You recieve a shiny silver box, with a DS cartridge, a USB adapter, and a microSD card, if you ordered one.

The USB adapter has a slot for the microSD card. You can plug in the USB adapter in to a USB port in your computer, and copy NDS roms, music, and mpg movies, along with whatever homebrew applications you want! How cool is that!

The best thing about this particular product is that’s it completely plug ‘n’ play. Drag and drop and you’re done.

The CycloDS is a great device for backing up all your games. You can have multiple roms on there at one time, around 20 or so on a 2GB card( and obviously you can get a bigger one). For $50 bucks it’s really cool.

Ofcourse you should own the roms you have backed up on the CycloDS. And it’s quite handy to just carry around one cartridge with your whole collection rather than 20 or games.

Shockmachine

Izayus in the 1st episode of the 7th Portal

I’ve been trying to find these webisodes for quite a while now, and finally did. For all those who know what I’m talking about, and have been trying to find these episodes, here’s the link: StanLee Media’s Flash Movies.

Windows 7 Beta

Two words. BLOODY BRILLANT. It took me a while before I tried it on a machine, and now when I finally did, I am in awe of the awesomeness of Windows 7. It is the most amazing operating system I’ve ever used.

I installed the Windows 7 beta, on a Presario V2000, not a top of the line machine, by any standard. The RAM had been upgraded from 512MB to 1280MB. The installation was painless, but then again that was never a problem, even with Vista. My wireless network was detected right after, I entered the key, and voila.

The best part was yet to come. With the installation complete, and auto-updates enabled, Windows 7 was updated, and Aero was working, really really well. Multiple IE tabs, Windows Media streaming music off the network, along with other applications running. All this on a three year old laptop.

Changing themes takes a second, and I do not exaggerate. Right-click, Personalize, select a theme, and it instantly changes, without any OKing or Applying. Everything just works!

Microsoft got this right in a big way. There will be people who complain, but then again, there’s never been any shortage of idiots in the world. They’re welcome to use anyone of the one million Linux distros out there, none of which work properly.

Can’t wait for the final release. Here’s to hoping it’ll be out before the year’s end.

Shark007's Codec Setup

You launch an .avi or someother video file, and Windows Media Player tries to acquire the suitable codec to play that file type. Never happens. Atleast not for me. I usually end up hearing the audio part, and seeing nothing.

I tried finding codec packs, but that proved harder than I thought it would be. Today, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon a pack that actually works. The only file I’ve tried so far is an .avi, back I’m quite sure it’ll play other stuff as well.

For all those who still need a codec pack you can download it from http://shark007.net/!

Bye bye Aztecs, hello Romans!

The Age of Kings was great. The Conquerors made it perfect. AoE 3 was a massive step in the wrong direction, which I attribute to fact that we live in a graphics centric world. Games are more about graphics then ever before, and that necessarily is not a good thing.

I’ve been playing lots of games of late. NFS: Undercover, Red Alert 3( DAMN their crappy copy protection), Kotor 1 and 2. And I just finished installing AoE 2 : The Conquerors, on my new machine. I’m going to install and configure hamachi as well, and I’ll be updating the article that started this blog if I find something useful, that I forgot to mention the first time around.

What this article is really about, is something I discovered while browsing the for AoE 2 clones. I came across a forum that mentioned a game called 0 A.D. It’s being developed by Wildfire studios The game will be free, when it’s released(which I hope is soon. Doesn’t look like it though).

Greeks in The Conquerors Expansion?!

Wildfire also created a MOD for The Conquerors, called Rome at War. This MOD primarily alters what the game looks like. It also transforms the Aztecs and the Mayans in to the Romans and Greeks. Moding the buildings and some units along the way. In short, it adds a little more content. Something that AoE fans value.

Try it out:

Wildfire’s Rome at War page: http://wildfiregames.com/raw/index.html 

How to install the Mod: http://wildfiregames.com/raw/install.html

Screenshots: http://wildfiregames.com/raw/screens.html

So I installed Kotor, patched it. Upon launching the game for the first time, I was told that my machine failed the hardware test. My OS was not recognized, and my graphics card, an Nvidia 1GB GeForce 9500 GT wasn’t good enough. The game then launched, and I was aboard the Endar Spire. The game was running really fast, and I had all the graphics settings maxed.

After about five minutes of playing, the game crashed. This was normally during a battle, or right after one. I tried every fix on every forum. Nothing seems to work, atleast not for me. The crashes were pretty random too.

Saving, and restarting were the only fixes I could find. Once I got off the ship though, the game hasn’t crashed. I haven’t played Kotor very much since then, but I’m hoping it’ll remain stable. I’m pretty sure this is a graphics driver issue, and hopefully some nVidia driver down the road will fix this. Meanwhile, I’m trying to find other ways of making it work under Vista.

Anyone else had such experiences?

Look's good, doesn't it? That's about it.

I’ve had it with Linux. Everytime I try and use Linux, something or the other makes me wish I’d stayed away. This time around, with the NEWEST release of openSUSE, the mouse and keyboard don’t work! Let me explain.

So I popped in the DVD and began installing openSUSE. The install itself was quite painless. After it was complete and my machine rebooted, I came to the GRUB screen. The option that was selected was openSUSE… (pae). With all previous versions of openSUSE, (default) was the default option(WOW!). So I selected default. And that folks is where this miserable story comes to an end. The OS boots up. My USB mouse, and USB keyboard didn’t work anymore. So I inserted a USB stick, which was detected. Fat lotta good that does me. How the hell am I supposed to interact with it? Psychically?

By the way, the mouse and keyboard work fine using the (pae), the NEW default, option. I guess it’s really unreasonable of me to assume that the mouse and keyboard will work with whatever option I select. I apologize. I will not make that mistake again.

My future endeavors with Linux will be limited to installation on VMs, or crappy machines.

Windows Vista

So I just finished building my new machine. I wanted to try installing the 64-bit version of Vista, since I had 6gigs of ram.

There’s obviously nothing much to the install. A few clicks, and some waiting and you’re done. The issue I had was after Vista Ultimate was completely installed.

It booted up for the first time, I logged in, launched a few applications, and just like that, everything started lagging. I ran task manager to check what the hell was going on, only to find CPU usage at 100%.

Killing services, updating to SP1, a reinstall none of that worked. Browsing through multiple forums, I found a post suggesting removing a memory stick. That didn’t work either. Not the ideal start. Anyway, turns out that updating the BIOS for my Intel DQ965GF did the trick. Everything’s running quite smoothly.

In case someone out there has the same problem, hopefully this’ll help.

And now, I’m off to install openSUSE 11.0!

Prologue:

Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors Expansion

AoE2: The Conquerors was one of the best strategy games ever released. And even though it’s been close to 10 years since it first hit the shelves, it still remains a classic. So you can imagine my disappointment when one fine day, a few days back, I clicked the zone.com button to play Conquerors online via the MSN gaming zone, and I found that they’d stopped hosting it!

Chapter 1: The hunt for a substitute!

Well then, we couldn’t have that. So I began looking for something that would allow me to play Conquerors via the Internet. After a few google queries, I found Hamachi! Logmein’s VPN service.

Chapter 2:Downloading and Installing Hamachi!

https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/list.asp

The installation process is painless. A few clicks and you’re done. Hamachi loads up, and you’re assigned a permanent IP address.

The next thing you need to do is create a network, which involves choosing a name (one that has not already been taken, this is by far the hardest thing to do), and setting a password for that network. Others can join your network if they have Hamachi and know the name and password of your network.

You should now have a network setup.

NOTE: For Windows XP users: Go to Start –> Control Panel –> Network Connections. Click on Advanced on the Menu bar, then Advanced Settings. You will see a Connections box, and Hamachi will be at the bottom. Bring it all the way up.

Changing connection priority in Windows XP

If you use Windows Vista: Go to Start –> Control Panel –> Network and Sharing Center –> Manage Network Connections. Press Alt for the hidden menu bar to show up, and then click Advanced –> Advanced Settings, and change the priority.

Changing connection priority in Vista

Chapter 3: Launching Conquerors!

Launch Conquerors. Host a game via Internet/TCP IP. Check your IP address after you create a game, and the hamachi IP should show up.

Other players on your hamachi network can join the game by clicking on Show Games and entering your IP address.