Alright, I've had it with the game now! My 30+ hours of progress on this campaign is now officially ruined, as I am stuck as a vampire, due to one more wonderful bug.
For those of you who have played, creating the cure to vampirism requires a few things:
- Argonian Blood - 2 shoots of Bloodgrass - 6 cloves of garlic - 5 leaves of Nightshade - Ashes of a powerful vampire
I had them all collected today, and I was finally ready to rid myself of the blasted disease, considering how inconvenient it is to take damage from sunlight.
Anyhow, I went to Melisande, the witch, to give her all the requested items, when I ran into a very frustrating and disappointing problem.
It seems the she is refusing to accept my Bloodgrass. It says you need 2, and I have 17! I did a bit of googling and discovered that this is a confirmed bug in both the PS3 and the PC. Apparently it has been patched on the PC, or at least can be fixed pretty easily. PS3 users do not have such an opportunity for a workaround.
Oh, and to disspell a few assumptions a lot of people have with this bug. No, it is not a result of how many Bloodgrass you have in your inventory. I've tried it with various amounts, and even thrown all of it away except two pieces. No, it doesn't matter if you get it from Oblivion; all of mine is taken from Oblivion and not in shops. No, it doesn't matter what order you give Melisande the ingredients in - I've tried it out of order, and down the list, and it is still a problem. No, it doesn't matter if the campaign is beat or not (at least for me here on the PS3 GOTY edition); I have not even come close to beating the main quest yet.
What this means?
The vampire cure quest is completely broken and cannot be finished, meaning my character will forever be stuck as a vampire and take damage from the sun, simply because of a bug.
Many of the users who experience this on the Game of the Year edition state that you can load up your gamesave on a copy of the original Oblivion, and complete the mission that way. This, sadly, is not an option for me, considering my copy of the original Oblivion is American and the GOTY edition is European (the game saves are not compatible). People recommend renting a copy, but I don't even know of a single place within 30 kilometers that rents games over here.
So now, I am completely unmotivated from even touching my game anymore. What a waste of time!
It's sad to think about, but my first play through of Oblivion was pretty smooth, but each sequential time has uncovered numerous performance bugs, and many which prevent certain events from happening. I love the game like hell - heck, it's one of my favorite, but I am really deeply disappointed at how so many of these issues are so well known and remain unpatched.
Bethesda has gotten a lot of money out of me too over this game. I own*four* legitimate copies of the game (Xbox 360, PC, PS3, PS3 GOTY edition), plus I dished out some 300 additional kronor just to get Shivering Isles on Xbox 360. What I'm trying to say is, I've poured a lot of money into collecting this game, and frankly I am beginning to feel it wasn't worth it anymore. Games that don't get their issues fixed deserve to be pirated, not paid for.
It would be nice if Bethesda would patch their mistakes occasionally (and not just when it is a fun one, like the item-duplication), but again, this is just wishful thinking. The game is two years old, and even though loads of people still play it, it doesn't seem that Bethesda is too interested in making the experience as polished as possible.
Grrr...
Suddenly, I am a lot less interested in seeing Fallout 3. If Oblivion is any sign of the level of polish it will receive, then there are going to be a lot more frustrated gamers in the future.
If you've tinkered with GTK development, then you no doubt probably already know that compiling a program can be a bit of a tedious chore remembering what to type out each time.
A simple solution - which may be obvious to some - is to simplify the process into a simple bash script.
Let's assume that our program is named "hello" (and the source file is "hello.cpp"). Typically, you might compile a GTK application like this:
Because the package configuration data most likely will never change, an easier approach would be to create a bash script to do this for you. Simply paste the following into a plain text file:
So I had the Xbox 360 on for no more than 15 minutes, and then I see a flash of graphic artifacts on the screen, and the console freezes.
I restart the console, it loads up the Xbox menu fine, but as it's loading a disc, BAM - graphic artifacts again, and it freezes.
At this point I knew the RROD was gonna strike any moment. So I turn it off again, and when I reboot it again, I get graphic artifacts when it displays the Xbox 360 logo, and then it freezes.
I turn it off, reboot again, and low and behold: the RED RING OF DEATH!
Thanks, Microsoft! You guys are the greatest. This Elite console isn't even half a year old, and it's already a large paper-weight.
So now, I have to send it in for repairs, and be without it for 3 weeks, while waiting for repairs.
I am 95% done with Lost Odyssey, but I like to beat all the games I review before reviewing them. This means, my Lost Odyssey review, and any other scheduled Xbox 360 reviews I was gonna write will be delayed. I guess I will have to review something on the PS3 or Wii in the mean time.
I've wanted to know how to do this for a long while, and since a situation came up where I wasn't happy with a table's structure, I decided I'd investigate to see how I could re-order some of the fields in the table to my liking.
How do you do it?
You DON'T!
This completely blew me away when I discovered mySQL has no such feature.
After googling a while, I discovered there are a number of people who are trying to accomplish the same thing, and most responses to such queries are greeted with narrow-minded answers saying, "why", "do this instead" and so forth.
Has it ever occurred to any of these people that perhaps you use and rely on phpmyadmin for creating and organizing your tables, so it's a matter of preference to have phpmyadmin sort them accordingly.
Yes, I know you can change the result ordering in a SELECT statement, but this is probably not only obvious to everyone else asking, but doesn't address the underlying issue of cleanliness and organization which would make a big difference in phpmyadmin.
So I guess the only alternative is to backup a field's data, drop the field, and recreate it in the desired location.
A big thanks for a stranger who visited my blog with the same problem in Oblivion (Game of the year edition) for the PS3.
A major bug, which seems to affect countless people, prevents you from ever completing the "Cure for vampirism" quest, as the witch will not accept your Bloodgrass.
No thanks to Bethesda (big, big surprise there... yeah right), the solution that was passed onto me works like a charm!
Basically, you create a save file outside of the witches house. Then you exit Oblivion to go to the PS3 menu system. A quick system language change to German, and load your game save back up again. Now, she finally accepts the bloodgrass, so all that is left is to resave, change the game back to English and play with it finally out of the way.
It worked perfectly for me on my first test of it (although I think I will have to redo it since I got busted buy guards and had to give up loads of $h!t I stole from people).
The solution where you had to use a NON-GOTY edition disc to complete the part and then go back to the GOTY edition didn't work for me, as my GOTY edition is PAL while the older version is NTSC/U.
So this solution really came in damn handy for me, because it didn't force me to buy yet another copy of the game simply because Bethesda doesn't give two shits about their fans after they got their money.
Here is a link that I was referred to, and I can vouch for its success:
Thanks again to the stranger who visited my blog and alerted me to the solution. To be honest, I didn't want to bring them down when they said they were contacting Bethesda because I knew it would be in vain. Although Bethesda makes some killer games, they don't seem to give a $h!t about their loyal audience who gives them the money that keeps their company alive. It's a sad state of affairs when a major game on a major console has a major bug affecting how you can play the game, while the developers do nothing for more than a year, and eventually have to turn to dedicated gamers out there to find wacky solutions.
In any event, it's finally done, and now I feel like I can go back to replaying the game when the mood strikes me!
Played a bunch more of Lost Odyssey. I was expecting to beat the second disc at the rate I was going, but apparently I still have a ways to go. I'm still enjoying the game, although I am gradually beginning to notice the various (minor) flaws.
In a way, I really want to breeze through it, because I have so many other games calling me to play them.
It's funny - for as much as video games are a part of my life these days, I don't have a site dedicated specifically to video games.
I've thought about starting up my own gaming community before, but a few things have hindered me from doing so (namely: a good name, and support of other people who could maintain it).
If anyone wants to help build a gaming community, contact me in some way, shape, or form. I've already got the software written which could do it. It's all the other trivial things I need help with.
I went out shopping today with NeroAnima, because sometimes I really don't like feeling like I stayed cooped up inside on the weekends as well. It's bad enough that I don't go out much during the week - so occasionally I feel like getting outside with all those other people-things. I think I'm just trying to make sure I don't become as anti-social and shut-in as I used to be.
Anyhow, there is nothing to do in Sweden. The only thing I can think of to pass time is go shopping to one of two different malls - both of which I've been to far too many times to count. I went out to Loddekoppinge today, and checked out El Giganten, Siba, OnOff, and the pet store.
The pet store was fun because they had lots of cute bunnies. One of them was laying flopped ontop of a house without even the slightest sign of caring about who was around. Damn little bugger must have felt really safe and secure in there - go figure. They had the dwarf bunnies as well. I love those little guys cause they really are like cotton balls with their fur sticking out everywhere. There was a chinchilla there too, but the bastard stayed inside a house so I didn't get to see more than his tail.
At Siba they were having a sale on UMD films - as almost any store that sells UMDs always does. Sorry Sony, but the UMD was one of the coolest format ideas that was totally executed poorly. The biggest reason? You can only play the stupid things on a PSP. The quality is *near* DVD quality, which is pretty good in my book. Since I have the PSP slim now - and the component cables to go with it - I can watch UMDs on my TV as well. The deal was dirt cheap in my opinion, at 3 UMD films for 100 kronor! Some of them are probably horrible movies, but at that price I wasn't too concerned considering I have a collection sickness and only had one UMD before getting these. Jumanji and Ghostbusters were probably the best two I got - I'm not sure if I've even seen any other the other ones.
I decided to push that "get an extra 360" idea out of my head. I decided this by total random chance. I wrote a simple "coin toss" script, ran it a few times until I got a best out of three out of five score and went with the result. "Heads" meant I should go for it, and "tails" was "what are you thinking wasting money on another console you stupid f*ck". NeroAnima gave me the idea that I should make the same program into a GUI version with an animated coin and all. I'm not sure how good my C++ and GTK+ knowledge is right now, but I think it's worth messing around with sometime. After all, I haven't even done any C++ or GTK+ coding since the last time I formatted (1-2 months ago).
Anyways, I don't feel like sacrificing any of my savings on that plan now, so it was probably for the best that the odds weren't in my favor. Plus, next weekend I will be going to a sci-fi, comics and gaming convention, and I'd like to have lots of spending money. I haven't mentioned this convention earlier because I was under the impression it wasn't until May, but it turns out it was a month sooner than I thought. I really can't wait because it felt like a mini Comic-Con when I went last year. Sure, it can't compare to Comic-Con (San Diego), but it's still fun and there is lots of stuff for sale that you normally wouldn't see.
Oh yeah, other than that, on the drive home from shopping, we got onto the subject of if we were going to Texas this summer (family reunion). Anytime I think about flying I think about dying - those concepts are interlocked for me. So anyhow, then the subject got onto making a will. While most of it was all joking around, the underlying issue of making a will probably isn't. I have a lot of things I'd like to have clarified before I bite the dust. I can't think of who will get all my gaming collection and stuff like that, so maybe I can make a contest out of some of it. Who knows.
I hate my ISP. They are all a bunch of incompetent monkeys who don't know $h!t about $h!t.
Well, here's some major nice news for me (and my server).
I knew this was coming, but forgot about it until I received this little advertisement in the mail today.
Very very soon my housing area will have the opportunity to switch over to 100 Mb/s!!!
That makes me nearly wet my pants.
While my current 24 Mb/s line still may be leaps and bounds ahead of most American's, that simply isn't enough for me when I know that other Swedes around me are getting 100 Mb/s.
Hehehehe
I cannot wait. As soon as they give us a definite date, it's "f*ck you, Bredbands Bolaget". My current ISP (Bredbands Bolaget) has a 3 month termination clause in their contract, so the sooner I get the date, the better.
You seriously cannot imagine how frustrating Bredbands Bolaget has been for me. There was a time where they were the best ISP in Sweden (just 5 years ago), but that time has come and passed. They are now, the slimy crap that crap that other crap won't eat. I really despise BBB - a bunch of incompetent morons.
I'm not too happy that the 100 Mb connection is going to be offered through my crummy (overpriced) electronic company, but what can you do?
Been playing a lot of GTA4 today, since it's the weekend and NeroAnima was out. I made a lot of progress and got a few achievements, which helped push my Gamerscore over 28,000!
I got the achievement for completing all the assassin missions, and later on the one for coming in first place in 20 races. But, even cooler than those, I finally got one I've been trying really hard for a while now: getting $500,000! I sorta did a little trick to get the achievement, and still get to kill Dimitri as revenge (and possibly bang Kate). Thing is, you are forced to decide: do you want to make a lot of money and please your cousin Roman, or do you want to exact revenge on the double-crossing Dimitri and please Kate by sticking to your personal oath. I chose both.
See, I was already at $427,000, and I knew the game was ending pretty soon. I don't know how good my chances would be to get to $500,000 any other way if I don't get a huge chunk at once. So what I did was saved a backup of my game to my memory card (as a fail safe), turned off auto-saving and played through the mission to get the cash. It earned me $250,000 I believe, which easily pushed me over $500,000, so I got the achievement and the game asked if I wanted to save. I said no, since I can then reload my game and go back and do the revenge mission instead. Looks like I won't even need my backup save file. So for anyone out there who wants to do both, just disable auto-saving before making your choice.
I really hope I complete GTA4 tomorrow. I've been playing it for a long time now, and can't believe theres still more to it. It's a really long game if you're doing all there is to do. I thought I'd have it done today, but now I'm only hoping I can finish it tomorrow. I wanted to have a review for it ready the 15th as well, so I really need to get it wrapped up.
I think I should make a weekly "yet another annoyance" bit on all the new ways Firefox finds to irritate and disasstisfy me.
Anyhow, I just came across another while posting my last item.
It seems that, with Firefox 3 at least, once you have clicked the "browse" button to upload a file, you can't erase that field, if you don't have anything to upload!
I discovered this when I accidently tried uploading my image as an icon. My software threw the "maximum icon size" error, so I went back to correct it. I could easily use the browse button on the appropriate field to have the file uploaded, but there is no way to remove the selection from the previously selected failure.
In other words, an entire form of contents can be wasted in a split second because you aren't able to erase the path to a file to be uploaded. Previous versions would allow you to select the path and erase it (I believe IE handles this the same). Not anymore! Anytime you click or select the text already stored, the damn browser opens up the dialog box to upload a file. Clicking "Cancel" only cancels out of the current dialog and the previous value remains!
Seriously... I'm just waiting, hoping, and waiting some more for the next great browser to come along. I've never been fully satisfied with Firefox from day 1 - sure, it's still the best bet - and my frustration at the constant hurdles the team keeps throwing in are really a turn off.
Okay, I know that mushrooms are mostly water weight, so don't act like I'm a total idiot here or anything. But I had no idea just how much water weight they boast.
Remember those 350 grams of fresh Amanita Muscaria caps I picked over the weekend? Well, I've been drying them for the past few days (in a dark area, with a fan blowing at them most of the time), and they are basically finished now. Well, they are in the state that those I ordered online were at least.
After all the water evaporated, 350 grams of fresh mushroom caps has become just around 38 grams!
So simply put, the actual mushroom flesh only amounts for around 1/10 of the actual weight of a fresh mushroom, while the rest (roughly 9/10s) is water.
I knew it would be a big difference, but I never would have imagined it to be close to 9 to 1.
NeroAnima told me we got an ad this past week from ICA Maxi, advertising that they were selling 8GB SanDisk USB flash memory sticks for a mere 149:- (with the ICA members card).
Considering that I just recently bought a 4GB Kingston stick for a heck of a good deal at 99:-, I had to get this new deal since it was even a better deal.
They didn't advertise "one per customer", so I got two of them!
I challenge you to find a better deal than 8 GB for 150 kronor ($18.75 with tax) anywhere in Sweden, or the states for that matter. I doubt there will be a deal as good as this for many months.
Apparently, these are even good chips that boast some "U3" technology (some encryption or protection mechanism), but this means nothing to me since it's only supported on Windows platforms (barf).
I always like a challenge, but impossible mode on Dead Space wasn't really much of a challenge. There were a few parts that were difficult simply because of the game's mechanics, but it was never really challenging.
Anyhow, I just managed to complete the whole game on impossible... I wish I had looked up one of the achievements earlier because you get the Peng Treasure on the 11th level, and I have no save files there anymore. In fact, my closest save file is at the beginning of level 4, so I have to go through a lot of the game to get it again.
Why the hell isn't there a way to just replace a level???
I'm only missing two achievements on Dead Space... The one for the Peng Treasure, and the one for completing the asteroid part on level 4 with more than 50% of the shields remaining. Fortunately, I just arrived back on level 4 (on my third round of a Medium game), so I will play that part over and over until I get it. Then it's just a matter of time before getting to level 11 again so that I can get the Peng Treasure and complete the achievements for this game.
Aeris is officially dead. What a bummer. Not so much cause I liked her, but because I was trying so hard to get her limit break level high enough to teach her "Great Gospel". I had the frigging thing and everything was planned and set and then I apparently progressed too far into the game without realizing I had passed the point of no-return.
Decent enough mail day today, because I got the strategy guides I mentioned ordering a week or so back.
It's only a shame that the only guide I still haven't received yet is the one I wanted the most (Lost Odyssey). That's a long story as it is, though, since I've gone through about five different emails with the book company. They originally said they didn't have it in stock (even though their site claims they did), and eventually someone told me one of their other suppliers then had some 170+ of it in. They told me they put it back in my order and will ship it off, but I still haven't got a confirmation that it's been shipped - and that was 1-2 weeks ago.
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Some of them are probably horrible movies, but at that price I wasn't too concerned considering I have a collection sickness and only had one 
Looks like I won't even need my backup save file. So for anyone out there who wants to do both, just disable auto-saving before making your choice.
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