I’ll write about anything of remote interest but since this really is at heart a technical blog about PHP I’ve decided not to dilute it any further. Thus for all those interested in following my progress in Eve Online and some other more general topics I nabbed a new domain and installed a second instance of Serendipity.

You can visit my Eve Online character, Maugrim McFiriba here: http://www.adventureineve.com

Again, I invite anyone reading here who has started or will start playing Eve Online in the future to look me up in-game and perhaps you can even hook into my Corporation, the Crimson Industries and Development (CIDEV) Corporation. We’re a fairly relaxed bunch who spend a few hours now and again knocking around in a motley collection of Cruisers, Industrials and Barges plying our mining skills and luck on the asteroid belts of quiet backwater systems. That’s when we’re not plying our other skills by sending Guristas and Sanshas to their frozen graves…

To keep folk informed, I’ll be pushing Eve Online blog posts (and other topics) to a new blog separate from this one. Some quick polling showed people assume this is a near pure PHP medium so a new blog for the non-PHP topics is called for. This fits in with my target of 3 blog posts a week which now won’t be seen as spamming Planet PHP .

When I left off my last post I was enjoying ownership of a new Caldari Kestrel Frigate in Uitra, in the game called Eve Online, and had just joined a Corporation to further my experience and have a support network available. You can find me in-game as “Maugrim McFiriba”, the character I invented in the mid-90s with the now infamous “The Reaper” nickname, and later used as my internet handle all over Yahoo from 1998. Best of luck to other PHP developers trailblazing through Eve right now – I’ll add you guys as buddies in-game . Email me if you want in on my chosen Corporation in the next week or two.

This week started off quietly with me outfitting my new Caldari Kestrel. After training the required skills I’m now running with 4 Standard Missile Launchers (1 is held in reserve). To add a little to my “tanking” (the ability of a ship to absorb damage for extended periods without exploding) I’ve fitted a Shield Hardener, a Small Armor Repairer and a Shield Booster. The first is passive, the final two eat Capacitor power. My naming is not exact – still getting the hang of having module names memorised . I figured out recently that I was off the mark about increasing my ship’s capacitor max – I actually need to make modules I install require less by training relevant skills. In any case, I can now fit in those tanking modules and 3 Launchers without stressing my capacitor beyond it’s design limits. If I disable the Armor Repairer I can put an extra Launcher online (at a safe distance from the enemy since it drains my Capacitor dry when activating!) and increase my fire power by 33%. Assuming my shields can take the return beating with the Shield Booster enabled for short periods, and I don’t end up really really needing that Repair module, I can chew on level 1 Pirates from a distance of 20km or so and take out a ship with each grouped launch. I’m sure that won’t last long as the Pirates get wind of my new death dealer .

More after the jump.

I’ve also now moved from Uitra to Perimeter. Moving to Perimeter leaves me a little closer to my Corporation mates, and just three jumps from Jita. Jita remains a lagfest but it’s a huge market and some of the prices there are just lower then going elsewhere. You can get almost anything in Jita since it’s a natural trading outpost at the confluence of three other star systems. If you can abide the lag at the weekend when it is bustling with commerce. Yesterday I narrowly missed a Corp member’s request for a run into Jita to grab a cheap module for 20 million ISK. That’s 20,000,000 ISK. As a newb I barely scrape by on a measly 435,000. If I’d had the time I could have earned an easy 1 million commission. Corps are where all the money is at – budding players need to get off the newb training wheels and find themselves a Corporation.

Mid week I received a mail from the Corp mailing list inviting members to a mining op (an operation where we strip mine anything valuable from asteroid fields and sell, sell, sell). I’ve accepted the invitation so this Saturday I’ll be mining for the Corporation. I have my laptop on tap for some light reading/writing/browsing while my ship is stockpiling ore. It’s not the most entertaining of professions but the social dynamic is good, and some teamspeak and multitasking works for me . Maybe it ranks with WOW’s mindless grinds but it serves a purpose in Eve Online and I do have a new ship to buy later. Primarily though it’s about standing – I don’t want to be the newb who isn’t contributing to his Corp’s future success. I do have a *lot* of writing to get started on anyway – more on that in another blog post sometime. It’s a 100% taxed op, meaning all proceeds go to the Crimson Industrial and Development. Sunday’s op will be for member-profit.

One of the Corp members should be loaning me a Caldari Osprey (Cruiser) for the ops which will be a massive step up from my lowly Kestrel with its meagre cargo capacity. I’ve spent the last two days training my Caldari Frigate skill to 4, and Caldari Cruiser skill to 3. If the op goes well, and Sunday’s secondary non-taxed op does also, I will be shopping around for a new Caldari Caracal (Cruiser) to replace the Kestrel with. Since I’m on a Missile binge, the Caracal is the best Cruiser to step up for. It will be my fourth ship since starting the game, but really the first I will have purchased myself rather than having it awarded. Moving to a Cruiser should afford me more development room for a while and hopefully make the pirates on these Agent missions less of an annoyance. With a Cruiser also comes additional cargo space – I really need to read up on developing decent Salvage skills for those wrecks I leave behind on missions! It will also offer more room to expand my tanking ability, at the expense of speed and manouverability obviously since a Cruiser is far larger than a Frigate.

This week’s highlight was when a fellow Corp mate, Sam Savage, asked around for anyone interested in a Heavy Assault Launcher he scavenged from a wreck. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity to get at least one expensive piece of kit for that Caracal Cruiser in stock without personal cost. I met Sam down in 0.7 sec space a few jumps from Perimeter and picked up the Launcher – which is now sitting in storage in Perimeter. I have items scattered across Perimeter, Uitra and Urlen – need to grab everything and move down to the mining op location Friday night so I’m ready to rumble come Saturday afternoon. I think my Clone Beta is still sufficient in case of my imminent death (me; total newb; >1.1 million skill pts). Tip to those just starting, keep the clones updated or you’ll lose excess skill points if killed!

With all these Missile Launchers available on the Kestrel I learned eventually (some would say “Doh!”) to assign Launchers to multiple targets correctly. I can’t believe I spent this long wondering how to switch from launching 4-missile barrages at one target, to 2×2-missile barrages against each of two targets. The solution was of course to target two ships (I need to train Targeting to pick more), activate two Launchers for the current primary target, click the secondary target’s graphic in the top right of the UI, and activate another Launcher or two. Hello sitting ducks…! Being able to target more than two ships seems pointless in the Kestrel but the Caracal will have more firepower to distribute across targets.

I also learned another new cultural term “can flipper” referring to another player who attempts to steal the contents of your Canister while mining. Seems to be something players often do to attract the wrath of the owner and provoke them into a PvP confrontation. I suddenly want that Caracal real bad so I can accept a few provocations and get in some PvP experience. I still feel my newbness like a millstone around my neck at times – like when a Drake pops out of a gate marked with the yellow tinge and skull of a wanted player and you wonder if they’ll pop off a few rounds at you for getting in their way .

With the move to 0.0 space (non-existent security!) with the rest of the Corporation in the near future (part of a larger scale Alliance migration), I need to get that Caracal rolling and my tanking skills pulled up. I’ll ask around the other members if there’s any particular specialisation that would be handy for the Corp to have. Squatting in a Cruiser will likely leave me with a lesser role than those pulling 360′s in Drakes and I sure don’t want to be too close to whatever causes a Drake trouble when it turns up without some preparation and suitable skills to at least make my 5 second survival expectancy count for something useful. Hopefully we smaller pilots can fill in some time doing recon in Frigates, or even Cruisers – though Cruisers may be a bit too big and slow (and expensive) for purely recon roles. I’ll ask someone.

In other Eve news from random reading, I’m following sources of intel about the struggle between Tortuga, Goonswarm and their stubborn foes Band Of Brothers (BOB) in 0.0 space. Things do not look good for BOB who in the recent past of Eve were one of the most prominent Alliances. Their fleet is still nothing to be sniffed at according to the intel, but when an Alliance talks about a star system as their Alamo it can’t be a good sign. I’m way out on a limb when it comes to politics in the 0.0 sectors, but I hope this isn’t a sign that the internal struggles of the 0.0 Alliances are going to cease. Where will that leave me as a budding PvP player? My current Alliance “Eve Evolution” hopefully will offer plenty of opportunities for fleet ops where I can gain practice and experience before we’re pushed into a war of our own. A few fleet training sessions wouldn’t go amiss. Some of this might be Alliance pushed – another thing to ask my fellow Corp mates.

Lot of newb questioning this weekend .

It’s a lesser known trait of mine that I enjoy playing computer games, specifically strategy games for the PC. The only console I own is a Nintendo Wii – which is saying something since it’s the first console I’ve owned since the Sega Genesis! So this weekend, with all the free time I have, a new broadband connection courtesy of Eircom (after replacing the crappy Netopia router they give you for free; free as in scrap metal), and a little trepidation, I joined Eve Online.

Eve Online is a MMOG set in space. There are approximately 5000 star systems, 200,000+ subscribers, and perhaps 18,000 to 45,000 players online at any one time. Since I was playing at the weekend for extended periods, I noticed the numbers peaked on my GMT clock each evening. The idea behind Eve Online is to enter the vastness of space and make a name for yourself either through combat, mining, trading, production or research. These are not however true alternatives since any player can train any skill imaginable given enough time. So the name of success is called specialisation, not class leveling…

All star systems have a security rating from 1.0 to 0.0. I spent all my time in 1.0 and 0.9 star systems. The word is that going anywhere with a 0.8 rating or less is not something a Rookie should consider for at least a few weeks. Going to 0.5 or lower could charitably be called suicide. Check out YouTube for a few videos of what happens to players who get cocky and impatient and run off to a 0.4 system to mine. It only takes a high skill player with a few missiles…

As for strategic and tactical gameplay – Eve Online rocks. It’s a thinking man’s dream game. You need to select skills, compare weapons and ammunition types, review Market conditions for the best regional prices (some stations can charge double the average price for items), get used to how ships scale and how to assess which you can take on (which is pretty much nothing since 1.0 sec systems are heavily overwatched by the local race’s police forces and only suicides would attack you, or you them ). Living in 1.0 space is quite safe and a more than a few corporations stay exclusively there. Even a few of the 0.0 Corporations maintain 1.0 sub-Corporations for you to join.

The game itself is beautifully rendered. Back in December CCP release the Trinity client was released which added an overall graphics update with high resolution textures. My PC was never taxed while running it. I have a pretty good gaming rig so I could easily run two clients at the same time (Eve also let’s you play three characters on your single account). Th only niggle was collision detection on large objects like stations and planets. While it seems an odd flaw, I suspect it’s a simple optimisation. The only annoyance it will serve is trying to reach anything on the opposite side of a station – my advice is to orbit around the station before making a straight-line approach to such objects.

My own experiences from a first weekend after the jump…Day 1: PHP Is Not A Recognised Skill…But Missiles Are!

Sad to say, but I was unable to make a living in Eve Online as a PHP programmer. Aww… After booting up the Eve client I was greeted by an Introduction video detailing some of the back story to Eve Online. It’s standard sci-fi fare as Tor would publish in a cut-sized paperback. Yep, a total cliche, but the backstory just set’s the scene – it can be as cliched as it likes. Anyway, does WOW not have the same? Afterwards I input my trial account username and password, before being greeted by the character creation screen.

Creating a character for Eve Online should not be done lightly. Read up online about what kinds of attributes, skills and race/bloodline mixes are best suited to what you want. I wanted to kick other player’s asses (PVP/PVE) so I went with a Caldari Achura who had taken up the Soldier profession. I added my 5 attribute points to Perception, Intelligence and Memory (2-2-1). This gave me quite a collection of skills for in the area of Missiles, Gunnery and Calderi Frigates. More besides – but these are great ones to start a Soldier with. Adding a portrait is simple with the client’s facial morphing abilities though each race has distinct Earth profiles – so my Calderi Soldier has distinctly Asian features.

The game opens with a tutorial of sorts. It’s slightly eratic on two fronts. Firstly it doesn’t automatically warp your ship to the tutorial area all the time (so you need to warp to a station, and restart the tutorial whose steps are thankfully easy to fast forward past). Secondly, you need to take instructions literally – for example when they talk about shooting a pirate with a blaster in the first tutorial don’t assume to do it now – otherwise the next screen which does say to activate your guns will freeze. Why? Because the pirate is probably dead now after a few shots, and the tutorial doesn’t realise you can’t activate your guns anymore (no target). That’s another route ripe for a restart .

Otherwise the tutorial isn’t all that bad – it gives you the basics, introduces you to an Agent who provides missions, get’s you up and running.

I spent the next day running missions. During this I made sure to a) have a Clone Beta on hand and move it to any new station I decided to base myself out of, and b) make sure I insured any new ships I received. Keeping all your off-ship cargo stored in a station is a really good idea. I consolidated my assets on my chosen station twice so far. In a few more days I suspect I’ll need to consider a semi-permanent central station in the region to consolidate items and other ships in. In truth I spent the whole weekend in about 4 star systems around Uitra which is bot bad for a Rookie in a 5000 star system game .

I started out in a Rookie Ibis ship. Basically a tincan with a Railgun and a Mining Laser. As a Soldier, I followed Agent Missions first. After a few I was awarded a new Calderi Condor Frigate which is a bit better than a tincan but only has 2 possible weapon points which I armed first of all with Blasters, but finally with Standard Missile Launchers. Missiles appeared more effective at the time – they deal a lot of damage from long range and even gave single-shot kills. Hybrid Turrets (Guns) are shorter ranged and take more time to kill anything with (as a Calderi at least). Long ranged combat simply makes sense since you’re further from the target’s own guns and they tend to use lower yield Rockets for long-ranged engagements.

Most of the first day was spent learning skills (usually level 1 and 2 for stuff like Learning, Clarity, Mechanics, Science, Navigation). I found my weapon skills were already at levels 3 and 4 but supporting skills for ship systems, shield and armor upgrades, afterburners, propulsion systems and capacitor upgrades were untrained. These are essential to add new ship subsystems like hardened shields, damage control modules, sensors, capacitor upgrades, etc. One of my current concerns is power. Your ships are never fully loaded up with equipment because available power is never enough – something I need to focus on. Processing capacity seems a lot better – but I’d bet that becomes a limiting factor later too. So yeah – train those skills. If not playing for a day or two – pick a big 60hr skill to train while you’re offline.

Overall impressions: It was a good start. As I suspected it’s not the most exciting game full of thrills and spills. It takes patience and acknowledgment of having to plan and execute a long term strategy of skills training, ship research, corporation membership and cash inflow (Missions, Corp work, Mining, Trading, etc). I intend training skills continually – only takes a quick login to start a new one training (lvl1 about 30mins, lvl2 about 1.5hrs and lvl3 a lot more!). I also intend working my way to a new Calderi Kestrel or Merlin which are the most powerful Calderi Frigates. I’m sticking with Agent Missions for now. My Condor doesn’t have the cargo space to go mining for cash and the starting Missions are more profitable for now, as well as being part of an interesting storyline.

Day 2: Suicide Runs, More Missions, Corporation Recruitment Drives

I started Day 2 on a mission to destroy the lair of a Pirate. Outside the Station at Uitra VI Moon 4, a bunch of Rookies were annihilated in an “incident” after opening fire at another player. I also witnessed a wicked looking cargo ship shambling up to the Station for docking and had a quick conversation with the pilot. He was in from a 0.6 system to make a quick sale and get some repairs done. Dangerous places down past 0.8…

After another mission I was awarded a new Calderi Kestrel Frigate. Local chatter advised me it was the finest Calderi platform for Missiles in the Frigate Class. I was happy enough to load it up with 4 Missile Launchers and another 3000 missiles as ammo. Ammo was seriously being chewed through by now from the more powerful Pirates I was taking Missions against. My ship’s power continued to be a problem so I set to on a training track to provide skills I could use to increase capacitor output. Really need to get more supporting systems for my shields and armor in place – but first I need the power capacity to run them!

I spent a block of time spectating the local traffic. Basically just picking out ships, reading their information, and getting a feel for which ones were good, bad or indifferent. Most of the ships were Calderi, but I located an Amarr Industrial which marks a first for another species. I gather I’m so deep into Calderi space it’s a rarity to find anything not Calderi yet.

After some bumming around I felt the need for a little exploration so I headed to the Jita System. Or as the local chatter were calling it: LagFest. Turns out Jita is a system at the confluence of three others which makes it a prime trading spot. It was so popular that the CCP servers in Iceland were having a bit of trouble keeping up with the populace . It was very laggy, but I purchased a few items at a supremely low price. It’s almost a supermarket for the region with low prices and thousands of customers and a *lot*.

After my expedition of a whole 3 jumps from Uitra, I returned to Uitra VI Moon 4. One of the high points of the day was watching two Destroyers (my Kestral being a flea in comparison) start up a firefight. Between the missile barrages, shield flares, and beam weapons flying around a big crowd of Rookies gathered. Into the fray came a few extra ships including a few Frigates. It was an impressive display though one or two Rookies lost all sense of survivability and fired off some Missiles to see what would happen. With some restraint the opponents replied with a single low-yield missile. The antagonisers quickly warped away before the next one!

After some checking of ship, pilot and corporation affiliations of the battle members I realised the whole battle was a deliberate show – a publicity stunt of sorts for a local Corporation. As a recruitment drive it was a good one – Uitra is where most many Calderi Rookies end up so it was their first look at a full scale battle between 5-6 Frigates, Destroyers and Battleships. Such a show of force also underlined what players of 2-3 months can accomplish, which obviously underlines how huge a role patient plays in Eve Online. It takes real time to train up those skills and accumulate the cash for such extravagant ships and equipment.

I finished off the weekend of Eve Online by moving down to the Perimeter Star System a few jumps away. There’s a Calderi Naval Assembly Station here and it’s closer to my eventual possible home in another week down in Venelin. I’ve setup a Missile oriented skill to train which will take about 20hrs (sufficient time for me to sleep, go to work, and take my time recovering at home before logging in again for a quick check and a new skill to set training – maintenance mode on weekdays).

Final impressions: Read this http://atomic-tourist.net/AAR.pdf for a something interesting about Corporation play out in the real world of Eve Online in 0.0 security space. Long term is the keyword. Jumping into Eve and expecting to crush everyone inside of a few days is pure stupidity. It takes planning, strategy and research to pull off a good game. This undoubtably explains Eve continued disparate subscriber count. At 200,000 it’s respectable but not even remotely close to what WOW pulls in. The fact is Eve Online is a different game. It’s quite easy to get into, but whether you have a personal makeup capable of blasting away Pirates, mining for a few hours with a good book (obviously you need some in-game entertainment – which may seem counter-productive but then you’re missing the point!), or trading. Personally if I take up Mining I intend on taking full advantage of the fact I have a PC which can run Eve, Firefox and Eclipse at the same time, and in the future a MacBook Pro too. Eve is not just about having “fun”, it’s about accomplishment on a large scale over an extended timeline. Other folk would find this all dreadfully boring and lack the patience and extended mindset to create their own fun and enjoyment from the game.

So the story so far at 2 days? Eve Online is attractive, skills can be trained offline, but it requires patience and long term commitment. The commitment needn’t be time consuming either. I could play for a few hours at the weekend, or a few minutes at a time on a week day, and it wouldn’t put a dent into my free time. With skills training offline there’s far less pressure to be online all the time, or even a lot of the time. Many corporations clearly state they are looking for players who play “once a month or more” even…

I finally got my copy of the game at the weekend, played a little, got the patch, found my save games were incompatible, restarted, and replayed (sigh) a little more. It’s an interesting game, full of interesting ideas and sometimes exasperating combat. Surprisingngly, given the level of buginess so evident (and definitely not addressed by that patch) it’s a good game overall. So it gets a thumbs up from me, with a sidenote that you should have a pretty decent rig to really get the most out of the game, and should have a certain tolerance for the inevitable bug or two.

Even so, there are some spectacular misses. Gameplay stands by itself very well, so these aren’t as important as they would be to a lesser First-Person Shooter, but still… The most obvious is that the settings menu for Video Options is a mess – Antialiasing and Anistrophy are non-existent. One is simply not working, the other is useless because STALKER’s game engine uses a weird rendering system that doesn’t support it. I’ve been reading the TweakGuide.com examination released earlier and all is not lost – there are tweaks you can make since the game is capable of being modded by extracting the content archives (much like Oblivion and Medieval 2). TweakGuide also comments on the effectiveness of some low-level options (which don’t seem to work better than the “medium” ones). Also HDR, important for GeForce 6 series GPU’s, is not a separate setting to be disabled.

Back to the game play – STALKER excels at a few graphical additions (even with the above). The most obvious is the weather. When it rains, it pours. When it let’s loose lightening, your video card takes notice. The second is the day/night cycle – and night is something to really take care with. Unlike Oblivion, or other half-assed attempts at day/night cycles, STALKER just takes the realistic of approach of making the sun set and rise at genuine times. Simple, effective. Half Life 2: Episode One (the level with the underground garage populated by Zombies) is a close match for how you’ll feel when night arrives. Even bumping up the gamma level doesn’t help with visibility. Even the flash light isn’t much help beyond a certain range. This really packs a cool punch – especially when you have to spend the next 7 hours of gametime (a lot less in real time of course ) stumbling around in the dark hearing the howls of a pack of mutant dogs and barely being able to see them when get close. Sychronising attacks with lightening strikes becomes a quickly learned skill .

The other cool thing is the “ALife”, watching mother nature at war with packs of Blind Dog mutants run into confrontations with those mutant boars around this corner, or something even weirder around another – all at random in a natural fashion. It’s cool to watch – especially once you realise those creatures have defining habits. At the start, I remember finding the body of a fellow Stalker surrounded by mutant dogs. After shooting up two, and scattering the rest I returned some hours later to find the escapees of my first attack had returned to the body and were apparently ravaging it – and their dead compatriots. I almost felt sorry for the poor sod whose pixelated body was being gnawed on, I was even tempted to use the “drag body” action to move him to a place safe from the local man-eating wildlife.

A few places where it goes wrong includes the mission system. Missions are obviously not finished in full – most are given by a handful of Traders, or Stalker leaders. Most come with no other in-game scenery, events, or NPC interaction other than the text descriptions. Oblivion was far better – of course Oblivion has voice overs for ALL the text which made it more immersive to start with. This lack of gloss in some areas, and the opposite in others is a sad thing – finished this game would have hit a few 90%+ marks in reviews, rather than the telling 80%+ it seems to be getting.

Overall, it’s flawed and buggy, but that’s easily forgiven once you jump into unique action. My score? I’d go with an 85% and hope it prods future FPS’s to new levels of originality.

After playing Oblivion and following the forums on how the game plays out I discovered (as did a lot of people) that the game comes with some serious flaws in later gameplay (level 15+). Now, being honest, this are not flaws per se in Bethesda’s perspective nor that of others – but being a long time Morrowind fan which I have played through a number of times, using different characters and joining different Guilds and Houses, it seems that way to me.

The problems are three fold:

1. Levelling seriously hurts unless you do some careful planning. It doesn’t bother me right now because my balanced Mage/Fighter class was designed to allow some choices in how I level attributes. But if you are not careful you can start skipping important attribute multiple-increases (up to 5x) by diluting your skills with common-use ones like Athletics, Security or Sneak.

2. Monsters and NPCs level with you – the infamous scaling system means a Level 5 character will meet Level 5 monsters, a Level 16 character will meet Level 16 monsters, etc. It’s not that clear cut of course, but imagine levelling to 16, having lower attributes for your combat/defence Major skills due to using non-character-specialisation Major skills, and having a lot of monsters running around with supposedly rare armour types… Not good IMO. Bethesda imposed a challenge, but left out a sense of achievement. At level 20, there is no achievement – everyone else is suddenly level 20 (or less) and often with the same great equipment you spent a fortune getting hold of. Again, Morrowind or main stay RPG fans will have issues with this.

3. Items are not rare. Need glass armour? Well, you and every other monster and NPC will be swimming in Glass armour once you hit a certain level. There are no statically placed, or rewarding rare weapons and armour to be found in dungeons and ruins. Instead MANY monsters will have “rare” items at later levels, right down to those scraggly looking Bandits who hijack you when travelling through the wilderness between towns. What’s the point of searching for those rare pieces of Glass armour when everyone has them? I don’t think there’ll be a challenging foray into any House treasuries in Oblivion looking those full sets of rare Ebony and Glass items….

I call these the Three Stinkers of Oblivion. It’s such a cool game, but someone along the line dumbed down the RPG element and jumped on the hack’n'slash bandwagon. Now, this is a personal perspective. When I level I want to see some creatures that were horridly difficult to defeat now cowering in fear at my passing (or at least speared up against the nearest tree by either my sword). I don’t want to find that challenging dungeon now even more challenging JUST BECAUSE I LEVELED!. AT least make it a little less obvious, and allow me a sense of power – until the next big bad Daedra cuts me into ribbons…

There are smaller annoyances. The Interface is clunky – sometimes I hate consoles for how they make developers forget about using mouses and keyboards. The maps contain zero detail defining elevation or terrain type. The maps are way too small. That horrible target reticle is way too big.

Other than the above I love Oblivion by the way. It’s a great game – but its the later levels of your character that seem to go pear shaped.

Now to the Modders part. Since Bethesda changed things like the above, some Modders have quickly gotten around to changing them to something else more in keeping with the RPG spirit of things. I’m just going to list four Mods I’m currently using at the moment (the rest are small things that add convenience and hardly worth mentioning). The second is an absolute must have to fix the clunky UI in some limited way.

Auryn’s Levelling Mod:

This Mod imposes a new Levelling system which offers real time calculation of Attributes. If you needed before now to concentrate efforts to obtain 5x Attribute multipliers on level up, then stick this in and worry no more. In fact you can quit worrying about leveling at all – there are now no leveling screens to click through. It also slows down levelling rates a little bit (not much – other mods can slow it down far more by directly changing skill increase rates and such). Comes in two varieties – Level according to Skill increases within your Major Skillset, or Specialised Skillset.

BTMod:

This is a big improvement. It’s a UI mod which imposes a smaller Font on text in the Inventory, Skills, Magic, etc interfaces. It’s such a huge difference to be able to view three times the number of items on a single screen with this done. It also increases the map size (it’s stupidly small by default). Also contains optional Mod files to remove the display of certain subsets of Compass markers. For those with a real need for orienteering across Cyrodil.

Iyachtu’s Monster/NPC Scaling:

Simply put – it imposes a number of Level caps on NPC’s, Monsters, etc. The idea is that the more you progress in the game, the more challenging the monsters will become, but the less likely ALL monsters will match your Level. It’s pretty specific in what it does, and most caps will not emerge until a level of above 15-20. Some caps are static – meaning advanced NPC’s will actually be powerful, not Level 1 wimps you can rub out at level 1. It may sound doubtful, but it certainly sounds better than being able to finish main quests at Level 1 by becoming a weird Breton with severe insomnia…Tom Servo’s Rare Items:

Items are the last problem – why should Ebony and Glass items be so hugely common at all? Where’s the fun in locating that full set of Glass Armour and Weaponry and stealing it? Where’s Morrowinds classic habit of hiding items in hard to reach, or even find, places? The Rare Items mod removes such items from common Monsters and NPC’s and leaves them (as a rarity) on higher class monsters such as the Minotaurs, Dremora Lords, etc. Since they are rare, monsters and NPC’s will be less likely to have them available – so it also ensures that as you level reaching for that Difficulty slider is not necessary, and there is some sense of achievement when you finally get a full set of rare items.

Auryn’s mod requires you to create a new Character (there’s are alternative player levelling mods but I like this one’s sense of balance and skill/attribute capping). The rest are simple drop ins.

There are a few constants in my life online.

1) I ramble about topics at random
2) I only use an IM if bored crazy
3) I vanish for weeks when a decent RPG or strategy game is released

No. 3 is going to happen this coming Friday (in Europe) when Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion hits shop shelves across Europe. Much in the vein of addictive games like Civilisation IV and Rome: Total War, there will be a few weeks where countless people will drop offline, lose contact with close friends and relatives, and lock doors in case the significant other in their lives tries to interrupt them.

The problem with games like the Elder Scrolls series is the replay value and depth of gameplay. Morrowind has been a constant presence on my hard drive, alongside Rome TW, since 2002. Even playing last time in January there was still lots to do and explore. It was wearing thin I’ll admit – only so much questing you can do over a 3-4 year period even with some quality mods added – but the game is so huge that new encounters are inevitable if you go looking hard enough .

Rome TW has something similar. No many how times you play, there are always moments of satisfaction to be found. The best one yet I’ve had was a huge battle with my fellow Brutii outnumbered and eventually routed by a horde of Gauls. Rallying up my troops over the course of 20 minutes, I sent them all over the battle map avoiding enemy formations until some semblance of order was restored. Atop a deserted hill, I sent out small units of cavalry to keep the Gauls off balance. That done I used expended Archers as shock troops (excellent method of stalling an enemy formation’s charge) before pounding them from the sides with heavy infantry. After almost 30 minutes of near routs, after the near defeat of my army, I’m victorious. If you haven’t played a TW game before – you don’t deserve to live. Even when it seems all is lost some creative thinking can switch the course of events.

Anyways, Oblivion is looking like a fantastic game. If the world is as detailed as Fry Cry’s it will be a sight to behold – and who didn’t sit for a while with their mouths open after seeing that island paradise the first time? Combat and Magic have been improved – and the addition of physics will add a certain feeling of satisfaction when I get to smashing foes around the place with fireballs. NPC’s have seen improvement in daily activity schedules, lip synching, real voice conversation, etc. I doubt the hyped realism is as evident as publicised – and early reviews seem to bear out the level of repetition I expected. More important Magic, Archery and Stealth have all been revamped and balance out melee combat nicely by all accounts. There really is nothing more irritating than being forced into melee combat because magic is too weak or requires range to work well.

A few well hyped quirks are interesting in themselves. You can now buy (more likely steal ) horses. And yes, in case you’ve hidden under a rock for the last year, you can ride them. The world is now something along the lines of 16 square miles of forest, plains, mountains and urban areas. Towns are better guarded – town watch are no longer random patrolling loners, they congregate in groups and will hunt down criminals, i.e. your character, pretty efficiently. I could continue with a long list.

Suffice it to say Oblivion is looking to be a long way ahead of Morrowind. They’ve kept all the best points of Morrowind, and revamped the more repetitive/boring bits where players had little interaction before – such as the Melee/Magic use.

Since this is one of those games I’m a huge fan off I’m going to spend a little extra to supplement my PC’s capacity and buy a Creative XFire Sound Card at the weekend. My aging Audigy 2 is probably starting to use a fair number of my processor cycles on more recent games, and this will offer better sound (esp. for Headphone use when emulating 5.1 surround) and ensure the processor (which I don’t want to replace for at least another 6 months) is as free as possible to handle the game. Another piece of good news is that NVidia are releasing an updated ForceWare driver specifically addressing performance in Oblivion later today which will hopefully keep my 6800 GT up to scratch.

Another 3 days until I get around to scorching Skeletons with a maniacal grin plastered across my face…