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Andytizer

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    Rezzed 2013

    in News and general PC gaming

    Posted

    Last year Iron Wookie and I attended Rezzed 2012, a PC games expo arranged by RPS, which was a very cool experience.

     

    This year I'm planning to attend Rezzed 2013, which will be held June 22-23 2013 at the National Exhibition Centre at Birmingham International. Birmingham is less than an hour train ride from London, UK.

     

    If anyone would like to attend with me, we can try to arrange press passes for those who are interested (who have been major contributors to the blog/wiki), and in rare cases we may purchase tickets for the day if cost is an issue.

     

    If you are interested in attending and meeting up, let's do it - and maybe we can have a drink together!

     

    I'm thinking of attending at least one of the two days, depending on what talks get announced at what time. I'll definitely have my 'games journalist' hat on when I'm there, and maybe we can get some scoops up onto The Port Report :).

    Marketing ideas

    in Development (concluded)

    Posted

    We could probably create a bot that scours comments on gaming blogs and replies "STFU go to PCGW" with a link.

     

    Have you tried contacting Destructoid? They seem to have a really friendly staff and may be willing to talk to you.

     

    Can we make STFU go to PCGW our motto?

     

    Not sure this is the right tone we want for our motto :D.

    Crowdfunded Games

    in Development (concluded)

    Posted

    I hate to be the lone voice of dissent here, but do we really need this? What does noting that it was crowd funded add to an article? I don't think a single game that is crowd funded is sold or made available only through kickstarter/indigogo, so noting such on the article doesn't add a bit of information to the article that relates to fixes/where to purchase the game. Plus, no game that is available for kickstarting is likely to be far enough along in development to warrant an article on here, so what's the point?

     

    I would broadly agree that a title being 'crowdfunded' is not really integral to getting a game to work.

     

    However if there is a simple, future-proof way to create lists of games, then I would like for us to support this. Then we could create lists on the fly, e.g. low-end games, all games which use Steam, all games which have GFWL, etc.

     

    This really requires a rework of all of our templates to support SMW which would provide the best way of entering this type of data.

     

    Appreciate the work on the template Garrett. However the crowdfunding status/data is not necessarily that useful. We should find a more comprehensive way of doing this. I would if I had more time to delve into the best that is SMW..

    Integrating SteamDRM into PCGamingWiki

    in Development (concluded)

    Posted

    It's not viable to put a list that extensive in a switch, nor is there an easy way of automatically adjusting the template based on whether a page already has a Steam availability entry (since each availability row is a template rather than being parameters of the header). It could potentially be implemented as a transcluded template but that would still require inserting it on each page so the effort would not be hugely reduced. One way of handling it would be to put the list up on some temporary sandbox page and then have everyone remove entries as they deal with them bit by bit or whatever (there are only about 280 games on the list right now, many of which probably don't have wiki pages yet).

     

    The GitHub page has changelogs for each list type so it would be easy enough to keep an eye on it and integrate the changes.

     

    I like this idea the most, manually doing data entry and removing parts from the page. It's time consuming but the best option for the future.

     

    It would also be helpful to just go and copy new templates based on the DRM definitions from SteamDRM, e.g.

     

    Legacy method (should be renamed CD check)

    Server side activation

    Account-based (although maybe this is covered in the 'Store unlock' column of the Availability table?)

    Inert (should be renamed 'removable')

     

    We could use templates to make these consistent across pages.

     

    We should be comprehensive in detailing which part of games require what DRM. e.g. BioShock 2 GFWL can be deactivated with a hack, but this removes the ability to use their DLC e.g. Minerva's Den. All this is useful information that might fit under the 'Availability table'.

     

    Also I think it might be helpful to have mouseover popup definitions of items.

    BioShock Infinite thoughts

    in News and general PC gaming

    Posted

    Absolutely loved the game, finished it a few days ago. Some of the moment at the end were spine-tinglingly good.

     

    However I can't help but feel disappointed with weapons and gunplay of the game. Basically I only used two weapons, the carbine and the machinegun, which I upgraded fully. I also only used two vigors - Murder of Crows and Devil's Kiss (and occasionally Shock Jocky). For some reason the game seemed to encourage you to use fewer weapons - and I think it suffered for it. BioShock 1's gunplay was much strategic, and ammo was very scarce, it basically made you improvise and think harder about how to engage in combat.

     

    Also I felt the integration of Vigors into the story didn't really make sense. It is kind of explained at the end, but it didn't seem like it was 'integral' to the story. Whereas in BioShock 1, the plasmids/Adam were kind of the star of the show and they were part of the driving force of the plot and setting.

    Experimenting wite affilaite linking in the Sitenotice

    in Development (concluded)

    Posted

    Hi all I'm looking to increase our revenue income from affiliate marketing by posting up interesting deals on the top Sitenotice. The idea is that increased income will be used to purchasing additional games for us to review and create pages for (we have really ramped up our purchases lately).

     

    We are currently using a script which converts links into affiliate links on our site. Any links following from our site with the following domains will append our affiliate information onto the link seamlessly:

     

    greenmangaming.com

    gamersgate.co.uk

    gamersgate.com

    gamefly.co.uk

    newegg.com

    amazon.com

    amazon.co.uk

    gog.com

     

    I hope that the Sitenotice link isn't too intrusive (as a single line of text) but I am happy to take feedback and to take it down if it's too much.

    The Port Report - Interviews

    in Development (concluded)

    Posted

    I've begun to realize that these people are very interesting subjects, but I'm having a hard time coming up with questions as I don't know their specific subject areas :).

     

    Perhaps for each suggestion, you could also submit 5 questions to ask, and also contact information or website URL if you have it.

    The Port Report - Interviews

    in Development (concluded)

    Posted

    Who would make a good subject for an interview?

     

    I'm thinking of reaching out to various people that don't normally get interviewed - e.g. modders, tool creators, website owners. E.g. creator of SS2Tool, DSFix, UniWS, etc.

     

    Who would you like us to reach out to? Who would make an interesting interview subject?

    The Port Report - new PCGamingWiki blog

    in News and general PC gaming

    Posted

    I am likewise interested in doing contributions. When I finish with the page for LEGO Island, I would love to make a blog post about all the challenges of getting even a kid's game from 1997 that was built for Windows 95 to run on modern hardware using Windows 7. It would be an interesting look at how hardware, software, and graphics API's and technology can change and present new difficulties at getting old games to run.

     

    Yes this sounds really interesting- can you show me a quick mockup of the structure that you'd use, and maybe an introduction/first section. I'd like to make sure it's on the right track before you write it (I don't want to disappoint contributors by rejecting articles once they've spent lots of time writing it!).

    The Port Report - new PCGamingWiki blog

    in News and general PC gaming

    Posted

    Hi guys, I have soft-launched a new blog for PCGamingWiki called The Port Report, which is now linked on the sidebar of the Forum, and I'll be placing a link on the Wiki when it's time to 'launch' for real.

     

    The basic concept of the site is to post news about PC game fixes. The idea is directly inspired and is designed to carry on the ideas of the Port Authority feature on the now defunct GameSpy. Examples: FarCry 3, Prototype 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines. You can see the large parallels between the Port Authority (analysis of PC game settings) and PCGamingWiki's goal.

     

    Why do this?

    -By producing regular 'news', the pcgamingwiki.com domain will get PageRanked higher on Google for all of its content, including Wiki pages.

    -It gives an opportunity to upload personal research somewhere, so that it can be referenced on the Wiki pages.

    -The content is more casual and personal to the particular author, with much more scope for opinions and impressions, which is useful in comparison to the 'clinical' feel of Wiki content.

    - Blog content has more scope for casual engagement with the ability to comment on articles and engage/agree/disagree with an author.

     

    Ideas for content

    - Report - Full 'impressions' of a new PC game's settings within 48hrs of a game's release (preferably within 24hrs) - heavily based on the Port Authority style. Main difference from a Wiki article will be 1) personal opinion, 2) focus on performance impressions, 3) graphics settings comparison (e.g. FOV 75 vs 90, no AA vs x16 AA, etc.)

    - Mini report - If there isn't enough time, we can push out shorter articles based on specific settings - e.g. specific FOV settings of Resident Evil 6.

    - Interviews - I would love to begin interviewing the 'unsung heroes' of PC gaming - fix makers, utility creators, mod makers (DSfix, SS2Tool, etc), community moderators, etc. there are interesting stories to tell, and no one else is telling them.

    - Features - How does GOG make their games work on modern OS's, what's their relationship with modders? Why do developers encrypt configuration files? Where are all the touchscreen Windows 8 games? Plenty of ideas, would love to hear more from you guys.

     

    What's next?

    I'm planning to 'launch' the site on Tuesday/Wednesday with a full report on BioShock Infinite. By then I hope to have the blog's styling completed and have everything ready to go.

     

    The next stage is all about community contributions. I've already begun to receive ideas and even a full article without even asking. I'd love to see more - if people would like to volunteer to receive free game code, I'll prioritise and supply it to those who would like to do both Blog and Wiki article writing.

     

    I think the beauty of the Blog in this early stage, is that reports are always useful no matter how short they are, and how much time an author has to write it. Therefore, a Report speed and release will be prioritized over how comprehensive it is (as this can be covered later in more detail in a Wiki article). Of course, for major releases like BioShock Infinite, I would like code to be given to those who have the time and commitment to submit a full comprehensive report within the 48hr timeframe.

     

    I'm also interested if anyone would like to help out with the Wordpress administration side. At the moment I'm planning to release articles for every major release, but I can see in the future that this could become a daily posting kind of site. If anyone is interesting in helping on this end please let me know.

     

    Interested in helping out?

    Read up on the Assignments forum.

    What's the origin of your name?

    in Random

    Posted

    Andytizer - back in primary school, no one could pronounce my surname Tsai. It's actually a very common surname in Taiwan, but it's spelled a bit oddly in the romanisation of Chinese sounds in the UK. In Cantonese, I would be called 'Choi'. Anyway kids at school started calling me Tizer, after the softdrink.. and that kind of came together with my first name to become the online handle 'Andytizer'.

     

    I'm going to guess a few others:

    JRWR - I already know this one, he can tell you himself

    Newmansan - obviously this is a reference to Seinfeld, the avatars speak for themselves - but how did the -san suffix come about?

    Garrett - this is either your real name, or a reference to Thief

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