to see more information on the console they can choose 1. With filter level 1 user can see everything else expect floody debug messages.

When debugging error, developer can set the level to 0 and get all information game can give. Making good log file to analyze later.

The project is currently under heavy development. I will post more when the project goes forward.