Family Meeting

When is the last time you and your family actually sat around and talked to one another? Not many families talk these days. Many families do not spend enough time talking about stuff. At dinner tables, there are not many times when the table is full and everyone is talking to everyone. It is very important to be close to your family because many times when I speak to people, they tell me stories about how families are broken apart, how parents dislike their children, and how children dislike their parents. Talking can always be a fun way to pass time quickly while the power is out and build a nice bond that was lacking for so long.

Hide and Seek!

Oh how I loved this game growing up. I remember it progressing into night Hide and Seek and all the neighborhood kids would participate. Good times, eh? Not to worry, you still can play this game old or young! I recommend playing at night so if your power goes out at night – perfect solution! All you need is a flashlight and you are ready to play hide and go seek in your house. Another fun thing to do with a flashlight is play flashlight tag. The person “it” has a flashlight and tries to find you, and then tag you.

Board Games

If you ever had the pleasure of meeting my parents and asking them if I liked board games, they would laugh and say no! I was never into board games, but I do have to admit, it can sometimes be fun with a lot of people. These days, they make them extra interactive and 21st century-esque. Many board games have been made into computer games. Can’t play those with the power out though. But don’t you miss the original games themselves? Games like Risk, Monopoly, and Clue are all great choices for you and your family to play. A way to make it more fun is to play in candle light. By the way, I dominate in Monopoly!

Read

The most easy way to pass time is to read a book. Take that book that you have been dying to read, but never had time for it. Read it by candlelight; It is so relaxing. I am not a big reader of books, but the next outage I have will give me more of a reason to finish up Stephen King’s Under The Dome.

Work

Do you have a deadline for something that needs to be done? Is it homework for school or work that your boss has told you to do? Do you need to type a paper? If so, right it by hand. Right your thoughts on a piece of paper and then when the power comes on, you will be well on your way to finishing the paper. If you need research, go to a library and research through books or through your own collection of books. That is, if anyone has an encyclopedia collection anymore.

iPod/iPhone/iPad

Though you need electricity to charge this gadgets up, they are equipped with a heck of a battery life so for me, listening to music is a must. If you have an I pod, this is a great time to listen to it. If you do not have an I pod, you can play a hand-held gaming device, PSP, Nintendo DS, or any others out there.

In the event you lose power, you will remember this post. Of course, when one is bored, we can come up with some with the craftiest solutions. We all take advantage of electricity and once we lose it, we don’t know what to do with ourselves, but if you look back at when we didn’t rely so heavily on electricity, it’ll make it easier to do without at least for a couple of hours.

What To Do When Your Power Goes Out originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on April 21, 2010.

Preparing for WAR

This is not so much a review as it is a preview since the game is still in public beta.

Before I go into this let me warn you NOT TO REMOVE YOUR BOOT CAMP PARTITION JUST YET. This beta is not fully functional and is very buggy. They are leaps and bounds in front of the direct WINE version but still not quite in the production phase yet.

I used to play the game when I dual booted for windows but now that Cross Over Games has gotten up to par for L4D I am good to just play games built specifically for the Mac platform.

For a bit of history on the technology. this is still not actually a native Mac game. Instead, this is Cider which is basically an enhanced form of Cedega that is tailored for the game that uses it.

The first warning to anyone who wants to try out the beta before getting a real account is the long download time. True to the teachings of World of Warcraft, patches often include new content and expand the size of the game almost exponentially.

Being a cider copy the game is actually running in wine with TransGaming’s spin on the direct X emulator which might explain the white back drop as their version of running the game within a window although the actually logon screen will follow you between spaces without dragging its milky partner allong.

The time you launch the launcher it might fail and need to relaunch (it worked for me after the relaunch without issue) although you may want to slow down if your a fast typer because the launcher seems to read enter before finishing reading your keys (not a big bit of lag just a minor annoyance).

But thats not the end of the pre-play pre-release bugs. The downloader may need to be restarted a few times while it updates files needed for play. And I hope you didn’t start downloading with a trial account and then switched to another account because that might restart the whole thing.

To all mac users who use a firewall you may get an authentication error when you finally launch the game, just add the game to your list of programs allowed to use ICMP and you should be fine. Also you may get an error when the game launches, just ignore it and click ok the game will launch shortly.

When the install finally finished and it was time to get into the game I found the interface just as it was on windows, save I needed to drop the gamma because this game does not look its best in high gamma. Also, even though I could play the game with everything maxed out on my boot camp partition I had to play in fastest frame rate mode which still lags like hell around enemies.

Combat was functional although I lagged out a few times while attacking and there was some lag when trying to let my Squig fight while I did my ranged dps with my bow. This was actually working out as the lag started to die down after a bit.

Well soon I got the hang of things and reached rank 2 and was starting on my way to rank 3 when the game crashed. After my laptop cooled a bit I went back into the game spawning right in the middle of all the enemies with my squig still summoned.

As annoying as it is being this slow when in windows the game runs well with everything cranked I was pretty annoyed but decided to wait for a new patch.

It looks like they figured out a good bit of the compatibility issues but this game still needs work before the cider version gets a vote in my book. My recomendation to any players who switch to windows to play this game is to keep switching until its out of beta.

WarHammer Online (Mac) originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on September 23, 2009.

First: I’m A Zelda Fanbody

I started off with the third title, A Link To The Past, and fell in love with it. Ocarina of Time came out, and was one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life, with Majora’s Mask falling right along those same lines.

So I’m no stranger to the series, and I can honestly say that I love those games more than chocolate.

Now, when Wind Waker came out, I felt a little betrayed by the cel-shaded animation as opposed to the traditional 3D graphics used by OoT and MM, but never-the-less I gave it a try…

…And was horrified.

“The Wind Waker syndrome”

As if the gay cel-shaded animation was bad enough on the eyes, they had me riding around in a boat hunting down pieces of triforce. Stupidest thing I’ve ever had to do in a Zelda game, and believe me – I played every single one of those Majora’s Mask side-quests.

I never even finished Wind Waker. I felt betrayed, and felt it did no justice to the series whatsoever. Then, as if all my complaints to Nintendo finally meant something, Twilight Princess came out.

Twilight Princess

I hated the title because I had to recite it in Block Buster to rent the game (doesn’t sound very masculine), but I had to try it. It was great – it brought back the old OoT feel, and even acted like it had a place within the Zelda storyline in respect to the other titles.

I loved it. It wasn’t any OoT or anything, but it was a relief from the stupid-ass cel-shading and cartoon bullshit.

Phantom Hourglass

Words don’t even describe how pissed I was when they turned around from Twilight Princess to return to the horrendous cel-shading crap. I didn’t even waste my time.

Spirit Tracks

And now, as if they are just begging me disown my beloved series, they pull this yet again. Only this time, they ditched the boat and went with a steam train.

Nintendo, what the hell are you smoking.

As if riding around in a boat and collecting stupid miscellaneous items wasn’t tedious and retarded enough, some genius at Nintendo decided to:

1. Make it a train this time
2. Make it a FUCKING TRAIN this time
3. Make you once again hunt for stupid items…
4. …In something that clearly doesn’t fit in the Zelda universe

I mean, it’s a train. Come on. And a steam train, too – how did they invent this when Robert Fulton didn’t event the steamboat until the mid-1800’s? (that’s not a cue to make another steamboat game, nintendo)

Let me get this straight – here you have cel-shaded Link, running around in a TUNIC, trying to save a princess (just a wild guess), and he’s going to do it in his steam train while living in a tree.

Makes perfect sense, if you’re on crack. Maybe that’s just it – somewhere between Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker Link found a crackpipe, and started puffin’ up on that Kokiri rock so get over the loss of Navi, hence the cel-shaded-ness of Wind Waker et al.

Oh, he came off the pipe just long enough to make Twilight Princess, where he found that while he was away sailing around stoned – all hell breaks loose in Hyrule. But now he’s back on the pipe again, following the loss of Minda. So it goes.

Nintendo DS + Train = Goodbye RPG

So you’re on a train, right? Trains run on tracks. Funny thing about tracks, is that they only go where the track-layer wants them to go.

That’s right, goodbye traditional “Let’s go explore here now” Zelda gameplay – you’re going only where the tracks are gonna take you. Oh, the DS lets you realistically draw tracks on the touchscreen as a dungeon bonus – but that’s about it.

And that’s on your unrealistic steam train, while you’re in your tunic, shooting stuff out of cartoon canons (god forbid the kids see any actual violence like they see on MTV). All this in your trippy, cel-shaded universe.

Conclusion

Zelda is dead to me. I’ll sit here in refuge, with my SNES and N64, playing the Zelda I’ve always known and loved. You can have that cel-shaded crap – I’m done with it.

Nintendo is killing the best series to ever hit the gaming industry, and it saddens me. I’m sure that I’m not the only one whom thinks so, either. But I’ll at least be the only one to say it – Fuck Nintendo, and the death they’re bringing to the Zelda series.

(see also: the commercial failure Azurik: Rise of Perathia, which also had you going around collecting fragments in a terrible attempt to be considered a “game”. The Wikipedia article on it has obviously been edited by the game creators.)

Dear Nintendo: Stop Killing Zelda, Please originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on August 7, 2009.

So Wikipedia has always seemed like a goldmine for getting funny reactions from people via trolling, and they sure didn’t let me down in my own attempt. This isn’t a regular techie piece, but rather a humorous parody of Wikipedia editors via stereotypes and a very successful trolling attempt.

First off, before we piss any of our dedicated readers off, I know this doesn’t apply to everybody. There are Wikipedia editors (from here on referred to as “Wikipedians”) whom have lives, don’t worship Jimmy Wales, aren’t obese etc. This is just a parody of those whom do, and that spend every waking moment improving Wikipedia.

Hey, even I use Wikipedia constantly to look stuff up, but some people obsess over it too much, and that’s the point I’m making. Now, with all that out of the way…

Step 1: Create a Wikipedia account

Well, for my vandalistic constructive edits to be accredited to The Coffee Desk, I had to register an account. The user ‘Fat Slob‘ already existed, so I just went with the non-creative name of TheCoffeeDesk (now defunct/blocked – see below).

Step 2: Create a “real”-looking user page

With a valid user account, I was ready to make edits. After making a valid-looking user page, that is:

(please note that the “new messages” link above looks just like a real alert, only linked to the Penis article. The “typical wikipedian” link went here: typical wikipedian)

The text on my user page reads:

Hi, my name is Mark and I’m from The Coffee Desk. My goal for Wikipedia is to get as many Barn Stars as possible, as it has been my lifelong dream since childbirth (or since Wikipedia’s inception, at least). Having a small image and a few lines of text placed on my talk page is a huge accomplishment for me, and is well worth the days spent editing in exchange (as opposed to having a girlfriend, working, or anything “normal” like that).

Hey, some might even consider me a “Wikipedia nazi” of sorts for all of the constructive edits I will be making, so prepare yourselves – I take no prisoners when it comes to improving the Internet Encyclopedia!

Ta-ta!

Step 3: Contribute!

So, with a valid-looking user page and all, I was ready to make edits. I started minor, merely placing quotation marks around the word “outspoken” in the second paragraph of the article about Helen Keller (see here).

Then, I slowly stepped it up. I edited the Boingboing article to include a word about the phrase’s historical usage in sexual behaviour (seen here), before getting much worse.

I made the article about famous stuttering jazz musician Scatman John stutter, before replacing the entire Enzyte article with an image of a buttplug.

Then, I did my worst:

Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is practically the Internet Jesus to these nerds. His page is protected by an army of geeky teens, so I had to go a little more low-key by instead making a movie about him.

I’m referring, of course, to the edit I made to Bruno, where Jimbo Wales becomes a gay austrian.

Blocked, etc.

That did it. Those little geeks were so pissed about me messing with their god that they blocked the account indefinitely after that. They also threatened to remove all links to our site from Wikipedia, concluding that we must have put them there since we’re such bullies (and therefore spammers).

No, we didn’t put them there, but couldn’t give a care about whether or not they’re removed – I came and got what I wanted. The reactions I got from these guys was priceless (and lost with the banishing of the account, with no screenshots ): ).

My block appeal (declined):

I never meant any harm, just wanted to improve Wikipedia and earn a barnstar, as has been my lifelong dream. Other users, such as those above, have guided my edits to be even more constructive, and I deserve that this should be taken into consideration in the process of unblocking me so I can make constructive edits here on this wonderful web encyclopedia.

You see, since childhood I’ve wanted nothing more than a page on a widescale encyclopedia so I could improve the universe, making wonderful contributions (such as speling correction) to said encyclopedia, and to get a golden star for my efforts. When I found out about the Wikipedia project, I was thrilled and made a vow to do everything I could to get a barnstar.

Now, it appears I shall never have the opportunity to win said barnstar, and this saddens me to a great point. I just wish there was some way to go back, or perhaps win a second chance, to earn a barnstar by making only constructive edits now that I’ve been shown the true way, as this would bring great happiness to my life.

Such a feat would allow me to draw a line through “Win a barnstar” on my bucket list, so that I can move on to the next item on the list (bungee jumping using a morbidly obese person as an anchor). Such things make me happy, and would allow me to reflect on my life with great happiness, feeling I’ve left a great mark on this world, hence my name.

So I would appreciate any consideration in this matter, O great Wikipedian Administrators. I could really improve this encyclopedia, given a chance with the guidance I have been receiving. I thank you all for your time and patience in this matter, and ask that you give this some consideration for both my and Wikipedia’s benefit.

In Jimbo Wales,
TheCoffeeDesk

Priceless. I realize that this seems like a pretty lowlife attempt to troll, but Wikipedians have had it coming for such a long time, and this wasn’t the first attempt by far (nor the last).

So we’re blocked, and I pissed off a bunch of Wikipedians. But I got the reactions I desired for all along, as well as a pretty funny post. Worth it? Oh yeah, absolutely.

(And Anthony has a story in a similar vein coming up, where he responds to spammers/scammers via Email with some pretty hilarious material – stay tuned!)

Messing With Wikipedians originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on July 23, 2009.

I will take the best elements from games of yester-year that are lost upon the modern game world. For my first shining example of aged gold I chose my personal favorite. Descent 2 (because I never played the original).

In this segment I am going to talk about one of Descent’s neat graphic tricks: THE ABILITY TO SHOOT OUT LIGHTS!

Sorry the technical term escapes me but if you play Rainbow Six, Killzone, or UT3 you have probably noticed the lack of the ability to just shoot out a light in order to make a room dark.

Sure Some Games like SOCOM US Navy Seals and Splinter cell have it, but it’s actually rather rare these days. What’s more is that its in both the single player and the online multiplayer not just one or the other like COD4.

I know that most games work around the need for this by having persistent outside environments or using “bullet proof” objects as a source of light.

Grand Theft Auto contains a half attempt at making things right by having the cars preform this trick but all the buildings have conveniently un-shootable lights.

I’m not going to brag skills I don’t have but if we figured this out in 96 it should be standard by this day and age.

Anyway I hear some N64 games calling me for a talk about using the proper amount of buttons on a controller so see you guys soon.

Retro Player Series: Descent 2 originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on June 5, 2009.

So here I offer you the REAL shebang – tips for speeding up Windows (from a real expert), the reasons why they work, and considerations that you usually have to pay for from one of those other lame services frequently advertised.

But first, the obligatory disclaimer:

The Coffee Desk's Disclaimer

…Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the actual tips and tricks.

Less Startup, Faster Finish

Ever log in and, while you hear the hard disk spinning like there’s no tomorrow, wait for it to be done to be able to use your desktop? This is a cause of Windows trying to do too much at the same time during startup, and here’s some tips on cutting down on this time so you can start working sooner.

Before we dig into the registry, let’s first clear out the startup folder. There are at least folders Windows NT checks following authentication for programs to start up after logging in, and most of the time they are filled with unnecessary crap that you don’t even need.

These two folders are located at: “C:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\startup”, and “C:\documents and settings\%USER%\start menu\programs\startup” (Vista paths are different, adjust accordingly). Anything located in these folders, including but not limited to .exe and .lnk files, will be opened by their default programs or directly executed. Delete anything out of these folders that you didn’t put there, checking first that you don’t need them (and be sure to reveal hidden files before doing so).

If you see anything be Adobe, Apple, or Microsoft within these startup folders or the registry keys we’ll soon be discussing, you can probably delete them without any issues. Most of these files are just placed there to “speed up” the launch of the corresponding applications (Adobe and iTunes are notorious for this), but unless your computer acts solely as an iTunes or Adobe machine (as the companies naturally assume), then you can delete the speed launcher and/or tray icon programs.

A similar arrangement is centered around two registry keys: “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersions\Run” and “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersions\Run”. If you don’t know how to edit the registry, then don’t bother on this step because a few of the files within these keys are actually needed by Windows to start up properly, e.g. CSRSS.EXE and the like.

This website, titled “The Process Library”, is an accurate database for what processes are good and what are not. Use it as a cross-reference to identify a process as needed or not before removing it from the registry’s startup key, and as usual don’t remove any antivirus programs from the startup.

In addition to clearing out the startup folders and registry entries, cleaning up your desktop of unused icons is heavily recommended for performance reasons (less stuff in memory, less stuff causing explorer.exe to eat up CPU time).

By removing the unused/unneeded programs from both the startup folders and registry keys, you can ensure an already-faster startup after logging in, but we’re not done yet.

Defrag, Defrag, Defrag…

Unless you’re running a new Solid State Disk, you need to frequently defragment your hard drive. The NTFS filesystem used by modern installations of Windows NT (e.g. XP and Vista) is very prone to fragmentation, and although many of our steps center around speeding up hard drive access it is good to go ahead and do an initial defragmentation to make the later processes go smoother.

So go ahead and defragment the disk, as you should be doing once a month at the least, and when it’s done come back and we’ll further optimize the system.

TuneXP

This is a reputable software tool, available for free (believe it or not) that we’ve personally used to optimize countless Windows installations (thanks to Anthony for showing this to me). The tool is available here.

After downloading it, go ahead and install it. You’ll immediately notice the simple, taskbar-based user interface, which is a result of the developers putting more effort into the actual optimizations than the pretty interface (that’s a good thing, as you’ll see).

Do the following in this order from the program, and wait for each one to finish before starting another: Everything under “Memory and Filesystem” in order from top to bottom, setting “IO Page Lock Limit” to 128MB. The last step, “Ultra-fast booting”, is by far one of the best tools in speeding up Windows, as it relocates kernel drivers and other bootup executables/libraries as close to the root of the C: drive as possible, causing a tremendous performance boost in Windows.

Now that you’re done with “memory and filesystem”, let’s move on to the “hardware” menu. If you use an Intel chipset, enable UDMA-66: this allows your intel motherboard hardware direct access to memory (bypassing the CPU), and will therefore allow other processes more time to execute.

If you don’t use a lot of USB hardware, save for the occasional flash drive usage, go ahead and increase the USB polling interval. This makes Windows check the USB bus less often, and therefore frees up the processor for more background processing tasks. Gamers may want to speed up Windows IRQ handling, as this makes the keyboard and mouse more responsive (in addition to other IRQ-based hardware, such as network cards).

Increasing the DNS cache under the “Internet” menu is recommended for most users, unless you are a system administrator needing up-to-date DNS settings (doing this speeds up website seeking time).

Under “Services”, disable messenger unless you honestly use it. Fast user switching is not needed if you don’t have other people logging in and out while you work, and disabling themes makes your computer look more like the classic Windows 98 look (but with a tremendous speed boost).

The TuneXP tool automatically defragments the C: drive after running the bootup speed boost, and since that is the last filesystem-based trick we’ll employ you won’t need to defragment any more after this section, unless you do so at the end just for good measure.

Services

Services are background tasks that enable other programs to share functionality along with lower-level operating system access. They usually run as threads under the hungry svchost.exe process, or allocate an entire svchost.exe all to themselves in some cases. Disabling unneeded services will speed up Windows’s startup, but be sure you know what you do and don’t need otherwise you’ll actually INCREASE your startup time, or lose application functionality.

If in doubt, leave a service’s startup type either in automatic or (in most cases) manual.

Leaving a service in manual tells Windows “load it up only when an application tries to use it”. This lets your system run without it for as long as it is not needed, but if the time arises to bring it alive, Windows will take its own sweet time to bring the service alive and make it available. Automatic services are loaded regardless of demand, and disabled services don’t run period (and are not monitored by Windows for demand, either, creating even less overhead).

This Blog post details each standard Windows service, and how to decide whether or not to turn it off. In addition to the normal services, you may want to set application-specific services (such as QuickTime, iTunes, iPod, or Adobe) services to manual, to save processor time.

By doing this, Windows (and thus the processor) has more time to pay attention to other applications, and also has more physical (non-paged) memory to dedicate to applications you may want running faster than the iPod service, which will run regardless of iPod connectivity. Indexing should almost never be enabled, unless you are very disorganized.

Pagefile tuning

The pagefile is a sensitive issue. Some users know their habits enough to tune this down to a fine level, while others have no idea what to set this to due to inconsistent usage habits. If you have 3GB or RAM, and usually only use up to 512MB-1GB of it at a time browsing the web or just running Office, then you probably don’t even need a pagefile, and will see a tremendous performance increase in disabling it.

However, should the time come where you suddenly use all 3GB of that memory with no pagefile to catch any overflow, then you’ll bluescreen and lose everything. So having the lowest needed amount of a pagefile is necessary, and be sure to adjust it to your usual computing habits while leaving room for errors or emergencies.

To edit your pagefile size, hold the Windows key and press Pause/break (Windows shortcut key of the day). This will bring up the system properties dialog, and from there press the advanced tab, and find the “virtual memory” setting (it’s really just the paging settings, for those that know the real definition of virtual memory).

Set the size to something low that you’re comfortable with, and if you have a large amount of physical memory and don’t do any video editing or extensive photoshopping, then go ahead and disable the pagefile entirely.

By adjusting this to the best setting, you will see a huge performance boost since everything Windows does will be loaded into fast physical memory rather than paging it out to the hard drive, further creating a hard drive bottleneck and slowing down memory access for programs. If you resized it a great deal, or disabled it entirely, go ahead and defrag again.

Crap Cleaner

CCleaner, formerly “Crap Cleaner”, does exactly what it’s name implies: it cleans the crap out of your registry. The registry is a huge Windows database of settings and lower-level Windows and application parameters that gets larger with the age of a Windows installation. It also is prone to errors, contributing to its being a root cause of performance problems in Windows installations.

Download CCleaner here, and go ahead and give it a good run, cleaning out temporary internet files, autocomplete caches, system caches and correcting registry errors. Doing so will speed up Windows registry database access and therefore speed up overall Windows/application speed.

Graphics

Especially important for integrated graphics cards, disable as many visual features of Windows as you can tolerate living without. In Vista, Aero is especially important to disable, and even XP’s menu fading and the like can be disabled for a performance benefit.

Doing this keeps the stress off of the CPU for graphics processing, because not all graphics-related tasks are handled exclusively by the GPU and may require CPU intervention regardless. Integrated cards sometimes use physical memory for graphical textures, so cutting down on how many you use outside of games will speed up other applications.

Others

Run MSConfig, and under the boot tab, enabling the NTLDR /NOGUIBOOT option will decrease Windows’s bootup time, albeit slightly. This is a result of Windows focusing even less on loading graphics at boot time, and therefore lets it get to the nitty-gritty of other core booting functions faster.

Also, disabling Windows Automatic Updates will speed up your computer. If you go through with this, you will have to manually check for updates yourself, but by doing this on your own time rather than letting Windows download and run updates in the background whilst working, you will get a performance boost.

Conclusion

By doing the steps outlined in this post, you will see a tremendous performance improvement in your Windows installation. Be sure to continue to run Antivirus products, because even though they slow down your computer during scans, it is compensated by the fast that most viruses slow your computer down even more.

Most of the services and registry entries that slow down your computer are a result of companies like Adobe and Apple that think only of speeding the launch of their products, without a care as to how much they slow down your computer when idle in the background. These “speedlauncher” programs that normally reside in the system tray are notorious for being memory hogs and slowing your computer down, so getting rid of them is not an issue.

Opening Task Manager after going through all of these steps and checking for memory/CPU hogs is another good idea, and will further help to track down what’s slowing down your system.

I hope everybody enjoyed this article, and gets the most performance out of their Windows installation as possible (for a Microsoft product .

Tuning Windows: Less Bull, More Speed originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on May 20, 2009.

They don’t always have a detailed storyline in favor of general player-versus-player combat, the graphics don’t always match those (or the requirements) of proprietary games, and usually they are based off of an existing game or idea, but open source games have a special place in both the gaming industry and the wide variety of open source software alike.

The games we listed here were actually thoroughly tested by most of us, and we weighed them out against proprietary games while attempting to cover a broad spectrum of game genres in the process.

Armagetron Advanced

Armagetron Advanced is a game based off of the “lightcycle” scenes of the Disney movie Tron. It is actually a fork of an earlier attempt called simply Armagetron, but with enhanced graphics, AI, and overall improvements to the original, Armagetron Advanced easily outshines its predecessor.

The game has surprisingly decent graphics for an open source game, which is best demonstrated on a higher-end OpenGL video card (such as those included with Macs) but easily scales down to accommodate lower quality hardware without loss of overall game quality.

The game is a simple player-versus-player or single player versus AI strategy game, and its simple controls and game principles make this one of the best open source games in circulation. The software’s networkability makes its gameplay across a LAN or an official Internet server a pleasant experience, as we have tested over a standard 100Mbps Ethernet LAN many times.

The game’s AI is also nothing to sneeze at, and the classic level-based layout scales well with both enumeration and difficulty level of the game’s AI, presenting a challenge without being to quick to jump to “impossible mode”.

As a clean, family-friendly and work-safe addition to the list, we highly recommend it to everybody, especially Tron fans.

Frets On Fire (X)

Frets On Fire is an open source clone of the classic game Guitar Hero, along with the ability to even load song files from the standard PC Guitar Hero distribution. The game is phenomenal in its emulation of full-blown Guitar Hero, right down to using the keyboard as the guitar.

However, where the game lacks in graphical sophistication and two player gameplay, the Frets On Fire fork Frets On Fire X covers all of the remaining bases. Frets On Fire X allows two player gameplay, extra themes within the game (including true Guitar Hero-ish themes) and extra features and graphics not present in the regular Frets On Fire game, although we feel they should be.

Guitar Hero veterans will have no problem adapting their skills to this open source alternative, and its ability to load Guitar Hero sound files makes it a great dual-boot game, in addition to its “hackability” due to Linux’s Bluetooth integration (I know somebody whom was able to play using an Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller and Wiimote with no programming necessary thanks to this).

In short, Frets On Fire is a great open source alternative to Guitar Hero, and Frets On Fire X takes it even a step further with additional enhancements and tweaks that rank Frets On Fire X even higher on our list.

Nexuiz and OpenArena

In the first person shooter category, we combined both of these Quake engine-based games into one section since they share many qualities.

For starters, both demonstrate a common theme of open source first person shooters, especially those based off Quake: they place more emphasis on the actual gameplay rather than a definitive storyline. This would not be such a bad thing if shooters of both types existed in the open source community, but the overwhelming list of Quake-based games with no substantial storyline and just action is what turns off many from free gaming software.

Despite this limiting quality, however, OpenArena and Nexuiz are at the top of their genre of Quake-based first person shooters. Nexuiz’s graphics are some of the best demonstrated within an open source game, and OpenArena’s gameplay and AI bring the classic Quake action to more of a modern look and feel, with updated graphics, weapons and AI intelligence.

Both of these games rank higher on our list than other FPSers like Urban Terror due to their AI intelligence and single player gameplay, although their emphasis on LAN and live gameplay also add to their experience and influence our appreciation of them heavily.

Both games are highly recommended to both Quake veterans and modern first person shooter fans looking for a high quality free software game, although it is debatable whether you can find better gameplay in proprietary combat-based first person shooters given the lack of the open source development volume and idea/improvement input from developers and users alike.

LinCity-NG

Lincity is as CNN describes, “a highly sophisticated [SimCity] clone”, and we couldn’t agree more. Building on the principles of the game SimCity, this open source clone further extends the gameplay familiar with Sims players with added features such as the addition of raw materials, and water/ecology management.

LinCity-NG further extends Lincity with even more added features and better graphics while delegating the task of running on slower/older computers to the original Lincity as compensation for the increased system requirements.

LinCity-NG is sure to be enjoyed by SimCity enthusiasts and open source gamers in general, and further widens the variety of available open source game types available in the community.

Hedgewars

A personal favorite, Hedgewars is a very intuitive Worms clone and just as addicting as far as simple-yet-extensive gameplay is concerned. The hours seem to pass like minutes when you begin to “catch on” to the game and begin to play it online with others.

The game is strategy-based, with a wide variety of weapons at you and your team of hedgehogs’ disposal, which can be utilized in ever-expanding ways to dispatch the other team(s) before they do the same to you. But the gameplay is not the only likable aspect of this game, however: it is praised (by us) for its customization and flexible gaming options, which combined with the networkable emphasis of the gameplay creates a very personal and intuitive atmosphere for the game.

It is truly an instant classic: written using largely the QT programming library, it is completely cross-platform and runs just as smooth and perfect on the highest end Mac as the 128MB video card laptop we tested it on (just tick the “Reduce Quality” checkbox in the settings). The game will no doubt be an open source classic for a long time, and each release brings even more features to the game for its users’ enjoyment.

Conclusion

This list of open source games was not arranged in any particular order, since it is difficult to weigh games of differing genres against each other effectively. Instead, we simply provided a very in-depth review of what we feel (as both users and developers) to be the highest-quality open source games currently in both circulation and development. Almost all of the games on this list are cross-platform, even available for Windows, and can be downloaded free of charge as well as patched by any developer willing to take the time.

We hope you enjoy the games on this list as much as we did, as we tried to cover as many game genres as we could from the open source gaming software set. Happy gaming!

Top Current Open Source Games originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on May 7, 2009.

Some of these are easter eggs within the Windows operating system or included programs, and others are generally undocumented/forgotten features that nobody really uses due to lack of general knowledge. Either way, everyone is sure to get something out of this, and as you read further down the countdown the secrets get even more technical and obscure (in other words, if you see something listed here you’ve known about, keep reading – chances are something further down the list will surprise you!)

10. Alt-escape
We thought we’d start with something cross-platform and fairly easy to initiate, so the first (or last) thing on the list is the long-forgotten companion keyboard shortcut of alt-tab: alt-escape. Most power users know about alt-tab’s ability to switch windows with even a nice icon display in most versions of Windows, but alt-escape does the same, only starting with the window at the bottom of the window stack.

As per alt-shift-tab, alt-shift-escape reverses the order in which windows are switched. Could be handy in some situations where alt-tab or taskbar-hunting is too slow to find an open window.

9. Pinball’s “hidden test”
As most know, pinball was a program included in later versions of Windows NT, namely Windows 2000 and Windows XP as per a software deal between Microsoft and the authors of the pinball game in question. But many don’t know about the hidden ability to control the pinball via the mouse the game includes, accessible by typing “hidden test” (including the actual space) after starting a game.

Upon typing the phrase, you can control the pinball directly via the mouse and push your high score waaaay over that of your friends, without even editing any data files!

8. Widget-like CPU graph
This has been a feature in task manager since at least Windows NT 4.0: fire up task manager, click the “Performance” tab, then double-click anywhere within the window and voila! instant chromeless CPU graph you can drag around from anywhere within the window.

This is a fine example of how Microsoft programs have a tendency to include the ability to remove the window chrome from their programs, as seen also in the Windows NT clock (last included in NT 4.0) via double-clicking as well.

7. A Few Shortcuts
The subject of Task Manager prompts a list of keyboard shortcuts you may or may not already know about, but we’d like to list anyway: (super refers to the “Windows logo” key): super+r brings up the run box, control+shift+escape fires up task manager from anywhere, super+e brings up explorer.exe (“My Computer”), super+l locks the computer provided you have a password, and super+d minimizes all open windows to reveal the desktop (in addition to bringing them back again).

Also, for screenshots, the printscreen key on the keyboard will dump the complete contents of the visible screen into the clipboard (you paste it into an app, such as mspaint) while alt+printscreen only selects the active window.

We’d also like to note the forgotten ability to assign any program to any unused keystroke via the right-clickable properties of any icon and looking under the “shortcut” tab for the keyboard shortcut text box.

6. Bluescreen On-Demand
This feature of the Windows i8042 keyboard controller driver entails in modifying the system registry, so please be careful when setting this up as we’ll have told you just enough to be dangerous (system administrators are no stranger to the registry, however

Open up regedit (super-r regedit) and, using the tree in the left pane, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\i8042prt\\Parameters . From here, right click in the right pane and select New>”DWORD (32-bit) Value” and name it “CrashOnCtrlScroll” (without the quotes and set its value to 1 . After a reboot, holding control and pressing Scroll lock twice will bluescreen (crash) the machine.

This is apparently a registry parameter included by Microsoft for their generic i8042 keyboard controller driver, which when activated causes said driver to crash the kernel and thus the machine. I would take a guess at Microsoft’s leaving this in the driver as a means of testing the bluescreen (bugcheck) routine, but other than that it’s just a nice way to crash Windows, without just simply waiting around for it to happen .

5. Internet Explorer Kiosk Mode
This next tip is really only practical if you were running a coffee shop with touchscreen kiosks on an intranet (since you can’t input URLs when doing this), but nonetheless some reader of ours may wish to do just that.

There are two ways to do this: you can either bring up a run box (super-r) and type “iexplore -k” (without the quotes), or modify the shortcut icon’s properties to target “c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe -k” (depending on your system). The result, either way, is a full-screen internet explorer window without any chrome or status bar or anything. Enjoy.

4. Resource Editing
This is easily the most dangerous “secret” on this page, although it isn’t really a secret at all, just a way to modify Windows resources. By resources, we are talking about strings and images included within programs and libraries used by Windows. The tool for editing the resources is called Resource Hacker, and can change almost any text within any program (hopefully script kiddies won’t read this).

Some notable system files to modify the resources of are: C:\windows\explorer.exe (start menu, general desktop dialog boxes), and C:\windows\system32\msgina.dll (login window strings and images). Use this at your own risk, as any errors in recompiling those system files can lead to an unstable(r) system or even an unbootable system.

3. Windows 98 Product Team
This gem requires both a working Windows 98 installation, and a little time and effort to do, but here goes: open up explorer (super-e) and browse to c:\windows\application data\microsoft\welcome . Click weldata, then right click and choose to create a shortcut.

Right click to the properties dialog of the shortcut, and at the end of the “target” text box (past the quotes) type a space and paste “You_are_a_real_rascal” (without the quotes). Now, at the bottom of the shortcut properties where it says “run”, choose “minimized”, then close and double-click the shortcut for a “video” of the Windows 98 team names and assorted Microsoft campus pictures.

The video is really an ActiveX (or JavaScript?) heavy local HTML document, so a working iexplore.exe is required to view it. Viewing the source does not work, since the HTML documents created are deleted just as fast as they were created, leaving no time to view the HTML source.

2. Useful NT Commands
Windows NT does, contrary to popular belief, come with a few very useful commands for detailed system modification. A few of the most useful ones (with documentation accessible via the ‘/?’ option) are: net (particularly “net use”), taskkill (similar to kill in Unix), control (user administration), findstr (similar to grep), gpresult (view group policy results), netsh (a whole shell for network administration), and driverquery (similar to lsmod, but with minimal documentation).

1. Game Cheats
We saved the best for last, and here it is – the mother lode! We already mentioned the pinball cheat, and here are some cheats for other popular games included with windows:

Solitaire/Spider Solitaire: Pressing alt+shift+2 will instantly beat any game, causing the cards to flow and all just as if you’ve played the game all the way through. Fun to show off for your friends with!

FreeCell: control+shift+F10 will prompt you to either “abort, retry, or fail” (an MS-DOS error reference by FreeCell programmer Jim Horne), and clicking abort followed by making another move will instantly win any game for you, even the unsolvable games -1, -2, and 11982 (selectable via the game menu or F3).

Minesweeper: Not an instant-win shortcut, but just as good: This only worked on expert mode for us, but whenever in a game, type “xyzzy” (without the quotes) and press the left shift key (if it doesn’t work, try the right key). After doing this, click on your desktop (without hitting an icon) and click F5 to refresh it.

The very top-left pixel of your screen (hard to see) will now be white, and will turn black whenever your mouse hovers over a button concealing a mine within the minesweeper game. The F5 keystroke is needed to refresh your desktop to reveal the newly-added pixel, and is required on NT-based Windows versions (and probably 98 and 95) due to Active Desktop being added on as a feature.

These game cheats are undoubtedly the coolest secrets in Windows, alongside the “volcano” screensaver text in Windows NT 4.0 (not listed because it only works in NT 4.0, not 2000 or XP).

0. Pranks
Well, we write a lot of software, and although we said there would be 10 secrets listed, we can’t help but to add an extra element (and therefore making it have undefined results . These, in addition to the resource hacking we mentioned earlier, are some of our favorite windows pranks we would like to share with our readers:

The Fake Icons: First, take a full screenshot via the printscreen key on the keyboard. Paste the screenshot into a new mspaint session, and save the file. Then, highlight all of the user’s icons before cutting and pasting them into a new folder located under “My Documents” or somewhere not on the desktop. Set the taskbar to autohide via the properties dialog for it, then unlock it and drag it to the top of the screen so it remains hidden from the user.

Set the screenshot you saved earlier as the desktop background, and voila! all of the user’s “icons” are unclickable and the start menu/taskbar is fake as well. I’ve been doing this to people since Windows 95 was first widespread, and even today it’s a timeless classic for most users.

Windows Pranks: Windows Pranks.com contains the most amusing set of harmless Windows programs designed to be used as pranks you’ve ever seen (besides the ones at RJL). Place any of the files found on the site into “C:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\startup” for them to instantly execute when any user logs in for the time of your life!

Login/Logoff: In the same vein as the Windows Pranks, you can make your own DOS-command based pranks such as the one-liners “shutdown” and “logoff” in Anthony’s .bat to .exe converter, and placing them in the same all users startup folder mentioned above will bring any user to their knees!

Fake cmd.exe: Follow the instructions on the pastebin entry for Anthony’s Fake cmd.exe code for a prank to freak out any system administrator.

Well, that does it for our list of secrets and our own list of favorite Windows pranks, and we hope you as a reader enjoyed them and even learned a little something from them. Just remember: don’t make it too obvious you’re looking at that pixel when showing off your new minesweeper skills, remember to put the fake cmd.exe in dllcache, and don’t get too crazy with the pranks!

Top 10 Forgotten Windows Secrets originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on April 26, 2009.

This review is in lieu of a COD4 for mac review as the purchase I made got cocked up in the download process.

Instead lets take a fun little romp down the road paved by the premier company for making games available across multiple platforms Transgaming.

AS you all know I am writing from personal experience not from research so your experience may have some variations.

The first time I came in contact with trans gaming was shortly after the vista beta trashed my computer and I was forced to make Linux my primary operating system. I quickly fell in love with Linux and when it came time to buy a copy of windows I shunned the idea for my speedy new friend.

Enter cedega – a fork of wine which betrayed their promises and for 5 dollars a month makes most windows games (at least the big name ones) work within Linux. While some games ran like trash at first (like eve online and oblivion, which ran nicely but lots of graphical corruption due to my sub-standard card) I found it played wow and doom just fine so I was happy with it for the time I had it. The 5 dollars a month actually seemed worth it.

Eventually I got a new computer which broke so I got a mac book pro under the shining glory of the fact that it is a Unix based product. Unix != Linux but I have to say i still don’t regret the decision because macs are getting increased game support now that the whole “x86 to ppc” barrier has been graciously broken.

I hastily downloaded eve online only to find out that the intel mac version of eve online is actually just a copy of wine with eve installed in one big executable package.

WTF I proclaimed as it became clear that my 5 dollars a month was funding a company that simply perfected how to turn directx9 calls into openGL calls.

A quick point that’s not porting in-fact its little more than emulating. (even if Wine Is Not an Emulator)

Whats worse though is the fact that all the games still have their right click based commands which is fine if you have a mouse but crap if your trying to play from the track pad (to all you who claim you can’t play a first person shooter with a track pad I say I have one hell of a talent to show you).

Either way the game worked fine so I figured I would keep my gob shut as its not the best solution but damned if it did not work.

Now while transgaming may toot their own horn to what I just said their latest working Idea, Cider, does not get the same praise.

Cider is essentially a series of libraries that a developer can link to so that porting to the mac does not require any extra work. The problem with this is not in the games’ functions but instead in start-up time.

Battlefield 2142 and Command and Conqueror 3 where my test subjects and both of them have a starting wait time that made me incorrectly believe the program was not launching at all. once they got running it was great but still the wait is unbelievable, and to the point where if you ask randomly on macrumors.com your bound to get a negative story about the game in general.

So where does that leave me thinking? How about Cedega for the mac. If you have figured out how to get it working leave a comment with a link or a story because I am at a loss.

Better yet here is a random idea: why not just remake the game for mac, since your’re going to make a console version that relies on OpenGL anyway just wedge it in some where instead of making a half-assed piece of crap.

Yes at-least one company is actually taking the time to port mac games and that is Aspyr who recently lead the charge for porting Guitar hero to the mac and while my brand spanking new mac book pro can’t play it with all the settings turned up to eleven like I can play Mass Effect on the windows vista partition of my computer, it still starts up and plays like a normal PC game with no noticeable drop in graphics quality. For more on how effective Aspyr is your going to have to wait for me to get my copy of COD4 which will fuel both a review of the game and a review of Aspyr as a company.

For now Transgaming you get a 3/5 and a hand shake for putting more games on the mac but not quite doing it the right way

Cider, transgaming for the mac originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on October 1, 2008.

If you find the japanese style of cartoons offensive then you will find the art in this game annoying unless you where into Jet Set Radio future and the like but then again these days it seems like the world is opposed to the idea that anything good can come out of anything that remotely resembles a fad.

Either way the game’s cell shaded setup is something I actually find pleasing and while all of your characters motions are exaggerated like in your typical anime they actually all work fluidly and make sense.

The in-game store has some expensive items (they almost all are) but you don’t need them to win. True Gun A maybe more power-full than Gun B but it will have something about it that makes it just as weak. You don’t really see much in this game that gives players an unfair advantage that can’t work against them and that is one of the high-notes. With my default gear and appearance I was able to decimate people who had tricked out their characters beyond my 5 hours of game play means.

As far as combat is concerned its split between sword meelee, which is all smooth and natural, and gun play which works very fluidly.

The targeting system is an over the shoulder system reminiscent of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition only this system is fast and fluid to the point where it works well for the twitchy game play.

It’s a bit unstable but very much worth playing (especially because its free)
4/5
s4.en.alaplaya.eu/

S4 League: a quick look at the beta originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on September 15, 2008.