Review: The Promise of Haruhi Suzumiya

The promise of Suzumiya Haruhi the video game

The promise of Suzumiya Haruhi the video game

The Promise of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの約束, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yakusoku) was the first Suzumiya Haruhi video game released for the PSP in December 2007. It is a fully voiced visual novel with exact Japanese subtitles. Like most visual novels the story does not require much interaction on the players part, it might as well be an anime in that regard. What really sets it apart from its anime counterpart is the easy at which one can study from it. When pressed the L shoulder button will bring up a history of everything said. Not only can you reread the text but you game will also repeat the audio.  This audio repeat can be done by pressing triangle from within the main game or by pressing the circle from the text history.

Altogether an excellent game for studying and enjoyment, mind you the level of Japanese required is not trivial, the subtitles do though open the possibility for using a dictionary.

Offical Website: http://b.bngi-channel.jp/psp-haruhi/

2009
07/15
CATEGORY
Japanese
Review
Video Games
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The Hidden Document, a Fallout 3 Mod.

ohhello

After playing the awesome series of story mods by Puce Moose http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4730 I decided to take a swing at it. I kept the story small so that I could focus on polish without getting getting sidetracked with making it grand.

Update, now version 1.0:
This new file fixes a major bug and greatly improves the story telling.
Some how I had included every single script from Fallout3 in my esp. I am sorry to anyone who has lost game play due to my mistake. I have now deleted the old bugged file.

Finding the story:
Since this is a small mod I did not want to bother the player with a note such as is used in the DLC and Puce Moose’s stories. To access the new area you must go to Canterbury commons, it is the first door to your right when you enter Uncle Roe’s house.

Possibility of mod conflict:
This mod uses a prefix for everything redefined so there should be no conflicts. The only problem that might be encountered is if another mod changes Uncle Roe’s house in which case depending on load order the player might not be able to access the quest.

Credit:
Credit goes to Puce Moose for his inspirational mods and these websites for fortran source code, all snippets used under fair use as well as their respective licenses.

http://orion.math.iastate.edu/burkardt/f_src/f_src.html

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/fortransrc.html

http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/lib.stat.cmu.edu/jasasoftware/llca.txt

Copyright for this mod:
While this is my first mod I would like to this that it is well polished and enjoyable and I would like it to be used with no restrictions. To that end I release any copyright of mine relating to this work under the CC0 license. In plain English this means that you may do what ever you want with my work, with some restrictions that I am not allowed to release in certain nations. If you do live in a nation to stops copyright creators from releasing such rights as attribution I promise not to prosecute if you were to “accidentally” to not comply fully. With that said I do not expect anyone to actually reuse these files, one can dream though. If you do end up using any of this I would love an email: daniel.mark.dressler@gmail.com .

Thehiddendocumentv09 | 10 KB

2009
07/11
CATEGORY
About Warll
Video Games
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Server rebuild

Ok so the parts arrived finally.  While I love Newegg’s competitive prices the shipping factor usually dampens my enthusiasm, not only is shipping a bit more expensive but it is also slower since everything comes from the states even when ordering from the Canadian site.

  • The new parts:

DSCF8538 Read more

2009
07/09
CATEGORY
Computing
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Useful program for Windows Vista #1

Make Windows transparent for free with Glass2K.

So why would you want to make windows transparent, well put simply productivity.  It works expecally well when viewing an image, be that photos or video, since the colours are less likely to blend with what you are doing on top.  With text it becomes a little harder although it is trivial to decrease the transparency which allows you to easily to which peice of text is on top.  Surprisingly this program is actually compatible with Windows Vista even though it was programmed for Windows 2000 and Windows XP .  Performance wise it runs well although this is to be expected since it was written with much weaker computers in find vesus what we have today. In fact it stays at around three percent of my AMD 940 and uses 1.6MB of RAM.  All together the productivity gains are comparable to getting a second monitor, if not a bit nicer since everything is kept in one field of view and Glass2K is free to boot!

chime.tv/products/glass2k

2009
07/01
CATEGORY
Computing
Review
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SMR, Simple, complete

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.

2009
06/26
CATEGORY
Sid Meier's Railroads!
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Cities XL crack, hack, torrent or leak, just not possible.

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:

  1. Install game.
  2. Edit the Updater.bat file so that each line points towards your game’s installation directory
  3. Launch Updater.bat
  4. Close the launcher once updates complete
  5. Your game is now up to date to the latest version
  6. Copy the crack to the game’s install folder
  7. Launch game using CitiesXL.exe, select language, and enter any random login credential
  8. Enjoy

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

There is like no way anyone is going to crack this because the security is just to hard, but if you downloaded this already you can make a 7 day trial account for it and play online for the time.

1. Go to citiesxl.com and click on the sign up button in the menu. it should bring you to a registration screen.

Ignore the cd key button and just fill in all the information for your online account and click the send registration button.

On the next screen it will ask for a cd key but just scroll down and there is something that says activate 7 day trial.

There, now you have a user name to log in with for the next 7 days and you have access to all the multiplayer stuff. Until someone gets a better idea il be playing for the next 7 days :D
[/update]

[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.

2009
06/23
CATEGORY
Cities XL
Video Games
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My new site project: Cities XL

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.

2009
06/21
CATEGORY
About Warll
Cities XL
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