I wrote a short story and put it on the Kindle Marketplace on Amazon.  It’s currently free until Midnight PST (13th May 2012) so if you want to read it for nowt then go get it quick.

Amazon.com link

Amazon.co.uk link

Cheers peeps

/end shameless self promotion

Reblogged from The Gamer's Craic:

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Episode 5 of The Gamer’s Craic is now live! This week year we talk to our guest TheFingersHurt about his gaming history, the move from console to PC and many other topics including:

• Jack Tramiel and Commodore.
• The value of games.
• Moving from console to PC (Battlefield)
• Skyrim
• Retro gaming (of course)

TheFingersHurt posts great Battlefield videos on…

Read more… 27 more words

The Gamer's Craic podcast? Oh yes, I remember.... :-D

Now the majority of the spam is done automatically by bots that crawl for comments sections and go to work. They generally post some rubbish and either have a hyper link in the post (which normally gets them blocked automatically) or in their name/website section.

The main issue with the spam bots is tracking them because they use almost sensible responses to posts like “I found this information really useful” or “this article was great, you deserve more views” – it’s all very clever and insidious by attempting to manipulate people to approve the comments via ego massaging (doesn’t work on me – if I get a compliment, I’m immediately suspicious).

The amount of variables (and grammatically poor English) they employ makes it difficult to filter for these types of spam messages, however, it would appear that one spammer didn’t configure their script correctly and they inadvertently dumped their entire vocabulary in to a post on one of my other sites.

So I thought I’d post it here as this gets the most traffic and may help someone improve their spam blocking technology.

Here it is:

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Useful anti-spam thingies:

Cookies for Comments by Donncha

Akismet

If you’d like to read more then here’s the link:

http://www.backslashgaming.com/2011/10/19/i-love-the-kinect/

Toodles

Having played the BF3 beta for a little while I’d encountered what I thought was respawn invulnerability a couple of time, but put it down to me just being paranoid about it. But no, it is in BF3 too!

I saw this video:

And considered that maybe it was dodgy hit registration on the shotgun because it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. But the video that proved it for me was from Geoff (sasbenjr)

In this video there are a couple of incidences of respawn invulnerability and Geoff confirms that it appears to be the case.

In terms of the respawn invincibility itself it seems that it’s also a perspective issue, with the player model appearing to the enemy momentarily before the actual player is spawned. That would explain why players spawning report being killed straight away. But here is where my problem with respawn invulnerability lies: the spawned player model is not only invulnerable, but they are also impervious.

This means that if they block your line of sight to the person they spawned off they are acting as a shield for that player. This is a problem when you flank a squad of buffoons and are taking them out with a weapn with a low ammo count. As soon as someone spawns in the middle of them and soaks up your bullets you can be left high and dry while the other players turn around to see where the shooting is coming from.

I don’t actually have a problem with respawn invulnerability as a concept. It’s useful for those that are being spawn trapped, but that to me, is the only time it should be happening. And if invulnerability needs to be in the game for those people who choose to spawn in to a dangerous situation then they should not be impervious and soak up all the bullets intended for their squad mates.

Check out my latest post on backslashgaming.com

David Nicol is a gamer, blogger, podcaster and video creator based in the UK. Find me on:
YouTube TheCheapKills
Twitter
Google Plus

There was another reason why I wasn’t in a rush to play the Beta. I’d already played it. Not the Beta itself, but the Alpha a couple of months earlier. The Alpha was Operation Metro, the Beta is Operation Metro. Some players on PC were invited in to Conquest on Caspian Border to load test the servers, but that map/game mode apparently will not be available to console players. Ironically, despite all the big talk about dealing with those who broke the NDA on the alpha, at least one of the players who broke the NDA was on the Caspian Border map…. using the same gamertag as in the Alpha. That is a total pisstake by that player, and also EA/DICE for allowing it to happen (unless of course they were allowing him to “leak” the footage to begin with).

So at this point I’m a bit fed up of the same map all the time. The good news is that there have been a number of changes between the Alpha and the Beta. For example, the LAV. This was an attacker armoured vehicle but is now absent from the Beta. When I first spawned I went looking for it, but it wasn’t on the map. It took me a while to realise it wasn’t there.

The positions of the MComs on the first base (in the park) have also changed for the better. The locations are more accessible for both sides without having direct lines of sight from spawn.

You no longer vault over everything, it’s possible to leap small obstacles without doing an impersonation of Daley Thompson’s Decathalon. The vaulting is still there, and it is a cool animation, so it’s good that it’s limited mainly to objects you would normally vault.

Flashlights are in. These were mentioned in pre-Alpha posts but weren’t in the Alpha. They are a gift and a curse. The flashlight, which I’m going to call a torch from now, since I’m not American, and it takes less to type are a gift when you see the beam coming and you fire at the source to get the kill, but a curse when you’re totally blinded (especially by a team mate) and get killed. In the Alpha there was only the RDS or laser sight which caused a red blinding effect, this is also in the Beta.

The biggest hinderance I’ve had so far has been a single team mate with the damned torch. Trying to hold down an MCom is not easy when some window licker keeps running past, blinding you. It’s a bit like the team mates who blow up your mines in BC2…. “thanks dude, that was really helpful”.

What about the weapons? Well the MLG Pro are using the PP2000 and UMP45 this season as those laser death cannon kill you before you know it. The M70 shotgun is an adequate counter – but requires you to be up close and is mostly a two hit kill unless you get a head shot.

It’ll be interesting to see what others make of the different weapons and unlocks as you have to unlock each attachment for each weapon. For some I can see them getting to the level where they unlock the UMP45 and not using any other weapon unless DICE “balances” the damage characteristics.

Lastly on this let’s talk about graphics. PC understandably has the best graphics out of the three available platforms (mainly as it’s outputting on current hardware rather than components that are over half a decade old). From there it’s pretty subjective, platform of choice. Both the PS3 and Xbox360 have positives and negatives against them in the graphical department, but nothing that really puts one much much much above the other. Here’s a visual comparison between the platforms:

But don’t forget: IT’S A BETA
Which means that DICE are looking for areas that they can improve on.

That’s it. Stop reading now.

Earlier today Donncha turned mobs on on the server. For those not familiar with Minecraft, mobs are beasties. Zombies, spiders, creepers, eldermen and skeletons. Their sole purpose is to ruin your day, which is a bit hard to do when you can’t take any damage (Creative Mode).

For some reason every time night fell (when the mobs come out) they’d head up my pyramid. Probably because “it’s there”.

So here is my first encounter with the mobs on the server:

For the majority of mobs, they burst in to flames when the sun comes out, unless they are somewhere nice and dark…. what’s that? Oh, underneath my part finished pyramid is probably nice and dark? Yeah, I hadn’t considered that….

But mobs be damned! Especially the eldermen who kept stealing blocks from my pyramid (although Donncha has since sorted that so they only steal “natural” blocks). My pyramid is complete!

We’re cooking now.

But anyway, love it or hate it, I’m hooked. And my most recent endeavour on Donncha’s server has been a massive pyramid. The top of it is at the highest buildable level. It’s really quite a large undertaking, and if I’d paid attention at school I’d be able to a) work out how many blocks it needs, and b) how long it would have taken to build.

It’s so big it’s the largest singly structure on the map so far:

Thankfully Nick and Duck gave me a hand last night after Donncha activated Creative Mode on the server – which basically means you have infinite blocks, take no damage and can fly around for easier building. As it was late and I’m minging with the cold right now I left before Nick and Duck. But they had my back. Ensuring that I wasn’t preyed upon in the night by binary vampires by entombing my spawn point. They’d also made impressive headway on the pyramid build, and left some amusing graffiti to boot:

I’m also doing a series on what I’ve built so far on Minecraft and will be doing a live comm/let’s play type thing of the single player. So if you’re interested in that, here’s the first two vids:

Part 1

Part 2

Cowing lush.

http://twitter.com/#!/Lundenerpaa/
http://www.youtube.com/user/Helwaron

I don’t want to be down on call centres, but having been on both sides of the phone the level of support you get is very hit and miss. Being a realist I spend my time expecting to get someone who either doesn’t understand the problem, or the term ‘help/support line’. Being a target driven industry the latter is understandable, the former, as far as I’m concerned is inexcusable. But I digress.

Here was my issue: I’d signed up for Xbox Gold to play BFBC2 on in June and thought that the autorenewal was off (I could have sworn that I’d sorted it out) – but apparently not. So I was being billed £5.99 a month when I was intending to get a 12 month card from a retailer for cheaper than the Microsoft price. So what I wanted was the auto renewal turned off and I’d sort the rest.

Eventually I found the number for Xbox support since the website kept giving me the American contact details (not good service). I rang the number and wondered which country I would end up talking to. When I got through I spoke to “Neil”, well that’s what he said his name was but judging by his accent he was obviously a Dara, or a Padraig! Oh, I jest.

Seriously though, Neil is a credit to Microsoft. He was upbeat and used his sense of humour in the call. Many many many many many call centre workers could learn a thing or two from him. I was fully expecting to be on the phone for ages getting more exasperated by a hard of learning monkey when instead I had my issue dealt with and resolved straight away, and not only that, it also gave me a more positive view of the company (Microsoft).

Well done Neil – you’re a star.

Peas and loaves.

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David Nicol is Articles Editor for hupitgaming.com, YouTube gaming commentator and blogger based in the UK.

Why not check out my new gaming site: backslashgaming.com