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Its just a pity that I haven’t really been able to commit CPU cycles to the project lately. Why? Well my work PC is suffering and needs a reinstall and my home PC is not running on ADSL and I’ve been too lazy to re-enable the BOINC to run while on 3G.

If you decide to join up I’d recommend joining team South Africa.

The event was very well attended, unlike some previous attempts. MooDy and the team at ZAPS with the help I believe from Megarom had done an awesome job in setting up some consoles outside the store for people to play GTA IV. I heard something about some guys having played almost the whole day - talk about liking the game. I don’t think I could play for a full day standing in front of one of the kiosks machines, its just too uncomfortable.

Just after midnight the queue was out the door and around the corner already. People really seemed to want to get hold of their copies of GTA IV.

Well here are a few choice picks:

You can find the rest of them over here.

Microsoft were really clever when they packaged the 120GB hard drive accessory as they include a USB data transfer cable that hooks up to back USB port of the console and clips onto the 120GB hard drive SATA connector. This allows for the software to move all content (except movie rentals) to your new hard drive albeit only in one direction. So you can’t downgrade your drives at a later stage. They also include a DVD titled “Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer” in the kit which does the actual work.

Xbox 360 120 GB and Elite Migration

So tonight I decided would be a good time to do the transfer as Eskom aren’t planning on any electricity load shedding. Also you have to know that the 120GB hard drive content will be erased when you do the transfer, so make sure you check out all the content before doing the data migration.

I followed the instructions and connected the 120GB drive up to the back USB port on my console, turned my console on and inserted the software DVD. This is what I saw:

Yes, can you freaking believe it! They have region locked the transfer software. Unfortunately its after hours so I can’t contact the local support line. I’ve tried searching for a solution and it seems I need to get a DVD for PAL consoles as it seems there are 3 versions as there are games, namely NTSC (USA), NTSC (Japan) and PAL. Is it too much to ask that the fact that its region locked appear somewhere on the product packaging at least?

I’m hoping the solution will be a simple Xbox LIVE code I can redeem to download the transfer software to my hard drive or even a memory unit.

The Gamerscoreblog team are going to be having a chat with Denis Dyack about the upcoming Xbox 360 title Too Human. Here is what Chris Paladino has to say about it:

If you were to stop me on the street and ask what my favorite game of all time is, I’d reply “Diablo 2 with the Lord of Destruction expansion“.  You’d then ask “I never played that game, are you old?”

I’m pretty excited about our upcoming game Too Human which has been described as similar to Diablo 2, or Titan Quest.  The game has classes, random loot, and skill trees.  The older gamers out there may read this and think Moria, NetHack, or Rogue.

We will have the opportunity to speak with Denis Dyack about Too Human very soon.  Rather than ask questions that I think are interesting, we’d like to ask questions that you think are interesting.

So take a moment and drop some comments on his blog post over here.

In the meantime local community member Havok ZA has posted some IGN screenshots of the game over on the Xbox 360 South African forum here, I’ve linked them below for your viewing pleasure.

Hel, goddess of death, orders her merciless army of undead soldiers to enslave mankind and destroy Asgard, the realm of the gods. As Skarin, last hope of the Vikings, control every vicious blow of your sword and axe and drench the battlefield with the blood of your foes.

Viking: Battle for Asgard is a single player only action adventure game that is set in the time of, you guessed it, the Vikings. It carries an 18 age restriction due to the strong bloody violence.

Initial impressions of the game aside, I got the hang of the game quite quickly although there are no starting tutorials or guides to help you. By wandering around you just happen to see characters with a question mark above their heads and when you approach it turns into the B button which initiates a dialog with the character in question. The subtitles system during in-game character dialogs is a bit clumsy as the voice over isn’t synchronised with the subtitles and requires the user to press the A button all the time. I suppose one good thing about that is when you prefer to read fast and skip ahead. Although this is not always the case, as pressing A during the cinematic characters dialogs results in skipping of the dialog. Never fear, all important dialogs are preserved in your journal which is accessible by hitting the Back key and navigating using the LB and RB buttons.

The graphics in the game are surreal and lively however I am not too excited about the 3rd person camera which tends to stay where you left it, which can be a good thing, but can also be an irritation during combat scenes. Thankfully the camera is easily adjusted with the right stick.

If you enjoyed playing Overlord as much as I did, then I’m pretty sure you’ll like Viking: Battle for Asgard. Its available for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. A quick price shop reveals the following online pricing:

• R527.00 @ ZAPS
• R560.00 @ AnimeWorX
• R563.00 @ Take2
• R565.00 @ BT Games
• R574.95 @ kalahari.net
• R599.99 @ Look & Listen

So if you are a fan of games like Forza Motorsport 2, DiRT, Project Gotham Racing 4, Need for Speed Carbon or Test Drive Unlimited then you could be racing like a pro with the awesome force feedback wheel.

From what I’ve read the event will be running from 18h00 until just after midnight when the game officially launches to the public. So don’t miss out, get your butt down to ZAPS and pick up your copy while you are at it for just R640 (Xbox 360) or R677 (PS3).

I first tried out Grand Theft Auto on the original Xbox console and I must say I wasn’t too excited about the genre in general. But I believe GTA IV is a break from the old formula with online multiplayer and some cool new concepts.

Grand Theft Auto fans can now get another glimpse of “Grand Theft Auto IV” before it hits shelves on April 29. The fourth official trailer, titled “Good Lord, What are You Doing?” AKA “Everyone’s a Rat,” is now available on Xbox.com.

Developed by Rockstar Games, “Grand Theft Auto IV” is a powerful crime epic set in modern-day Liberty City, a world with an unparalleled combination of scale, depth and detail.

For the first time ever, “Grand Theft Auto IV” will also include online multiplayer, enabling gamers to play with their friends.  Plus, only Xbox 360 players will have access to exclusive “Grand Theft Auto IV” content coming this fall.

I believe both AnimeWorX and  BT Games will also be hosting a midnight launch for gamers to be able to fetch their pre-orders at midnight.

Ghost Town:

Avalanche:

The press release follows:

The Fight Continues - Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack Arrives in April
The award-winning “Halo 3” multiplayer experience continues to evolve with three new maps available only on Xbox LIVE Marketplace

More than 7.3 million copies of “Halo 3” have flown off store shelves, upwards of 500 million hours of frag-tacular online gameplay have been logged on Xbox LIVE and the Heroic Map Pack has been downloaded by 1 million plus gamers and counting. But it’s not over yet…

Microsoft and Bungie today announced that April 15 will mark the release of the next wave of “Halo 3” downloadable content. Available exclusively on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points, the Legendary Map Pack will introduce three new maps to the title’s award-winning multiplayer experience, Ghost Town, Avalanche, and one map yet to be revealed. And with the addition of some exciting Forge options, fans can explore new ways to create and share their custom “Halo 3” content.

Ghost Town is a battle-scarred maze of narrow passages and dangerous ruins outside the once-prosperous city of Voi. Collapsed ceilings and shell-battered buildings provide both valuable cover and deadly traps, as catwalks and stairways take the fight from claustrophobic ground combat to dizzying rooftop battles. Ghost Town is a mid-sized map ideal for Team Slayer games and smaller, objective types.

The second map, Avalanche, is a tribute to Sidewinder, a “Halo: Combat Evolved” fan-favorite. This massive, vehicle-oriented objective map adds a twist to its classic predecessor with all new interiors, dramatically reshaped exteriors and brand new vehicle variants. Take a ride and admire the visual variety from the cockpit of the retuned Hornet.

The third map to be included in the Legendary Pack has yet to be announced, but stay tuned to Bungie.net for full details on another returning classic… fans of smaller Slayer maps, it’s time to get excited.

Be sure to check out www.xbox.com  and  www.bungie.net for all the latest information and screenshots of the new maps.

I decided to go with a Server Core installation instead of the usual Full installation and it was great, I ended up at a command prompt after installation, reboot and logging on for the first time. So I proceeded to type in the following commands to configure Hyper-V:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto
start /w ocsetup Microsoft-Hyper-V

A reboot later and my server is now enabled with the Hyper-V role. One problem, how do I configure a virtual machine? It seems like the only way is from another Windows Server 2008 machine running the Virtual Machine Manager. This kind of sucks big time as I don’t have another one to play with. Apparently Windows Vista will be able to run the Virtual Machine Manager at some point but right now it looks like my lean and mean Hyper-V server is going to have to become a bloated full installation.

The App class takes care of the initialization and basically you assign a new instance of your Page class to the App.RootVisual property and through the power of Silverlight it appears on your screen.

So if you wanted to change the currently displayed UserControl for another instance naturally you’d try and set the App.RootVisual property to another instance of a UserControl. This sounds great in theory but it seems that its a single assignment property. Pete Brown’s blog post happens to make mention of this.

So in a quest to solve the problem I’ve implemented a very simple UserControlContainer class that allows the developer to switch controls at runtime without having to deal with the set once RootVisual property.

Simply create a new UserControl called UserControlContainer and copy the following into the UserControlContainer.xaml.cs file:

    public void SwitchControl(UserControl newControl)
    {
        LayoutRoot.Children.Clear();
        if (newControl != null)
        {
            Height = newControl.Height;
            Width = newControl.Width;
            LayoutRoot.Children.Add(newControl);
        }
    }

Next set your Application instance RootVisual to an instance of the new UserControlContainer in the Application_Startup method.

    private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e)
    {
        // Load the main control
        this.RootVisual = new UserControlContainer();
        Page page = new Page();
        ((UserControlContainer)this.RootVisual).SwitchControl(page);
    }

Then wherever you need to switch out the active control, simply call the following if you are inside App.xaml.cs:

    TestControl1 testControl = new TestControl1();
    ((UserControlContainer)this.RootVisual).SwitchControl(testControl);

Or the following if you need to switch controls from elsewhere:

    TestControl1 testControl = new TestControl1();
    ((UserControlContainer)Application.Current.RootVisual).SwitchControl(testControl);

If you find this useful or find any issues with this method, let me know so I can improve it for all.

Updated 2008-03-13: Added Application_Startup example. Thanks to Maurice for pointing this omission out.