Free Talk Friday #1 - Favorite Games of 2016

Since 2016 has just ended and is fresh in our minds I think I will talk about my favorite games that I played that came out in 2016. 2016 was a really great year for games. We had the heavy hitters in all genres. And these games are in no order. I just thought I would list what I enjoyed from this year. So lets get this started.

Titanfall 2 - "It's Like Iron Giant With a Higher Body Count."

Titanfall 2 is a great game about fast paced and dynamic infantry combat sprinkled with very fun mech combat sections. The singe player story was a blast to play through. While only lasting about 5-7 hours I enjoyed every minute of it. You and your buddy robot fight through many hordes of enemies, in many environments, and with many weapons. It is a blast and the entire thing just feels good. Multiplayer is also a blast. Be prepared for fast paced infantry combat that feels like something you would get if you had tribes, call of duty, and mech warrior all smashed together. It is great and they are constantly adding onto it with free map packs.

Superhot - "The most innovative shooter I've played in years!"

Superhot is what it says it is. "The most innovative shooter I've played in years!" It plays like a puzzle shooter. You are given a scenario in which the objective is to kill everyone around. You can pick up things in the environment to use as weapons. And the greatest thing is that time only moves when you do. So you can take your time and think about your decisions before you act upon them. While not a long game you will have fun the entire time.

Overwatch - "It's Hight Noon!"

Overwatch is a quintessential Blizzard game. It takes a preexisting genre and polishes it to a mirror shine. Imagine a game system like Team Fortress 2 with many more great characters. Characters are great. Each one has a distinct personality and playstyle. There is a character for everyone. The combat is fast and tactical. The teamplay is on point. And is accessible for almost anyone. It is a great game just to waste a few hours in when you want to unwind or kick some butt with friends.

I have played many other games that came out this year but sadly one thing or another held me back from saying they were my favorites. Doom was a lot of fun. Rip and Tear! Sadly there are some odd efficiency problems that I could not fix. So sadly that detracted a large amount of points. Hitman was great but sadly I only played the first map due to only buying the starter edition. So I cannot give my full review on it. Arma 3's Apex expansion is a great and wonderful addition to the Arma license.

Beyond that there are so many other great games. So get out of here, go play, and have fun! Tell me in the comments which game you had the most fun with this year.

See ya Monday,

- Bly

Workshop Wednesdays #1 - A Pistol and a Dream

What I have been working on... 

...3D Modeling

I have been 3D modeling for about 2 years now off and on. I would say that I have gotten pretty good at constructing a 3D mesh. Texturing is another story. I always seem to get the mesh created then move onto the next thing. I never add a material or texture to it.

So this time I wanted to complete a model fully. With a texture and everything. So I started looking for inspiration. It looked around my room for inspiration and what did I see on me dresser. The tickets to Star Wars: Rogue One that I saw two weeks ago. So I though I should make something from that.

I started wondering through the Rogue One Wookiepedia page. I looked at what sort of tech was in the movie and stumbled upon the A180 Blaster Pistol. I thought it looked pretty cool. Interestingly enough it was the one Jyn Erso gets from Cassian Andor towards the start of the movie. So I thought that was what I will model. I can use the image on the wiki page as the texture.

So after a few hours and one restart I came up with my blaster. I think it turned out pretty well. And it has a texture mapped to it. It is low poly to allow it to be used efficiently and has a single material to be easily imported into a game engine.

Now time for critique. I think most things turned out well on this model. The barrel and mechanism areas both look pretty good. I would like to go back and remake the grip. The grip is supposed to be more curved and less cardboard cutout looking. That will be what I will fine tune over this week in my spare time.

...Programming

Over the past few years I have been wanting to create my own engine, but sadly just never got around to it. So I thought why not start now. Starting with 2D then adding 3D. Thought they are both interchangeable in OpenGL I wanted to focus on one to fine tune it before another. So this means simple, 2D meshes and methods such as rectangles, circles, triangles, text.

So over the past week and a bit I have been designing and working on a project that would utilize an OpenGL 2D engine. This is going to be a basic circuit simulation that will allow the user to create circuits of cells, resistors, and wires. Once I had a basis for the project I began working on a development model. Basics such as basic engine capabilities, such as 2D rendering and window handling, come first. Next comes input. Then buttons. Basic UI follows that. Then the electrical components. After that the current simulation and calculation. Lastly a contextual info panel to allow the user to peak inside the simulation. 

 Once I had a development model setup I began working on the technical details one by one. I am currently working on step one. render. I have window management, shader handling, and polygonal rendering completed. I am currently completing text rendering and then I will create a basic line rendering system, basically a rectangle that is generated based upon a rotation between two points. After this will come everything else game play wise.

I don't have much to show you since it is mostly code and debug graphics. So I will leave you with an acknowledgement that I will show you something next time.

See ya Friday

- Bly

Monday Media #1 - A Cacophony of Sights and Sounds

What I have been playing.

- The Witcher 3

Ah The Witcher 3. I played through this game last year without any of the DLC. It took be about 50 hours to complete when focusing on the main story line and a bit surrounding it. I thoroughly enjoyed large amounts of the game. During the Christmas Sale on Steam I grabbed the DLC, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. So now I am currently playing through it again. This time I am not going to focus on just the main story. I am going to try to do everything. Every quest completed. Every explorable area will be traversed. Currently I am about 5.5 hours in and am still in White Orchard. This game is so fun to just wander around and see what there is.

- Call of Duty 4

I have owned Call of Duty 4 on the PC for many years now. I have always enjoyed it but sadly I had to put it away as new games had to be played. So about a week ago I reinstalled it, updated to the newest version, and installed cod4x, an update mod. It is as fun as I remember. Great level design. Fun, fast game play. And wonderful community servers. I have found a server that runs a modded version of the game. This server contains almost all of the maps from all other call of duty games. It is a blast to play through and enjoy all of these maps in one game. I will probably continue to play this for a few more days. It is just a blast from that past that gives me a little blast of nostalgia and enjoyment over the week.

- WW2 Online: Battlefront Europe

This is one that I have some experience with. WW2 Online: Battlefront Europe, WW2 Online for short, is a MMO scale WW2 simulation game. The reason I say simulation game is that it not only covers infantry combat but also, armor, artillery, air, and sea, Each one is covered in a good amount of depth. To even add to the scale of it they entire game is played over a half scale version of Western Europe from Eastern France/Southern England to Western Germany. The reason I decided to pick WW2 Online up again was due to the fact that they were discounting subscriptions slightly for the Holiday season. So I though why not and I grabbed it for a month. The past few days were made of large scale infantry pushes, armored support operations, and air to air combat. When I say large scale infantry pushes I mean large amounts of me moving up with a large force and getting shot. When I say armored support operations I gave a group of paratroopers a lift on my Panzer 38 to a forested FOB, Forward Operating Base, and was subsequently destroyed while supporting those troops to take the FOB. I hope they were able to take it. And when I say air to air combat it means that I flew a BF-109F-1 in several bomber support missions to be subsequently be shot out of the sky. While the outcome of these situations all ended up in my death I enjoyed ever second of it. I met some interesting people. Shot some interesting people. And died to people I never knew. It was glorious.

What I have been reading.

- Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi

Currently I have been keeping up with Jesse Cox's Star Wars New Canon Podcast. Every month they send you off with a few to read assignments based around the new canon after Disney wiped out all of the old. This months were Heir to the Jedi and The Clone Wars Season 4. So since this is the reading section I will talk about Heir to the Jedi. I have heard mixed things about it but do not know much about it so we shall see as the weeks go on. Currently I am two chapters in and am quite enjoying it. Luke Skywalker was sent to Rodia to facilitate an arms deal between the Rebellion and a local Rodian clan. During the start of his journey he starts to make some new acquaintances and learns more about the Jedi than he knew before.

- 2600: The Hacker Quarterly Winter 2016-2017

I was at Barnes and Noble picking up the previous book when I thought I would look at the magazines. A brownish book about 3/4 this size of a regular magazine caught my eye in the tech section. Printed upon the cover was a picture of an Atari console with a collage of people behind it. Above it were the words 2600 The Hacker Quarterly. This magazine looked odd so I opened it up to one of the articles that appealed to me. It was talking about how they were able to repair and rescue fake memory cards. It was quite interesting. So I grabbed it up. It covers just a wide variety of community written hacking and tech culture articles. I would recommend it if you are interested in either of these things.

What I have been watching.

- Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 4

I have to say I was never a big fan of The Clone Wars. I have currently watched Seasons 1-4. 1-3 are sort of a slog. It has about a 20/80 split on what I would consider good and what I would consider bad. 20% of it is worth the watch and the rest can be painful to sit through. The characters can be boring, childish, and/or just plain annoying. One thing I cannot fault it with is being ugly. The environment designs and characters are well made. Everything feels that it fits well together. The action and scene are beautiful to watch. What I would consider bad is some of the story telling and character portrayals. The characters have a large amount of depth but sadly they can be poorly told. About 3/4 of the way through Season 3 they got their act together. The action was fast. The stories were well paced and told. And the graphics on screen where beautiful. Season 4 took that layout and ran with it. It was almost all great. Heck I would say I enjoyed all of it. It felt Star Wars. There were interesting characters. Interesting Worlds. Large amounts of action, combat, and a healthy dose of space magic, also known as the Force. And great stories within the world of Star Wars. I would recommend starting here if you don't care to know the characters backstories. It is really where they have shown their talent when it comes to making The Clone Wars. I'd give it a good 8/10.

- Passengers

Passengers is a sci-fi movie based around the transit of a colonization project onto another world. There are about 5,000 passengers, if I remember right, being transported to this other planet. It is a 120+ year journey so in order for the colonists to survive they are put in suspended animation.  Along the way an accident occurs and a hibernation pod malfunctions. This pod contains an engineer. Who  sadly wakes up 99 years too early. He ends up getting himself into even more trouble when he cannot handle the isolation and in desperation wakes up another passenger. This movie covers their interactions and many events that follow. Overall the concept is really good. The execution can leave a little to be desired. I enjoyed it for what it was trying to do but felt it could have done it better. 6/10

See ya Wednesday!

- Bly

Hello, World!

This is the initial post of my "Bly's Log" blog that I hope to be working on every other day. Get it. Bly's Log/ BLog. Stupid joke but I found it amusing. This will cover what I have been working on, what I have been playing, what I have been watching, what I have been reading, what I am thinking, and pretty much whatever else I am thinking about. I created this because I have always found the idea of a blog fascinating but I felt I did not have the writing skills to accomplish it. So I figured, why not!

So It will go like this. Every Monday I will do a write-up on what I have been playing/watching/reading/listening to. Every Wednesday I will do what I am currently working on. Every Friday I will just do whatever I feel I want to talk about.

I hope to see you here and hope you enjoy your stay.

See ya Monday!

- Bly