MiniAce
Patrick joined
I am a 3D modeler, well, I am learning how using blender. Right now I currently only have the basics down but I am improving fast. Previously I had made several attempts to learn 3D modeling, but I was too young to understand the concepts of 3D modeling, or simply plan out the models I tried to create. Now that I am older I figured I might as well as give it a go, and now using all the the knowledge obtained from previous attempts my modeling is starting to take off. I live in Ontario Canada, and I play several sports including ice hockey, paintball, baseball, softball and football. I currently work as an umpire but I aspire to work in the gaming industry. I am strictly a PC gamer, I usually play RTS or FPS games but I occasionally find an (MMO)RPG that I will play for a while.
My Blogs
The Blog Well another week has gone by, and well nothing really new has happened, I did however create a youtube channel. I don't know if I will actually end up posting anything on it but I have made one. Other than that no new news.
Life Well I'm not grounded anymore...but school is kind of a drag. My teachers are assigning a lot more home work than past years. But oh well, I'm acing art, and science but I'm bombing math. My home room teacher hates my guts because I always question him, and sadly things aren't looking very good for the school year. In gym we work out to 80's work out tapes put on a projector. The worst part is that I'm not very coordinated, and find myself falling behind. Whats weird is when we do running or sports in gym I can beat pretty much anyone in my class, but then when it comes to coordination I'm really terrible.
Modeling and Mods This week once again I have no new models. I really need to start again but I can't really think of things to model. So I guess I should move on to "GAMING".
Gaming This week I played more Dual Reality, and tried out a few Mount And Blade: Warband Mods. I tried the Asian Invasion mod, and Sword of Damocles: Warlords. Also as I type this I have 2 mods downloading to play for next week.
-Dual Reality: When I played this I had expected the jump pads to be very very different than the first tech demo. The only new things that I were a platform jump pad that is just i guess a move able floor. and the jump pads were in the floor so no one could exploit the engine (meaning I didn't get to fool around for like an hour with a jump pad). Other than that the new maps were quite nice and I love the puzzles. I can't wait for the full mod and I will rate it 5/5.
-Asian Invasion: I barley played this. In fact i only did for like 10 minutes. I start the game up and nothing was different. The faction colours were different and the major towns names were different. But other than that I saw nothing different. Going to their mod db page it says their were guns but I didnt see them when i went to towns. And I couldn't get the banners to work. Overall maybe a 1/5 really they made it look a lot better than it is, and I was very disappointed.
-Sword of Damocles: Warlords: After playing Asian Invasion I really wasn't expecting much from this mod but its was very good. There were the old factions along with new ones with new classes. There were guns new armor, and coolest of all an absolutely HUGE map. There were a few game play problems though. Firstly the map was a little too big, you character moved so slow on that big map. Also it was too difficult to find someone to kill. Also they give you middle class units and throw you in the middle. Finally I didn't understand what the concept of war parties were. Overall the game was pretty good and I will give it a 3/5.
Wrapping-It-Up So as I said before I am downloading a few mods now, THAT, a half life 2 mod, Europe 1200 Beta 5, for warband, and lastly Titan: XCIX, for half life 2. Also if anyone has any ideas for my youtube please leave it in the comments.
That's another blog wrapped up.
Mini Ace, out!
Links
You Tube:
The Blog I know guys, I'm sorry I had to post this on Wednesday, but unfortunately I only really got to go on my PC until Sunday. Then guess what, I get grounded. So unfortunately this small blog with have to be for both last week and this week. Also I am considering several changes for my 11th blog/introduction. One of these changes is simply changing the rating from out of 5 to out of 10. Also I am considering asking other sources for input for the changes but so far I haven't contacted anyone.
One change that I'm going to implament this blog is the Wrapping-It-Up section. It will basically summerize what I have said about the games I reviewed and say good bye. I think it will help me end the blogs because I always have trouble "wrapping it up."
Last week I was so busy with hockey and the first week of school that I unfortunately didn't to model anything. Therefore for this blog I will not have a Mods and Modeling section. I may or may not be able to cox my mom into letting me 3D model and post them for next week.
Life So as I have said I have been grounded until Monday. Basically in my house being grounded means that you cant have access to your computer, phone, or any other electrical device (excluding TV). Other than that school have just started and at first I wasn't to keen on my class. Then after the first few days I realized that if non of my friends were in my classes, I might actually get some work done. Also I seem to be becoming popular among the students this year... I really don't know why but I always thought it be a lot greater. Now basically there is no difference but everyone wants to talk to me.
Gaming So last week I was able to play Spiral Knights again, and try out some of the Dual Reality Tech Demo.
-Dual Reality Tech Demo: I wont rate this one this week, because they
released a new version recently. They mainly worked on the jump pads,
and they're properties which I personally thought really really needed work. I also have considered posting a video of me
playing through the tech demo. I want to do this because i am not really
a normal player, and I always wonder if i am doing the puzzles
completely wrong. For instance on one level they're was one of those
shorts robots that kill you on the middle of a narrow platform. I
couldn't figure out the puzzle so I jumped almost like a Kreedz jump
around the robot and brought an extra bot with me to the next room. I
also thought that the maps were really planned out quite well. I loved
the way that they made it look as if you had to use the other
dimension/reality when you really had to stay in the one that you were
already in. I cant wait until Monday because I know that this is the
first thing I will play as soon as I get my PC back.
-Spiral Knights: So last week I wanted to try Spiral Knights again because I saw the steam trading and it reminded me to try it again. So I did, and I really found it annoying to play online. You see I had this 6 year old kid asking me to help him with equip his new sword. The worst part was he was on the voice chat. After that I will now only solo the dungeons no matter what. Besides the dungeons aren't that hard to solo, And you of course get way more exp and money.Other than the player base being very shall we say "immature" the game is pretty good. But then again when do F-T-P MMOs have decent players, after all MMO's were the only games I played when I was a very young gamer, I just thank my brother for letting me play his TF2, otherwise I doubt I would ever have played any decent games. Okay since I got so off topic I will just rate the game...(drum-role please)...3/5.
Wrapping-It-UpWhen I talked about maybe recording me playing through Dual Reality I started thinking about maybe doing a live stream like Dec from the Mortewood Plaza had like a year ago when he was doing testing. Sadly i think that if i were to do that you will see how much of a n00B i am when it comes to single player games. I know that I am terrible with puzzles and that I SHOULD stick to multiplayers but I just enjoy singleplayer so much.
So to summarize what I have said in this blog, defiantly play both Spiral Knights and Dual Reality. I will try to get more models up, and lastly I appologize again for having to post this blog on Wednesday and not having one next week.
That will finish off the blog, Hopefully I will have more in the weeks to come!
Mini Ace, out!
Links
The Mortewood Plaza:
Dual Reality:
The Blog This blog may be shorter than previous ones because I was out at my cottage and RO2 Beta came out so as you can imagine I wasn't really playing anything else.There isn't really any new news for the blog, though this is the first time uploading my blog on a Saturday.
Modeling and Mods Today I only have one model done, because I was at my cottage and I only had my phone with me. The model I did make was of a flashlight I found on my brothers desk. Its one of those small ones that could almost fit on a key chain. I really had to mess around with the render to get it right but non-the-less I think it looks pretty good.
Life Well as I have said about a million times before, I rented a cottage and met up with my friends from Ottawa and Montreal. I wont go into much depth because I know that that's not why you read this blog. But we explored around Picton, and we went swimming A LOT. Also we had a campfire every night and we played frisbee together, and I cant wait until next year to see Anika, Fiona, and Lukas!
Gaming Last week I said that I would review the rest of the HIB3 but I honestly couldn't get myself to play the games. So I guess this week I will talk about part of the HIB3 that I did end up playing: Braid, and Atom Zombie Smasher. The new free-to-play steam game: Crimecraft: BLEEDOUT. And of course Red Orchestra 2: Hero's Of Stalingrad.
-Braid: I played through the frist world properly, then I realized I didn't actually have to collect all the puzzle pieces, so I ran through until I think world 5 then I just stopped because I saw no point in continuing playing. Though I did enjoy using the time shift mechanic I really got bored of the easy puzzles. I will rate this a 2/5.
-Atom Zombie Smasher: This game was exciting for a while i really found myself planning things out and trying to see the best places to put things. I would plan for like 5 minutes before starting the level. But the same level with more "zed" and more humans really got tiring, but the parts I did play I did enjoy until i got bored. And I will rate this 3/5.
-Crimecraft:BLEEDOUT: This game I play I think almost 8 hours trying to beat it, and I eventually did. The story was a little week but still good, and I did like the feel to the game. It reminded me of the movie District B13. Though there weren't park-our stunts the underground ghetto feel to it is similar. The basis of the story is that our oil has run out and the world pretty much died, and the people have joined up into gangs to try to survive. I played The PvE (the story) as well as PvP, and I found that all of the people playing in the PvP were, well not very skilled gamers. Even though I was using the basic weapons I still managed to be first or second in the little 4v4 matches. Overall the game was really fun and I cant wait for episode 2! So I'm going to rate it 5/5!
Also Red Orchestra 2 Beta came out and my brother and I have been playing it quite a lot. The first 3 maps that were released are very fun, well the 2 that aren't tank only maps. Today the beta is getting an update and it is supposed to be adding 3 more maps and the progression and unlocks (I may be wrong about that last one). Personally I don't really think that this is a very good idea, though there is the 2 SP campaigns realesing 6 of the 10 maps coming out in the release will kind of ruin the game in the long term... But I'm sure Tripwire will release more maps later.
Another cool story is that I listened to my first live podcast 17 and then the post game TF2 games. I found out just how nice the community was. I was kind of a n00B when it came to the severs and things like that, and half the time I talked about star craft 2, but I had fun fooling around in the post game session. My most memorable moment was "feeding" William even before the matches would start. I would always go up to the gate when on defense and eventually William burnt me from the other side.
I guess this concludes this weeks blog be sure to check out podcast 17!
Mini Ace,out!
Links
Podcast 17:
The Blog I have an announcement to make today! So I am officially moving the blog to every Saturday. I'm very sorry for changing the day again but I am trying to find a good setup that works with my job, hockey, and school. Yes I did say school, I start in about 20 days and I am not exactly excited for it. Not only does it mean i wont be able to model and skate as much. But i have hockey 4-6 days a week, so I am going to be really busy trying to balance hockey and school and all of you, my beloved readers.
Also if I am unable to write a blog or game it will be posted on Wednesday. If it isn't posted on Wednesday there should be something in the previous weeks blog warning that I will be away. Since I am talking about being away, this week from Sunday the 21st to Sunday the 28th I will be away with my family at a cottage. I will talk more about this in the "LIFE" section.
Lastly I am introducing a "LINKS" section to the blog so I can link things like the mods I reviewed, or someone that helped with a model. This section will be at the bottom of all the blogs .
Modeling and Mods This week I modeled a holy hand grenade and baseball bat (pictures have already been uploaded). I made the holy hand grenade because I love the worms games and I just had to make one. I really like how it turned out, and I will try to UV map and texture it ASAP. Along with the grenade I also made a baseball bat. For this model I made several versions and my friend Dragon (links in "LINKS" section) and he told me to do some tweaks to do. After a while we got it just right. Dragon is the founder of "The Dragons Keep", it is a group that hosts TF2 servers.
Also I have officially decided to colour (ye I'm Canadian) coordinate the background of my models.A blue background will mean that the model is a PROP. A green background will mean that the model is a CHARACTER. And a red background will mean that the model is a WEAPON.
Life Well as I said earlier I will be going to a cottage near Ottawa with my family, there is an internet connection but I don't have a laptop that is good enough for gaming so I guess next weeks blog may be on Wednesday, or I will unfortunately have no blog. I will try to make models but I cant really promise anything.
And today i have a question for you guys, if grey stuff comes out of my toe is that bad?
Gaming Today I am going to review half of the humble indie bundle 3's games. The games I will review are: Machinarium, Steel Storm: Burning Retribution, Crayon Physics Deluxe, and Osmos.
-Machinarium: Technically I didn't play this game but my brother did. Basically my brother was having trouble with the puzzles in the game so I helped him through 95% of the game. The games puzzles were very funny and hard, and I really loved the arcade part of the game. The only down side to the game is that some of the puzzles you had to have quite and imagination and we ended u using trial and error to get through most of it. For an example at part of the game you had to use toilet paper as a rope at one part of the game. One thing i want to mention is that the art was absolutely AMAZING I spent a while just admiring the drawings in each map. I will rate this game a 4.5/5 because the developers had a sense of humor and it was just generally a fun game to play.
-Steel Storm: Burning Retribution: This game was in like the RTS view but it was just a regular shooter with little to no story. It had a little bit of a learning curve to be able to dodge the enemies attacks but it only takes maybe the first mission to learn. Theres not much to say about this game... I will give it a 3/5 because I did enjoy it but it wasnt anything special.
-Crayon Physics Deluxe: In this game I got bored of it quite fast. I played until the 4th island, adn from what I played the puzzles were very easy. And to be honest it work make a mediocre IPhone game, I would give it a 1/5 because I just couldn't stand playing this game, if I wasn't going to write a review on it I would have stopped after the first 5 levels.
-Osmos: This is another game that belongs on the IPhone and not my PC. But in this case I think it would be very very fun if it were longer. That was the only problem with the game was the amount of levels. The game consists of absorbing other cells that are smaller than you.You are either trying to absorb an AI cell, become the biggest cell in the map, or trying to reach a certain size. There were also these cells that had like an orbit around them that you were in. If you got out of orbit you went out of control and in the long run died. One feature that I thought was cool was that to move you had to use small parts of you to push you forward, so you really needed to be patient and be strategic in your moves. I am going to give it a 4/5.
In my other gaming news I am starting to play an MMORPG called Drift City, it is like a racing game with a story and car chases. I also was playing Modular Combat, one of my favorite mods. Next week if there is a blog I will review the rest of the HIB (if there is a blog next week), and I am planning on going through some of FPS banana's SP maps.
Until then...
Mini Ace, out.
Links
The Blog
Okay so the first thing I would like to say is that I am very very sorry for having such a delay time in between blogs, a lot of thing happened this past week. Now I know that this is no excuse and I need to be more serious about you guys. Also I now have a plan for the blog, I will do 10 blogs to see how things are picking up, and if I want to do this continually. If I decide to I will do an official introduction blog and hopefully start doing things more seriously. Also I think that I will try to write a new blog every 2-4 days, so be looking forward to that.
Modeling and Mods
So yesterday i realized that i had no models for the blog because ive been so busy, so i stayed up until 2:30 last night modeling, and chatting with my friend Josh (Dr. Jeckle). I decided to make a battle axe type model because i love playing with them in Mount and Blade: Warband. It took me about an hour or so to do because i had to keep redoing the blade. I could never get it to look right. Also i worked on prop modeling and created a pop can and a pylon, they are both somewhat simple models but i think they turned out quite nice.
And a little inside info: There has been some talk about starting a Half Life 2 mod amongst my friends, we really don't have anything yet but if we do decide to do it then I of course am overflowing with ideas.
Life
The reason I have been so busy recently is because my hockey coach...passed away last Monday. You see, in Canada we are stereotypically hockey fanatics, and for some people like myself its true. So you might have been thinking oh it was just his coach, but my hockey team, well to put it simply we did everything together. We went to restaurants, hotels, over to each others house, and just generally were like long time friends.
My coach was 36 when he passed, and he left behind 3 boys, 6 year old twins Jared and Drake, and 13 year old Nick. And of course his loving wife Jennifer. We will always miss you Chris and we pray for your family.
Gaming
This week I was focused on playing all of the free steam games. They are Forsaken World, Global Agenda, War Inc. Battlezone, Spiral Knights, Alliance of Valiant Arms, and Champions Online. Oh and Team Fortress 2 but I've had that for years and it doesn't really count.
-Forsaken World: I am not a very big RPG player anymore, but I have to say this was one of the slowest RPG's I have played for a while, I think I played until I was level 16 then I just stopped it was boring and slow and it held your hand way too much. It was too easy to kill anything and it wasn't very exciting. I would give it a 2 out of 5 because it wasn't absolutely terrible, but not exciting and way too easy.
- Global Agenda: This game was extremely fun, and the jet pack mechanics, I spent a lot of time just fooling around with it. Unfortunately the game was very short and it ended abruptly. I think I was at about level 21 when I got bored of the pvp. Basically what happens is you run through the story doing quests and missions like in Guild Wars. Then when you think you are really good and you really really want to play more, the game's story just stops, and your expected to play pvp until you are level 30 and then join the games clan or guilds called agencies and do even more pvp. Now there is a co-op pve option but its is so repetitive, and there are like 4 missions for each skill level. So after 2 or 3 levels with my character which are by the way relatively hard to get off of doing the co-op and pvp, I gave up and moved on. Overall the game was very fun and well made and I would give it a 4 out of 5.
-War Inc Battlezone: I have mixed feelings for this game it was really fun and well made and you can really tell that the developers care because there is an update almost every single day. But on the other side this game needs more balancing. The snipers really ruin the game and unfortunately but now surprisingly most people play sniper, they're are extremely OP and end up being stronger than anyone in the game. Also I have been made aware that they fixed this but you can see all enemies on the mini map ruining any stealth or skilled approach. The last thing that I found bad about this game was that the skills only worked half the time and it was very frustrating because I bought a skill with the "gold coins" (which is the payer money) that I got at each level. I could have used the coins to get a good gun permanently but instead bought a skill that only works half the time. This game was very fun and addicting and really there are only minor things to fix but its not perfect yet so I will give it a 4 out of 5 and I may continue to play this game for a while, and hopefully they will make those fixes..
-Spiral Knights: Unfortunately I can't really review Spiral Knights because unfortunately I got stuck in the tutorial camp. You see there was this guy and he had I think 4 little bubbles of text, and I just got tired of reading them and skipped them. Little did i know that you acctully had to read those to figure out where to go, so I ended up using this machine like elevator thing to do some sort of dungeon fighting but I really couldn't figure out what to do after that.
-Alliance of Valiant Arms: This game was a complete counter-strike clone, and it wasn't very thought through in my opinion. I think this because if I am to kill one guy head-to-head it takes me down to low hp and I am killed almost instantly if I try to go into another firefight and it kind of ruins the whole feel of the game. Another thing that I hated was the snipers, again developers really have to be careful about having snipers in a game, because a lot of the time all of the noobs go and just play sniper because they are OP and easy to use. The worst is when almost everyone is a sniper and I try to advance then as Doug would say it "BOOM HEAD SHOT" and there is really nothing I can do about it. I only played this one for a little while but I did like the tank game mode where you have to kill or escort the tank, but I'm pretty sure thats from Enemy Territory: Front Lines at least thats where I first saw it, I bet theres a game that did it before though. There wasnt really a lot of bad things about this game but there wasnt really very good things about it either so I will give it a 2.5 out of 5.
-Champions Online: This game was a little too repetitive for my likings, and it seems to be geared towards team or friend play. Unfortunately we only have one computer good enough to run this in my house so I couldn't play with my brother, and non of my friends would play with me so I went solo. The game was fun in the tutorial but when I got to the main city I did all of the kill the new purple gang quests but there were so many of the same quest it just wasn't very fun, I may go back to the game and try again because I really really enjoyed it up until it got repetitive. It did hold your hand a lot but I thought they did it in a good way because you didn't have to use the auto attack and there was blocking so if you wanted to you could use skill. But as I said earlier if you want to play this you might want to get a friend because the enemies were pretty tough to take on solo at some parts of the game, then again you could just grind A LOT. The story was half decent and was easy to follow the maps were huge and the movement skill mechanics (like you could fly or jump super high or do the spider man things with webs) really allowed you to morph your own playingstyle and superhero. This game really did have its moments and I don't want to give it a perfect score but it was really close so I will give it a 4.5 out of 5 because it wasn't perfect but I really enjoyed the game.
So those are my reviews of the free steam games, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog, and I need to apologize again for 2 things. Firstly I am going to apologize again for posting this blog so late. But also I would like to apologize for uploading the pictures of my models before and after posting this blog, I had uploaded the pictures, and wrote out the entire blog except this last paragraph then I had to go to work so I didn't have time to edit it, so basically when I got home my brother was on until well now, when I am uploading this. Thank you for putting up with me and my weird life.
Mini Ace, out.
Modeling and Mods
Well I am finally using Mod DB again, I have modeled 2 things today. Both of which screens have been uploaded to my profile. I may start to try to unwrap and UV map some basic things. My brother has offered to make some textures for me, so i see no point in not trying. Also soon I may start to try to map, but I want to have a little better grasp of modeling first. But when and if I am able to model well enough that I can make proper material and map I could easily make my own SP map and send it in to Planet Philip. Also sometime this week I am going to try to make textures for a hammer again, so that should be pretty exciting.
Life
Currently I am not doing many things as I am on summer vacation, and well to put it simply, my family and I don't usually do much during the summer. The only thing i will be doing this week that is exciting is that I am going to a mini camp for ice hockey. I play as a goalie, and i have never played rep before this year, and last year I was scouted and asked to try out for AE, and when I did, I made the team. Now my parents are taking so "extra measures" so make sure that I'm not the goat on the team. So much for support. Also I may be starting to paintball again, being my first blog I guess I need to explain this too. When i was ten I started to paintball and I've been hooked ever since. But unfortunately this year i have been having some gun troubles and I need to order a part from California. But the shipping will cost about twice as much as the part. All in all I am most likely going to have to break down and buy the part, or use my back up gun, but lets face it a Tipmann 98 custom just doesn't match up to my Autococker.
Gaming
This week I really haven't done much gaming but when I do I usually play Mount and Blade: Warband, Star Craft 2, Battle Field Bad Company 2, or any Half Life 2 mod. So today I started 1887 EP1, and well i play for about maybe 20 minutes and stopped, I mean I really didn't like playing the mod. The reason for that is if i want to kill a lot of enemies and go through extremely liner maps I might as well as play a MP game. I mean it seemed room after room I kill a hoard then i proceed to the next room i kill the hoard, go to the next room and kill the hoard. You get the point. Maybe tomorrow I will try it again but I doubt I will.
Another game I was playing today was Mount and Blade: Warband I love the game, its extremely fun and i would recommend it to anyone who likes both FPS, and RPG. Unfortunately this game is EXTREMELY buggy in fact I've had 2 characters that i had to stop playing because of bugs, the first character the morale for my food stopped working, therefore making all the people in my party leave.
The other the middle of my map became transparent so i could see the skybox below, also it wouldn't let me travel through the area so I had to delete that character too. So my character now is a girl too hopefully get some achievements, I don't know why but i always feel good about myself when i get an achievement until I realize how easy it is to get it.
Lastly, I am really looking forward to the Humble Indie Bundle 3, even if there has been 4 of them. I really like the looks of VVVVV, Crayon Physics, and Hammerfight. Cogs and And Yet It Moves don't look very enjoyable but you never know, I've only seen the trailer for the Humble Indie Bundle. Another thing I am really looking forward to is Red Orchestra 2: Hero's Of Stalingrad. I really loved the first one, even if the play isn't really my style. It comes out August 30th
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