Category Archives: Games

First go playing TF2 online!

So, after playing against bots for a few days I joined a Team Fortress 2 server this evening with David and we had a pretty good time! First David joined an empty payload server escorting a train to the other side of the map. Good clean fragging fun there, especially with a rocket launcher!

Next a game of capture point on Gravel Pit and we got thrown on to different teams. Woah, great stuff! The server was a mixture of humans and bots though I didn’t realise that for a while. The replay function works really well but I didn’t have Quicktime installed so I couldn’t save them. Sucks that I lose the recordings when I exit TF2! 🙁

PS. Thanks Deffik and Shaz for the games of Bad Company 2. My computer just wasn’t up to the task this evening, though I did enjoy taking down all those helis with the VADS!

David blasting my team to smithereens with his minigun!

Learn to play Team Fortress 2

I don’t know if many other games have a new users/training section to their forum like the one for Team Fortress 2 does but they should! Maybe it’s a sign that the game has a lot to offer and a learning curve?

Having just watched two of the videos linked from here about playing as an engineer I’m itching to get playing the game but I will need help. Who’ll join me? I see now that 18 of my Steam friends have the game. Must get a few of you on Skype and go play it!

Portal 2 Level Editor

Yet another reason to hope PSN comes back. I want to play Portal 2 on PC! Pleaaaassseee!

According to the Portal 2 blog a level editor for Portal 2 has been released.

Today we’re opening up the beta of the Portal 2 Authoring Tools to everyone! It’s available as a free download for all owners of the PC version of Portal 2 and can be found under the “Tools” tab in Steam.

The Portal 2 Authoring Tools include versions of the same tools we used to make Portal 2. They’ll allow you to create your own singleplayer and co-op maps, new character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music.

Pity Steam won’t accept the Portal 2 code until PSN comes back. I don’t suppose anyone has tried contacting Steam support to ask if they’ll relent due to the extended outage?

For future reference The Minecraft server is running…

For future reference:

Occasionally these need to be updated. Some of the plugins have been abandoned by their original authors. I would like to thank those who took up the (mostly thankless) responsibility of maintaining these plugins. Doing a great job!

PC Fun on Bad Company 2

Defffik was good enough to record some of our games last night. First time for David playing the PC version of Bad Company 2, Gavin is fairly new to that version too and I leveled up to 10 so we’re all a little rusty playing with mouse and keyboard.

It was my first time playing with the my new mouse, the Logitech G500, and it made a huge difference! I bound buttons on the mouse to knifing, use, and grenades as well as using the higher DPI for the tanks which is like pumping gallons of WD-40 into the turret. That thing flies around when the sensitivity is pumped up!

‘Course, when we came up against a team of level 50s David, Gavin and I suffered badly but we still had a great time.

IRC chatlog of PSN hackers

PSN is still down (as it was this morning when I wrote the exact same words in this post) because hackers broke in and Sony discovered the breach a few weeks ago.

How long ago? This boards.ie thread links to this pastebin log which is apparently an IRC conversation between a few guys discussing the security problems Sony had.

The hostname updptl.de.np.community.playstation.net is mentioned and a week or two ago I fired off a “lynx -head -dump” request to find out what it’s running and it was definitely running an old version of Apache at that time. I tried this morning and the request was forbidden so thankfully Sony are tightening up things.

The forum thread also links here, a post written back in February. Unfortunately that site is down but I found the meat of that post here.

A well known hacker i don’t want to reveal here had all the Sony PlayStation Network functions 100% decrypted as well as providing some nice info about how Sony dealing with PSN members privacy in their online servers.

Apparently, Sony server gathered everything they can from the PSN connected PS3 console. When i said everything, i meant it. Here, i make all the list of what they squeezed from the IRC chat logs conversation between the hackers.

Sony monitors all messages over PSN.
All connected devices return values sent to Sony server returns TV, Firmware version, Firmware type, Console model
They also collects data in your USB attached device.
Credit card sent as plain text, example:
Code:
creditCard.paymentMethodId=VISA&creditCard.holderName=Max&creditCard.cardNumber=4558254723658741&creditCard.expireYear=2012&creditCard.expireMonth=2&creditCard.securityCode=214&creditCard.address.address1=example street%2024%20&creditCard.address.city=city1%20&creditCard.address.province=abc%20&creditCard.address.postalCode=12345
The best part of all, the list is stored online and updated when u login PSN and random.
But, that’s not all, with the PSN functions fully decrypted, this hacker can use the function to get all games, DLC, you name it, from PSN store without paying anything.

Wow, i am just speechless! We can really sue Sony for monitoring ALL data including our credit card info providing that we are connected to PSN, of course. Man, that is really big fail, as well as the PSN fail oh and the PS3 fail. Everything just FAIL, Sony!

You can read the IRC chat logs at the link below. We censored the names just to be safe.

This IRC log seems to be the source for this ARS article from back then in February. Despite what the report above says, the data was sent over SSL however. The main problem then was for people using custom firmware because the credit card details were stored on the machine too.

As a final note to finish, the replies on this thread on playstation.com are I think unfortunate.

Heh, I am happy that the article has eased any fears that you may of had surrounding your card details.

I would still ‘watch this space’ in case all of this goes horribly wrong and it turns out that we are in danger, but judging from the information and the articles, I think we our security is very much safe. Some sites generally like to jump on the band-wagon too early and cause a racket even if their information has not even been sourced.

Here’s hoping PSN comes back soon.

PSN is still down some of my gaming…

PSN is still down, some of my gaming friends have both a PS3 and Xbox 360, and a few more have a PC fast enough to play modern games so what platform do I buy Brink on? The first review I read is a glowing account saying, ‘Brink deserves to be ranked among the finest co-op games available.’

As David said on Twitter when he linked to this post explaining the game, it’s very like Team Fortress 2. Coincidentally, another game I would really like to play with a few buddies (on PC).

So, are you buying Brink and more importantly if we play together online, what platform are you buying it on?

PS. Brink isn’t out here for another 2 days, but saying that, I’m not rushing to buy this. I can wait! (Really!)

DrunkinDunkin’s first few moments on Minecraft

Gavin bought himself Minecraft and joined my server this evening. I teleported to him and he was unresponsive so I, err, dug a little hole around him. Then let in the water to welcome him to the world.

Everything was going fine until he attacked the wolves I spawned. After the finished him off they came after me but luckily I had a diamond sword to take care of them! Those red eyes. *shudder*

What did you think of Angry Birds?

Angry Birds to me is like golf in that it’s more frustrating than fun. However, it’s incredibly rewarding when things go your way in it. I can play something like Cut the Rope – and I did for hours – and get three stars on every level. With Angry Birds, the scoring is a bit to arbitrary for my tastes. I like it, but I feel it would be a better game if it wasn’t so opaque – but that’s me.

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Amen! Angry Birds is very frustrating. It’s really a game of chance where you hope that you have the angle of trajectory right. Even if you know how to finish a level there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to.

Give me Cut the Rope or World of Goo any day!

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