www.smrsimple.com is done, I only need to add one or two more things but for the msot part it is done, now for it to stand the test of time.
Archive for June, 2009
[Older update:] Forget it. There will not be a crack for Cities XL. There simply is no reason for crackers to go to the effort. The protection used effectively turns even the single player version of the game into an MMO as far as crackablity is concerned. If you have a Cities XL torrent running at the moment, cancel it. You can either buy a legal copy or move on, yes yes I know “civil piracy is not illegal”, what else would you have me call it? I would suggest moving on, there is not much in regards to re-playability to Cities Xl as it is now, maybe they’ll revamp much of it, doubt it. Right now Monte Cristo has let their dreams of MMOhood get in the way of making what they should have, a fun and challenging city builder. Instead you get a giant ad for the “planet offer” also known as Xbox live style “online services”, really all it is good for is the global chat and trading “goods” . Oh I guess you also get a pretty map which is a bit exciting, until you realize that it is no more than a picture and has no effect on game play. Weep a bit and then move on and do something more productive, like say learning Japanese, or exploring the other side of the world. [/update]
I know that when I had troubles finding a key I check out the The Pirate Bay and Google to see if Cities XL had been cracked and released, that did me no good since there is no Cities XL crack even still I really wanted to play it. Well looking at the web searches that lead people to this site I can see that there are some other unfortunate souls willing to hit the torrents just to play Cities XL. Well I have some news for you, its not going to happen until a street release at least and liekly never for the planet offer. The current Cities XL requires not only net access to login but also a constant internet connection to play online. There is no offline so no hope of getting past the beta key requirement. If you do want to play the game I would suggest downloading the client while you are searching for beta keys. That way you are ready to go when you do get a beta key and you can also check out the in-game music which is stored in “Monte Cristo\Cities XL\Data\Sound\Music\XL”, I know this because before I got my key I searched the game’s files and found the music. So yeah stop searching for a cities xl crack, hack or leak and get back to looking for a beta key. Oh and any Cities XL Torrent you happen to run across will either be a repost of the same client you can already get from Monte Cristo or it will contain spyware/malware.
So while SMRsimple.com is not even feature complete yet I have gotten myself addicted to another game, Cities XL. The new fansite is not surprisingly citiesxlsimple.com Right now the game is still in closed bata and as a tester I’m under a NDA so there really isn’t much to do for the site. I may write up some things and then set it to release after the NDA lapses. I may also add a passworded section so that me and some other beta players can have some place of our own.
Just only about a week ago I had my third Seagate 1.5TB fail, instead of exchanging it yet again I have ordered a 1TB Hitachi to use as my primary backup. I will then use the Seagate as a archive, or shortstroke it so that it does not run into the problem areas.
Which brings me to my next failure, I just woke up today to find that my computer would not turn on. Turns out my Silver Stone strider is striding on its last legs and that it sometimes makes a “pop” then it has to be turned off at the back for a minute or so. I’m going to take a risk with this and use it until the Earthwatts I ordered arrives, I can only pray that it does not blow up and take other hardware with it. Especially now that I do not have a backup. What I think I will do is turn it off at the back when it is not in use.
My speakers and keyboard also have seen better days, I’ve leave them. Really all this can be attributed to the fact that I got off the upgrade wagon, I like my new found frugality.
PS: I see that the foam on my secondary chair’s arm rest is splitting, I’ll leave it until I can justify buying a really nice chair.
So I just got another mp3 player this time it’s special. The first iPod shuffle 3rd, gen knock off. They are available in two gigabyte and four gigabyte versions with a full range of colours in each size. This one which was bought with my sister in mind is orange and weighs in at fourteen grams and two gigabytes. It comes with the same type of usb connector as the iPod shuffles. For my first small batch of songs it transfered at a modest 1.3 MB/s, I’ve seen worse.
The USB connector
The unit itself shipped with the standard “2GB” holo sticker and box that you will find with just about any chinese mp3 player. The sticker came off easy and left just a bit of adhesive which came off well with a little rubbing. Audio quality is no different as far as I can tell form my Zune and iPod Touch, although that is while using my own headphones, the ones it ships with are as to be expected, subpar. As you can see it is quite nice with no nicks on the surface and feels very solid.
It is just a bit larger then the real iPod 3rd Generation Shuffle as you can see when compared to a skin for the genuine thing.
The knock off compared to a skin for the genuine
Although I did not let that stop me from using the skin.
It fits, kind of.
It is not without its faults though. For instance while the manufacturer claims that it will tell you what is playing I have not found this feature, and there are only two buttons. The player also sadly only handles track order in the most basic way possible, it orders the songs, most likely alphabetically, then it plays from the top. If you turn the unit off and on it will simply start from the beginning. While I do not expect it to shuffle it would be nice if it remembered what it played last. This might though be a plus for anyone wanting to make a playlist, all one would have to do is rename the first song “1″ and the second “2″. The manual sheet of paper that it ships with is useless since it was printed for a second generation knock off,who knows maybe latter batches will fix this. For those wondering here is a quick guide to this units control scheme.
- To change songs press either “-” or “+”
- To increase volume hold either “-” or “+”
All together it is a quite nice and small mp3 player. In truth if I was given a choice between this or a Apple 3rd Generation Shuffle I would chose this one if only because I get to use my own headphones out of the box. Of course it is also a lot cheaper, I got mine from Focalprice for 13.03 USD which is much better then the ~70USD asking price for the Apple version.
Everything is going along well so far, with both myself and the new site.
- I’ve started adding descriptions from the map’s orignal topic if there is a useful one there.
- I’ve got some more Japanese studying done.
- Did well, I think, on my last Social Test hope I also do well on the finals.
PS: Is there really no one that wants to help me get maps up?
The history of city builders is dominated by one name Will Wright, he and his studio Maxis made the staples of the city building genre, Sim city, Sim city 2000, Sim city 3000 and Sim city 4 something happened though and there is has been a true sequel to the series yet. What happened was Spore, a monster sized game which took up Maxis’s time and resources until its release in 2008. Along comes Monte Cristo and their attempt at a city builder, City Life, they experimented with “classes” and “races” making it a bit more of a society manager unfortunately this was not the dirrention fans wanted the game to go in and City life replace Sim city 4 at the top of the city builder genre. Meanwhile EA still owned the Sim City trademark and they were not about to let it depreciate so used another studio, Tilted Wind Mills, to create “Sim City”: Societies. Societies was aimed at the casual market and played very much like City life, it too did not topple Sim City 4. In case Sim city 4’s popularity is in doubt I’ll just make one point, the torrent “SimCity 4 Deluxe w/ Crack & Serial” is still even after two years, in the top one hundred active torrents of the popular torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.org.
All this makes the city builder genre very ripe, even a ten year old player that started on Sim City 4 when it came out in 2003 will be nearly 17 once Cities XL hits the streets. The age ranges just go up from there meaning that Monte Cristo has the potential to capture a mature market without any competition. This financial incentive is what the genre need since without it we would never see a city builder of the scale the genre demands. Cities XL is set to be the giant game the fans are asking for and dreaming about. The engine is full 3d, you can play online in a sort of MMO environment, the buildings can be placed at angles and bridges can be built at arbitrary locations. The fact that it will be MMO means that Monte Cristo can and will continue to develop the game over time.
In short Cities XL is going to be the standard of the city builder genre for quite a while.
So I want to do something big. My I idea is for yet another website! Yeah I hear what your saying, “but Warll that is the last thing the SMR community needs”. Well you’re right, I myself don’t think the SMR community is large enough to support even two sites, although in this case it likely would fall apart if it was forced into the same one. What I would like to do is make a one stop destination for new users. Heres what I have so far after very brief brainstorming:
- It would be a related URL so that if we play the cards right we might just be able to get it to show up on google searches.
- It would be wordpress based, include a directory of maps and host maps.
- There should be a easy to use GUI tool for changing maps, the SAMs are so simple it is a shame that nothing automated has been made.
- It would be a platform for both sides of the community, if new users want to go deeper they may. As I see it now the amount of drama will simply stare new users away.
- It can be hosted on my dreamhost account although if it gets big as I hope it does ads can be added. Thats neither here nor there though.
The entire point of this would be to get new players to SMR and get the content that is already out there to people. There is a need for this as can be seen from the fact that people are still downlaoding SMRI.
Reading about and seeing what all has happened it looks like the SMR community is not as dead as I thought it was. I think I will have to reinstall SMR, wonder where I can find a Japanese copy. Really have to force myself from doing it right now, my finals are coming up.
About two years ago I was an active member of the Sid Meier’s Railroads!(SMR) modding community. I have never been much of a programmer, or any programmer at that. My one attempt at a map failed hard. The thing is though we had no shortage of maps. What we did have though was a mess and an initiative lead by snoopy to get multiple maps working at a time.
This mess was, in my opinion a result of out first attempts at maps. You see when Sid Meier’s Railroads was first released there was no SDK, that didn’t stop us and as such Dwax was the first to made a map based soley off of reverse enginering the games files. Ok so saying that makes it sound harder then it was, after all the game used primarly XML and hightmaps. The fact that the game shared an engine with Sid Meier’s cizilization and Oblivion also meant that there were a number of tools we could use for the models.
The problems mostly came from the conflicts between the XMLs. This was only compounded by the fact that Sid Meier’s Railroads istelf before the patches was bugy and had a nasty tendency to crash to desktop(CTD). Making it very hard to tell apart a mappers error or “normal” gmae crash. With that said thanks to efforts to standardize our use of the XMLs we were able to make maps work together some of the time.
By this point we had a wealth of maps but many of them would not work together, a big stumbling block for new users. This lead me to suggest Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental(SMRI) with the goal of making a all in one map pack. All a user would need to do was install and play. I am actually surprised that Sid Meier’s Railroads Intercontinental got off the ground, really all the thanks goes to Atani and Snoopy who put work into the installer and maps and managed to get ~20 maps together. In the end we got it out in time for Sid Meier’s Railroads one year anniversary.
After that we got one minor patch out before we left it all alone. At the time it was my intenention to make a sequel. That just never happened though and now its nearly two years later and I say for sure that it will not, well atleast not by my hands anyway.
I guess I should these two bits of knowledge, there are two known bugs from what I can rememeber.
- Sid Meier’s Railroads must have been luanched at least once before you go to install Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental. It works this way because Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental must be installed to the “my games” Sid Meier’s Railroads directory which is only created once the game is luanched. This might create some conflict for users with none defualt home directories. To get around this simply copy the Sid Meier’s Railroads “my games” folder to where it would be in a defualt configuration, you should then be able to copy and overwrite the folder back to where Sid Meier’s Railroads expects it.
- The Egypt map has a bug that will cause you to crash to desktop. If I remember right and I likely don’t, this has to do with the XML for one of the goods.
So in closing I will make these points. That Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental is still the easyiest way for a new player to get new maps that I know of. As well if anyone is interested in reusing the Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental name for anything Sid Meier’s Railroads related they are welcome to it, just contact me for the Moddb profile and Atani for the website. You must though be serious about this, I still do have an afinity for SMRI.
Anyway thank you everyone who has played Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental, thank you all the mappers who made this possible and thank you Atani and Snoopy. I really love the time I spent with you all on the forums, maybe I’ll see you guys again.
This is actually quite easy so I encourage any Nico nico fan with a iPod touch ior iPhone to download the Nico Nico Douga app. You will need a valid Nico nico account and Japanese iTunes account. If you do not have these just follow this guide to get a Nico Nico account and this post to get a Japanese iTunes account. Once you have that we can get going.
Step #1: Change your store location to Japan if it is not already set to that. This can be done by scrolling to the bottom of the Store page and selecting the location, Japan is at the very bottom.
Step #2: Then copy and paste “ニコニコ” into the search bar and hit enter.
Step #3: Download the app titled”ニコニコ動画”, to do this click “get app”.
Step #4: Sync your iPod Touch/iPhone so that the application shows up there. You can now safly change back to your local itunes location, the Nico nico app will not disappear.
Step #5: Start the application, this might take a few seconds. Then switch the far right tap labeled “設定”
Step #6: Enter the top menu, this one is labeled “アカウント設定”
Step #7: The top two feilds are for your Nico nico account infromation. “メールドレス” is where you input your email. “パスウーント” is for your password. Once you have these filled your done, you can now start viewing videos by going to the far left and selecting a catogory.
From left to right the Nico Nico Douga app taps are:
Categories – Featured – My Favorites – Search – Settings
Searching for “setting up Japanese iTunes account” on Google will give you outdated information, you do not need a Japanese iTunes card in order to sign up. You do need credit on your account if you plan on buying something but there are a number of free things which make it still worthwhile. I have made this guide so that you can easily setup a Japanese iTunes account for free.
Step #1: Change your store location to Japan, this can be done by scrolling to the bottom of the Store page and selecting the location, Japan is at the very bottom.
Step #2: You then need to try and download app, it does not matter which one so just copy and paste this ”ニコニコ” into the search bar and hit enter.
Step #3: Try and download the app titled”ニコニコ動画”, to do this click “get app”.
Step #4: You should then get a pop-up like this one, press “Create New Account”:
Step #5: You should then see a screen like this, if yours is in Japanese just click where “Continue” is in screenshot.
Step #6: This is jsut the EULA, agree to it without reading as you would any other.
Step #7: Fill in the fields correctly, although you can use a random stuff for the password recovery section.
Step #8: First check the “none” option. You can skip adding a itunes card unless you want to spend money. Only the “Postal code” and “Prefecture” have to have valid information. Use 170-3293 and Tokyo as I have done, although you can just as easily go hunting for others it does not matter so long as they are valid.
Nico Nico Douga or ニコニコ動画 is the Japanese competitor to Youtube and is chalk full of videos any otaku will love. You do need to register to see any videos n the site although that is not hard in the slightest, just follow this guide. The site also lets its user comment inside the video’s frame. This feature can be turned off although I have not done so, there is just something nice about seeing the text. One thing to note is that you will often see “ww…” this is the equivalent of “lol”. While the below video is hosted on Youtube I was originally posted on Nico Nico. Searching for “mad” on Nico Nico will net you many more videos like this.
Pixiv is another site any otaku should have bookmarked. It is a great place to find artwork. Many peices of which you will find later reposted on 4chan. Again like Nico Nico you need to have an account to view, this again is not hard to setup and is detailed in this post. There are some really striking good peices of artwork if you are willing to look. If you don’t want to bother with searching you can simply watch the Daily, Weeky and Monthy rankings page. Thats how I found the image below.
Ninja war?
*/It must be said that I did not write this guide. The reason why I am copying it here is because the site it was originally posted on is, unsavory. /*
Introduction to Pixiv
Pixiv is an image sharing site where artists upload their work. Images can be searched by tags, rated, and favourite’d.
Users can add friends to their own group like social networks, or bookmark people to “watch” their space. There are lots of nice works on Pixiv \, but to access them, you need to register for a free account.
Step 1 : Go to http://www.pixiv.net and click on the orange “Sign up now” button.
Step 2 : Fill in your email address, and click the button saying “入力完了”
Step 3 : A verification email will be sent. Open the email, and click the link in it to continue.
Step 4 : Now you’ll have to fill in your profile. This is the longest part.
pixiv ID: 3 to 32 characters long, alphanumeric characters, hyphens and underscores only. Uppercase characters will be converted to lowercase. You cannot begin or end the ID with hyphens or underscores.
パスワード (Password): 6 to 32 characters long. Fill in both with the same password.
ニックネーム (Nickname): The name others will see you as. 15 characters max.
HPアドレス (Homepage address)
For the next 5, there is a dropdown box on the right. First selection means “Everyone can see this information”, second means “Only people in MyPixiv can see this information” and third is “No one can see this information”
性別 (Gender): 男 (Male) or 女 (Female)
血液型 (Blood type): Straight forward.
住所 (Address): Last option, 海外 means Foreign (as in, not in Japan.)
誕生日 (Date of birth): Straight forward again.
職業 (Occupation): I’m not going to translate all of these, so you can choose the last one (Something else)
自己紹介 (Self introduction): Here you’ll HAVE to type in something to complete the registration.
Step 5 : Login with your pixiv ID and password.
*/More information you might be interested in but it is not necessary./*
Now when you go to http://www.pixiv.net/mypage.php you’ll see your home page. The first thing you’ll notice are some images in the middle of the page, under the heading “みんなの新着イラスト”. This is everyone’s newest artwork. Under these you’ll see もっと見る, which means “show more”, and you’ll be able to page through them.
On the right, you’ll see the top 3 images for the day, links to #4 to #10, and the same for the top 10 images of the week. Under each of these is the top #100 list. On the left, you’ll see your avatar, under this the list of people in your “MyPixiv”, and under this, a list of all the people you’ve bookmarked. If you click on your avatar, you’ll go to your profile, where you can change your avatar (画像の変更) and edit your profile.
On the search bar on the top right, you’ll be able to search for specific tags (in Japanese). If you change the option from タグ to タイトル・キャプション, it will search in image captions rather than tags. You can click on 人気のタグ for a list of tags. ランダム brings up a random selection of images, instead of most recent.
On the top left you’ll always see ホーム (Home), 友人を招待 (Invite a friend) and ログアウ (Logout).
When you click on an image, you’ll have a medium size version of the image in the middle, which you can click again to open the full size, the artist’s avatar on the left, with the following links under it:
プロフィールを見る – A link to their page/profile
お気に入りに追加 – Bookmark this user
マイピクに追加 – Add user to MyPixiv
When you try and bookmark a user, it will bring a dialog asking if you want everyone to be able to see this user in your bookmarked users list, and then a confirm button. If you try to add someone, you will have a box where you need to type a message to the person, followed by a confirm button.Above the image will be the tags for it (blue links, with a red one to the right). Towards the top right, you can rate the image on a scale of 1 to 10. Pixiv keeps track of 閲覧数 (How many people viewed the image), 評価回数 (How many people voted), and 総合点 (Total score). To the left, you can see all the artist’s tags. If you click on them, it will bring images by the current artist with those tags.
The button right above the image to the right, このイラストをブックマークする, lets you bookmark an image. To view all the images you’ve bookmarked, when you’re on your home page, click on the button on top titled ブックマーク管理 (Usually the 4th one). Underneath the image theres a text box and button for adding comments.
Remember: You have to be logged in to see images or pages. You cannot hotlink them AFAIK. And don’t forget to add artist tags when you upload the images here.
And apologies for the wall of text :)
One thing that seems to have pasted a lot of people by is the fact that Microsoft gives copies of Vista away, for free. No I’m not talking about MSDN. Microsoft will give anyone how can provide a International Student Identity Card (ISIC) number a copy of Windows Server 2008 Standard and Windows Server 2003 under their DreamSpark program. Windows 2008 is with few exceptions everything like Windows Vista Ultimate. You can use Vista drivers, change the language and can use RDP without a hack. The only problem you might run into is the fact that a number of moronically programed installers will check to see if you are on a “supported” version of windows and will complain when they see Server 2008. Microsoft’s Zune software is included in this group although you can get around it by extracting the needed files from the installer. Windows 2003 on the other hand while being like XP does not share the same base which means you would be much better off with 2008.
Getting a ISIC isn’t even all that hard although it might cost a few bucks, in my case I was out $16CDN. The ISIC homepage has more information if you are interested.Microsoft also gives other programs away under the same program such as Visual Studio PRO although they do not give any of the office suite products away.
So why should you use this method vs just grabbing a torrent? After all its not like this supports the development of windows in any way. Well its simple really, no need to use your precious bandwidth since Microsoft provides a direct download. It is also faster, the Microsoft servers can saturate your connection. You also do not have to worry about WGA or its ilk.
One of the key ways I am studying Japanese is by surounding myself with it. One big part of this is audio since it does not require much intertainment and is easy to setup. The problem I ran into though is that while I have tons of Japanese music I have no access Japapnese speech. I have solved this by using a FM transmitter plus my server. My server is set to constantly run LiveStation and broadcast that audio over to any FM radio.
I would preffer to use Keyhole TV since it has a much larger selection of Japanese, the problem is that there seems to be some anti leaching protection built in since whenever I leave it running over night the station goes “off air”. It jsut might be that the radio stations really are going off line either way though it goes my alarm no good if I wake up to static. This has forced me to use LiveStation and its only working station, FNN. It is better hen nothing though and I may in future do more research.
Believe it or not Warll isn’t just some weird spelling of war2, at least not now anyway. Its origin goes back to my first real experience with the internet, Runescape. Some friends were playing it at the time and got me addicted, well the first thing one needs would of course be a name. At the time I had been watching a lot of the History channel so the first name I tried was World War 2. Looking back it was likely a good thing the name was taken; of course I didn’t know this at the time so I tried many variations of it till I came up with Warll. I have been using it since, in truth it’s a great name, none else uses it so my only fears of it being taken are when I forgot a password. When I do forget a password I usually just append a 2 at the end, for instance my Youtube account is Warll2.
Big news! A crack is out and it works! Thanks to Nob Ody for alerting me to it. You can get it on isohunt here are the instructions:
I can tested it and it is virus free and works perfectly, the author has even included all the current patches.[Older update]
JDMans over at the Pirate Bay posted instructions on how to use the torrent with the Cities XL trial