Author: Hyper Pac

my current games wish / play list

27.01.2011

4 months and no update…I´m getting a bit lazy on this. Today I´ve updated the list and need to comment on some games.

I got Heavy Rain (PS3) as a present from my girlfriend and it is great. The story is amazing, the characters do not only look good, they are well designed, their whole behaviour is amazing. And it´s a totally new interpretation of the video game genre. Go get it ! I was really looking forward to the remake of NBA Jam (Wii, XBOX 360) but I got heavily disappointed because it´s not a good game at all. Just a bad remake. And Mafia 2 (PC, XBOX 360, PS3). Another disappointment in some ways. Read this article (only in german, sorry) I wrote about it.

Last but not least here are the new games on the list.

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  • Duke Nukem Forever (XBOX 360, PS3, PC)

Well what to say about this game ? 14 years of development, several times vaporware winner and Wired created the Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award exclusively for DNF and awarded it in 2003. And in May 2011 it will be released. Unbelieveable but true. You need to get this baby !

  • WRC – FIA World Rally Championship (XBOX 360, PS3, PC)

If you don´t like Dirt 2 (maybe because of its american styled presentation) and if you´re more into the real rally scene then this is your game (and mine too). It has a lot of flaws. The graphic looks as if it is 5 years old, the sound is really not great and you´ll find strange things in the statistics as well as in the career design. But it features a full WRC license (WRC, PWRC, JWRC, etc.) and a really great driving model along with all rallyes from the WRC calendar. The tracks are not a 1:1 rebuild of their real world counterparts but they are pretty well designed. In case you´re still playing RalliSport Challenge 2 on the good old XBOX (like I do) you may give WRC a try.

  • Velvet Assassin (XBOX 360, PS3, PC)

This is a classical stealth action game situated in the scenario of the 2nd world war. You´re playing a british (female) secret agent behind enemy lines. I own this one already and it´s a great game. It´s so dark and scary (it´s also brutal and bloody) and the whole presentation is haunting. But it is not an easy game so expect some frustrating moments although the checkpoints are fairly distributed.

01.09.2010

Today and for the first time I have 2 games for mobile platforms on the list. And hell yeah, the most funny basketball game of all times…

  • GTA Chinatown Wars (Nintendo DS, iPhone / iPad)

This is the first “real” game (not a minigame, or a just for fun game, no a real fulltime title) that I spent hours with on my iPhone. Though the controls are a bit fuzzy cause of the touch controls it´s the best game for the iPhone I´ve played so far. The story is amazing, the graphics are really great (look at them on an iPhone 4 or an iPad and you´ll know what I mean) and it´s simply so much fun.

And – if you don´t like the fuzzy controls there´s also a Nintendo DS version available. I played this one on my oldschool 1st generation DS and yes, the graphics is not so good, the resolution is worse and sometimes even the framerate drops heavily but you got to the point controls and the same great story and gameplay as on the iPhone / iPad.

So what´s the better platform to play ? If you own a Nintendo DS, go get this version for very little money at Amazon or eBay. Having real controls is the big advantage of this version. But if you´re fine with the touch controls in iPhone / iPad games then go get this version. It looks much better and is also available for cheap money at the Appstore.

You can also play the game on the Nintendo DS emulator for PC. See this YouTube video of mine I shot some weeks ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VjcACRrdLU

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/launch-trailer-grand-theft/61060 (iPhone)

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/rampage-trailer-grand-theft/46798 (Nintendo DS)

  • Duken Nukem Critical Mass (Nintendo DS)

Well since Duken Nukem Forever won´t see the daylight soon (or ever :-D) the Duken Nukem fans have to look for alternatives. And what we have seen so far from Duke Nukem Critical Mass seems like the game will bring a lot of fun to the DS. I´m still a little bit unsure if a shooter will really fit well into the controls and look & feel of a Nintendo DS (and I mean in concerns of really being a very good game, not just a 0815 shooter). But very soon we´ll know more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ADn_GiYBds

  • NBA Jam (Wii)

You know what ? I hate sports games, except motorsport. But I loved NBA Jam on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was the perfect game for people like me. Easy controls, fun gameplay, nearly no rules and big bam slam dunks. Because on TV, NBA is fun and still today I switch to a game from time to time. The remake of NBA Jam for the Wii does nearly the same, what the remake of Goldeneye (originally on N64) does.  1:1 copy of the good old gameplay, add some features, improve the graphics a bit (well I´m not so sure on Goldeneye) and release it for the Wii. It´s pretty arguable if this is a good concept or not. Some say it´s simple money making. And yes, they are right. Other say, a good copy is better than a worse self-made – and they are right too.

If I look at 2 statements by big publishers of the videogame industry from the last days (Ubisoft: “We will only focus on the (already established) money making titles.” THQ: “People who sell or buy used games are criminals and doing harm to the industry.”) I can´t see any revolutionary development at all and we all know that there are some “only for the money” players in this game (did anyone shout E.A. ?). So doing remakes of some classic titles can´t be that wrong, though it looks like they asked some consultants from the music industry what to do.

Anyway…here are the videos. Enjoy them !

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-nba-jam/101702

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-debut-nba-jam/63071

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/bracket-of-nba-jam/100193

Continue reading my current games wish / play list

Adaptec AHA 2940 AU SCSI Controller and Epson GT-7000 Scanner on Windows 7 x64

A few months ago I upgraded my girlfriends pc to Windows 7 x64. Sadly it was impossible to find a driver for her 99,- EUR scanner (Belkin somewhat USB).  So it didn´t worked anymore. Since then she bugged me with that situation and last weekend I promised her to find a solution. Luckily I had an old Epson GT-7000 SCSI scanner fooling around and an Adaptec AHA 2940 AU SCSI Controller. I used both in my old Windows XP set up years ago. And I thought that the Epson scanner is too precious to simply threw it away. (And by the way: the Adaptec card is from 1997 and the scanner might be 1 or 2 years older). I still remember that I got it from my uncle and that it was so incredibly fast even compared to modern USB scanners. So why not use this for my girlfriend ?

But…I knew that my solution may have some flaws. Firstly finding Windows 7 compatible x64 drivers for the Adaptec and secondly finding Windows 7 compatible x64 TWAIN drivers. Since TWAIN might have a bit of a brilliant design it is commonly known as the most shitty peace of protocol / API in computers history. Especially the last point didn´t equipped me with a lot of hope.

Today was the day to check it out. I was happy that my quite modern pc at least still features an PCI bus. So I fitted the Adaptec SCSI controller in it, connected the scanner through an pretty old school SCSI connection cable (after all that modern it didn´t require a terminator (and no, this has nothing to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger)) and turned my pc on full of expectation. Well the surprise wasn´t too big that neither Windows itself nor Windows Update found a driver for at least one of the 2 devices.

But good Google and a guy called “Linky”(Thx !!!!) in this thread of Germany´s 3DNow Forum solved my first problem with a customized Windows 7 x64 compatible driver for the Adaptec controller (it reminded me very much of my sound driver odyssey with Windows XP x64). I was skeptical towards this approach but I suddenly changed my mind after watching 2 minutes of fine Windows driver installation. And there it was. The device manager showed a successfully installed SCSI controller AND it had also recognized my Epson GT 7000 scanner. But no driver for this baby. Well no surprise. (By the way for all you nerds out there: the driver is actually an emulation of the Adaptec AIC 7870 SCSI controller. But it works. Who cares ?)

But somehow I knew that I wouldn´t find a working driver for the scanner at all. And I was right. Shitty TWAIN shit. I ended up with a tool called VueScan. I was already familiar with it, cause I tried to get my girlfriends old scanner working with this tool (it failed). But I gave it one more try and HOLY SHIT IT WORKED !!!

I was astonished ! Surprised ! Wow…

And it´s so easy. After the successful installation of the customized Adaptec driver I downloaded the software and installed it, choosing “yes” when it asked me if I have an old scanner with not working drivers attached (well exactly my case). And again after watching 2 minutes of fine Windows driver installation it worked. Unbelieveable. There is one little drawback. The software is really not cheap. For the standard edition you have to invest around 30,- EUR and for the professional you have to invest around 60,- EUR. But on the other hand the author Ed Hamrick must be the master of TWAIN so it´s just fair to help him out a bit.

To help all you guys out on this, I have uploaded the customized Adaptec driver and attached some screens to make you believe !

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Download: Adaptec_7870_and_2906_and_2940_driver_for_Windows_7_-_64_Bit.rar

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Update 1:

NeO mentioned in the comments, that it also works with the Adaptec 2940 UW SCSI Controller. Thanks a lot !

Update 2:

Chip mentioned in the comments, that is also worked with the CANON DR-2080C SCSI scanner. Thanks a lot !

The long search for a Webmail Solution

Update: Comments have been disabled as being the no.1 source of spam.

Over the past years I have been using my providers (1&1) webmail solution. They had 2 versions of it. A very simple and old school one and a web 2.0 like styled newer one. The newer one had many features but was dead slow. The older one lacked nearly everything a modern webmail application has, but was quite fast. With the daily mail mass increasing and time to spare for it decreasing I decided that I need a new and better solution. First of all, I don´t like Google Mail. It has all the features I need (and dozens more which I don´t care about)  but I don´t like it. And I wanted my mails on my server. Nowhere else. Ritlabs – my favourite desktop e-mail client provider still has no web solution, only a portable version of their famous mail client The Bat. Not good for me, I need a web based solution.

I found a very good overview for webmail solutions at this site and believe me – I tried them all.

I had 4 assumptions for a PHP / MySQL / Apache based webmail solution:

  • easy to configure and install (web based, no hacking through 10 different config files)
  • secure (no register globals, safe mode, etc.)
  • multiple mail accounts per user
  • light and fast

AfterLogics WebMail Pro was the only solution that fullfilled 3 of my 4 assumptions. The one it lacked is that it only runs with PHP Safe Mode Off (hmm, not good but anyway…). All other products on the list had major flaws. Some didn´t run the installer or did anything at all (like Roundcube), some required to disable every single PHP security enhancement (like Hastymail) and others were way to difficult to configure (like Squirremail, or IMP out of the Horde Framework).

WebMail Pro has a very good installer (you only need to upload the files to your server, chmod one directory) that does everything on its own. It´s well explained and lets you test every single setting of your upcoming webmail solution. If you´re fast then installation needs about 2 minutes of time.

And the best thing is – normally you have to invest a lot of money for that solution (149$ for 25 user license). But if you keep it under 25 users and a single server install the pro version is for free. How great is that ? There´s also a light version available but in it you can´t add multiple mail accounts to a user. For all you IIS and .NET freakz there´s also am ASP.NET version available.

So – if you´re looking for great webmail solution – check it out !

All images and copyright http://www.afterlogic.com/webmail-client.

Update:

Not long after writing this article Webmail Pro confronted me with the first bug. I couldn´t attach a file to an e-mail. It only presented me Error #2038 – unknown error.

Luckily Afterlogic has a support forum where Igor (Afterlogic support) quickly presented a solution. It turned out that this problem only occurs when you´re using Webmail Pro with Firefox on a SSL connection. The following solution will disable the flash uploader and use instead the html one.

Here´s the solution:

1.) Go to the root path of your Webmail Pro installation

2.) Locate webmail.php and open it

3.) Look for a line that looks like this // flashInstalled = FLASH_NOT_INSTALLED;

4.) Remove // from that line (uncomment it) and save the file

5.) You´re done. Now you can attach files.

6.) In case you can´t find that line in the webmail.php locate flash-detect.php and open it

7.) Look for a line that looks like this // flashInstalled = FLASH_NOT_INSTALLED;

8.) Remove // from that line (uncomment it) and save the file

9.) You´re done. Now you can attach file.

Update 2:

Alex had a problem with sending mails, so I thought the solution might be in common interest. The image below shows the settings you have to adjust in the adminpanel of Afterlogic Webmail. The shown settings are for POP3 only, not IMAP. In my case the servers are those from 1&1.


Der beste Inder der Stadt – Maharaja, Erfurt

Heute mache ich Werbung und zwar für den besten Inder der Stadt. Das Restaurant Maharaja in Erfurt.

Wer mich kennt weiß ja, dass ich essen grundsätzlich gut finde, mir es aber die gesamte indische / asiatische Küche ganz besonders angetan hat. Und deswegen erlaube ich es mir heute auch mal eine Restaurantempfehlung auszusprechen.

Das Maharaja bietet eine große Auswahl an immer frisch zubereiteten indischen Speisen mit einem variablen Schärfegrad, extrem leckeres frisch gebackenes indisches Brot, leckere Speisen aus dem hauseigenen Tandooriofen und eine sehr umfangreiche Getränkekarte. Das ganze zu sehr fairen Preisen. Darüber hinaus gibt es unter der Woche ein preiswertes Mittagsmenü mit Vorsuppe + Hauptspeise nach Wahl aus der Mittagskarte. Auch für Vegetarier hält die Speisekarte eine große Auswahl an Gerichten bereit.

Auch die Atmosphäre ist echt super. Das gesamte Restaurant ist super ausgestaltet und vermittelt ein ganz spezielles indisches Flair. Ganz klar - Daumen hoch !
Größere Kartenansicht

Das große James Bond Videogames Special

(currently only available in german, but an english version might follow later)

Nachdem ich diesen Artikel geschrieben hatte, kam in mir der Wunsch auf, mich mit dem Thema James Bond Spiele doch einmal etwas intensiver auseinander zu setzen. Eine kurze Recherche ergab, dass es doch eine wesentlich größere Anzahl an Spielen – die sich mit James Bond beschäftigen – gibt, als ich angenommen hatte. So fanden sich Bond Titel für fast alle Konsolen und Heimcomputer der letzten 20 Jahre. Ohne eine konkrete Reinfolge im Blick zu haben, fange ich nun einfach mal an Spiel um Spiel zu testen und werde regelmässig an dieser Stelle darüber berichten.

Titelliste (unsortiert, Stand: 09.09.2010)

  1. James Bond – Liebesgrüße aus Moskau (Gamecube, XBOX, Playstation 2) – Release 2005
  2. James Bond – Blood Stone (XBOX 360, Playstation 3, PC, Nintendo DS) – Release 2010

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Continue reading Das große James Bond Videogames Special

Mafia 2 – ein kurzes Review

Auf Mafia 2 habe ich mich wirklich gefreut. Deswegen muss ich hier jetzt auch ein paar kurze Worte dazu loswerden. Und kurz ist genau das richtige Stichwort. Denn kurz ist auch das Spiel. Wenn man der sehr straffen und geradlinigen Handlung folgt, so hat man das Spiel in einer anständigen Nachtsitzung durch. Und dafür habe ich 60,- EUR bezahlt ! Haben die Jungs bei 2K Games mal einen Blick auf Red Dead Redemption geworfen ? Da dauert allein die Haupthandlung 10x so lange. Ohne Nebenmissionen !

Und dann das Ende. Verflucht, was haben sich die Entwickler dabei gedacht ? Da bringe ich schon in einer epischen Schlacht eine ganze Mafiafamilie um die Ecke und dann ? Trotzdem bleibe ich der kleine, einfache Gangster, der einfach zusehen muss, wie sein langjähriger Weggefährte und Kumpel Joe von den eigenen Leuten entsorgt wird (der mir, nebenbei gesagt, auch noch durch die Handlung ans Herz gewachsen war). Verbrechen lohnt sich nicht, was ? Wenn ich Moralpredigten hören will geh ich in die Kirche um die Ecke 2K Games !!!

Ach ja – dann war da noch die Sache mit den DLC’s. Irgendwie konnte ich mich des Eindrucks nicht verwehren, dass 2k Games einfach ruck-zuck Inhalte aus dem Spiel entfernt hat um die dann als kostenpflichtigen Download nachzuschieben. Skandal !!! Bei einem Endkundenpreis von sagen wir mal 19,95 EUR für das Spiel hätte ich nichts gegen ein solches Modell. Bei meinen bezahlten 60,- EUR aber schon.

Und überhaupt – wer GTA (4), Red Dead Redemption, oder Saints Row (2) vor Augen hat, sollte bevor er Mafia 2 ins Laufwerk schiebt bei den Men in Black vorbeischauen und schnell alles vergessen.

Mafia 2 kann nicht mal ansatzsweise mit dem Umfang oder der Tiefe eines der genannten Titel mithalten. Als Ausgleich dafür verbringt man einen großen Teil des Spiels im Auto, was ja an sich nicht so schlimm wäre, wenn es noch einen anderen Zweck erfüllen würde, als von Mission A nach Mission B zu fahren.

Aaargghh…

Doch Mafia 2 hat auch gute Seiten. Die Story ist unglauchlich fesselnd und spannend aufbereitet, die Stadt, ihre Autos, Häuser und Menschen sehen wunderschön aus und erzeugen eine herrliche Atmosphäre. Die Zwischensequenzen haben filmreifen Charakter und die Sprecher machen bis auf wenige Ausnahmen einen guten Job.

Doch reicht das, um die negativen Seiten zu kompensieren ?

Nein, ich bin enttäuscht !

Splash 2010

 

Splash 2010 has been a blast !

Situated in the beautiful landscape of FERROPOLIS – a renaturalised mining area surrounded  by the Gremminer Sea in the east of Germany between Leipzig and the capital Berlin – it is one of the biggest hiphop festivals in Europe. The line-up was quite promising with US superstar Missy Elliot, dancehall mastermind Mr Vegas and german rap superstar Samy Deluxe along with aspiring artists like US rapper Fashawn.

We – my photographer and I – arrived on early friday morning. Check-in and press registration was fast, easy and comfortable. The tent (yes, no hotel) was set up fast and we used the very practical but sometimes overcrowded shuttle to the festival site. Entering the site was easy too, slick security, no nagging. With one main stage and short walks between the 2 smaller stages (one directly on the gritty shore of the sea) and a mere dozen of beverage and food stations the festival site was well designed and ready to be rocked.

We tried to see and hear as many acts as possible but got a bit distracted by the skateboard, freestyle and dance contest.

The best performance delivered the following acts:

+ Missy Elliot (the lady at its best)

+ Blumentopf (likely intelligent hiphop, everbody was there and everybody was jumping)

+ Exile (with Fashawn who´s still aspiring, but this time his DJ rocked the crowd)

+ Kool Savas (evil and bad guy attitude, everybody was there and jumping too)

+ Casper (the emo rapper with band, quite aggressive but intense)

Worst performance:

– Nas & Damian Marley (Nas was bored, me too)

Conclusion – the Splash was definitely worth a travel and hopefully I´ll get the chance to be back in 2011. My photographer did a whole bunch of pictures. Due to stipulation I can´t show you all, but I´ve added some of them to the gallery. Enjoy !

(This article is an edited and shortened excerpt. The full story was published in the september edition of the American HipHop Magazine.)

Typo3 extension installation

Well I´m a real Typo3 newbie, but I had no choice on this…since my last upgrade to Typo3 4.4.2 I had a problem with the rtehtmlarea extension – a rich text editor which ships with the Typo3 source package.

Whenever I wanted to edit a page it got the following error :

PHP Fatal error: Call to protected method language::readLLfile() from context ‘tx_rtehtmlarea_base’ in /srv/www/htdocs/XXX/htdocs/html/typo3conf/ext/rtehtmlarea/class.tx_rtehtmlarea_base.php on line 1153

I tried this and that to solve the problem but I had no choice other than removing the extension from the /typo3/sysext/ folder (where it was as installed as a system extension) and reinstall it as a local extension (in /typo3conf/ext).

But the internal extension manager did not agree with my plans and prompted me with the following error:

Error: The datatransfer did not succeed. The T3X file could not be fetched. Possible reasons: network problems, allow_url_fopen is off, curl is not enabled in Install tool.

But the solution is easy. You only need to insert the following lines in your localconf.php file :

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘EXT’][‘allowGlobalInstall’] = ‘1’;
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘EXT’][‘allowLocalInstall’] = ‘1’; – installs to (/typo3conf/ext/ folder)
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘EXT’][‘allowSystemInstall’] = ‘1’; – installs to (/typo3/sysext/ folder)
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘SYS’][‘curlUse’] = ‘1’;
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘EXT’][‘noEdit’] = ‘0’;
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘BE’][‘disable_exec_function’] = ‘0’;
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS[‘BE’][‘usePHPFileFunctions’] = ‘1’;

Be sure to check your localconf.php if these values are already there before you insert them. If so, simply change them, delete the cached localconf.php and try to install the extension again.

Thx to David from http://www.typo3forum.net.


nullDC – a Dreamcast emulator

Some days ago I realized that I haven´t written about a very important affection of me – emulation and emulators of old (and new) video game and arcade system. So this is the first article to change this and today I´d like to advise you nullDC – an emulator for the Sega Dreamcast and NAOMI arcade system. In it´s latest release 1.0.4 r50 it plays a great bunch of Dreamcast games and if you´re owner of a fast PC with a good gaming graphics card you can enjoy the games in much higher resolution than on the Dreamcast.

http://code.google.com/p/nulldc/

You should also try to get your hands on one of those xbox 360 pc compatible game pads. They are supported by the emulator and play well with Dreamcast games.

But one thing you should keep in mind. The emulator is still in an very early state of functionality or better stability. It crashes many times, sometimes it won´t play a game, you restart it and whoooo it works.

And – the developer ended it work on it some months ago and turned it into open source. So hopefully some motivated and skilled people will continue development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NullDC

Before nullDC will run on your system you may need the following stuff:

  • additional components for DirectX (dxwebsetup.exe)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime (vcredist_x86.exe) – even if you´re running a 64bit Windows (like Windows 7 or Windows XP 64bit edition) you´ll need the 32bit (x86) version of the Runtime. It won´t work with the x64 version.

And your nullDC “data” folder should contain at least the following files:

  • dc_boot.bin (Dreamcast bios)
  • dc_flash.bin (additional Dreamcast bios file)
  • dc_flash_wb.bin
  • dc_nvmem.bin
  • fsca-table.bin

The copyright on most of these files is held by Sega, so I can´t offer them here. But Google should be your friend on this…have fun !