I found couple of good videos from the UDK wiki. I decided to download the UDK and try to make something with it. As I have used hammer before and I have experience on compiling source sdk, it wasn’t hard to learn with the videos.

Comparing to the hammer editor, UDK can be harder for first, but after while the UDK has many advantages over the Hammer editor.

Hammer editor is much easier to start with, because on UDK you need to use one special box to insert every brush. It is bit confusing at first.

But after I realized how the brush stuff worked, UDK became much easier. Inserting materials is awesome. Content browser is much better and faster than the Hammer browser. And lining materials automatically is just so useful feature.

Kismet is also much better way to create scripts/events to levels than the Hammers own I/O system. It is also very easy to make animations with Kismet+Matinee.

Only problems that I have with the Unreal editor is mostly just the amount of features. There is just so many options to setup

The play in editor feature is also nice, but it is not so awesome as it could be. It makes developing faster, but it won’t remove compiling…

On the code/mod side. UDK is MUCH easier to start with. With Source SDK you need to install Visual C++, extract the source, configure it and compile. With UDK you can code with unrealscript and compile that. Unrealscript is much easier than c++ and it won’t explode the whole game if you forget one variable somewhere.

Valve has to make some serious upgrades to Source to get more developers to use it. Unreal engine is very popular engine and there is only couple of non-valve source games.

I am going to play with the UDK some more. Maybe make my own mod or something. But only problem with UDK is that I don’t want to make maps for UT3 only I have to use Hammer if I want to make maps for my favorite games.

I got the free beta key for the Medal of Honor. Now I know for sure that I don’t want to buy this game.

Let’s get some good things to the start. Menu graphics are nice, game looks nice and runs smoothly. Sounds are also good. And well, it is kinda fun deathmatch game.

And then to the bad things… Yes, it is beta, but there is way too much problems for me to even think about wasting 50$ on this.

It is a goddamn console port. There is a screen to “adjust my television”! Is developers that lazy that they can’t remove one damn menu? The whole ui is also not designed for mouse. And the server browser is even worse than the first browser on bc2 beta. I don’t even known if it joins to the server. It does nothing for 2-5secs and then it joins or not. And why I cant see pings of players? Is it so hard to display the numbers? Sigh… The text chat also bugs on the beta. If I press talk key, the input field is stuck on the field and I cant do anything with it. Developers, please, dont do shitty console ports.

Gameplay is not bad, but I have already enough games like this. This is some kind of bf/bc game that tries to be cod… It just feels too much like a MW2 mod to bc2. They have just changed some skins and maps, etc. Some of the animations are taken from bc2!

Some of the ingame icons are also from the bc2. There is also lots of models also copied… This game just feels like quick clone to make easy money…

And the gameplay? Yes, it is mostly ok random deathmatch… Gameplay is mostly ok, expect that I already have 3 games that are similar to this. Levels are just way too static. After bc2 destructible environment, this game has annoying feeling… I can see that somebody can have fun with this for sure, but I don’t see reason to spend money on this game.

It can’t be so hard to support custom maps. Looks like EA just wants to sell DLC rather than having community making custom maps…

And for competitive gaming, this isn’t going to work. REAL dedicated servers are necessary. Not these restricted shitty “rent-only” things. Also, where is the record functions? Every modern game-engine has record-functionality build in! Source,goldsource, unreal, quake(Id tech), Call of Duty(custom)…. And why I can’t spectate from first person??

And looks like all game companies have started to ruin competitive gaming. Dedicated servers most likely only for rent… No custom maps… No console…. And after couple of months we get a freaking dlc for 10$. And then couple of moths and they are selling next big game for 50$… No thanks.

I can see that somebody would like this game. But for me this isn’t worth of wasting money. I already have MW1 and MW2 for fast deathmatch. (And quake for REAL deathmatch) And I already have BC2 for more team-based battles. So yeah… I am not very happy about this game or where the gaming industry is going with this kind of games.

Mass Effect 2 is so far one of the greatest games I have ever played. It is just like Mass Effect 1, but with better graphics and without boring stuff.

Good gameplay, great story, interesting world. I can’t say anything bad about this game. It doesn’t even have any of those boring RPG elements that Mass Effect 1 had.

Importing saves from me1 can changes lot of scenes on the second game. It is always fun to remember some things on the first game that comes up on the second one. Example meeting Wrex on Me2 is one of the best moments.

Well yeah, yet another post about game that everybody already knows.

Great game that you should try if you haven’t. (and don’t do the mistake I made, just play the me1 first)

Last weeks one game, one week post is some late, but that can’t be huge problem.

I played the first Mass Effect, I had some technical issues with it, but nothing big. (First I managed to delete my saves after 9 hours played… then the game had 2.5meg corrupted files and it took while to find the problem and force steam to redownload those files (verify cache didn’t work first time I tried))

Mass Effect is single player RPG-FPS game that is very much story based. The story is awesome, but the ability to change the way it goes makes it even better experience. If some character dies in the game, he/she is permanently death. He/she is dead even on the Mass Effect 2. So there is some big choices to make, and the results can change the dialogs lot.

The RPG is system is not very good, the inventory is broken and it is not fun to change weapons/mods to weapons. It is slow and annoying to use. (good that they fixed this to ME2.) Good that I dont need to use it lot. The leveling up system is also somehow broken. I really don’t care what level I am, because it seems like all enemies scale to my level so it is never too hard for my level. (And scaling of enemies is actually good thing) Skill tree is only RPG element that is not broken. (But it is better on ME2)

Combat is fun, but there is some features that I barely ever used, like commanding squad members to position/attack/etc. I only used the pause menu to activate skills. However the cover system is good. Works very well after some playing.

Most likely everybody knows that Mass Effect is good game and they won’t need more obvios stuff about the game. If you don’t have Mass Effect, just get it. It is one of the best games I have played.

For couple of weeks I have been coding Gamingstats. It is simple website/webapp that collects information from users steam profile daily and then generates statistics for user. Collecting and generating stats all happens on the servers background cron script, so user just needs to enter his/her steamcommunity url.

Because some users have lots of games (100+) It creates lots of data to database. (Played time for every game, every day = lots of data) And because it generates lots of data, I have created steamgroup. To enable time tracking for games, you need to join to the steamgroup. This way I can control growth of the database.

Project is still in beta and there can be some bugs. I may add some more stuff to it in future, like better layout/design and forums signature system, but now I just want to make sure it works.

System doesn’t currently work with the steamcommunity profile id’s (eg 76561197974577294), but it works well with the custom profile urls.

http://gamingstats.pelikoira.net/