Friday, November 20, 2009

Gooti-Billa Goes in to PlayStation - Sony's addition Desi Adda

Its another supporting pillar for the Indian Gaming Industry. Sony after the Hanuman game, now adding the Desi Adda for the console which includes many games played in the villages like Gooti-Billa, Puli-Meka, Pachisi etc.

This is a nice move by Sony to encourage the village children too to participate in the console gaming world. It would be still better to launch few multiplayer games from the Indian Core.

As I see it, the gaming industry in India is going to be most competitive environment comparing it to other industries. Indian mind set is so, that if one of the thoughts is put into a typical Indian mind, it takes is spread in the circle very fast. Also, multiplayer games are most commonly played by many students in the institutions throughout India.

In this particular context, expecting a multi player game with story line from the Indian base is going to attract Indian gamers a lot. Of course it should be made with utmost care, as the view point of the gamers, if went negative a bit would result in a big a failure of the release.

Some game with good care some good story line with good graphics, that's all the gamers need to feed in this situation.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Fix - Could not establish connection to Steam servers - Use +ip HLDS command line

If you are here, you have Steam and you want to set up a Dedicated Server. You can install a Dedicated server using the Dedicated Server in Steam installed via steam or separately using HLDS update tool.

To know how to install dedicated server using HLDS Update  Tool, view this post on Installing HLDS. Once you install it, you can run the dedicated server using the HLDS.exe. But you may get this error saying,
Could not establish connection to Steam servers
This error occurs if your network IP is used in creating the dedicated server. For using you IP address from the ISP, you need to manually add it in the parameters. If you know how to insert +ip parameters, you can do it directly, else, see the explanation below.

For fixing this error, you need to give some parameters to the HLDS while running it. To do this, you should first create a shortcut to the HLDS.exe. Right click the shortcut and go to Properties. In the properties window, you will see a text box with the name Target. This box should be edited such that those parameters will be executed while running the application. The following examples lets you understand the commands and parameters,
"C:\Program Files\Valve\HLServer\hlds.exe" -game cstrike +map de_dust2 -console +port 27019 +hostname "Counter Strike 1.6" +sv_lan 0 +ip xx.xx.xx.xx
This is how the target should be set. Give IP and the error must be fixed. If you want to know your IP, just go to who.is and the website displays you the IP of your computer. Make sure you are not using local IP address.

Optional parameters like -console, can also be added in this target command.

Installing HL Dedicated Server using HLDS Update tool without Steam account

The installation of HL Server through HLDS Update tool can be done without using a steam account. Download the HLDS Update Tool from official Steampowered website. Then install the HLDS Update Tool, this will create a folder names HL Server in the directory specified. Then you can just use command line in the Command Prompt or the command parameters in the created shortcut of the HLDS Update Tool to install the games.

These are the parameters,
  • -command update (necessary)
  • -game cstrike | dod | tfc | valve | Counter-Strike Source
  • -dir c:\hlserver | d:\hlserver | e:\HLDS
So the whole command appears like this in the command prompt,
  • >HLDSUpdateTool.exe -command update -game cstrike -dir e:\HLDS
You can install it in as many directories as you wish. Also, you can install each mod in each folder of your wish. It will download the mod directly from the internet server. The total download size will be around 200 MB. Giving your Steam username and password is optional.

Once you install the server, you can start the dedicated server from the HLDS.exe. For this HLDS.exe too, you need to give some parameters to make it live with steam.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Most Economical Multiplayer Gaming - BSNL/Airtel Games on Demand - Rs. 100/- Per Month

Firstly, let me make it clear,

Airtel Games on Demand service, as I understand it from the official website, is only offering you one plan, that is Rs. 199/- per month. And the BSNL Games on Demand with the same Indiagames as the partner is offering 2 plans. One would feature 200 games with Rs.100/- monthly subscription and the second is Rs. 200/- per month, which would offer you all the 300 games and more adding to download and play.

So this makes it most economical gaming service you can get. You are just paying Rs. 200/- say, and you get full access to all the games with no downloading charges. If you are listening to this for the first time, you may think that the games might be published by either BSNL or Indiagames. But it is not like that, I will list some games which you can download and play through the GoD player of the service,

  • Need For Speed Most Wanted
  • Need For Speed Carbon
  • Need For Speed Underground
  • Age of Empires 2 The Conquerors Expansion (AOC)
  • Age of Empires 2 The Age of Kings (AOK)
  • Age of Mythology (AOM)
  • BattleField 2
  • BattleField 1942
  • Medal of Honour Allied Assault
  • Project IGI 2 Covert Strike
  • Commandos Strike Force
  • FIFA 07
  • Brain Lara Cricket 2005
But it takes little more to make every one say, "Games on Demand Rocks!!". Thanks to BSNL and Airtel, especially Indiagames, Gaming Scenario in India is going to take its branches from these two service providers, while the roots are already existing.

Buy Game DVDs in Hyderabad CD World at Chenoy Trade Center, Secunderabad

The CD World at CTC(Chenoy Trade Center) Hyderabad offers you good collection of games for PC, XBOX, PS3.  At the very store you can shop many other CDs and DVDs related to software, education and all. But I started this topic for those who want to buy games DVDs in Hyderabad, and more specifically for those who are near Secunderabad.

If you want to buy the older games, not too old though, you can get them from there for lower price as there are games with e-play Logo. These games under the e-play logo are marketed by India's Game software distributor e-xpress Interactive Software Private Limited. You can get all the games with this logo for just Rs. 299/- each. These games with the e-play logo also include the games from big publishers like Ubisoft, Codemasters, THQ etc.

Some notable games with this e-play label are here,
  • Ghost Recon 2 Advanced Warfighter
  • Resident Evil 4
  • Rainbow Six Vegas
  • CSI: Hard Evidance
  • Splinter Cell
  • Microsoft Train Simulator
  • Prince of Persia Sands of Time
  • POP WW
  • POP TTT,
  • FarCry
  • Company of Heroes
  • Brian Lara Cricket 2005
  • Operation Flash Point
  • Heroes of Might and Magic III+IV
  • Heroes of Might and Magic V
  • Empire Earth Gold Edition
  • Hitman Contracts
  • Hitman 2 Silent Assassin
  • Tomb Raider Legend
  • Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness
  • Sonic Riders
  • Medieval II Total War Gold Edition
  • Rome Total War
  • Virtual Tennis 3
  • Universe at War and many more.
There are more games not listed above but with the e-play logo. Also, apart from these, there are many more games in the CD World Store. For setting your financial budget for buying games like famous Need For Speed series, you can get NFS Shift for Rs.1000, Age of Empires series, you can get AOE Collection till AOC for Rs. 499/-, AOE 3 and the series, there are editions which cost around Rs.1200/- and more than Rs. 2000/- too.

If you want to add something, just post it in the comments. I may add it to the post later.

Friday, November 13, 2009

WorldShift Multiplayer Page for PC Platform

This page if for all the gamers who want to play the game WorldShift Multiplayer. You can use this page for sharing your Hamachi Networks or Direct IPs or any other method through which you can play the game. I dont know yet, whether you can play the game in Hamachi or not, but I guess there would be some mthod by which you can play multiplayer and this page might help you.

If the game can be played through Hamachi I will add networks in this page, or just you can share your networks here as a comment. And if there is any other procedure you need to do for playing the game, you can share it with others here.

If you want to share your ideas on the game, you can just make it brief and comment here.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - COD MW2 - Hamachi Networks

This post is for sharing your Hamachi networks for the game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Just create some networks and post here as a comment.

You can see a Resident Evil 5 Hamachi Networks share page to know more,

Comment your networks here in this post.

Here are some of the networks,
  1. codmw2_1
  2. codmw2_2
  3. codmw2_3
  4. codmw2_4
  5. codmw2_5

The password for all the networks is 1. Keep these networks active. Leave the network if you are going offline. Create more servers and share here as a comment.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Gaminglan's MatchUP - A multiplayer gamer page to engage matches

been trying since a month from now to develop a nice page for multiplayer gamers to engage themselves in matches. There are lot of other websites or Hamachi to engage matches, but I don't want this Gaminglan's MatchUP to be a client application, I want it to be a web interface.

So on the whole, Gaminglan's MatchUP should be a webpage with no registration, but users can if they want to, and is accessible to all. Any one can open gates to their games and other will follow them in their path. Registered users get advantage of reliability over the guests. The webpage should have links to all the game stats and that have been played by the users and there must be user ratings, the game viz. I don't want this page to interact in any manner with the game or the clients PC, but I want it to interact with gamer himself to the greatest possible.

I have been learning PHP to design pages. This looks crazy, but I want to know PHP as it is a very basic webpage building language and it has a lot of time remaining in the interent, a decade more at least I guess.

With the PHP knowledge, I have tried to make a chat page where multiplayer gamers can chat between themselves. This is a very basic version of that complex page. Now, as I am waiting for Call Letter from a company I am free. But once I get in to Job, I guess it would be hard for me to find some free time, but I can put some one writing the page for me, as I have funds for this then.

Any ways, I want to make multiplayer gaming as simplest as possible for any one on the Internet. But me doing alone all that is really hard. I guess I can find some great friends who are interested in Blogging and Gaming at the same time in the company I join. Once I find a nice partner, I wont be feeling tired I guess.

The chat page I have created is here and the forums are here.

Steam Accepts only 'Verified PayPal' Accounts - Buy Games on Steam Store

There were number of discussions both on steam forums and off steam forums about the usage of PayPal and Credit Cards to buy games on Steam. Some say 'Whats the use of PayPal if it is to be verified with Credit Card again.'. I don't know whats the use of it, but PayPal needs to be verified before you can buy games on Steam with PayPal. Else, the PayPal returns the error message something like this, 'Your seller needs instant payments, use Credit Card to very you account to perform instant payments.'

Apart from this, I am not sure whether it accepts payments from verified accounts with bank accounts.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

BSNL calls and asks to check out the Games On Demand for a one month trail

Gaming On Demand is a service offered by BSNL in partnership with IndiaGames. This GOD Service is for BroadBand users. In this service, you can play games via broadband. The data transfer for the games you play wont be counted into your regular data transfer. And understood from the website GoD, the data transfer for Games is unlimited. Make sure it is before you take it for granted.

The plans are like this,
  1. Rs 100 per month for 167 games
  2. Rs 200 per month for 300 games (All games)
And the website says, new games are added every week.

So, coming to the games, Age of Empires The Conquerors is included, thats a good news for me, secondly Counter Strike 1.6 is not included in the games list. This is very bad new for the same me. But you can see the tab saying CS Servers, in that page, I can see some servers with 59.xxx and 203.xxx, looks little confusing.

Is it that the Counter Strike game connected to those servers wont be counted or is it that they are just giving those servers and it will be counted to the regular Broadband? This what I need to clarify.

Now to conclude, no matter how many times I play the game, I can download the games officially, its a very good feature. Thanks to BSNL. I look forward to make this Gaminglan more closer community to the BSNL GoD.

Siege Rams have attack bonus vs Siege Units - AOC

In the Age of Empires The Conquerors, the Siege Ram and other Rams have attack bonus vs other Siege units. You can check it in any game, the Siege Rams give up to 68 attack to any siege weapon viz the Siege Rams, the Onagers, the Scorpions, the Bombard Cannons and the Trebuchets. This can be taken as an advantage when the enemy is using ranged unit combos with out infantry or cavalry included. The Rams can go straight forward towards the Trebuchet surrounded by archers and can give 3 blows to crush the Treb down.

Generally, to counter a group of 50 heavy scorpions or more is a difficult task. But if you are playing Persians, you have an advantage as War Elephants can easily counter the Scorpions. But if you are playing with any other civilization, you need to think a while to decide what combination to use. Here the Siege Rams come handy. Just garrison some pikemen in the Rams and take them straight inside the Scorpions cover area. Each blow from Siege Ram crushes one Scorpions if its not Celt Heavy Scorpion.

Also, when you are playing with mongols, you can easily do the above trick as the Mongol SiegeRams, fully loaded with Pikemen can move faster than a Celt Champion. So, there is no stopping for infantry. Just go on in to the core of scorpions and crush each scorpion with single blow from Rams. Also, take care of the Rams as they only attack on giving a command, irrespective of whether they are set to aggressive or defensive stance.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Halberdier has 66 attack bonus against War Elephants - AOC Tips

AOC is such a game where everything is set to a balance, no one unit has monopoly in AOC. If it were to be such a case, then the game just revolves around that unit with number of units created by a player. But its not the case. Each and every unit has some strength and weakness.

Elite War Elephant has 620 Hit Points to be a unique unit with highest hit points in the whole Age of Empires 2 The Conquerors. Just 5 of these units can crush down 30 champions, 15 paladins, 40 Hussars of Mongols meaning the Hussars of highest grade and many more archers. That is huge power. But when you play Persians, beware there are Halberdiers too in the game. Just 12 Halberdiers can crush down these 5 War Elephants. This is because each Halberdier causes 66 damage to an elephant. This is one of the huge bonus attacks the units have in AOC, after Rams. Even though the Halberdier's 2/3rds attack is inaccurate, 12 are enough to nutralize 5 big units.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Aztecs vs the Byzantines in AOC

The Aztecs are fairly powerful in their game with good monks strength. They have defense for every other civilization and their units. As they have Pikemen as a counter for cavalry and all mounted units, elite Skirmisher for archers and Hand Cannoneers, Jaguar Warriors for attack bonus vs infantry. Its a good mixture of these units. But they really lack faster stable units. If some one is attacking with bombard cannons, its really hard to counter those units if supported with Archers and Cavalry. This is the situation where you have to use monks to convert some enemy units to defend yourselves.

Byzantines are one civilization who can crush down Aztecs very easily, no matter what units and combos the Aztecs use. The Cataphract can cause up 29 damage to units with no native armor that is 0+3, and hence can cause 55+ damage with two hits enough to neutralize Pikemen. When Cataprhacts are causing trample damage, the over all destruction reaches more than 30, causing even the champions to survive only two hits at most. The Pikemen cannot resist the attack from the Cataphracts as they only need two hits from Cataphracts to be neutralized.

Try a game with these two civs. The army management should be perfect if you are playing Aztecs. You need all your concentration on army itself unlike the byzantines, where create and leave on the enemy is enough.

Alganon Hamachi Networks

Alganon is scheduled to release in December, this year. The game is said to be similar to the previous hero, the World of Warcraft. This might get better if it shows some simplicity, instead of adding too many features in an attempt to look different to the previous game, Warcraft.

No matter what, if it has got some good start, its going to overtake other games very easily. I guess there wont be any compromise on the graphical appearance.

I hope this should be playable through Hamachi, else use these networks to just chat.
These are Hamachi networks for the game Alganon.
  1. alganon
  2. Alganon
  3. ALGANON
The password for all the networks is 1. You can share any other ideas about the game here. Also share more Hamachi networks here.