Weekend Randomness

Its been a busy week. -puts on Godzilla movie- Woo, Edge of Tomorrow trailer. I really want to see that movie! Into The Storm, what happens when you give mother nature an attitude, it's on dvd, gotta get it! Looks cool despite the 6.3 it got. Huh. Next, a new joker animated movie. Ahh there's batman, was wondering when he would show up. Also on dvd already. Hrm. Next, ahh the original batman tv series, meh. Did you know Heath Ledger ad-libed the clapping scene in the jail in the second batman movie?

Miss him.

Anyways, in my left hand I have my iphone 6+ and in my right hand, my mouse? Heh, I'm rambling.

So yea, my i6+ is, well for starters its huge. Its slightly bigger than samsung's s5 and its got twice the battery life of the 5s. The sensor touch for unlocking/using app store is alot more reliable than I was expecting though I used the wrong thumb for it, you shouldn't use the thumb on the hand that pulls the phone from the pocket. 9 times out of 10 the first thing you do once you pull from pocket is use your open hand to interface with the phone so use that thumb. I used the same thumb I pull from heh. Ahh well, Can fix it easily when I get around to it. I think my biggest challenge will be getting used to the relocated power button. I definitely absolutely like it better in its new position, I'm just not used to it being there.

-Godzilla finally starts-

I love the real estate of the screen, sooo nice and comfortable surfing the web. Fits in my pocket just damn fine despite what some reviews have mentioned, they must wear tight jeans. It does stick out of shirt pockets so I don't recommend putting it there unless you want to pretend your james bond with the camera on and record folks talking to you.

The auto scaling of older iphone games works perfectly, haven't really noticed any stretching in my 3d games and 2d games have been reported and I can confirm have no issues with scaling, you just see more of the 2d environment. I have afew games that don't seem to like the phone though, can't seem to get real racing 3 to run on it.

-cheers for Walter white in Godzilla movie!-

I've moved my freemium games to the phone, more convenient having them in my pocket on the fly. Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Plunder Pirates, Spider-Man Unlimited. I also put Dragon Quest on it and as I beat the series each next one will go there too. Square Enix choose to use a really unique interface and it works amazingly well on phones because its designed to be completely controlled with one thumb. Of course, this interface doesn't work quite so well on ipads heh. So the phone gets the DQ series. It'll also get Real Racing 3 when the game starts working.

The wifey is the proud owner of a 4.7 inch iphone 6. She loves it, its really amazing how much larger the difference is between the 6's and the 5s and 6. My phone simply dwarfs hers! I've noted the standard 6 does not have landscape rotation like the 6+. Aside from that and a better camera, there's really no difference between these two phones and both rock!

-sniffles when Walters wife dies-

iOS 8 is equally amazing. Not one single complaint from my regular uses of the OS. Better messenger, better phone app, better multi tasking screens. I've heard complaints about the new sorting mechanics for photos, doesn't really bother me either way. I really like the changes to the app store, the bundling system is amazingly useful. Everyone who is an rpg fan should go get the squareenix final fantasy bundle for 30 ish bucks. 7 games worth 70ish normally. And my wife is obsessing over Big Fish's hidden object/adventure game bundles. I also like that if you own a part of the bundle, you can complete the bundle's collection at a partial price. And without a doubt my favorite new feature? Developers can add game play trailers in the app description. If they do, its always the first in the photo slide. Win!

I do wish they would give more details to the gamecenter confirmation though. Does the game use gamecenter achievements and leader boards, or just one of the two, or just the friends list, or what? Would save me alot of money on questionable purchases, thats for sure.

Oh, brb. Energy bar is fully charged on spider man unlimited :)

-sulks when Walter dies in Godzilla-

Back. Regarding Unlimited, damn I'm enjoying this little free-to-play title! There is just so damned much to keep one occupied in this game. I log in, check for the daily goals. Always do this, two always award ingame currency and the third awards iap. From there I check my leader board on the endless mode, this leader board resets daily and it has a whole slew of rewards based on your rank. Everyone gets something, so its always a win. I've finished the main story of the comic issues available, which is REALLY useful for chasing leader boards because each issue completed unlocks an extra spider man slot when playing endless and events. You always want the first card to have the card specific bonus you happen to want because you only get the bonus of the card active. Note, if you wipe out on a run and use iap to continue the run, each time you do you rotate to another one of your cards. The real benefit to multiple cards on your run though is that the multiplier each card grants stacks. So, if you go in to a run with 3 cards each having a 5.0x multiplier, you will receive a 15.0 multiplier boost to your final score that's applied to the leader boards. I REALLY like this because it means that the leader boards aren't strictly limited who who's the best at endless runners, its also based on who has been playing the longest (or spent enough real money which i don't mind because i will play long enough to equal them without spending 1/10th what it would cost to get to the end right now).

Lastly there are the events. Events reward in game, iap, normal card pulls, event quality card pulls, top end card pulls and card pulls directly. There are two things to an event, one is solo and all you, the other is leader board. The solo side will want you to accomplish something. Collect x mount of vials. Travel x amount of distance. Things like that. And there are always 4 or 5 progress points on the way to the overall goal. Each progress point awards various things listed above and each progress point awards steadily better than the one before it. The other half is the leader board and it works like the daily board, different rewards based on how you score.

So yea, this game rocks, it uses gameloft's cloud so you can cross play between devices. Just realized most of whats above I already mentioned a few days ago but there's more clarification so thats that, good game, grab it.

On to other games, I'm still playing plunder pirates. Its literally clash of clans with a exploration reward system and it makes full use of iOS 8's metal graphics boost system thingie. The ai is unusually stupid, I'm really hoping as I unlock additional unit types some of them will actually have priority targeting. In all these games though, I'll always find it incredibly stupid that my units will continue to shoot at a wall or resource building when there's a turret two inches further past the resource building chewing them up. Epic stupid. Ahh well, at least I have control of my units in boom beach thanks to flares that they will follow.

Real Racing 3 got an update this week, two new Lamborghini's, a new race series, a complete overhaul to the career mode interface and a revamped tutorial system. Regarding the cars, one is available now. The cuntach for 200ish iap gold. The other is the muria(sp?), not currently available and will be limited edition meaning after awhile she will vanish and if you didn't get her your sol. Regarding the overhaul to career mode interface, I like it better than its previous design, doesn't lag as much when surfing the series. I'm told the previous events we have had will permanently be added to the 'chapters' of career mode that they apply to. Example, when you get to the point where endurance mode unlocks, so will the event that preceded it. Complete the event first, get the 919 free. Nice! The first race series now has a full blown tutorial built in that plays out just like an event. Introduces you to all the race types. Then half way through that chapter of career mode is a second event that goes advanced on the race types, starts turning off features like acceleration and traction to give you a feel. Lastly, the new race series is in the final chapter, classics, has both new Lamborghini's, a old model Porsche and the Shelby Cobra classic. God I love that cobra, any chance to drive it in a series is always a treat. Its one of very few cars I drive in first person mode.

-watches Godzilla- God, who in the military was stupid enough to put analog on a nuke but then put the nuke on a electrically powered ship. Pretty stupid, now they have a armed nuke in the middle of the bay with an emp dead ship heh.

Clash of Clans got an update, new unit, several new units can reach new levels, other tweaks. The new unit is an air unit tank. Think golem but with wings heh. He is attracted to air defenses and makes a fantastic incoming dps absorber while your more fragile air units follow in behind. When he's killed, like the golem on the ground he breaks down in to several smaller units who continue to fight. The archer and the barbarian can apparently reach a new level. You can now pay for wall upgrades with purple elixir or gold. All round a good update, I've gone active again. Progressed from 1100 trophy count to 1700+ in the last three days, our clan is in a weekend war right now but I'm just not that good at the combat so I consider myself clean up detail. Clan rules say for the first 12hrs of a war anyone active call their marks on our forum and if you call a mark it needs to be within 5 levels + or - of your rank in the clan. After the 12hrs, attack anyone you want and mop up the unmarked or incompletely killed targets. I prefer clean up detail so that's what I'm waiting for. We're on a winning streak of late thanks to these rules so its all good!

Still playing space engineers! This week's content update introduced a new small ship cockpit, the ability to script c+ style for the game altering all sorts of mechanics, graphics fixes, all kinds of fun. The main base of mine continues to grow, all glass roof and whatnot for the main building. Working on a mk10 large scale mining ship. The new skybox moved the sun again, I'm going to move the solar panels one more time, and this time their going on a rotating piston so I can control the direction they face heh.

Godzilla just ended, fantastic movie. Freaking love everything about it. Going to wrap up this weekend randomness, will probably toss up some space engineer screenshots later on, maybe tomorrow. dunno. I'm in the mode for more giant on giant movies so I'm going to go find my copy of Pacific Rim and enjoy space engineers for abit.

o7

Randomness, Progress Reports

I've been playing Spider-Man Unlimited steadily, probably a dozen or so times a day since if living by the energy bar it recharges every 50 minutes. Getting better steadily and felt really epic when I got a 100k score. Then some guy on toucharcade bragged about his 1.5billion score. Suddenly I don't feel quite so epic. Anywho, both old events ended, new one started. Not quite as good a rewards as the first 47hr event but still decent. Making progress on issue two, about half way done with it. I decided I'm not going to get the exp booster for 75 iap currency, these cards level just fine as it is on their own especially since I unlocked the second character slot. I'm now spending iap on harder to snag cards. Was going to focus on the 25 iap currency card draw's but their damn hard to upgrade because upgrading requires another exact matching card type/rarity to upgrade. Probably going to just focus on 5 iap currency rare card building out my entire deck instead. And all my ingame currency is being funneled in to purchasing additional hero slots atm.

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Dragon Quest 1. Level 9 and moving quickly. I bought the best of the best from the town just east of the starting castle and immediately went up to the north west corner of the map where another town resides. Started farming gold across the bridge just south of that town until I had the best weapon and armor from that town. From there I went to the cave south of that bridge, got lost in it for about 2 hours because this is a port of the 3ds which was a remake of the original and the dungeons are all redesigned. But I spent so much time down there that I went from lvl6 to lvl9 and walked out of there with 1600 gold. Was intending to spend 800 of it on the best shield available from the nw town but I actually found that exact shield in a chest in this cave so win! I'm either heading south to poke that thing guarding edrick's armor in the sw ruined town, or im heading north east of the starting castle. There is a... well it was a cave with some hermit living it in the original nes game, no telling what it is now. There's also two bridges to cross and a very very wealthy town way up in the ne corner that sells keys! Keys are used to open doors (obviously) and their either very rarely found off mobs/in chests, or from this town for sale.

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Space Engineers update. I've begun working on 2.0, the bigger meanier more useful successor to 1.0 (still haven't named 1.0 so can't very well name 2.0 duh). I built a platform just a bit below and further away from 1.0 on which to work on 2.0. Little sister comes along last night and decides that the long arm that connects these platforms to the main base needed a piston designed elevator. Prett much you place pistons next to one another each afew squares above the previous. You ride on the piston's head, then step on to the next piston and continue the trip, and so on and so on. 9 Pistons I believe make the total elevator. Well her doing this inspired me, I built a full wall/window around the elevator so it looked quality. Problem is, that quality elevator design made the platform 1.0 was parked against look like crap. Now that needed to change.

Little sister realized she had just made a monster and snuck away at first opportunity while I rebuilt the entire platform, added features that make docking 1.0 much easier after flying her around, then I went overboard and well... heh.

The photos are in no particular order but you can see the elevator she built, the condition of the platform too. I moved the conveyor under neath it, then redesigned the entire platform. I windowed it up and even put a overhang window over the neck of 1.0 when docked. Looks really cool to be honest and little sister has taken to parking her frigates on top the window ceiling of the platform and just hanging out inside the waiting area.

We used some piston trickery to build a boarding ramp for the ship. Button press on the platform or inside the ship retracts/extends the platform and you just walk on/off. Very cool. Also button on/off setup the connector that you can see in some photos. These things magnetically hold on to one another and even after disconnecting if you pull away the magnetic pull is still there. Makes it really difficult for all ship sizes to get away. Work around? Turn off the connector itself. Also ran a arm to the nose of 1.0 and installed a camera on 1.0's nose itself. Precision parking baby, Like A Glove! (ace ventura voice).

In those photos you can also see the work I'm doing on 2.0. She is flat out bigger in all aspects of the word. Installed two artillery turrets tonight on pistons that retract the weapons in to the head when not in use. going to work on some sort of door system to cover them when not in use here soon. Funny thing though, when I powered up the first gun, the conveyor system wasnt active yet but the gun really didn't like my ore detector sattelite that I had placed over little brothers asteroid off in the distance in the last photo. Its targeting beam was fixed on the satellite hard core. Well I shrugged, continued working, installed the conveyor system, etc. Running low on suit energy I hopped in to a chair on the platform (i have a chair on all platforms of my base, alot more convienent than running to the medical bay every time suit energy runs low, sitting in any chair on a powered base/ship recharges your suit) when I noticed way off in the distance that the satellite was in a dead spin. 2.0's weapons had pulled ammo from the base supply via the conveyor system the second I had connected it and one shot the satellite!

Amazing range on these guns.

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I now own every car in real racing 3 and have gold trophied every race in the game. Right now I'm just popping in and updating my time trial event scores, I run the le mans 24 race with my toyota hybrid super car for 700k or so ingame currency every day or so if I feel in the mood. Spending that on upgrading what ever cars are in the weekly time trial event so I can get the best scores possible for me. Which means I'm always rank b. Rank a? Probably need to practice and take off the training wheels. I have always had auto accelerate on, braking assist to medium. Very nice comfortable way to play, especially on portable but the braking assist in particular baby's the track somewhat, over brakes most turns. With it turned off I could in theory wait longer before braking in to turns which would improve my times. If I turned off auto accelerate I could even coast through lesser corners, resulting in even better time due to no brake use and longer lasting car wear. Of course, if I turn those settings off then I need to learn how every single car engages every single curve of every track... ugh. I wish this game had those damn guide lines that change from green to red and whatnot.

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And there it is, the games currently harassing my free time :)

o7