For a couple of months now, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Hydro Thunder Hurricane(HTH), a ten years in the making redesign of the 1999 hit arcade racer Hydro Thunder(HT). While there are already numerous reviews out about the game I figure I would throw in a little depth with my 2 cents.
First off, the game carries the HT name quite well, however to fully enjoy it, you have to remember that this is not the same game we know and love. The boats are back and the race courses are exotic with twists and turns, however gone are the crazy announcer (different less impressive announcer now), mighty hull and a few other small parts, which have been replaced by different and in some case better improvements. The quick answer to "should I buy it" is YES, the long answer is... well read more to find out.
Controls:
The boat controls are similar to the original HT gas, boost and steer (but oddly no reverse). However the new wave physics of the water in each course makes the actual overall feel of each race far different from the original game and takes some getting used to. Hydro jumping makes a return, but is (over) simplified down to just a button press removing what was a tricky skill related move and replacing it with something anyone can achieve by pressing x. Might hull, the move that would smash opponents out of the way has been removed, which is a shame in single player, but makes sense in multiplayer, as it would turn into a complete mess of whoever runs out of boost first gets smashed, and there is already plenty of boat smashing going on.
Boats:
The Boats are back, minus Midway (now named Vector). Each has two or three unlockable skins to help show off your progress and make you stand out more in races. The boats are ranked novice, pro and expert (complete with the "your crazy"). However the feel of the boats have been altered considerably. The novice boats are not worth using after unlocking the pro boats, which may put off new players due to initial races being far more difficult to maneuver, however I urge you to keep playing because the pro/expert boat make the game far more enjoyable. On the other hand, further in the game the expert boats that can be unlocked are way more responsive than their original counter parts, rad hazard being a good example, it is far less prone to spin out on turns, which makes it quite fun to drive now. The down side to this is that in online competition almost every player uses a expert boat, sort of making the rest of the boats pointless (design flaw). Yet, while experienced players will probably stick with expert boats, I had no problems winning a few online multiplayer races with a Thresher(pro boat), it was just far more challenging than with the faster expert boats. In conclusion, other than the novice boats the rest are well relatively balanced and fun to race with once you master their quirks.
Tracks:
The tracks in HTH are all new, however they carry over the feel of the classic tracks. Below are a quick guide to the mix of each track based loosely on the classic ones.
Lake Powell (Lake Powell)
The first track, also making a triumphant return, a lot of different paths to take and a few classic shortcuts to leverage. All in all a fun track which won't take too long to master.
Storming Asgard (Arctic Circle + Ship Graveyard)
The second track, less light and lots of ice. A fun track with some cool surprises, though I am a little sad that the ice shortcuts require you to boost unlike the original which was crazy fast before even boosting.
Monster Island = (Jungle Adventure + Catacombs)
Third track, a circuit track with three laps that change what path is available to take due to the water level dropping. A few too many sharp turns for my tastes, but after getting used to it it is not too bad.
Hydro Dome (Hydro Speedway)
Fourth track, a circuit track with three laps which is very fun and built for speed. Close quarters so online play will knock you around a lot, however once you figure out the layout and shortcuts it is full throttle all the way to the finish. I destroy with Rad Hazard on this track!
Lost Babylon (Nile Adventure)
Fifth track, this one takes a lot of play to get used to, but is probably my favorite. Impressive visuals, lots of tricky shortcuts and quick turns make it very changeling but worth it.
Paris Sewers (New York Disaster)
Sixth track, a circuit track with three laps, built for speed and turns, not too much else going on, but still a solid track.
Seoul Stream (The Far East)
Seventh track, night track with lots of fancy lighted waterfalls and fountains. After the initial oohs and awes, not much going for this track beyond a few interesting but hard to activate/use water powered shortcuts.
Area 51 (Greek Isles + Ship Graveyard)
The eight and last track, a lot of people love this track, I like it but it is not my favorite. Includes a lot of interesting events going on in the background to keep you entertained. Otherwise a balanced track with emphasis on speed in the later half. Listen closely to what is said in the background during the race to get a few laughs.
Unlike the original HT, the track design in HTH are about the same in difficulty. Yep, sadly no Venice Canals successor to challenge our reflexes. Instead the difficulty of each track is controlled by what class of boat you use. Racing with a novice vs pro vs expert causes the other boats to adjust speed, use boost and take shortcuts. The expert racing is, as expected, the hardest as other boats are always at top speed. I prefer the pro races over all.
Secrets:
Secrets on each track are back, this time in abundance, with most tracks offering several routes to choose from, ranching from normal to secrets that have to be landed in from a high drop. This is fine, however I have a minor complaint with how a lot of the secrets are set up. A few have the classic feel, and if not taken only slow you down, however a lot of the extra paths are pointless to take. While even worse some important ones do not provide enough of a boost aid even after being extremely hard to access. Namely, that in the original HT taking shortcuts would normal fill your boost quit well, most in HTH do not, or even waste boost to access. This is not ruin the overall play experience, but you will occasional find your self thinking, "why did I even take this shortcut?"
Online Play:
Of all the features in HTH the one that I was looking forward to most is the online play. Races pit you against 1-7 other players with the host of each game choosing what map is played. I must say that the developers could have taken a cue from the Halo series and added a count down to each lobby, as I am always kicking out people who sit in a not ready state for over 20 seconds while every other player is ready to go. Beyond that the races are as expected, far different and more challenging than with humans vs the game AI. You tend to get knocked around far more as experienced players try to prevent others from getting boosts and accessing shortcuts. To make things more even in races, boost is adjusted based on position, so first gets normal while 8th place gets 8X as much ofter filling the gauge, this is both annoying if you are in first and very helpful when your boat explodes from a small mistake, so I am listing it as a moot point, though in the end it does not do much to help new players win, and would have been nice to be able to disable. In the end a ranking system would have been more fair for new players; I hit the game running, but new younger players must be feeling some frustration being constantly pitted against veteran players with no chance of winning till they get used to the track and unlock better boats. I have had a few races where I am against only one person in a novice boat, I had a good 60sec lead by the end, which is just not fair for them, but an easy win for me. Beyond the online races the leader board keeps track of your overall rank on each track, but due to some glitch problems on tracks allowing players to achieve impossible times, the leader boards are somewhat pointless, nothing like seeing 1:20 at the top where I can only get close to 2:00 on a race with an expert boat.
Down loadable content:
While rumors are flying, it is mostly confirmed that two more tracks should be available at some point.
That about covers the game, so if you like what you have seen go buy the game, if anything go grab the demo and check it out, however be ready for the novice boats to be very lame to drive.
August 12, 2010
Hydro Thunder Hurricane Review
April 23, 2010
Powering an Xbox 360 dvd drive
While I was waiting to be able to power my experimental/half working xbox 360 I decided to see if I could easily get the firmware keys off the drive (Note: this not for piracy, the dvd drive is not working and I would like to replace it at some point.) First off, the dvd drive is a sata drive, however it does not run off of a sata power connector, instead it has a 12 pin connector where 10 of the pins are used. Pins 1-2 are not used on the connector, pins 3-4 & 6 are +3.3v, pins 5,7,9,11 are ground, pin 8 is +5v and finally pins 10 & 12 are +12v. I was able to figure out this pinout using the post here.
Sadly, I was not able to get the key off the drive this time, however I was able to create a simple xbox 360 dvd power adaptor which was powered by a standard computer power supply, or in my case a power adaptor for powering a single computer drive. In the picture you can see my simple power supply on a breadboard, most of this is straight forward, the only tricky part is you need a 3.3v regulator to drop the +5v line down to the 3.3v the drive needs. You can see the regulator at the top of the board with two capacitors keeping the output clean at a stable +3.3v. I did not use a switch to eject the drive, because from what I can tell, the drive motor controller is damaged and will only make a minor movement before freezing and not responding again.
While an interesting side project, it was somewhat pointless as now I can just use the 360 to power it. However it was convent to move this smaller adaptor vs a whole opened 360. Eventually I will take another stab at getting the key off, but not till I have had my fill of xbl arcade.
February 13, 2010
You should have seen it coming! EpicGame on iPhone!
What is different is that there are no keys, you move left and right by holding the left or right edges of the screen. A tap will shoot, and a swipe up makes epic box jump. Pritty niffty I must say.
I quickly found out that the drawing class CGContext was annoying near the end, as you are forced to rely of the Touch OS to draw when it is ready, vs forcing a redraw when needed as I am used to. This takes a huge hit on speed, but I am lazy and do not want to spend an entire extra week of studying just to use OpenGL ES instead. It is large complex and annoying, plus way too much for a simple game like this. Oh, and thanks Apple for not making the iPhone simulator actually match the real speed of an iPhone, for others as a warning, the simulator runs graphic calls around 100 times faster than a real iPod 1G, don't be fooled!
You can grab a copy here, sorry non JailBreakers no portable EpicGame for you, as I am not paying $99 to Apple to distribute a free app, plus the music would most likely prevent it from being approved anyway, as it is used without permission, but without it, it just would not be the same.
Other then the code and the can monster art, I claim no ownership of the rest of the art and music, and as such I am posting the App as free for use as is, enjoy.
December 28, 2009
Colour My - Game Series
A while back I found great enjoyment in playing a simple flash game called Colour My Heart. It was a release for valentines of 2009 on Newgrounds, and ranks right up there with several of the other artistic games I have posted about in the past. Instead of being a challenging game, it is more of a piece of interactive art with a simple story. As SilverStitch, the author puts it, "This is not a 'hardcore gaming experience'...its just simple and more artistic". I was blown away by how well the simple pencil like graphics and backgrounds could come together to be as immersive as it ends up being. See Example Below...
September 14, 2009
Objective C for the iPhone or iPod
I finally decided to sit down and start working with Objective C, namely to expand my development areas into the iPhone and iPod areas. Not that I have any current grand ideas, however I had been meaning to create my own version of lights out and though it might be a good time to get to work. However, who know it may be worth paying the $99 developer fee in the future, but right now I am looking at jail broken device deployment only.
Objective C is similar and at the same time quite different from regular c/c++. One of the biggest differences is that you can use the dot operator, but also have the option of sending messages instead or a mix of the two. For example you could have class.method(input); or you could do [class method:input]; At first this was a little strange, however after a few hours I started to like it a little as it clearly defines what is processing code and what is message code.
Another change for me was using the Interface Builder in xcode. I had played with it briefly before, however I have never actually sat down and used it. It took me a while and some google searching however once I realized that I needed to add a method reference in the .h file as well as the .m file I could then see the links in interface builder. After that I was golden and quickly linked the button in my first game to UIBUttons that could be referenced in the code as well as a single buttonPressed method. HINT: Copy and paste is much faster then doing it individually. This reminded me a little of working in VBStudio as you could design the interface and then do the code second, however unlike VB, C is a little more demanding and requires hand coding instead of a double click on the UI element adding the code for you. Still, minus the some what steeper learning curve it was actually not too bad, and as a bonus I know now how to use Interface Builder in regular OS X development as well.
After ten hours or so of teaching my self objective c, I can now present BlackOut and simple lights out game. You need to have a jail broken device to install this, as I am not paying Apple $99 to give out a free application. Enjoy.
September 5, 2009
DADGAME
I had posted the dad at home and work flash movies before as must see items, however to add even more to the series is DADGAME the next episode following dad at work, however this time it is a full game. Yes, you get to play as dad as he goes on a rampage in town while stopping his boss' evil plot! With swords, lazors, nunchucks, guitar and briefcase as playable weapons against guards, football players, robots and a monkey. This is a must play, even if just on easy. I laughed very hard through the whole thing, especially with the crazy animations in rampage mode. sakupen went all out this time.
Play DADGAME Now!
July 29, 2009
Halo 2 Killtrocity V2
One of the perks of having a modded xbox is that you can mod and play modded games. Halo 2 Killtrocity is a collection of modded halo 2 maps, however the interesting part is that this does not mean only the included maps have been changed, now you can also play on a few included campaign maps as well. Any one up for capture the flag on the large bridge level with tanks! Also to make matters even better, the weapons and vehicles have been altered as well. This ranges from simple skin changes to a gun the fires plasma grenades. (As a side note. I will never play with Norm on that map, I HATE STICKYS). But that is not all, ever want to use the hunter beam cannon, well now you can! There are a ton of vehicles changes as well, but you can find them out on your own. I must say I had a lot of fun playing with my cousin on these maps, however a large group would be even more fun, I guess I will have to start looking into XLink Kai.
Check out the video below to see what some of the changes look like. PLEASE NOTE that the music may not be to your taste (it is not mine) and you may want to mute it as there are no other sounds.
Read more here.
June 22, 2009
Crunchyland bot
Quite a while back I was having fun working on a javascript exploit bot for an online game called crunchyland, the game itself was rather simple you create a character give it weapons and fight silly monsters that you encounter. The entire game engine was based on flash files that where embedded in html and where linked through javascript. The problem was that I quickly got bored with the game, you click, that is it, not very entertaining past a level or two. However before I moved on, I decided to try to write a bot for it so I could at least get on the leader board. Because there was no way I was going to sit for weeks of clicking, like some of the obsessive kids on the site apparently do. (Get a job!)
It was not too hard a task and gave me a good refresher in javascript dom manipulation. The bot uses an open window and url testing to change and click elements in the window triggered by timers. I also went a step further and had it watch the size of the health bar to heal the player after a certain point. After a week of testing I quickly had my character self level up on my testing server while I did other more productive things, and after a few more days I was on the leader board, with little effort, past the coding, on my part.
I have been waiting a while before releasing it, one to not get kicked of while I was still on the leader board, and to to prevent hoards of script kiddies from also quickly leveling up with no work. Now it looks like the game it not being worked on, and my script does not work completely anymore, so here it is CL Bot (For Safari 3 maybe 4 only). Anyone with some javascript experience could take it further and fix the parts that do not work with the game updates, however I have better things to be doing. Enjoy...
May 31, 2009
Braid for Mac
Although I am more of a casual gamer, I have always been a fan of indie game over large studio productions. Mostly because generally they are short, to the point and can take risks to try things professional games do not. I have written here about a few in the past, as well as a few of my own, so I am always happy to find another new title that perks my interest.
Braid is a strange game that focuses on change through time and forgiveness, and accomplishes this in that fact that you can not die, if you are killed, the game will sit and wait for you to rewind. This removes the dangers that other platformer games use to add challenge, so you may be left asking what is left to challenge the player? Instead they game uses a (some what cliche) search for puzzle pieces that come together to form the story. However to get to the pieces you will need to use your time warping powers, think 2D platformer now thrust into a 4D world, even though the lack of a Z plane makes it more of a different kind of 3D then ever seen before. Using the different abilities each world allows you will have to deal with time forgiveness, exclusion, branches and placement. Braid wonderfully pulls off using these separately and in a mix to give the player a rather unique challenge, which if you like solving puzzles that requires thought from different angles you will really enjoy this.
The story of the game itself is unique, you have Tim who is on a quest to save the princess from a horrible monster. This may sound familiar to Super Mario Bros and it is hard to not see that a lot of the game takes concepts from classic platformers. However it goes far deeper then the base story if you only look at the surface. What is reality? If you could warp the time that drives the reality that we see, could you truly say what we are seeing is real? The ending of Braid pulls this off with fighting perfection, which may leave some players rather confused. Combine this with wonderfully music and lush water color artwork and you have an amazing game.
I have always been annoyed with games in how you want to try things, but it would take too long when failures result in restarting, Braid removes this and pretty much can be described as one of the few games that always runs in sandbox mode. Of course some of the puzzles, and especially the hidden stars would be impossible with out this. Still I had fun playing through this a few times, one due to me poking at the game files and breaking it. Braid is available on xbox, PC and Mac, so there are a few ways to get it, but if you have a mac, support mac games and grab the mac copy!
For those who have played the game and want more depth on the story check out this article.
May 14, 2009
Epic Presentation
I was going through my files stored on the school server and found my Epic Game presentation. So I uploaded it to slide share so others can see it. Slide share messed up some text in my images, but other then that it is the same. Check it out...
April 23, 2009
H2Overdrive = HydroThunder 2
Sadly I have been too busy to work on side project, hence the lack of update. So I am very happy to be able to report that finally a developer is making HydroThunder 2! Raw thrills has released H2Overdrive which has everything that hydro thunder had, from the boosts to the drops to even the 3..2..1..go go go. But also makes improvements such as 8 racer at once and mid air tricks! Though I must say that that I do not favor the futuristic boats, but I can live with one minor complaint. From what I can tell it is only in arcades right now, but we all know it is only so long till it is ported. I only hope it looks as good as the arcade this time, because the ports of hydro thunder sadly never looked as good as the arcade. So while I wait for the console version, I need to find the nearest arcade with H2Overdrive.
Check out the Kotaku post here which is oh so accurately titled "H2Overdrive in videoh my god."
Also check out the videos below for a drool worthy few minutes of awesome.
November 26, 2008
Epic Box the Game
When I was told that I had to do a simple game for my Visual Basic class I had originally wanted to do a simple tank game with a progress bar that charged. However a friend of mine had the amazing idea of doing Epic Box the game, so when he decided to go with another idea instead, I quickly decided that Epic Box was a way better project. So after a few weeks of work and many laughs later I present Epic Box the Game (aka EpicGame).
Download it here!
(Requires the .NET libraries, Windows only...)
It is a very simple game. You move epic box with the arrow keys to go forwards, backwards and jump. You can also shoot, however this drains energy, jumping does as well. This will become a problem later as the hoards of Thirst Quenchers start to pile up. Luckily after killing enough of them, your Epic Meter will become full and you will receive new powers to help defeat them. After all the Thirst Quenchers are defeated, the Boss Fight begins...
Fun and short about 3 minutes of play, enjoy!
November 6, 2008
Yume Nikki
While mindlessly surfing the internet I stumbled across a rather strange video (watch here), which left me at first amused and slightly confused, then after that I was left wondering what this was based off of. So like may of my other great discoveries, I looked up the game Yume Nikki which the video was based on.
Yume Nikki is a rather strange game, where you are a girl who lives in a small apartment, which you can not leave, at least not while you are awake. You go to sleep and then are able to wonder through the very strange dream world that exist, assumed to be in the characters mind.. You pick up various effects as you explore the areas, which range from a getting a bicycle to turing into a stop light. These effects can help you do things, though so far only the bike and lantern have been helpful.
The imagery of the game itself is what makes it unique, as you travel in dreams of a girl that obviously has some mental issues, it is hinted that she will not leave the room in the real world due to some physiological reason, so what ever caused that, has also twisted her mind, or at least the dreams that she has. Most of the areas are bizarre, in the fact that they mirror a twisted reality or just have creepy backgrounds and NPCs running around, such as a world with grasping hands jutting from the floor. However what I find far creeper is that you will enter a door in one strange area and all of a sudden be in a forest or someplace more normal, which in turn leaves you waiting for something to appear that will make the normal far less normal, which on occasion does indeed happen. It is these "normal" places that seem the most out of place and odd, which I give credit to the creator for pulling off so well.
I must say that this, like other games I have posted are a great example of how 3D does not always make for games better. Yume Nikki is what I would consider a work of art, as it lets the player judge for them selves what purpose the events and reasons behind the game hold, as there is little to no back story or help in the game. If you have time, check out Yume Nikki, there is an english version (Get it Here), which is for windows, but runs well under Crossover Games on the Mac.
Check out this video if you want to see more without actually playing. (Contains spoilers!)
UPDATE: After getting very annoyed about the game crashing in the eyeball area, I did some forum searching. It seems that the 0.10 version of the game cannot play mp3s, so to fix the problem find the music folder for the game and rename the eight or so mp3 files and everything will work correctly.
November 1, 2008
Crossover for games
A short while ago, CodeWeavers was giving away copies of CrossOver Games for a promotion they where running, it dealt with politics so I am not going any further then that. Anyway... Everyone could grab a free copy of of any of their Crossover products. I grabbed games and mac, and so far I am very happy with it, it does not work for everything, but it does work for a lot. For those who do not know, Crossover uses the open source project Wine which "implements the Windows API entirely in user-space, rather than as a kernel module at the time of writing. Services normally provided by the kernel in Windows are provided by a daemon known as wineserver. Wineserver implements basic Windows functionality, as well as providing extra functions such as X Window integration and translation of signals into native Windows exceptions." Crossover is a commercial version of wine, so it provides a little more support then the open source project. If you have windows software and do not want to use BootCamp or Virtualization options, this is a very nice options. Plus I got to bust out my copy of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, which was just plain awesome. Also it will play the Windows version of Hydro Thunder with full 3D support, unlike playing it under regular wine.
October 26, 2008
Hydro Thunder on Mac
Hydro Thunder has to be my favorite racing game ever! Fast boats, amazing tracks, all and all an amazing game. If you have never played, you may want to read this, it will explaine why Hydro Thunder is awesome.
I have had the PSX disk for a while now, but it is annoying to dig out the Playstation just to play it. So I tracked down the PC version (Yes it does exist!) and got it running on my mac through Wine. This was rather simple, just download the latest free build of Darwine here and install it. You may need the unstable 1.1.7 build, because I had issues with it working on the 1.0.1. Install it and then run the wine helper once, after that the Hydro.exe sould auto open with darwine when you double click. Just as a warning, it may crash once due to no 3D card support, if it does, just reopen it and choose the play in window mode at the recovery screen that will come up. Enjoy
UPDATE: There was a question asked about how you can get the game screen to be larger. The problem is that because WINE does not have good 3D support, it will only play in a small window. There are two thing you can do to fix this, you can use the screen zoom feature under Universal Access in the System Preferences to enlarge the window, or you can grab a copy of Crossover Games, which does have 3D support, see my post on it here
October 13, 2008
Fantastic Contraption
Well this is a dangerous find when I have a project I am researching and home to do! Check out Fantastic Contraption for an amazing way to kill time, or loose time that you should be doing other things with. I have been obsessed all weekend with this game. Basically you get an infinite number of motors, rollers and two types of sticks to connect it all together with, all with a mission to get a red piece into a predefined goal area. However getting to the goal is not so easy, especially when it is below you or up a wall, and to make maters worse you only have so much space to build in, although after you run it it can go anywhere! You can only experience it by playing, and after finishing a level check out the thousands of other ways people have found to solve the same problem. If you liked building small gizmos as a child you will love this!
Oh and you can save and share creations! Check out some of mine...
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2972825
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2973894
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2974040
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2975559
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2977810
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2993872
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2994200
September 5, 2008
BZ Flag
While I was lazing today after work, I decided to check out the latest progress of BZFLAG, which is a rather well designed 3D MMO Tank game. Basically you drive a tank that can jump, due to rockets on the bottom, while shooting and avoiding getting shot by other players. However things get more interesting as players pick up flags that augment/de-augment their tanks. This can be something as simple as increasing their tanks speed, or far better, such as giving the player guided rockets. Their are also bad flags that work the other way.
I have been playing here and there for over six years, so the game has been around for a while. It is good as a time killer, and can be quite fun if you like shooter type games. It is also convent that you can leap in and out of games with no restrictions, so there is nothing stopping you from getting in a quick match, then stopping when something comes up. You can also make your own maps and host your own servers, if customization is you thing.
Check it out it is free and ported for just about any OS out there...
August 24, 2008
Run Riven on OS X
I had heard of this around two years ago, however at that time it would not play anything, it would just let users view any of the cards in riven. However it is has great progress, and now with the latest version 6 or beta 7 you can actually play the game. Of course it is still far from complete, lacking save in the latest stable release, and the beta crashes easily, the fact still remains that you are now able to play Riven on the latest Mac system, which is just plain awesome.
Remember you can still play Myst III Exile (My personal favorite), Myst IV Revelation and Myst V End of Ages(My least Favorite) in OS X with out extra work. Now we just need a update of the Original Myst, not realMYST, and I will be a happy fan.
June 6, 2008
Summers of Rappelz
Well it is summer again, and once again I have picked up playing Rappelz. It is a free to play MMORPG that I got slightly addicted to last summer. I have never got into the whole wow addiction, mostly because I am cheap and would never pay sums of my money just to play a game. Still I had wanted to check out what the big fuss was over it, luckily I ended up seeing an advertisement for Rappelz and on a whim decided to check out, I ended up liking it and continued to play it through most of the summer till I hit level 40, got bored and returned to school and now it has been a whole year.
(Yes the picture is a good screenshot I took of actual game play. What I like sitting near trees, haven't you noticed?)
Rappelz is fun, for the first 21 levels, after that it starts to slow, but having friends to play with helps starve off getting bored. I am not much for meeting people online, instead I had several of my friends from school also pick it up and play me me. Now my cousin wants to play, so I will start a new character and help him out, not that it hurts having a level 42 character as backup, a ton of items in storage, and over 3,000,000 in the bank. However I am sure I will probably quickly get bored again and start working on other projects.
If you too have been wanting to play a mmorpg, check out Reppelz, it is free and looks good so you can't beat that combo, and if you don't like it, hey you lost nothing but time in the process. The players are generally friendly, at least on the Tortus Server that I play on. You may even see me run by, keep an eye out for Efeion or my new cleric character Feiona and our Kampers Guild.
May 19, 2008
DDR Pad Controller
Well after about 4 years the pad controller board died. I should have expected this, because I am forcing the circuit to run under much higher resistance then the 2 inches of wire it was designed for, but still 4 years of heavy ues is pretty good. So it was off to staples to grab a new USB key pad. I personally like the Targus Keypads because they are simple and support more then one key press at a time, which is very important for the pad to work correctly.
After getting the keypad I brought it home and took a look at the circuit, it was quite a bit different from the version they had 4 years ago, mostly because it used small contact pad instead of the holes for leads like I was hoping. This was a small set back, however after ripping the contact holder off the board to get access to the solder points I realized that I was going about it wrong. There where some lead holes on the board, just not right there.
I got some very thin copper wire with the insulating coat, and soldered them onto the board.
It took some careful placement to correctly solder the wires that where very close to either the contact on the top, or the other solder points on the bottom of the board. Still after an hour of work I had it working, and could test in StepMania that it was indeed working.
All that was left to do was correctly wire it back to the pad. Sadly this was a lot more complicated then I had hopped, because the way I had the old version was slightly different. 
But I quickly fix this problem and had a wiring diagram to use. All I needed was the up,right,down and left buttons so I have two main wires 4 and 5 that are contacted to the remaining wires to get the correct button press. I am not sure if did something wrong or just shorted something, because after I had it all working for some-reason when you press left and up or down both up and down are pressed. Luckily this does not interfere with game play, it is just a small anomaly.
There you have it, all the instruction you need to make your own pad controller, however I expect that Targus will change the board again before this one breaks, so I am sure I will have to go through this hassle again sometime in the distant future.