So some time before RAGE this year i started buying the odd racing game and have to say i was really enjoying it on the xbox 360. I had played Forza 2 and Race Drive Grid since they were the only ones that were recommended unanimously by everyone i asked. Then came the RAGE event , it was there that i got a chance to play Forza 2 with a steering wheel and the 3 screen setup .Wow what a change in racing experience that was, as soon as i got home that night i started playing Forza again, but alas it just did not feel the same anymore. I then decided the last important peripheral i had to get for my xbox was a steering wheel.

Now many months later i finally have my steering wheel and i am back to loving my racing games. After setting everything up i decided i would run a few test runs with all the racing games i had and jot down my findings here. The games i tested were Forza 2 , Race Drive Grid and Need for speed undercover.

Forza 2 : It is in this game that i personally feel the steering shines the most. Since Forza is more simulation than it is arcade you need all the extra control you can get over your car and the Drive FX does it beautifully. The steering’s built in resistance makes a huge difference at lower speeds and on the different terrains allowing you to accurately gauge how much you need to turn or how much you need to adjust the cars speed.

GRID : I personally feel that GRID took a more arcade style rather than a simulation environment. The reason i say this is because if you play the game immediately after playing Forza the accuracy from Forza falls away for higher speeds and slightly more extreme driving. You can immediately see the difference the Drive FX provides after you take your first corner at 120 without crashing.

NFS Undercover : Even though i played this game with the steering i am not entirely sure that its needed. While the game does respond precisely to the steering the game itself is sooo easy that by using the steering i felt if i was cheating some how. The one experience that i have to recommend NFS for , is if you want the Hollywood driving experience. While weaving through traffic on a highway chase at 220km/h , there is very little that is going to beat that experience.

I have to say that i would recommend the Drive FX without a second thought to anyone , although it is a bit expensive if you don’t like racing games or only play them on the odd occasion.

Just remember its the driver not the steering that makes the difference :) ,

till next time

~stalkerh

Of particular note was DMC 4. After i bought the game i didn’t get a chance to play it right away since i was quite into COD 4 multi-player. But any way when i did get around and started playing the game i was surprised to see what a good game it was.

The general user interface was quite smooth with very little loading times, the only down side that the interface presented was the fact that you had to manually save every now and then otherwise face you face the option of loosing some really frustrating progress.

The game play it self is quite unique in that early on in the game your character does not really earn any new powers and has a very basic set of moves that can be chained together in some way or the other.While this is fine because you get used to it, i feel alot of people will end up dropping the once they reach the second character in the game.Without giving away to much , when playing with Dante ,its as if you are playing the original game i.e. you need to use Dante’s various styles. While the style are fun and interesting , they are alot harder to use in game than Nero’s powers.Also what many players will not notice is that you need to switch the styles rapidly in game and not just stick with one style as you will severely limit Dante’s potential.

All that said i feel that if the player gets through the high learning curve that comes with Dante they will really see the rewards that the game has to offer.Its just a pitty that it takes the game so long before they actually hook you into game.

The one point that the game sorely missed out on was the fact that if you give the player more they will always accept what you give.This is provided you are giving something worthwhile and not introducing problems.

Now if only i could get the time to finish this awesome game :)

Since i got it working so well i decided to integrate it MGB so that i can hopefully push the development a bit more.The problem that i find that protonotes sovles is that making notes on a site is such a problem. To notify a developer either a forum has to be setup or a blog is used or something of the like. While this works generally ,i have found that with web site development if the people are not meeting face to face it can be hard to pin point changes that they want a developer to make. This leads to screen shots flying around with squiggles all around and doesnt really help with keeping track of scope creep.

Protonote allows notes to be hooked directly to a site just like how a normal post it is stuck on anything else. The best part is that all of this can be hooked up to a MySql Database and can be tracked and monitored.

Go over to http://mgb.codebreaker.co.za and give it a try, to me as a web developer this is a invaluable tool.

While there are many providers out there that provide the applications to host your virtual machines , there are so many pros and cons its hard to choose a good provider.

If you willing to pay for the service then VMWare is by far the best, but if you use windows then you are in a bit of luck since Microsoft Provides a free Virtual PC that you can use. For Mac there is Parallels which works just as well.Recently Sun released xVM VirtualBox which is free for personal use, and man i must say that this is buy far the best option of all for the single user.

Some of the features that really caught my eye was the fact that you could assign each virtual machine a RDP port and basically leave the machine on which it is installed on to act as a server and then remote desktop to the virtual machines from your desktop. Another out of the box feature that i found interesting was the fact that it supports Intels and AMD’s virtualisation features which to me is a awesome leap forward.

The other good thing with them is that they have a release for any distribution under the sun :) .This helps with deep virtualisation testing as well as speed testing.

But as i stated in the start VMWare is the king when it comes to its multitude of products and the support of those products, i can only hope that Sun catches up with something similiar.

The market for these products is too big to be owned by one company only ,so here’s to new virtual applications for free.

Also if you have not yet tried Sun’s product yet i encourage you to do so since it is one great piece of software.

• Improved loading times.
• Permission Acquired to use site data
• Added better error handling for I.E. and Firefox
• Increased amount of data loaded from Zaps
• Misc other back end fixes

Keep the comments comming , thanks to those that commented already.

Please note that data is only taken from the respective sites every 8 hours to prevent dos attacks. The rest of the time the data will be loaded from the database.

Also comments are now live and active , any comments sent will be sent to me.

Please leave a comment here if you have any other idea or such.

Books i bought :

1. Beginning JavaScript (3rd edition by Wrox)
2. C# Via CLR

The second one is the one i am most excited about as its the one that Steve MCD recommended and it looks pretty advanced which is the stuff i like.

The First book is just there more to be a reference guide since i know some basic javascript but want a solid foundation so i am hoping this will do that for me.

So a funny thing happened yesterday, while browsing through my list of rss feeds i came across a feed on Web Worker Daily about an application that basically did the same thing as mine but with a lot less functionality .The difference was that they had a lot more polish for the product (fuelfrog) with all the nice colors and stuff attached .Thinking back if had polished the app a bit more who knows it might have got a bit more limelight (provided i could come up with a better name than fuletracker).

So does it come down to who releases there product first or is it more about  who has the best looking product. I know this is a 2 sided coin because a lot of the general public like i pretty product that is  less functional  more than a ugly more functional product.

So to all those that did not know i have a released a semi beta/alpha fuel tracking application that will allow you to track the mileage and a bunch of other stuff ,  so there i said it.

Now lets just hope my other ideas don’t get taken by other people.

First the new weapons are looking interesting ,i could not see exactly what was the names of the weapons but it seems there is a new pistol and a new rifle .The pistol brings a new move in where you are able to take a enemy hostage and use him a a body shield .If this came into the multiplayer section i can see some really interesting strats developing .The rifle did not seem very different to the normal gun-saw version except that it did not have full auto fire except that it seemed to shoot in busts which in itself is not to bad.

The other thing that was quite nice and noticeable was some thing that was talked about in the earlier developer vids is the inclusion of a higher number of enemies on screen at one time.I have to say what i saw in the mid as army of soldiers marched by and were slowly being picked of by the humans really looked awesome in terms of visuals.

I also see that they are using alot more open environments and with this bigger vehicles are being introduced .All this is a much welcome inclusion ,but from the point of a critic there is nothing really interesting being done here that was not already done in another game. While this is true ,from a technical perspective there is alot under the hood that is being done that the player will not notice. From the way they now handle water to the new dynamic lighting they  are supposed to use, it nothing fresh in terms of what we have not seen but rather its fresh in that is will make Gears alot nicer to play.

While i am going to have to wait till the game is released to see if it wil blow my mind away i can definitely from now that i will be getting it with out a doubt .