thoughts…

WowPlot has been updated to version 0.1.1, featuring the following improvements:

• loading / saving of plots
• more speed (back-end is now multi-threaded using NSOperation)
• Sparkle auto-updating
• better parsing
• some error-messages
• more consistent splitting

WowPlot is a graphical analysis tool for World of Warcraft® combat logs (compatible only with the new combat log format introduced in version 2.4). Its main focus lies in evaluating time-dependant combat performance in a very free-form fashion, which is in contrast to the mainly statistical approach of other tools.

WowPlot requires Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) and is a Universal application.

I thought I’d do a write-up on the addons I use in World of Warcraft, and why I think they’re useful. Some of them communicate with each other, so they become more useful if more people use them.
Although there’s quite a few addons, my interface still looks largely “vanilla”, so I don’t need to relearn the game…

AuctioneerAdvanced (and Informant)
This addon can scan the auction house (which takes quite a while; about 5 minutes on Bloodscalp) and remembers a database of prices and other statistics that is displays in a nice tooltip if you mouse-over an item. It also tells you the vendor sell price (e.g. useful if you want to pick the quest rewards that sells for the most gold because they’re useless to you). Furthermore, it extends the auction house interface to sort the items by average price (compared to its scanned database), so you can see at a glance whether items can be snapped up cheap or are horribly overpriced. Also, it offers a nice interface for selling items there, which can sell multiple stacks and displays you the other sellers for said item, and price accordingly. Enchantrix is also part of the package and displays what constituents items can be disenchanted into.
The addon is currently only available as a preview version, but that is already very stable.

BigWigs (and LittleWigs)
BigWigs provides raid (and in LittleWigs’ case party) warnings for instance bosses. This included things like player proximity (e.g. Maiden or Curator), debuffs, sacrifies, etc.
If you want to reset its settings (maybe because you accidentally disabled some warnings), delete “World of Warcraft/WTF/Account/[account name]/SavedVariables/BigWigs.lua” and “World of Warcraft/WTF/Account/[account name]/[server name]/[player name]/BigWigs.lua”.

Cartographer (and Cartographer_Fishing/Herbalism/Mining)
Cartographer improves the built-in full-screen map. You can create and share (!) notes on it, create waypoints that show a little arrow with a direction you’re supposed to go in (helpful for disoriented people like me that don’t know where 10 o’clock is ), it shows the position of other guildmates (that are also using Cartographer) in the world without being in a group and plenty of other things.
The Fishing/Herbalism/Mining bits extend Cartographer to automatically remember where you gathered resources nodes, which is very useful if you’re looking for a particular plant / metal / fish, or simply want to farm for materials.

ClosetGnome (and ClosetGnome_Mount)
With ClosetGnome you can create and swap between different sets of gear with a single mouse-click / keyboard button. For example, I have a normal “default” healing set, one with a focus on MP5 for boss fights, and another feral set (which I usually leave in the bank, though). This integrates nicely into FuBar (see later), but can also be used without it.
The ClosetGnome_Mount bit enables your gnome to switch sets based on mounting / unmounting, so you can equip your Riding Crop or Charm of Swift Flight.

FuBar
Now FuBar I really like. It’s not really an addon on its own, but a system which other addons can use (and quite a lot actually already support it without you being aware of it). Essentially, it creates a small panel or bar at the top of bottom of your screen, in which other information or plugins can be displayed. This really cleans up the sometimes overcrowded ring of addon buttons around the minimap… I’m going to list the FuBar bits that I’ve found useful, but there’s quite a few more:
BagFu — Displays the used and free slots for your bags and opens them all on a click
ExperienceFu — Shows you levelling statistics like “how long to level”, or how many more mobs at the current XP, etc.
GroupFu — Shows (and allows to change) the loot systems. Also takes care of rolling (simply click on it) and recording the results.
MailFu — A “You’ve got mail.” sorta thing. Also records your AH sales.
QuestsFu — An alternative quest tracker (which can track more than 5 quests at a time and also tracks how your party mates are progressing (e.g. “Fungi collected 8/15 Naga Scales.”))
TrackerFu — Displays your current tracking mode and allows you to change it.
TrainerFu — Tracks which skills you can learn now (or at the next level ding) and how much gold you oughta be saving up to pay for them. Also includes trade skills.

HealBot
HealBot is a reasonably easy to setup “grid click-to-cast” interface, mainly for healing and decursing. It tells you the current health status of everyone (as well as incoming heals from other people using it, so you know who’s already getting a big heal) in the party / raid, and includes reminders for missing buffs.
As an example, I’ve set it up to cast my Lifebloom macro (which activates the Lower City Prayerbook) on a left-click, Rejuvenation on a right-click, Shift+Mousebutton is my bigger heals, Alt+Mousebutton is decursing (poison and curse). I let it sort party members by max health, which means tanks are usually at the top and easier to find / heal.
It also displays who has aggro (so you can get preventive heals off on that squishy that just grabbed aggro from the tank), and who is / isn’t in range (so you can tell them to get their sorry ass over here).
A few version were quite buggy, an old stable version is 2.3.3.2, but I’ve also found 2.3.3.10 to be fine again, and from the changes done to .11 I suspect that that won’t cause any new problems either.

MobMap
MobMap displays the patrols / position / occurences of ALL (!) mobs in the game, as well as their drops and droprates, so it can answer questions like “What mob drops [this item] and where can I find this mob?” or “Where is the vendor that sells [enchaning recipe X]?”. It can displays the mob positions on the main map (default) or on the minimap as well. The addon also integrates with your Quest log and tries to extract mob and / or drop names from the quest description and thus allows you to look them up with a single click.
This addon consists of two parts (which you need to download separately): The addon itself and the database with all the information. These are updated independently from each other.

Omen
Threat meter. Know it, use it, love it. That said, as a healer on multi-mob encounters it’s a bit useless, but a new version for 2.4 will bring a few nice new modes that help in this regard. Watch this more closely than your dps-chart, please!

RatingBuster
Adds another mouse-over tooltip to gear that enables you to compare them to your currently worn gear more easily and see whether it’s an upgrade / downgrade / sidegrade. Also does nice things like converting Spirit to MP5 (for priests, druids), Int to crit% and many more.
If you use this and Informant (from Auctioneer) there is a bit of overlap in the displayed information. I simply configured them to remove duplicate information so the tooltips don’t grow huge. Fully configurable, but comes with sensible defaults.

SpellReminder
This displays timer bars for HoT, DoT, Buffs, Blessings etc, allowing you to easily determine on which mob / player you need to refresh. It’s a bit verbose out of the box (and by default has two groups of timers, one informative and one for the ones that are about to run out), but it is easily configured to your liking.
In my case, I’m only using it for my HoT-spells (Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth) and CC abilities (Entangling Roots, Sleep). I’ve given each of these timer bars a different colour (e.g. green for LB, pink for Rejuvenation, red for CC) and can thus see very easily what needs to be refreshed. It also displays the amount of stacks and the mob / player name.

Violation
Modern SWStats / DamageMeters-like addon with FuBar-integration and low overhead. Also communicates with other players using this addon. It also offers a few interesting stats that few other addons do, like aggro duration, for example. All these stats can also be displayed in one (or more) nice little live-updated window with graphs and such. Again, watch Omen more closely than the dps chart!

Xbox 360 #5 died yesterday evening with the red ring of death, two days before the launch of Halo 3…

I am not amused! :/

I finished this the day before yesterday (on PS3). It is quite hard-hitting in a few places, and I did very much enjoy the story-telling (great voice acting!) and vibe of the game.

Definitely not perfect but excellent while it lasts…

Most played game: God of War II.

I’ve imported the Japanese DS version of this - which is a budget release as it’s “only” a direct remake of the GBA version, which can also be played completely in English. The translation is very well done and the humour is as good as ever, although there are two or three spelling mistakes I’ve noticed so far.

The game itself is typical Phoenix Wright silliness (probably a bit more silly than its predecessor actually) with quite a lot of recycled content. Still, if you enjoyed the first Phoenix Wright, you’ll enjoy this too, although some of the music and certain coincidences are more hamstrung than before.

Work is keeping me fairly busy (preparing for a conference in Toulouse), and not that much terribly exciting has happened. I (un-)am patiently waiting for my Mac Pro (having chosen a decent 3D card as well as 802.11 has moved the ETA to mid-September), Rhythm Tengoku (Rhythm Heaven) is great (I am still looking for the song from the festival-stage), and Chromehounds is regularly taking up my evenings.

This game has gotten very unfair reviews, founded on its mediocre single-player mode, but the squad-based persistent online war redeems it (although there still are a number of annoying bugs left to be ironed out by the upcoming patch). The way in which it encourages teamplay is cleverly designed, and it is the main reason I play. There is nothing else like it. If your are looking for a twitch-shooter, stick to Halo 2, but if you’re lusting for something more strategic and substantial (with endless options for building your own mech), this might be for you. Some comments from Penny Arcade might help explain what makes this game good.

I’ve been playing (and finishing ) Black on my Xbox 360, as it is one (if not the only one) of the more recent Xbox games that are backwards-compatible. Technically, it is a very good showcase of what is possible on the Xbox / PS2 (as we are used to from Criterion), although there still are some glitches in the emulator (hanging, black overlay on the screen so can’t see anything (which goes away while you open the guide, incidentally)).

The game plays differently enough to other first person shooters (focus on headshots, nearly every enemy has some form of body armor, blowing stuff up, taking cover, big “Matrix Lobby” shoot-outs), but there is not too much variety; but then the game is rather short (which I didn’t mind). The “story” / video sequences are useless and going back to these indiviual missions (which are set in the same region) after the cohesive single-player campaign of something like GRAW feels jarring.
I found it was quite challenging on Normal, you really have to move fairly slowly, going in guns blazing usually ended with me being dead. No infinitely respawning enemies is a plus, a big minus for reinforcements being teleported in according to the scripted progression, though.

Not worth full-price IMO, but if you find it used / discounted (I bought it for 20 quid from Amazon) and like blowing stuff up, it’s well worth it.

Phoenix Wright is a bit an odd title for Western gamers, but I sincerely hope that more niche titles like it make their way over here from Japan. It’s a strongly structured adventure (although some would argue it is not much more than a heavily scripted visual novel), but that is not to its detriment in my opinion.

In your role as defense attorney, you alternatingly look for clues / evidence, and then progress to the actual trial, where you cross-examine witnesses to uncover contradictions in their testimonies. While that may not sound like much, the contradictions become increasingly hard to find and the overall story (as in the crimes themselves with their motivations and their relation to each other) meshes all of that into an interesting narrative.

There are 5 cases altogether, 4 of which are ported from the Japanese GBA game, and a much longer 5th case, which was specifically written for the DS and uses many of the system’s features very well (touch-screen, microphone, 3D graphics). Overall, the game took me about 10-12h to complete, and I very much enjoyed finding clues and contradictions, although as mentioned before, the structure is very rigid and usually there is only one correct way of doing things.

Last week, Shadow of the Colossus finally came out in Europe. It’s a PS2 game by the same team which did the excellent ICO, and it shows.

It also is very hard to talk about it objectively, as it is a very subjective experience, but definitely one that you should try (in addition to ICO), as the games seemingly take place in the same world.

Essentially, the game offers you 16 boss battles (and plenty of replay incentives after that). These are sometimes more, sometimes less frantic, but always distinct episodes, separated by calming travels through the gorgeous but largely barren landscapes (which are barren for a reason; also note this does not imply boring) presented entirely without load times.

Beautiful is not a big enough word to describe how the game looks, but it pays for its epic scale with a less than stellar (but never hindering) frame-rate. I’ve entered a cave, where a waterfall falls out from a shadowed ledge into the bright sunlight that’s entering the cave from above. Or the small touches, like the doves near the altar flying off and leaving feathers behind, sea-sawing slowly to the ground, or the beauty of the water, both being below the surface or simply seeing the blurry reflections.
The animation of the main character, his horse (which you really only have to nudge where you want him to go), and the colossi themselves are moving incredibly well, with a precision and connectedness to their environment (via inverse kinematics) that is rarely seen.
Hats off to the artists and directors (not to forget the programmers, who made it all possible on aging hardware); this game has evoked emotion and thought from me on a scale I find hard to believe.

The gameplay probably won’t be to everyone’s taste (best described as a mixture of action and puzzle game), but give it a chance to enchant you. Most highly recommended, both as a game and a story.

The Xbox 360 has been out for a month (in the US at least), and of course I couldn’t resist picking one up here on the 2nd of December. I got the Premium Pack (the only sensible choice for people playing online) with Kameo, Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero.

The Console
Heavy bugger. Size is pretty much the same as the old Xbox (except that that had the power supply installed internally) but the pretty newfangled design makes it look much smaller. Power brick is big, but not huge (slightly bigger than my Mac Mini power brick).
Noise is about the same as my old 1.4 Xbox until you insert a game disc. Then it goes a bit mental. You don’t really notice when playing games, but when the music is off during the loading screen, it’s making a fair bit of ruckus.

Project Gotham 3
Good soundtrack (like a configurable car CD changer with different music styles to choose from). And it looks really nice in motion (the motion blur makes it feel really smooth) and the HDR / exposure is really great. No AA I could discern, and I looked pretty closely. Single player is standard PGR2 with a few new variations (time vs. kudos), which serves me well, but is a bit short overall.
Online is a blast (when driving with non-morons), but what really impressed me is that all of the tracks we were driving felt great, in contrast to PGR2 there seems to plenty of jumps / elevation changes (special mention to the parking garage in Tokyo and the ramp before the sharp right corner in London).
On the handling, it feels very similar to PGR2 to me. I think there’s a bit more sideways action going on, but overall rather similar. That said, I sold PGR2 together with my Xbox about 3 months ago, so I cannot really go back and check.

Kameo
Best looking launch game from the 3 I’ve got. The first level and the overall attention to detail (character design and animation) is very nice. Yes, you can see they tried to make it colourful. Yes, they tried to cram every effect known to mankind in there (imagine the ICO shadows looking like the Shadow Trolls… O_o). Yes, the variation of some of the “puzzles” isn’t too great, i.e. instead of puzzles there is something which would be a part of the solution of a bigger puzzle (for example in Zelda).
But still, I think it’s a good game all the way through and some of the vistas presented during gameplay are most impressive. And it’s not too easy (having the hints turned off), some bosses (although there aren’t that many) are quite interesting to fight.

Perfect Dark Zero
Finished this on Secret Agent. Controls feel a bit odd, but workable. Most of the levels use specular lighting and metallic surfaces, even in the outdoor levels. It feels very different to Halo, though. What I really like is the feeling of presence of your character (your shadow, or simply the smoothness of animation when going from 1st to 3rd person). Graphics are good, but not as effects-in-your-face as the beginning of Kameo. Then you get from small tunnels and confined rooms, to a huge detailed hangar with 20-30 enemies, some allies, and a lot of spider bots attacking you, and you realize there’s a lot of power under the hood.
The single player campaign is more of a “high score run” arrangement of individual missions than what one traditionally expects in a campaign. The cut-scenes are fairly laughable as well, but the actual levels are quite distinct (ignoring the shinyness) and offer quite a bit of variation.
This also has a fairly large multiplayer offering, but so far I’ve only tried it once, and realized I don’t get on with jet packs at all…

Xbox Live
Ace. Check in-game, what message you got. Ask someone with a voice message to re-invite you. Voice-chat with someone else while playing.
The interface is well done, but a bit jarring at times: One of the metallic overlay blades pops in left, you make a selection, the blade moves out left and another the blade pops in right. Setting up the console felt like watching a tennis match!
Similarly, when the game is calling console internal Live functionality (like “View gamercard” for example), the look changes from whatever the game looks like to the metal blade overlay (or however you have configured it to look).
Overall, a big (!) step forward for Live, in particular the Market Place and Xbox Live Arcade is very well done (buy the excellent “Geometry Wars Evolved”!).
It is amazing, how different online gaming feels simply due to using the (great) wireless controller. For lack of a better term, you feel much more “free” to move around a bit, or sit slightly sideways (which is bad for you neck, though ).

A few backward compatibility remarks
The VGA cable only supports 60Hz. Ergo, only games that support PAL60 can possibly work. Halo 2 does. But not the included Xbox Live Update and Downloader program. So to play online, you need to connect the LoDef cable (well, anything BUT the VGA cable), hope you have a device to display it on, download the updates and maps, reconnect the VGA cable and you’re good to go. Until they decide to update it again… :’(
And everyone that is running 1280×1024 with he VGA cable may have an incorrect aspect-ratio depending on the game, as that resolution was added with a firmware upgrade and some games (e.g. PGR3) haven’t been tested with that mode and thus display incorrectly (for now).