gothi

A badly chosen byte

Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic now 50% faster

Apr 13

Posted by gothi in Programming | No Comments

Halo 3 logoWorking down in Worcester last weekend left me little time to work on the Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic but I was able to steal an hour or so away from the current Double XP weekend playlist to do some further work. I’ve beefed up the amount of downloader threads from 1 to 5 which has halved the time needed to analyse my game history, 1167 games at the time of writing, down to 23 minutes from 50. It’s still more than I had hoped but the bottleneck is the speed at which Bungie.net is responding. The thread that strips the information from the pages never falls behind and is working on each page as it arrives. I could throw more downloader threads in there but I’m not sure what affect this will have on Bungie.net I guess the first release will have to be a slow but sure affair.

The database code hasn’t been started yet, the program is currently erroring on completion. Nothing show stopping but something that needs addressing before I move onto the DB code. With the recent announcement that Bungie are going to give the helm of Bungie Favourites to the community I can see an increased need to locate which games have assets in your history.
I’ll be working on stopping the completion error today, I’m not sure why it’s only just started happening so that’s an interesting challenge. I’ll also need to find a profile that hasn’t played many Halo 3 matches for testing, another challenge in itself :D

Update
I’ve fixed the error, I hadn’t accounted for going from 1 thread downloading to 5 which meant another thread was exiting early. I also picked up on a subtle bug where 1 of your games was never processed. Hardly a killer bug but I’m glad I spotted it before the public beta (as soon as the DB code is written) :)

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Two Xbox 360′s, one router

Mar 30

Posted by gothi in Uncategorized | No Comments

Picture of Xboxc 360 ElitePiggle loves playing Halo 3 and I do to, you’d think this was a marriage made in heaven yes? Actually, as great as always having partner for team games is, sharing a screen on Halo 3 is very frustrating, especially on Team Swat. Halo not only halves the screen horizontally but also crops the left and right sides of the screen to keep the aspect ratio. Think of it as playing from the house across the road, peering at your TV through the window. So yesterday I surprised Piggle with her very own Xbox 360 Pro, welcoming the world of Strict NAT Hell into my home at the same time.

I have a 20mb connection, connected to a Linksys WRT54GL (V1.1) router. 1 Xbox, set with a static IP and placed into the DMZ gave a perfect Open NAT, adding the second 360 caused us both to have Strict NAT’s. Looking around no-one seemed to have any answers to this issue so I decided it must be possible, I just wasn’t trying hard enough. The first step was to play with Port Forwarding, don’t waste your time here, it doesn’t work. Next I changed the routers firmware to DD-WRT, after several issues (always read the instructions for installing on your router folks) I had it running but the best I could do was get us both to Moderate NAT status. Doing some more research I read a comment on someones blog suggesting that both 360′s be put into the DMZ of the Tomato Firmware. I’ve never seen a router firmware that allows two devices to be in the DMZ so I immediately installed it. Disaster! One 360 could get an Open NAT but the other couldn’t connect at all :(

After hours of router upgrades and configuration I was in a worse situation than before. I resigned myself to going back to the stock firmware. Checking out the US side of the Linksys website I noticed that they had a more recent firmware available than the UK side so decided to risk an install on my router. Everything installed fine but the NAT status for both 360s was Moderate/Moderate at best and Strict/Moderate at worst. I wasn’t happy with this and the fact that nothing was showing up in the UPnP log for either Xbox was bugging me. Not only that but I began to wonder what affect putting the 2nd 360 in a different VLAN would have. I immediately reinstalled the DD-WRT firmware and set to work.

The first option I changed was to put the 2nd 360 into a different VLAN to the other.

DD-WRT VLAN Settings

The final steps were to disable the DMZ option, enable the UPnP option and to set each 360 to DHCP. This allowed each 360 to use UPnP to configure it’s own ports. Tentatively I did a connection test on my own 360, the result came in, an Open NAT! Taking Piggle’s controller out of her sleeping hands I started the connection test on her 360, again, an Open NAT! Fearing it was too good to be true I started the sign in process on both consoles. Both 360s started displaying messages about signing out of Messenger and showed as being logged out. After a moment of worry my fears dissipated as both machines logged into Xbox Live and even better, both had Messenger running. I can only assume that the initial messages were due to the port forarding being set up for each machine. A quick look on the router confirmed, both had used UPnP to set a different port. Now for some tests.

I started Halo 3 on both machines and hosted a custom game, inviting Piggle in. No messages appeared about being unable to host due to my NAT, a great start. I started the game and watched both screens as I ran around and destroyed things, it was identical in every way. Next I fired up messenger from my chatpad and had a small conversation with myself from Piggle’s account, everything was working fine. Dropping back into lobby I changed the room to the Theater to see if that would complain or flake out. Well it certainly complained, apparently Piggle’s connection was better than mine and she would have to be party leader to start the film clip! We’re on the same connection and same router! Giving Piggle Party Leader status allowed me to start the video, it worked like a charm. The final test was to play a game, I kicked Piggle from the party and headed into DLC Objective. Everything worked exactly as it should, I could hear everyone I was supposed to and finding a game didn’t take too long. The game was over so quickly, we won of course, that I started another, just to test of course… We lost and I decided that 4:30am really was a good time to go to bed after a long struggle with the 360′s NAT settings.

If you’re struggling to get two 360′s on the same network with Open NAT’s, it can be done so don’t give up, I hope that my experience with it can be of some help to you.

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Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic AKA the Halo 3 Assets Finder

Mar 24

Posted by gothi in games, Programming | No Comments

Halo 3 logoI’m a big fan of the film clip/screenshot feature of Halo 3 and check the Bungie Favourites every time I load up Halo 3. Recently they haven’t been updating this as much and this left me wandering the Halo 3 Files Forum in search of some decent clips to watch. Then it hit me, what if someone had made a video from a game I was in, how would I find it? Well Bungie’s site makes a lot of stats available but finding all the games with assets, even for just yourself, is a tiresome and manual process. I didn’t fancy looking back over the 1000 or so games I had played, checking each one for assets (screenshots and film clips created by players) so I created the Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic.

The Asset-O-Matic (development name: Halo 3 Assets Finder) actually stemmed from an earlier idea, I was going to log every game recorded by Bungie and make a database of all the games with assets, build a website around it and let people search on almost anything; date, player name, game type, map, length of match, number of clips/screenshots, well you get the idea. I did some quick maths, and it wasn’t good. I could do it slowly and not cause a Denial Of Service on Bungies site or I could do it faster and risk taking Bungies website offline. Doing it slow meant it would take days, even months to log every game and then the data would be immediately out of date. The faster option wasn’t much faster and risked getting me banned from Bungie.net and even Halo 3. Then I realised, most people will only be interested in clips/screenshots from games they were in. I spent the better half of a day re-coding my application and threading it so I could keep tabs on the results in real time. The results are what you see below, the Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic

The Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic

As you can see, I record a lot of information, all of this will be stored in a local database in the final version so you can update overnight and browse the results at your leisure. The current layout is for testing purposes, the final version will allow you to search the database, rate the results, look better with organised information and be easier to use.

A brief overview:

What does it do?
The Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic scans the game history of any Gamertag you specify looking for matches with Assets (screenshots/film clips).
How fast is it?
The development build took just over 50 minutes to scan my entire game history, that’s 1052 games at the time of writing.
50 minutes!? Can’t we speed that bad boy up a bit?
The program is currently single threaded, adding extra threads to prefetch the game data will speed things up a lot. My concern with this method is that if the program becomes popular it could cause a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) on Bungie’s site. I will look at adding an extra thread or two to the program to check the speed difference. Ideally I will be able to discuss with Bungie how the program affects their website and adjust it accordingly before public release.
When will you release this?
There is no current release date but I’m expecting it to be soon. The database code needs adding and then some tests on adding a few extra worker threads to speed things up. Keep checking back for a release date.

Over the course of testing this I found a horde of film clips that I enjoyed watching, knowing I was in there somewhere. You never know, you might find that you’re the unwitting star of someones video, just like I did….

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Utah Saints Something Good ’08

Feb 26

Posted by gothi in Uncategorized | No Comments

I’m lucky enough to have seen Utah Saints play live and was both excited and worried to see their seminal classic “Something Good” return in 2008. I needn’t have worried and the video is an excellent match to their triumphant return:

Burnout Paradise Tips

Feb 26

Posted by gothi in games | No Comments

Burnout Paradise boxartI’ve been working at getting all the street times nailed recently and found that you can make things much easier for yourself by following some simple rules. Some of these can also be applied to racing and the burning Routes although your mileage may vary:

  • Take it online! Find yourself repeatedly crashing during your run? Traffic is severly reduced with extra players on the map. Get yourself into an online game (the more the merrier) where people aren’t doing challenges or races. You’ll find the road a lot easier to navigate now.
  • Use Boost wisely. The temptation is to boost all the time but this can lead to a crash. Use boost when the road is clear, you’ll get a faster time by careful boosting than holding the button down and crashing. Lay off the boost when approaching taffic, corners and hills.
  • Use a fast stunt car. Speed cars may be faster but they are also twitchy and you can’t use boost as and when you need it. Stunt cars build a lot of boost from drifting, oncoming and jumps so you’re unlikely to run out on your run and if you do it doesn’t take much to get some back.
  • Don’t crash. Pretty obvious but remember, the clock still runs during the crash-cam scenes so more than 1 crash and you may as well restart. If you do crash before you make it half way down the road consider restarting, it’s likely you’ll crash again further up the road and won’t beat the time.
  • One way is faster than the other. A lot of roads have shortcuts and jumps you can take which make travelling in one direction along the road a lot faster than the other. If you’re having difficulty beating a road time try approaching it from the other direction, you might just find it a whole lot easier.

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Devil May Cry 4 loading screens, only 749 to go!

Feb 8

Posted by gothi in games | No Comments

Devil May Cry 4 BoxartIt’s been noted that the PS3 version of Devil May Cry 4 has a mandatory 22-25 minute install before you can play. This has the effect of making the load times 2-3 seconds faster than the Xbox 360 version. Just to put this into perspective, you have to see up to 750 load screens on the PS3 to break even for that install. Now I don’t know about you but I’d be more willing to play it direct from the disc (just like the Xbox 360 version) but with an optional install to the hard drive, should I feel the need for sleep and faster load times in the morning.

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Tactics117, stupidest Halo 3 player ever?

Feb 8

Posted by gothi in games, Rants | No Comments

Halo 3 logoI’ve just finished playing a ranked Big Team Battle on Halo 3 where I was team killed repeatedly by a player called Tactics117. After the match he sent me an abusive message indicating he’s racist, very confused about his sexuallity and he was very disapointed with my playing in that match. But why did this happen?

Up to the point where Tactics117 started team killing me I had amassed 0 kills. That’s right, nothing. Now this wasn’t because I’m rubbish at Halo as Tactics117 assumed but because I had spent almost the entire match driving other people around in a warthog. Whilst they were racking up the kills I was only getting medals for assisting. A quick look at the score boards medal section after the match would have redeemed me for my lack of kills but no, instead Tactics117 decided to throw a ranked match and start killing his own team because he thought I wasn’t playing well.

Here’s a lesson for all Halo 3 players, especially Tactics117, you don’t get many kills when driving the warthog around but you do help your team win. If you are unlucky enough to end up with this guy on your team, watch out, he’ll kill you whether you’re playing well or not based on something as misleading as your current kill count.

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Burnout Paradise? More like Burnout Hell

Feb 6

Posted by gothi in games, Rants | No Comments

Burnout Paradise boxartI’ve been been giving the newly released Burnout paradise some serious attention over the last week and with any new game I really want to love it, but like BDSM, one man’s Paradise is anothers Hell….

Criterion Games have taken the Burnout World and turned it into a free roaming sandbox game but since this is a driving game don’t expect any GTA style escapades. This new style in itself isn’t too bad but some seriously bad design choices have been implemented:

No retstarts.
Criterion boasted that this wouldn’t matter as there will always be other events near by. But it does matter Criterion. When doing a Burning Route, having to drive for 5 mins to get back to the start just because you crashed once is not fun. When you are trying to do the last few activities in the game to complete your licence, driving back for 5 minutes back to the race you just failed is not fun. Even Rockstar realised that the GTA series needed a quick way to get back to a mission you failed and introduced taxi cabs as restarts. Games are meant to be fun remember Criterion?
1 crash and you’re out!
During many of the later Burning Routes and races, once single crash is all it takes to be left so far behind that there is no point in continuing. This is not fun Criterion. I’ll give it another shot when I fail but when you punish me needlessly I start thinking about trading your game in for something fun.
You’ve just crashed, lets see that in slow mo and waste 5 seconds!
Like the boring relative who comes round to show you 500 holiday photo’s, Criterion decided that since they had spent so much time on the crumple/crash physics (instead of making the game fun it would seem) that they would show you it at every opportunity. You wish for an option to turn this off after 30 minutes of first play and what makes it worse, you can actually lose races due to this ‘feature’.
I need a navigator!
Practically any race is 10% driving, 90% pausing to look at the map! Let us set waypoints so we know when a turn is coming up and plan our own routes. This is not a fun way to race! If you try to use the mini-map you will end up crashing into any number of cars and walls and don’t forget, more than 1 crash and you may as well forget the later races. Turns come up so fast that most of the time you will not see them until you’re way past them and the turn indicator is useless and distracting when planning your own route.
Don’t look at a curb!
The game seems so desperate to show me it’s crash engine that on several occasions it has crashed me when I was nowhere near a curb, wall or car. I sat there in disbelief as my car crumpled on the edge of a tiny railing that I wasn’t near and wouldn’t expect to damage my car in the first place.
What do you mean you want to see the road ahead?
In what can only be thought of as some kind of punishment, the default camera angle is far too low to the ground. This may mean you get a better feeling of speed but it also means that the road ahead is often a mystery until you end up face first into a wall, car or speck of dirt that causes you to crash. heaven forbid you think to activate your Burnout along the road of random death. You can raise the camera angle but only by holding up on the right analog stick, without some sellotape this is an impossible task when racing! The only other view available is a first person one and the less said about that the better.

Now Burnout Paradise is fun at times, but there’s just too much wrong with it at a basic level. This is the sort of game that appeals to car fanatics, Burnout Brand Slaves and submissives who love being punished. A patch is forthcoming by the sounds of it, lets hope Criterion address some of the major problems with this game and give us the Paradise that it so wants to be.

As for me, I’ll keep plodding along with it, for all the stress it causes and poor design there’s a fun game in there fighting to get out. Online can be a lot of fun and there’s a definite feeling of satisfaction when you beat a friends time on a road. This is probably Burnout’s saving grace but it relegates what should have been a first class game to a nice, but sometimes uncomfortable, second class.

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What happened to 360gamesaves.com?

Jan 6

Posted by gothi in Uncategorized | No Comments

Whilst answering a query for someone I noticed that 360gamesaves.com was no longer up and running. I’ve done a bit of research but there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer as to what’s happened. If anyone has some actual concrete information as to why the site is no longer available, drop me a line.

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A new year

Jan 6

Posted by gothi in Uncategorized | No Comments

Firstly, anyone waiting for my Memor32 review will be pleased to see it’s now up at PS2 Save Tools (after 7 revisions) :)

December was a challenging month to say the least and resulted in me dropping off the internet for a short while to recouperate and concentrate on that pesky thing known as Real Life. Illness combined with technology problems (including a damaged laptop, a totally destroyed phone and net connectivity akin somewhat to that of some string and a couple bean cans) left me reeling slightly but I’m getting back on top of things at last :)
Apologies to anyone awaiting an email responce from myself, I have 2000+ emails to sort through and will be responding as soon as I can!

Here’s to 2008, a milestone year for both myself and my girlfriend and hopefully some milestones in the hacking community!

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