Sniper Elite V2

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Management Summary: If you have a PC, XBox 360 or PS3, and like third-person shooters that benefit from a little thought, you *need* to get Sniper Elite V2.

I bought it on day of release (for PC, expecting next day delivery from Amazon, it arrived three days later… *sigh*) and I’ve been enjoying every second of it that I’ve had a chance to play so far – I’m only on the second mission, but I’m replaying each mission exhaustively to find all the bonus lewts (bottles of wine and gold ingots); trying to figure out ways to get up-close and personal for the hands-on kill, trying to figure angles to take out isolated soldiers, getting into stupid ranged fire-fights with opposing snipers, and most difficult of all for me, getting a hang of the ballistics at Sniper Elite difficulty.

I enjoyed Sniper Elite well enough, but not to the same visceral extent I’m enjoying this… The immersion is the best I’ve enjoyed in a third-person shooter, beating Splinter Cell (a *very* hard thing to do in my book). No videos, I don’t have spare disk-space to transcode 1080p footage to 720p for YT right now.

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Upgraded my SMP server to 1.2.5 (new EE and the rest) and it’s not starting, yet it ran perfectly locally… So annoying!

Yahoo! a second upload and a couple of restarts and everything is coming up roses.

Change of plans

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So, while I wait for EE2 1.2.5 SMP support (I’m certain Pahimar has it in hand…), I’ve changed my mind about going SSP for Season 4, and instead I’m going to have a go at my first ever Super Hostile CTM LP.

I’ve already downloaded Vechs’ new Lethamyr SH CTM map (version A, haven’t seen any of my usual LP YT subs doing it yet, so figure that’ll give me a chance) and I’ll give it a go tonight in an attempt to tide my own channel subs over until there’s something good and EE2 to give you all.

I’m going to do my darnedest to complete the map “legit” (although I don’t expect to finish it in a single sitting), and will make 15 minute episode(s) out of whatever footage I have when I die (come on, you and I both know that’s what is going to happen…). Expect to see the Sphax texture pack in full effect, but otherwise I have no other mods installed for this.

I am watching The Misfits taking on version D (or C, can’t remember now) but they haven’t really gotten so far as to spoil my own play, which can’t start until I get home from work at 17:00 GMT. Hopefully I can get Episode 1 of a few out before tommorrow.

PMUK Plays Server and MC v1.2.5

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It’s all starting to come together for the server upgrade to MC v1.2.5. Last night/early this morning Chicken Bones updated NEI for v1.2.5 (and dropped the requirement for MLMP at the same time), so I’m only waiting on EE2 SMP support for v1.2.5 and the server can be updated.

I’m giving consideration to going SSP while I wait for EE2 SMP for v1.2.5, given I’m the only player on the server at present. Pahimar has already done an SSP-only release with v1.2.5 compatibility. I believe I’m right in saying he’s looking to drop MLMP as a requirement on SMP and that is what is taking the time; Forge/FML being different to MLMP.

Plan for the upcoming long weekend

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Not sure if you’ve been told this, but at the end of last year I bought myself most of the bits to build myself a new gaming computer (Core i7 2600K, Gigabyte mobo, EVGA 570 GTX – it’s what I do all my PMUK Plays videos on) and that the long-term plan was to water cool it with a pair of loops; one for CPU and RAM, and the second for mobo and GPU (best heat distribution I could come up with in my head – CPU and GPU being the hottest parts). I currently run it air cooled because speccing up two separate water cooling loops isn’t cheap.

Well, this coming 4-day weekend, I’ll get properly started on the water cooling. I’ve got the blocks for the CPU and GPU, along with the radiators and the proper RAM (16GB of Corsair Dominator, yum). I’m just looking to get the interconnection lengths right and ensure the pumps/reservoirs all work without leaking as a first step, and once I get the RAM and mobo blocks, I’ll add them into the loops and test again before installing in my case.

PMUK Plays MC Season 4

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Thanks to tireless work by Pahimar, Equivalent Exchange 2 for v1.2.3 is out. As of sometime tonight, that’ll mean I’m ready to start on season 4 of my LP series (once I travel from the spawn village on my server to where I’m going to start the LP). However, I think it’d be prudent of me to hang on until the weekend to actually start recording, I’d like to do a quick “introduction to the server” video before that so you all know what to expect.

Just to “heads-up”, I’m going to start with some wood punching etc, but my intention (at the start) is to follow the EE “Getting Started in v6″ guide to the letter; well, as closely as I can… there’s no promises of finding diamond in any particular strip mining operation, after all (at least until I have a Mk3 Divining Rod, that is).

PMUK Plays MC Season 3 End

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I recorded the final episode of season three last night – went to the End and slew the dragon (that’s a boss fight to be proud of Notch – even with a whole bunch of EE/IC2 power items, it took a good 5 minutes to kill him…)

I’m now working towards season four. I’ve got my server running v1.2.3 vanilla (it’s whitelist and I’m not going to give out slots to, please don’t ask. My #minecraftchums know how to get hold of me for the address), and my client(s) are running v1.2.3 with newest modloader and MLMP, and thanks to being mostly vanilla, I’ve run MCPatcher and will use Vattic’s Faithful texture pack for the season, assuming that the EE textures for Vattic’s are updated to v6 sometime.

The world is in place, I just need to move the spawn point to a nearby NCP village I’ve found, and set up a few signs (rules, can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em) and starter resources for the other players, then find a nice plot of land far enough away that I can record season four with a decent starting area and without running into anyone’s mine workings once I get the EE mining toys – huge mine workings will feature in season four.

As for getting season four under way, I’m just waiting for MC Forge to release a v1.2.3 version (and LexManos is hard at work on that, looking at their Jenkins), and then EE will be the last piece of the puzzle. Only waiting on two things is oddly relaxing, strangely enough…

Web server upgrades

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Web server upgrades – I’ve got an apt update running right now (had a load of updates to apply that the Ubuntu logon splash didn’t bother to tell me about…) so the site may be a little slow for a short while (less than ten minutes I would estimate). More news once it completes, I’m sure.

Update - All done, and everything appears to be fine. I’ll need to reboot at some point (there was a kernel update in there), but I can do that at a sensible hour rather than the middle of the day.

So, Minecraft 1.2…

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…is out. I am both over-whelmed and under-whelmed in equal measure. I’m *so* looking forward to cats for the anti-Creeperness of them (not actually a huge fan of cats IRL, but I can tolerate them in MC if they give Creepers the Fear) and excited by the Jungle biomes (house in a tree, you know it!).

*BUT*

Means the end of YALPS (Yet Another LP Series) – not a terribly bad thing, it’s starting to get a little boring for me and I’m running out of stuff to do. No spoilers, but I really don’t have very much else I want to achieve. The new start is always the exciting part of any LP series (for me).

*SO*

I am looking at changing things up with the next LP series. I’m going unimod – I’ll upgrade to 1.2 once Equivalent Exchange updates and run with just EE. It’ll be tough to start with (no hella-mining with an IC2 Diamond Drill while I build up to the EE Power Toys), but I also believe it’ll give me the most exciting mid/end game experience. Plus, waiting on a single mod to update is a lot easier than waiting on ten or more to update (in addition to the pre-reqs, that is…).

Oh, and it’ll (potentially) be SMP. #minecraftchums, I’m going to be getting my server running 1.2 and EE, so it’ll be a lot easier for you all (and I) to get up and running without “ID Conflict” problems like I had for my current series (and basically stopped me running the server with 1.1).

Finally, it’ll be (rightly) called Season Four; by all rights the current LP should be called Season Three, and this’ll be the fourth lot of Minecraft LP videos I’ve done. So, I’m looking forward to “PMUK Plays Minecraft Season 4″, and I hope you all will too.

P.S. Expect regular world downloads for this new season. It’ll be a whole lot easier for me to release worlds when there’s only the one mod installed. How often sounds good? Every 5 episodes? ;-)

Freeing up some block IDs

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I’m giving some serious thought to uninstalling Exanadu’s Sponges from my LP series. I can clear water using the Volcanite Amulet, and lava looses all its fears using the same item, so Sponges is less necessary. It’ll give me a pair of Block IDs back too! I may yet be able to install Zippinus’ Advanced Machines and/or ThunderDark’s Modular Force Field System (“what nuclear explosion problems?” with MFFS installed).