It’s been a long time since I last played any boardgames. Last Sunday was the one which broke the record, with me joining Muggs, Plainsunset and Ling for games at Minds cafe. They initially wanted to play a few rounds at the pool table, but I suggested boardgames instead.

Back at Minds cafe, we started off with suggestions by Muggs – Rumis. Supposedly a game used by Mensa, it’s a fun and deceptively simple game to learn, but needs great thought and a bit of intuition to be good at it. Two rounds of it was what we had.

Following that we played some similar game, of which the name still eludes me. Something similar to blockus. Quite fun, but I think I prefer Rumis. It’s in 3D; more challenging. Unfortunately for us, we only managed to play 3 rounds in total. Well, I guess everyone needs to be totally in the game and think quick. Maybe we should bring a stopwatch and set the countdown timer to 1 minute!

After the extremely quick 2 hours, we headed to the nearby billiards saloon for a few games of pool. It was good, but I think I prefer boardgames better.

Well, looks like I missed quite a lot! It can’t be helped anyway. Still, between one and the other, I think I would still have made the choice which I did.

Was over at quasi’s place yesterday for several games of Wii. It lived up to my expectations of being entirely entertaining, and then some. Was playing the bowling game with New Journey, and it was a ball of laughs, pun intended. I’d have to agree that it’s more of the social gaming machine, rather than a hard core gamer’s machine. Unfortunately we had only two Wiimotes with us and there were a total of 5+1 in the area. Five initially, before a neighbour joined in the party. Not that it mattered anyway, since the the rest were all too busy jamming on their guitars!

This could have turned out totally well, if not for those Tempermental and Xtremely Impatient (taxi) drivers plying the road yesterday night, on my way back home. I don’t see a reason for their impatience, more so since the road was almost empty save for a handful of cars. It’s not just tailgating my bike, but trying to squeeze me, just because I happen to be on the side of the lane, and not at the center.

Damn.

This is supremely hilarious!

Certainly brings an entirely whole new perspective to a traditional musical instrument.

View the rest of the vids here.

No two way about it, really. I want a Wii. Please, pretty please? I’ll behave, oh, I promise.

If only decisions were this easy.

Great start to 2007. I didn’t spend money, I didn’t gamble, I didn’t get drunk, but I sure did indulge! Now, my body is feeling worse for wear. It’s the effects of the intensity of it all, and like anything else, you definitely have to train before embarking on a similar undertaking. Good body posture and ergonomics helps too.

My arm now feels very tired, and my fingers a little sore. My throat seems a wee bit dry too. Well, I was playing Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction with Muggs for almost the whole of Monday and Tuesday, so it was bound to get a little sore.

Need to find the time for such adventures in future, something which is proving to be increasingly hard to do. More importantly, I think we need to find more adventurers to join our mini raiding party. It’s getting a little bit boring, just the two of us.

I believe I can safely assume that at this point in time, Sony’s Playstation 3 is probably the most powerful gaming console available. There’s only three options available at this point in time, with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii being the other two contenders. I don’t think the PC can be considered a console too, hardware and functionality wise. However, in the context of games, a PC is quite good at that too. In fact, I believe that, money not withstanding, if you dump all the best parts money can buy, you’ll end up with a very playable gaming system. Think Dual core CPUs. I don’t know if AMD’s 64-bit dual core is going to be better than Intel’s Core 2 Duo, or whatever they have lined up for purchase, but that’s not what I’m intending to put across right now. Still, add whatever CPU you want, with 2 GB of the fastest overclocked ram available, either an ATi or nVidia card in Crossfire / SLI configuration, I think it’ll be hard to beat. It’ll cost half a bomb too. The PS3 costs just as much too, I reckon.
Thing is, it’s all clearly on the internet that Sony is openly associating it’s PS3 console with Linux. There are numerous guides available out there, with instructions on how to go about installing and booting Linux on the PS3. Now, this is unlike the Xbox version which took quite some hacking just to get Linux inside the cranium. Linux is available for download, and so is the Linux boot CD for PS3.

One good thing about Linux is that there is WINE available for playing windows based PC. Now, Wine Is Not Emulator, hence the name. Well, I have already tested Wine on my Fedora Core 5 installation, and well, it holds water. Naturally too, since there are millions of Wine users out there. I’ve got Diablo 2 working in fullscreen. However, because there is an additional software running in the background, things are going to get noticably slower. Diablo 2 was barely playable on my computer. Of course, you have to bear in mind that I’m running an AMD Athlon 1.1Ghz PC with only 400+ MB RAM. Not stellar specifications, but enough for my needs … for now.

So, look at it this way. PS3 is probably the most powerful console system available. It can boot Linux. What does that mean? With Linux running inside, you can theoretically install Wine into the PS3. There-in, lies the beauty. With Wine installed, you can theoretically play any windows games, provided it has been tested and is working. What does this give you? A powerful and versatile gaming system, which can play not only PS3 games, but PC games as well. Now, I remember that there was talk on the net a rather long time ago about some Xbox emulator for the PC. I don’t think it really lifted off the ground, but just imagine the possibilities of that one happening! PS3, able to play games from 3 system, all in one machine! OMG, this is just insane.

The only problem now, would be the price. It’s just too painful a pinch to be able to manage. At half a thousand shy of two thousand at my last enquiry, that’s quite a lot of money to lay down for something which is still very new on the market. Well, only time will tell. Now what I need would be for some kind soul with a PS3 lying around to install Linux, install Wine or Cedega and then get onto the World of Warcraft. That will be the day!

Everyone loves freebies, right? I’m pretty sure of that. It’s instinctive to want something for nothing, although it’s something quite hard to come by. More often than not, free things are really that outstanding either. Still, there occasionally comes a time when something comes along, that happens to be free, and is good too!

It’s actually a break-out clone, but with updated graphics and interesting variations. Best of all, it’s free. Until November that is. Get it while it lasts. Here.

Script Creation Utility for Manic Mansion Virtual Machine

Getting the Scummvm to work. This is probably one of the most important software to install. With this, I can play all the old’ish adventure games without needing a full fledged pc! Time to complete Full Throttle!

This is the forum thread to keep an eye on, for future developments and releases.

1. Scummvm is dependent on
1. libsdl_1.2.5-slzaurus20041025-j_arm.ipk
2. libSDL-mixer_1.2.6-zports-1_arm.ipk
3. libmad_0.14.2b-1_arm.ipk
4. libogg_1.1.3_armv5tel.ipk
5. libvorbis_1.1.2_armv5tel.ipk
6. libvorbisidec1_20040108-1_armv4l-xscale.ipk
7. libfluidsynth.so.1.1.1 or libfluidsynth.tar.gz
2. Install all the libraries as above. Note that as of scummvm 0.8.2, libsdl_1.2.5-slzaurus has to be used. 1.2.6 version refused to work. The scummvm interface refused to display itself.
3. Copy the libfluidsynth.so.1.1.1 to /home/root/usr/lib
4. From there, create symbolic links (ln -s) of it to libfluidsynth.so.1 and libfluidsynth.so
5. Install Scummvm 0.8.2
6. Set it to run as fullscreen.
7. Calendar brings up the menus. Address should be left click while menu should emulate a right click, or something like that. Cancel skips the animation.

Compressing the sound for talkie versions of the game would save disk space, naturally.

1. Download Scummvm tools.
2. Download Lame (for encoding into mp3)
3. Download OGGenc (for encoding into OGG vorbis. Somehow, the executable refused to run on my PC)
4. Compress them!

Scummvm compression info from here.
Lame – http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

OGG – http://homepage3.nifty.com/blacksword/storage/

This is all Kisetsu’s fault and her post on Need for Speed Underground 2.

If not for her, I wouldn’t have installed Need for Speed Underground.

Then again, it’s been a very long time since I’ve played a racing game. Ooh, the feeling’s great!