Valve is at it AGAIN!

Steam Holiday Sale

Steam is at it again. Their Christmas Holiday Sale is up with some pretty good games selling up to 80% discounts.

Tempting...

Team Fortress 2: The war is over!

Team Fortress 2: Victory!

Finally, the Soldier is the victor in this war. And the reward, are these special shoes:

Originally designed to solve the problems of going up to the second floors before stairs were invented, these boots now serve to reduce the amount of damage received while rocket jumping (or sticky jump if it were for the Demoman)

The week-long war have seen a very close match between the two classes. With 6,406,065 dead Demomen and 6,372,979 dead Soldiers. It was a close match that surprised even the developers.

Good job Demomen. Even though we lost, we put up a good fight.

Team Fortress 2 Blog: The War Update

Team Fortress 2 Blog: It's a Bloodbath!

Team Fortress 2 Blog: War, Day 2

Team Fortress 2 Blog: Weekend Update

Team Fortress 2 Blog: Casualties of War

Team Fortress 2 Blog: The Big Red One

Team Fortress 2 Blog: It's Close: 5,727,928 Soldiers, 5,742,720 Demos

Team Fortress 2 Blog: Countdown: War ends in less than an hour

Team Fortress 2 Blog: VI Day

Team Fortress 2 Blog: And the winner is...

The Top 500 Worst Passwords Of All Time

Whats My Pass?: Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time

Did you ever think that "My passwords are awesome! No one will EVER be able to figure it out!"? Well, think again.

The link shows some of the most common passwords people keep reusing. I am ashamed to say that I do use one or two of them on the list.

Some of the usual suspects include:

123456, password, abc123, xxxxxx, aaaaaa, 11111, asdfgh, qwert, zxcvbn

Team Fortress 2: WAR!!!

WiiWare - Muscle March

Just when you thought that you've seen all the game there is, WiiWare comes up with this.

It's embarressing and disgusting yet it's funny and AWESOME!
I am confused...

More Muscle March madness at Gametrailers.
Kotaku - Muscle March Buffs Up WiiWare Next Year 

Where to Eat - Fast Food Flowchart

Hungry? Can't decide where to eat?

Here's a flowchart to help you.

Wordpress - Where Should I Eat Fast Food Edition Flowchart

Assassin's Creed 2: Dev Diaries

Here are some Developer Diaries for Assassin's Creed 2. I find it fun and educational to see how a game is made from concept to completion.

Demmit VALVE! >_<

Steam One Day Sale

I bought Batman and Dragon Age. >_<

Mass We Pray

Mass We Pray

A game where you play, have fun and worship the lord at the same time!

Convenient.

I'm not a Christian myself, but before anyone start lambasting Prayer Works Interactive for blasphemy and heresy and defiling the sanctity of the religion, try clicking on one of the links.

Assassin's Creed: Lineage Full Movie

Youtube: Assassin's Creed: Lineage Complete Series

I believe I've posted something about Assassins' Creed 2: Lineage previously. Assassin's Creed 2: Lineage follows the story of Giovanni Auditore da Firenze who is the father of Ezio, the character controlled by the player in the Assassin's Creed 2 game.

The film was originally released in 3 parts but this youtube video contains the full 30 minute movie.

Although SOME PEOPLE are already playing Assassin's Creed 2 on their PS3s (oh and XBox 360s) on the 17th of November, we PC users will have to wait til 2010. Til then, we have this movie to keep us company.

Youtube: Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin's Creed Wiki: Assassin's Creed 2: Lineage

Space Invaders - What they REALLY look like.

Jean Salamin submitted this image to Threadless.com.
Are they cool or what.

They Are Real

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - The Movie

Saying that I'm impressed at the trailer is an understatement. But trailers are meant to get people excited about the movie. So, we'll see how the actual movie is like.

I know that in recent years there's not been many (if any) game-to-movie conversions that are any good. I'm hoping that this one would be an exception, since Jerry Bruckheimer's directing it.

Team Fortress 2 for $2.50

Remember yesterday when Team Fortress 2 was on sale for the ridiculous, mathematically-basically-zero price of $2.49? According to the bean counters, we're now broke. Man, what were we thinking? Anyway, in a desperate attempt to move some units, make up the shortfall, and save the company, TEAM FORTRESS 2 IS ON SALE FOR $2.50 UNTIL 7PM PDT! Pennies from Heaven!

 ...

Don't you just love Valve?

Team Fortress 2 - Financial Report
Steam Store - Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 - Halloween Special

Team Fortress 2: Pumpkin Patch

Team Fortress 2 Halloween Special
Apparently there's a new King Of The Hill map - koth_harvest that is haunted by the ghost of old Zepheniah Mann.
An interesting event where you can shoot pumpkins to make them blow up near enemies and meet the haunting ghost of Zepheniah Mann who causes players to freeze in fear.

The New DSi LL

You know, when they announced the DSi with the larger screen (3.2 in compared to the DS-Lite's 3.0 in) I thought "Well, that's an improvement". Considering the limitations of the size of the DSi, that's the largest increment they could do without affecting the rest of the device.

And when I heard about the rumoured 4in LCD screen DSi, well I was a little sceptical. Well, the only way they could do that is by increasing the size of the DSi.

Assassin's Creed Lineage Short Part 1

Ah, Assassin's Creed 2. Another game I'm eagerly anticipating.

Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits

We are doomed! Roundhouse kicks galore!

It was supposed to be a routine mission: A rogue Soviet army was holding POWs hostage in Cambodia, and only Chuck Norris, man of action, could save them. But the stakes are raised when Chuck’s greatest enemies unite to invade and destroy America. Download the most action that can still fit on your mobile device and help Chuck save the entire free world! This time, he’s pulling no punches and unleashing his full fighting power - never before seen by anyone who lived to tell about it!

FFCC - The Crystal Bearers Song Sung by Bon Jovi

The Final Fantasy series, in my opinion, has always been known to have interesting art styles and beautiful songs.

And now, Bon Jovi adds their music talent to this new Final Fantasy series for the Wii.

I've always liked Bon Jovi and the song doesn't feel out of place. Well, the snippet's for the tv commercial and I still don't know how they're using it in the game. Too bad I don't have a Wii.

The song, however is We Weren't Born To Follow, which is in their new album.


Kotaku - Does Bon Jovi Add Anything to Final Fantasy? Judge For Yourself

Pose Maniacs: 30 Seconds Drawing

Pose Maniacs: 30 seconds drawing

This is absolutely one of the best site for training your character designing skills.

Basically, the site contains a Flash application that flashes pictures of characters (male/female) in various poses. You get a pencil and paper and draw the characters in those poses.

As part of the training, the pictures will keep rotating every few seconds (which can be adjusted from 10 - 90 seconds - default is 30 seconds). This forces you to train yourself to draw them quickly.

Yay Gordon

And the all time greatest game hero is... Gordon Freeman!

Well, the result wasn't totally unexpected.

Gordon vs Mario 

Gordon Needs You!

The Poll Standings

It all started when I heard about Gamespot having one of their polls for The Greatest Game Hero. Unfortunately, I only realized it when it's Gordon vs Link. Of course, I picked Gordon, no questions about that. :3

I read a post in the comments about Valve's announcement. I didn't know what it was until I got back and logged on to Steam.

And saw this:

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, There is Only War.

Ultramarines The Movie

Warhammer 40k fans would be delighted to know that on 29th Sept 2009, a new CGI movie Called Ultramarines was announced. So far, not much info is available from the main website.

Though I am not a fan of Warhammer, even I am a bit excited by the prospect of a Warhammer movie.

To brush up on your Warhammer lore:

Lexicanum: Ultramarines 
Wiki: Warhammer 40k 

Let us read a chapter from the LOLCat Bible

Genesis 1

1. Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem
2. Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.
3. At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz. 
4. An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.
5. An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1
   

Tools - IrfanView

Download IrfanView
Download Plugins

IrfanView is a free image viewer. It's pretty lightweight and very customizable with the number of plugins available for it. With the proper plugins, it can play mp3s or even movies, become an image editor or open a pdf file. I don't use those features, though since I have other programs doing that already.

But one thing that IrfanView has that I like very much is that it can perform batch editing. You can rename/convert/resize several items at once. Pretty useful to keep your images (or other files) properly organized.

Guard Dog - Classless Update Day #2!

Another update for the Guard Dog mock Team Fortress Update. Complete with new hats and maps (oh my god, he added ctf_convoy! :))).

Team Fortress 2 Guard Dog Update - Day #2

Valve and the Community

Valve Software, the creators of Team Fortress 2, Left4Dead, Portal, and the Half-Life series. They have a knack for not taking things seriously in a serious way. They even play along with some of the eccentricities in the community. Which makes it pretty fun.

This is especially true in the Team Fortress 2 community. The game itself is over-the-top and humorous. Add to that the frequent replies of Mann Co., the fictional company that provides the Team Fortress 2 classes their equipment, and their CEO Saxton Hale just completes the picture (and I have to say, I am a HUGE fan of Team Fortress 2).

Here's a few compilations of their interactions with the community.

Giving sound advice on forum posting.

Blog Updates - Sidebar at the bottom of the page fix

I've managed to fix the problem of the blog's sidebar being placed at the bottom of the page. Apparently, it's caused by the Jump Break in Blogger's new layout.

The Jump Break button inserts a

<!-- more -->

tag to indicate that the rest of the post is hidden and can be expanded to view the rest.

The problem happens when the tag is inserted between a <div..> and </div> tag pair. It causes the sidebar to be thrown at the bottom.

Also, I managed to add a third sidebar on the left for my profile and the Labels. Which I think is pretty cool. It also leaves me more space to put my more frequently used links on the right.

Tools Archive

Compiled links of useful tools I currently use.

Image

GIMP - GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

Inkscape - An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

I will try to update regularly this time

Well, after two years, I remembered that I still had this blog.
I'm also starting to like the changes they made with it, like having a "jump break" button so that I don't have to code it in manually.

I plan to do some spring cleaning with this blog and make some changes to make it better to read.

Like for starters, all these links to game sites (after the jump :) )

Crayon Shin-chan Creator Passed Away

Ang told me yesterday about the death of Yoshito Usui, creator of Crayon Shin-chan. He was missing when he went hiking on his own on a mountain in Gunma. His body was found on Sunday (20th). My condolenses to the family.