Squaresphere

I’ve been suffering with a Steam related problem for what seems like forever! The client starts up but will only download from the content servers in little bursts. It will download for about 5 minutes or so and then disconnect, to the point where on an 8mb adsl line it would download all of about 10% of a game over the course of a day!

Finally got around to looking into this this morning before work and found this cunning article tucked away in the Steam Support site. http://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6966-IADH-1503

Turns out that for me at least, deleting my ClientRegistry.blob file and rebooting Steam worked fine! I was getting over 1mb/s download when I left for work. So with any luck this will help out other people who are struggling to get Steam to download their games or updates.

Yes it’s true. Hellgate London has been released! After a very weak demo was released the retail is superb in comparison. It’s quite shocking that they would release such a lame demo when the game is really actually very good indeed. Anyone who is a fan of Dungeon Siege, Diablo2 or Titan Quest or just an Action RPG fan generally will enjoy this fantastic title from Flagship Studios. Bit of a shame that the EA corporate whores had to pimp it out as a subscription MMO style game though.

Check it out, http://www.hellgatelondon.com/

Yes, finally, the dry spell on the PC games front has ended. Plenty of new titles out at the moment. Stranglehold, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, World in Conflict and Crysis Multiplayer Beta.

So lots of things to keep busy with. I have added a link to my ET:QW stats on the left hand menu, seems I hadn’t been playing on ranked servers or the stats weren’t working or something. At least that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!

Back to work already! Man LAN passes by far far too quickly these days. The WCG were visiting the I-series, so it was all about the tournaments this event, plus the comedy security fence. I spent most of the lan playing either the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Beta2 and having recently bought Titan Quest and Immortal Throne from Steam, I played through the entire of Act 2 and 3, most excellent fun, although killing Typhon was pretty difficult, on to Act 4! It sure went a ways to powering up my SteamID and pushing my rating close to 10

Since City of * starting having some lag issues with their packet carriers in Europe somewhere, I went back to playing some OpenTTD. This game has such massive replay value it’s hard not to just install it when bored. I have started using the replacement GRF files too in order to change the game and give it another new lease of life. You can find a list of GRF files on the OpenTTD wiki, over here, http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/GRF_List

The other decent title out at the moment, similar in play style to Fable by Lionhead Studios, is Overlord. This is a superb game where you play an evil Overlord with a horde of minions with which you wreak havoc among the populace. Fire, brimstone, even your own evil tower! Great game.

I got one! Mesarim managed to persuade me that getting a cheap second hand unit from Gamestation for £99 with a game was well worth it. I started on my age old diatribe about how they would be good if they were open and you could actually use them for what they were intended. He informed me that thanks to some dark magic jiggery pokery there is Open Edition firmware to unlock the unit and allow you to use it as it was probably intended by those who designed it before the Sony corporate suits got hold of it. I also nabbed a matt black faceplate from DecalGirl and now have a fully featured and functional PSP

Running 3.40-OE firmware, I am currently playing Final Fantasy 7 (psx version), Zelda: Link to the past (snes) and Wipeout Pure (psp) all from one memory card! I have to say, this coupled with the built in WPA enabled WiFi and internet browser make the PSP a great unit to own! It’s quite shocking the amount of potential that this machine has and that Sony have locked away from all their local fans. Shame on you Sony.. again.

I finally managed to get my bots/dark mastermind to lv50! So I have two 50’s now one on either side of the fence! What to do next? Landed myself the Headline Stealer accolade too

Watch the momentous moment,

Ever wanted to run your own country? Now you can! Nation States is a game I used to play many years ago, where you can found your own nation and set-up various principles of the society and government, and then deal with policy issues which will shape the face of your nation over time. It seems I left my old nation unattended for long enough for it to be deleted. So I have founded a new nation.

The Empire of Buttermonky!

http://www.nationstates.net/buttermonky

(yes, it’s not a deliberate typo)

Finally got my scrapper Midnight Dragon to level 50 in City of Heroes! Awesome achievement, big thanks to all the people who helped out.

Check out the movie, apologies for the crappy quality, kind of rushed and I don’t have a good encoder.