Windows Media Center 2005 woes

I managed to acquire, for the price of a nice lunch, a brand new Elonex media center Artisan LX a couple of days back. I was initially very excited because up to then I had still been running my first media center was really just an experiment, built from scratch containing mostly old components I had around my place. A year and a bit on, I am firmly hooked on a PC based PVR system the cornerstone of my entertainment system. It contained an Athlon 2600+ processor with 512Mb of DDR coupled with a DVB-T Hauppage tuner and an 80Gb drive for recordings running the open source MediaPortal software. So as you can see, there was plenty of room for improvement.

This was the first time I have really had a tinker with the Windows Media Center range of Operating systems that Microsoft produce and I went in with few expectations, apart from wanting at least as comparable an experience in terms of functionality and flexibility as I have enjoyed with MediaPortal.

The first thing that struck me was how fickle Windows Media Center 2005 was, even with all the roll ups (essentially what Microsoft call Service Packs for Media Center OS) installed. Wikipedia sums up the ‘capabilities’ of WMC 2005:

‘Media Center originally had a limitation of 1 analog tuner, but was raised to 2 analog tuners with Media Center 2005. With Update Rollup 1 for Media Center 2005, support for a digital tuner was added, but an analog tuner must still be present for the digital tuner to function. With Rollup 2, up to 4 TV tuners can be configured (2 analog and 2 HDTV). All the tuners must use the same source, for example they must all be off an aerial or a set-top box using the same guide data, you cannot mix Sky Digital and DVB-T for example.’

XP Media Center really shows its age here - I do not watch any analogue transmissions, so for a Media Center to require a legacy piece of hardware just to be able to access DVB (digital) seems preposterous. But that was not the worst thing! Windows Media Center 2005 is not capable of pulling EPG data OTA (over-the-air) instead requiring an overly elaborate system that relies on a permanent, always on Internet connection. This also raises some privacy concerns as ‘anonymous’ data, which is not entirely anonymous as Microsoft asks for your postcode during set up, is fed back to Microsoft which can include recording / watching trends and general EPG usage. Hitherto my media center system has not been networked. Considering it is in the opposite corner of my house, and I do not stream my recordings or have formal media shares, I never felt the need to network it. It was nice to just have a static, secure system without any security programs or periodic updates - now security monitoring of my media center has been added to my list of digital chores.

None the less, I was determined to give it a fair go, so I added a wifi adaptor, added some plug-ins and configured everything. After spending eight hours getting everything working, playing around and testing… I went back to my custom build. Not all the problems can be put squarely at Microsoft’s feet however. Elonex declared bankruptcy shortly after launching this range and the malicious part of me can see why, if this mediacenter is the sum total of their expertise.

Whilst the case looked rather nice from the outside, the hardware and the design of the internals is what really lets it down. The only element Elonex got right was the noise (or lack thereof) - the media center barely gives out a murmur when idle due to only a since fan which is housed inside the power supply. It runs at 690rpm, which draws air over the CPU heatsink (which has four heat pipes) and directly out the side of the case. However, I stressed ‘at idle’ before for a reason. When the media center does anything the incredibly noisy hard drive starts very audibly clicking and crunching away and it completely lets the machine down.

However that’s not the worst thing about this mediacenter. Due to the fact that there is only one very slow fan the airflow in the case is restricted to circulating around the motherboard tray, the processor then out the power supply. The harddrive and PCI / AGP cards are completely neglected. This point was slammed home when the harddrive consistently reported temperatures of high 50s to 62 degrees Celsius!!! Worse still, when I idled the system, that heat didn’t dissipate. The hard drive is locked into place with a pretentious plastic locking mechanism which neither improves the accessibility of the drive bay nor decreases the vibrations from the drive. There is no thermal (or thermally viable) contact between the hard drive and the case and as such, the hard drive is left smouldering away with no way to cool down predictably with next to no drop in temperature. There is a valid point that maintaining electronic components at a set temperature prolongs their life by avoiding constantly repeating thermal differentials (i.e. heating and cooling) however the fact remains that 60+ degrees centigrade is far too hot for a hard drive. Although my brief research on this did not yield any definitive threshold, most sources agree that 50-55 degrees Centigrade is about the absolute maximum recommended operating temperature.

Couple this practically zero thermal conduction with a lack of airflow and you have a recipie for a very short hard drive life. Even worse, this thermal issue was not limited to HDD, the south-bridge and GFX heatsinks were equally poorly cooled and get unpleasantly hot to the touch.

Worst of all, it is just slow. CpuID and the BIOS disagreed with each other about the exact Intel processor that powers the system. I believe it to be either an Intel Pentium 4 530 (at 3.06Ghz) or a Celeron D 345. There is no way the much older Athlon 2600+ processor with the same RAM should be out performing this setup and yet it does so without breaking a sweat.

All in all, very disappointing. A remarkable demonstration of technical ignorance on the part of Elonex. But hey, I didn’t pay for it and now I have an extra DVB-T tuner back in my original, self built machine.

Design (cosmetic) : 8/10 - Pleasing, with a nice Hi-fi look.

Design (technical) : 2/10 - Poor components poorly arranged.

Cooling : 6/10 - Great CPU and powersupply cooling, but everything else is woefully neglected.

Acoustics : 6/10 - Silent until it has to touch the harddrive, still a good effort though

Connectivity : 8/10 - Lots of connectors for digital Audio and Video

Capacity : 5/10 - 200Gb harddrive with a portion taken for recovery. I wouldn’t trust it though and by modern standards it is rather anemic.

Overall : 2/10 - Great for free, if I paid anything for it I would have been annoyed.

DoD:Source - Play for free this weekend!

This weekend you can play Day of Defeat Source for free via Steam, it corresponds to the launch of the Palermo services across steam which greatly adds to the platform by adding unlock-able achievements for each game. So what is Day of Defeat I hear you ask? It started out as a FPS mod using the original half life engine and was set in the second world war era. What initially distinguished this game from other stand-alone games and mods of the same and similar genres at the time was how thought out it was. Rather then blindly killing the enemy, to win the round you had to capture (or destroy) strategic points as well as blindly killing the enemy. In essence, it was a slower paced Counter Strike with a lot more emphasis on teamwork and strategy.

I have not played DoD for a number of years which is surprising given the fact I have been playing it since Beta 2 and had a waypointing site dedicated to the mod. Back then it was a damn good ‘rough round the edges’ community mod with a lots of promise and bags of potential.

Beta 3.0 was released and everyone celebrated. It built on the strengths of the first betas- tweaking and balancing them as well as adding new features. For a while nothing happened, we all were content playing beta 3.0 and listening to rumours of the ever elusive beta 4.0. Then, in my opinion, it all started going wrong. The mod team struck a deal with Valve and the mod became a commercial game. Beta 4.0 was actually released as version 1.0. It was highly polished and improved, as one would expect from Valve’s backing. Unfortunately it also had a boat load of issues in particular 56k dial-up gamers (yes there still were a fair few back in 2002/2003) were hit hard with very poor gaming experiences for no tangible reason.

At this point I walked away from Day of Defeat, life was complicated at the time and I was about to start Uni so I didn’t have much time for gaming. So, today I eagerly launched DoD:Source which I had preloaded a few days earlier… and was sadly disappointed.

The game itself is largely unchanged apart from being Source-ified which is both good and bad. It was nice to know most of the maps already, despite their new and frighteningly stunning clarity, as well as the basic classes and the useful routes / camping spots etc. What irked me is that the game itself had been dumbed down somewhat. Features which, at the time, differentiated DoD from other Mods such as bleeding, slow paced objective based gameplay and side weapon differentiation were either dropped or drastically tweaked.

What I find inexcusable however is that many of the old problems still linger. Despite the servers I have played on today having between 4 and 16 players the game frequently juddered and lagged particularly during explosions. The hitbox issue, allegedly solved in Day of Defeat, also reappears with some rather odd damage and hit patterns which can be very frustrating. What is even more peculiar, the game designers have appeared to have focused on beautifying the graphical side of the game considerably, adding odd looking ‘film grain’ effects as well as a kill cam with ‘Press F5 for snapshot’ and other useless ‘features’. Some of these additions are almost pretentious in the flashy way they are implemented especially given how inconsistent the effort appears to have been across other aspects of the game.

This is not to say the game is not fun to play and you can currently buy it for $4.99 (half price until the free play period expires) which is an absolute bargain, but I still think beta Day of Defeat 3.0 was the best version to date. I may have to fire it up with some sturmbots at some stage.

Graphics : 6.5/10 - Good but mostly thanks to the engine and sloppy in places.

Sound : 6 / 10 - Reasonable, but not earth-shattering - somehow feels less meaty than before.

Gameplay : 7 / 10 - Same classic DoD, but a little dumbed down and sadly nothing to distinguish it from other modern games.

Difficulty : 7 / 10 - Shallow learning curve and a wide range of players out there.

Overall : 66/100

Worth playing, but won’t keep you occupied for long.

We don’t go to Ravenholm

VALVe released Half life 2 to a salavating world back in 2004. Gamers jumped on the game and its new engine called Source, a fork from GoldSrc which powered the original Half Life and was itself based on the original Quake. Unusually, I am going to get to the point very early in a post - I thought Half Life 2 was great. It was slick, beautifully polished and combined action, horror and character development with VALVe’s unique humour.

I do not wish to say much more about the original game, instead I want to talk about the episodic spin offs that were ment to continue the story line. Half Life 2 left us on a bit of a cliff hanger which was both exciting and disappointing. Luckily, VALVe made good their promises of a continuation which would be “worth the wait.” This was the rather obviously named Half Life 2: Episode 1 which I reviewed on my old site. Again, cutting to the point - I loved the first episode with the usual spectacular visuals and wonderfully choreographed character development we have come to expect. Apart from a little bit of “backwards and forwards”-ing and the fact the game was brutally short (I completed it in a 4 hour sitting on hard) it was an orgy of explosive action mixed with a deep undercurrent of forboding.

What the hell happened next?! Episode two has been out since late 2007 and despite promising a lot of new and exciting features such as massively destructable structures and ‘non-linear’ gameplay, I am yet to play it. Today again I watched the preview videos and felt excited by what was on offer, so why is it I have yet to play or am undecided on whether I want to play episode two? It is 2008 now, four years since the original game was released. Whilst technologically the engine (and therefore the games) have improved in many aspects, it still borrows from the tired wardrobe of the original games. We have the same MP7 and combine rifles, still we have the same equipment and still we have almost the same textures. VALVe seem to have missed the point of episodic gaming:

1) More installments with a greater, developing story line

2) Reduced cost of each installment

3) Reduced time between releases (6 to 9 months at most)

4) Something new and exciting in each new installment.

Whilst they have succeeded in point one and two, they are by no means successful at points 3 and 4. Episode two (and likely the final installment when it is released) feel a bit like a poor theatre company who are stuck with the same actors and same (now) limp faded props and dresses from show to show - trying to recreate a medieval scene one week and a futuristic dystopia the next - all from the same props!

I don’t like ranting like this about a company who has given me so many hours of enjoyment, but by the same token I (and everyone else) had the right to expect more. How hard would it have been to replace the MP7 with a G36 carried by shock Combine forces just outside the city to add little bit of spice? Adding new aliens and expanding story lines are welcome additions, but if the player has the same old tool set, it detracts from the larger changes. Had this game been released a year earlier it would have been a different story, but now I have little enthusiasm for it.

I will try and play it at some point, if I am wrong I will happily put it in writing

The Problem with Outsourcing (or Dell’s Outsourcing)

Well, with any luck I have got my laptop problem sorted now. Although my excitement has been tempered moderately by being on my fourth (!!) HP dv2799 in two weeks. Still, fingers crossed this one won’t fail after a few days Prior to buying this laptop, I did a fair amount of research and digging around to see what I could get and for what price. I was quite taken with a Dell XPS laptop, the M1530. However, with all the horror stories I had heard about Dell, I thought I would put them to the test first, this and I had some questions I genuinely wanted answered before I considered going ahead with my purchase.

I have to say, Dell did a sterling job - if their intention was to make me reconsider my purchase. Having both called them up and spoken to a Customer Care representative online I was surprised at how clueless the people I spoke to where.

Admittedly, the questions I was asking were fairly technical, but instead of checking or asking someone, I was fobbed off with ridiculous answers. I decided to share my experience of the online chat with Dell’s Sourabh Bhattacharya. (I am assuming this is him on Facebook.)

I wanted to share the experience partly as a warning to others and partly for the comedy value in the responses. It also turns out I am not the only one who has had frustrating chats with this agent.

10:42:45        System      System
You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
10:42:45        System      System
Connected with Sourabh_Bhattacharya
10:42:55        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
Thank you for contacting Dell Sales Chat. My name is Sourabh, your Sales Advisor.
10:43:00        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
In order to help you better, May I have your telephone number and email address, if the session ends I will contact you and help you further.
10:43:01        Customer      Konrad
Hi there
10:43:24        Customer      Konrad
I am looking to buy a m1530, I have a couple of technical questions not covered by the site
10:43:53        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
Hi Konrad
10:43:53        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
sure
10:43:56        Customer      Konrad
I do not wish to give out my telephone or email address at this time.
10:44:00        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
please go head
10:44:03        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
No Problem
10:44:12        Customer      Konrad
now, when customising the xps m1530, there are a number of options
10:44:27        Customer      Konrad
the faster hdd (7200 rpm) are they SATA 150 or IDE?
10:44:45        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
Yes.
10:44:59        Customer      Konrad
which one - SATA or IDE?
10:45:55        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
SATA
10:46:43        Customer      Konrad
ok, cool. Next question, the RAM. As per default, 2Gb is selected which runs in dual channel mode. If I upgrade to 3Gb (2Gb+1Gb) will it still run in dual channel mode or be reduced to single channel?
10:47:10        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
Yes it will still run in Dual Channel Mode
10:47:48        Customer      Konrad
what command timing does the RAM use when shipped? 2T or 1T?
10:48:57        Customer      Konrad
Hang on, on your site it says “Note: In order to get dual channel bandwidth capability, both slots must contain memory modules and they must be of the same size and configuration” If I go for the 3Gb configuration, then the modules will not be the same size?!
10:49:50        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
Yes, it will be of the same size
10:50:12        Customer      Konrad
but it wont it will be 1×2gb and 1×1gb
10:50:45        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
doesn’t matter. because the slots inside are of same size
10:51:00        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
and it is made for DDR2 RAM only
10:53:07        Customer      Konrad
the slots will not be the same size if populated with a total of 3gb of memory
10:53:16        Customer      Konrad
you can’t get 2x 1.5gb ram sticks
10:53:47        Customer      Konrad
Ok so what happens if I buy the laptop and it is not in dual channel mode? Can I send it back?
10:54:51        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
it will be of same size, however the there are different Modules inside the RAM card which are more compact and increases the capacity
10:55:58        Agent      Sourabh_Bhattacharya
for the first 7 days, you will have the return policy to return it back
10:56:06        Customer      Konrad
I am not talking about the physical dimensions of the ram module, I am talking about the memory chips on the ram module.
10:56:13        Customer      Konrad
Ok, thanks for your “help.”

As you can see, I eventually got a bit fed up and decided to terminate the session. The above is completely unedited and as it transpired. Never before have I had an argument about the dimensions of RAM modules. *rolls eyes*

Of continuing Tuesdays…

Yes, granted the title to this post makes no sense and basically relates to nothing, but I thought it set up this post rather well. You see, this is just a brief post to apologise for the less than usual frequency of my updates in the last couple of weeks. Its been a bit of a busy time so I have slightly taken my finger off of the pulse of the various industries I follow. Since the majority of my posts are reactionary commentaries or rants or how-tos it follows I have not been writing much.

Also, the much vaunted laptop (dv2799) I bought a couple of weeks ago has now had to be swapped a third time!! The first time it had a strange RAM corruption problem in the GFX RAM and the second laptop I received had a poorly constructed USB header which shorted the whole thing out. *sigh*. Still third time lucky I hope, its a lovely laptop, its just a shame it is let down by dubious quality control at Hewlett Packard’s end.

So, stay tuned, I have by no means lost interest in my blog! For now, I leave you with the comedy genius of Simon Amstell.

Choosing your next PC’s Operating System (the 64bit fiasco)

I am in the process of building a new gaming PC. Well, I should come clean, I have been in the process for almost 5 months now - I am mostly decided on the specifications but minor incompatibilities / annoyances cause me to stall. When this happens, real life typically takes over and by the time I look at my ‘final’ specification again, I normally rip it up and start from scratch due to new hardware being released or price drops. *exhale* I am finally on the verge of finalising the specification, the only things still holding me back are the graphics card (after news of ATi’s 4xx0 series) and the amount of RAM to put into my machine. The latter is heavily influenced by the Operating System I plan to run.

There are two crucial elements to any computer system which must work in harmony, the software and the hardware. Whilst this hardly an earth shattering announcement, I never cease to be amazed at the backlash in the form of blog / forum posts from people who forget this. Realistically when building (or buying) your next Gaming PC at the moment your choices are limited to Windows XP or Vista. Both Linux and Mac OSX suffer from platform compatibility issues with major new games and whilst the former enjoys fair server support for online gaming, neither really has much traction in the desktop gaming market.

The difference between Vista and XP is far more than cosmetic, whilst many are quick to criticise Vista for a number of reasons, I am actually a fan of Microsoft’s latest Operating System for a variety of reasons. Sure, it is feature-poor compared to initial designs and has it’s own annoyances, but the number of extra features and advances make it decisively the better Operating System. There is a caveat, for Vista to run comfortably for gaming purposes needs at least 1 Gb of RAM for itself. This on its own is no big deal - RAM is extraordinarily cheap at the moment, however the issue of platform (32bit/64bit) is now rearing its ugly head.

64 bit computing is nothing new, infact AMD processors have had 64bit extensions (called x86-64) for a number of years since the K8 platform back in 2003. Intel did not catch up (despite starting earlier than AMD) and produce viable 64bit chips until the Pentum 6xx series (late 2004), having stumbled initially with their IA64(T) specification developed for their Itanium platform.

Given this was four years ago, why are we not all running on 64bit XP or Vista? The answer is simple, in the same way that driver support initially crippled Vista’s adoption, 64bit drivers are fairly few and far between. What this means, is a lot less hardware will run properly under a 64bit Operating System. Given this situation, why do we even care about 64 bit computing? Why is it not relegated to high end computing and server farms? Mathematics.

Unfortunately, with a 32 bit Operating System, there is a mathematical limitation to the amount of memory the system can address. At most, Vista (or XP) in 32bit will only address 4Gb of total RAM. This includes both the graphics card and the main system memory. This brings my point about Vista comfortably using one Gb of RAM all by itself to sharp focus. Whilst Yes, the price of RAM is cheap there is something about me that dislikes buying 4Gb of RAM (to enable dual channel mode) only to have a quarter of it not accessible by the system. I wrote about this in detail in a previous post.

So what is the solution? Whilst I am huge fan of Vista (and have recently bought a Vista laptop) I do not think it is suitable for desktop gaming. With Windows XP, I have had fairly bloated a driver / runtime loaded installs using no more than 300Mb of RAM which realistically enables most PC gamers to get away with 2Gb of system RAM with no perceptible loss in gaming performance. This unfortunately would not be the case for a similar system running Vista and as such, unfortunately scuttles Vista for this market in my humble opinion.

The 2k bug

Whilst it seems the Internet enjoys a good Microsoft Vista bashing (see previous post on topic) research today came out suggesting Windows 2000, an eight year old operating system that recently entered long term support phase by Microsoft, is more ’secure’ than Windows Vista. (Cue fanboy and antiboy posts.)

But this is rather misleading, let us not forget, Windows 2000 was released in February 2000, a dark era where firewalls, security software and Windows Update were treated with suspicion previously reserved for black magic. Ok, so maybe I am exaggerating slightly, but back then the average PC had either a Pentium 2 or 3 processor between 600Mhz - 1.2Ghz, between 32-128Mb of RAM and a 20Gb hard disk and was aimed at the business market not consumers who had the privilege of running Windows ME (let the justified ME bashing commence.) But we are still missing the point here, now the only users that run Windows 2000 (which accounted for about 2% of all Internet traffic in March 2008 ) are those who are comfortable power users (like Steve Gibson) or those with old hardware (e.g. Third world etc.) As such, it is not worth the malware authors’ time to target such a small percentage of the userbase when they are more likely to snare the vulnerable XP or Vista users.

Worse still, serious doubts have been raised over the validity of this study given PC Tools did not scientifically determine the states of key security within the operating like Windows Vista’s UAC or even which service packs were installed on the computers. As noted by Ars technica, often the first action by typical malware is to download the target package(s) onto a system immediately after it has been compromised with the usually relatively small initial exploit. This could mean that their numbers are greatly misleading when three or four ‘infections’ could actually be a single instance of malware.

The only way to scientifically conduct such a test, would be with three virtual machines, one running Windows 2000, one with Windows XP and finally one with Vista each running a with a comparable set of security tools and the latest patches. That way, after each exposure, the virtual machine could be examined to determine if the exploit was successful and if so, the degree to which the target machine was compromised. At the end of the experiment, the virtual machine is ’switched off’ without writing the changes to it’s virtual disk and restarted to test the next exploit. Using this methodology, all exploits can be tested equally and methodically and various configurational permutations can also be tried (e.g. Operating systems with only default security measures etc.)

Let us also not forget, there is no way to tell whether these threats are serious silent drive by download style exploits (which would constitute a serious threat) or as a result of user ignorance which even the most secure operating systems and security applications can not guard against. Playing Devil’s advocate, I can see a case that unscientific tests like these better represent real world conditions, however it can not be used to judge to reliability or security of Operating Systems nor the users using them as no conditions nor variables have been made constant. As such, unfortunately, these results have no validity as far as I am concerned.

Great idea, poorly implemented

In the last day or so, WordPress have begun inserting “Possibly Related Posts” and a series of links at the end of some blog posts made by hosted members on wordpress. The backlash was predicable.

This is potentially a great idea as it allows visitors a much greater range of posts that may be of interest to them. Its the kind of feature that allows you to click through to someone Else’s blog, find something interesting, click through to someone Else’s blog… repeat etc. This cascading exploration (which for example, Youtube do brilliantly) has always interested me and is the best way to find interesting stories / ideas online.

This kind of stumbled-across traffic is a welcome boost to those of us who like looking at our traffic stats (I am guilty of this) although at the moment I have seen no noticeable increase in traffic from this ‘feature’. My problem with this new addition is that, apart from a blog post a few days back by Matt (which most people would have missed) there was no warning at all from wordpress. This ‘feature’ has the potential to add content to every post we make here on wordpress and it should have been officially announced, not snuck into blogs surreptitiously like this.

I take time and care over my posts and I dislike the idea that an algorithm can add links to the bottom of my content with no approval from me. I have no way of filtering or proofing/vetting the links until they appear which is unacceptable. What would be interesting would be if this ‘feature’ was offered in the “Write Post” dialog either allowing you to add your own links (based on a pool of posts from an algorithm) or at least preview the default “Related Posts.” I have disabled this function for now, if you want to too then simply goto Design>Extras an check “Hide related links on this blog, which means this blog won’t show up on other’s blogs or get traffic that way“

Vista Bashing = Cheap Traffic!?

It seems the web (and certainly the blogosphere) is full of posts damning Vista for various reasons and I do not believe all this harsh criticism is justified. It all came to a head when I read a particular blog entry tonight. I started writing a brief reply in order to express my feelings on the matter, but it turned into a semi-lengthy rant which I would like to reproduce in a somewhat tweaked / editing form here.

What worries me is that it is very fashionable to bash Vista. It feels like any self proclaimed Tech expert thinks it is almost their prerogative to write long anti-Vista articles based on and citing other anti-Vista articles - does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?!

For the record I should say I am a huge fan of Linux, I run more Linux boxes than Windows, but of those windows boxes, the majority are XP and only one is Vista. I am very happy with Vista as well as XP but it is about managing your expectations. It is completely unrealistic to assume Vista will run on hardware that is a couple of years old (or even some budget machines.)

Surprise surprise, it won’t, Vista has been plagued by hardware and software incompatibilities - what does this tell us? Simply that Microsoft was not lying when it said Vista is a major update to the Windows platform. Historically all major updates have had driver and software compatibility issues (anyone remember XP 5/6 years ago?!?) Drivers are the responsibility of the manufacturer NOT Microsoft, for years prior to release Microsoft were talking to hardware companies, asking them to update their drivers but most ignored them. Why!?? Very simply because they will sell more hardware if people have to go out and buy Vista certified equipment. It is not in their interest to revisit hardware they released 2 years ago - it does not make them any more money and the consumer be damned.

Saying that, there are a number of platforms / situations when Vista is clearly not suitable and for those I still run XP - it is more responsive on such hardware and has the added bonus of comfort factor (i.e. I have been using it for years and I am very familiar with it,) but lets not forget, this is old technology that has not really been worked on since 2005 (sp2.) SP3 is nothing more than a security roll up with a few extra Vista developed features added. The desktop rendering in XP (called GDI+) is based on a software stack that is several years old and incapable of hardware accelerated desktop compositing - the same thing Mac OSX and Linux have been capable of for years.

The problem is, noone seems to have a long enough memory to remember the Windows 2000 / 98 saga, or the Windows XP / 2000 saga that followed that…

There is nothing wrong with Vista*, similarly nothing wrong with XP*, nor is there nothing wrong with Linux*, and even with OSX* - it depends on what hardware you have and what you want to do with it.

* Of course it is not as black and white as this, all platforms have their inherent strengths and weaknesses.

I wish we would move beyond this fanboy like bashing, if there is merit to a discussion I am all for it, but I am getting fed up of reading the same FUD constantly. Most of it is simply fishing for cheap traffic.

/Rant

Bringing the Puzzle into the mainstream

I was having a long overdue clear-out of my cupboard and I found a few interesting things I have managed to accumulate over the last few years. The one bit that peaked my interest the most was the box for Red Alert: Counterstrike. This was the first (and worst) expansion pack for Command and Conquer Red Alert, still inside the box was the manual and the coded communication. For those of you who do not remember (or never played this game) to the right is a picture of one side of this coded communication.

The encoding was very simple, it was Morse code, if you deciphered it, you would be told how to access the built in (and secret) hidden ant missions which were not alluded to in the actual game. It got me thinking, when was the last time gamers were really challenged with puzzles in mainstream games? RPGs in general almost always feature quite unique and challenging puzzles. The n64 versions of the Legend of Zelda series of games had some of the more varied and fun puzzles but there are many more examples of such games. This is a genre that has Incorporated RPG elements as one of its key gameplay points. How many new RPGs actually utilise puzzles to challenge the player? Most newer RPGs seem to believe NPC or item hunting around the game ‘world’ map to be the height of puzzle solving, whilst this can be fun, it does not even remotely compare to RPGs of old.

Lets take a look at the main genres in PC gaming and see how they are (or are not) innovating.

Real Time Strategy games in general have no puzzle solving within the gameplay. That does not mean they are brainless mass-mindless-click games however, more modern RTS games like Company of Heros or Supreme Commander do require the player to carefully think through their next move rather than rely on tank rush tactics of old. Games like Company of Heros have value added features which require the player to complete each mission whilst meeting some modest requirement (e.g. no less than 5 tank losses or inflict 300 casualties) but these only serve to give the games some limited replay factor, they do not encourage the player to think much. The unfortunate downside to many of the more complex RTS games is they suffer greatly from their own complexity. This is most obvious in Supreme Commander where the great requirement for micromanagement seriously detracts from the fun gameplay.

First Person Shooter games are some of the worst culprits when it comes to innovation. More and more game companies believe that the answer to their next shooter is to build a new engine and rehash gameplay from previous titles. Whilst in a lot of cases produces some excellent games (Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock etc) in terms of innovating or bringing something new and challenging to the genre, they tend to fall flat. There are a few notable exceptions thankfully and by a strange coincidence they mostly appear to use the early ID engines or Id tech 4 engine. It all started with Quake back in 1997, a (for then) stunning true 3D game which became the most touted reason to buy a (or upgrade your) computer that year for gamers. What it did well is, apart from being an ego shooter, there were secrets which were challenging to find as well as a number of func_triggers that either had to be shot (or touched by the player) in order to allow them to progress in the game. This along with the introduction of pseudo physics gave players a new dimension to think in when playing FPS games and was in stark contrast to pseudo 3D games like the original Doom series.

Doom 3 on the other hand was a different story, featuring a (then) revolutionary FPS engine, it sought not only to stun gamers, but also to add a little bit of uniqueness to the genre. It was a lot of fun to play but in a lot of ways it’s desire to innovate fell short of the mark. Whilst obtaining UAC PDAs was a new take and added to the immersion in the UAC universe (hunting for codes to Supply cabinets was interesting) it didn’t really present any new challenges to the seasoned FPS player.

Prey, a game based on the Doom 3 engine on the other hand had an excellent concept - one of spirituality. Unfortunately this game seemed to have dropped out of the lime light fairly soon after it’s release which is a shame, but it presented a Doom-esque game whilst presenting a fair few challenges. The protagonist is an American Indian who has the ability to move through some objects / force fields with his spirit, which, the player can swap into and then back to his physical form. This coupled with the physics defying walkways gave the game a fairly unique feel seperating it from the realms of the generic Doom shooter clone.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is also worth mentioning here because, whilst it does not have any puzzle solving quests in the traditional sense, the game itself can be thought of as an FPS game crossed with a RPG Mystery. It is by no means the first game to have alternative endings and although all seven of them can be broken down into two categories, there was something very fun about unravelling the mystery. It takes effort to go after the side quests in order to achieve this and it is very easy to by pass altogether. This is an example of an FPS story told well, it is a story that unfolds very slowly based on player effort and interpretation. Other games tend to just unravel their stories based on the player’s progression which is by no means as effective (although F.E.A.R is an except to that.) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. could have done so much more though, for example introducing PDA style journals inside their existing system to add atmosphere. The existing system of, you kill someone/find a body and automatically download the information (including stash locations) is a bit too automated. Something like this has to be carefully implemented in order to add to the game rather than give the player reams of pointless prose which they (mostly) will skip like the copious books in Morrowind and Oblivion. A good example of where this journalised PDA system could have been put to good use would be in the X18 lab (With the poltergeist) with all the keypad locked doors. I would have loved to read a paragraph from the dead scientist’s PDA rather than just hearing a brief voice clip telling me the code.

Of course now we come to Portal. The reason behind Portal’s phenomenal success (it was initially viewed as a fun side-mod to Episode 2 by Valve) was that is was completely different. In a way, it was more of a tech demo with a story than a game in itself, but look at the critical response it had from users and reviewers. If nothing else, the amount of fun and enjoyment Portal gave to a wide gaming community speaks volumes for the need for more puzzle elements in modern games.

I wanted to talk about RPG games as well as some other genres, but I can not really find any examples which add greatly add to this discussion. I will however make them the focus of a future post on this topic.

A puzzle does not have to be a scrambled message on an extra bit of paper shipped with the game, it could be far more subtle, it could be a geometric puzzle (wonderful examples in Zelda, Ocarina of Time), it could be a story driven puzzle which gives secondary story arcs (like STALKER) or event a RPG style event driven puzzle. The point I am labouring to make is that there are a huge variety of ways games puzzled and challenged us before graphics became the driving force behind game development. I just hope we will start to see some mainstream games which present more of a fulfilling challenge than we have seen in the last few years.