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And there goes 100 hours of my life!

EA is giving away free copies of C&C: Tiberian Sun w/Firestorm, C&C: Tiberian Dawn and C&C: Red Alert.

Download here!

http://www.commandandconquer.com/classic

http://www.mortalonline.com/content/open-beta

I have been trying to get in but it looks like the patcher is down. Game looks like the spiritual successor to Ultima Online. Hopefully I will get a chance to play some this week.

Update: After DAYS of downloading and re-downloading the client and patches, I have given up. I finally got it to patch to the correct version and what do I get….Invalid version, please re-install game client. I GIVE UP! I have played plenty of buggy game beta’s but this might be the worst.

If you have the time and energy, it looks like there is an interesting game once you get past the patcher but for me I am done!

On 1/2/2010 I purchased a copy of C&C: Red Alert 3 from Steam. For $10 I could not pass it up. Maybe I should have done a little more research…..

My main reason for purchasing it was for the Online Co-Op campaign.

The first thing I did after watching the intro (Which was awesome by the way) I attempted to get connected to a multiplayer game. Much to my surprise, I get an “Invalid CD-Key” error.

My first thoughts are that I need to enter a CD-Key somewhere and I managed to skip that step. After 20 minutes of searching online, emails and in the game, I realized that the CD-Key is only found by checking your registry.

I checked the support forums on Steam and found that I am not the only one that had an issue and it looks like this has popped up before. Based on what I found online, I needed to contact Steam support. Since I had never done this, I had to setup ANOTHER account with Valve to submit a support ticket. One of the questions that the support ticket asks for is the CD-Key (Which I do not have unless I want to dig through my registry).

I am currently running Windows 7 64-bit which made a couple of the guides I found online incorrect. So after some searching, I found my CD-Key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Electronic Arts\Electronic Arts\Red Alert 3\ergc

I am now ready to finally submit a support ticket. I copy and paste the CD-Key into the field and upon submitting the form I get “Invalid CD-Key”!!!! This is from Steam….(Or at least the support system) that I get this message. At this point I am just short of furious. I find it amazing that a game I bought a couple hours ago has an “Invalid CD-Key”! I decide to leave that field blank and then add the CD-Key to the message of the body.

So now begins my journey to find the one CD-Key to rule them all!

Stay tuned for updates as I traverse the realm of Customer Support and Digital Distribution. May god have mercy on my soul!

Update #1: Still no word from Steam support so I decided to do more digging. I found a link to an EA forum that states to reach out to Customer Service. http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/29390.page

I am waiting for their live chat customer service to answer. Will update shortly.

Update #2: Just got off the live chat and they are stating that I need to uninstall and reinstall. I figure…what the hell….might as well give it a shot.

Update #3: After some investigating, I found that the retail version has a 20 character key. I found a 32 character key. Maybe this is the problem? Not the problem.

Update #4: I uninstalled and reinstalled the game…..no dice. Surfing forums looking for a possible fix. Looks like I will have to wait until the experts get in tomorrow.

Update #5: I was looking at the wrong CD-Key. It is a 20 digit code not a 32 digit code. The 32 Digit code is the product id. Still no update from Steam, EA, or Valve.

Update #6: I sent a PM to EA_Panoptico on their support forums to see if I can get some more info…..I will keep everyone updated.

Final Update: After 48 hours of waiting, the issue was finally corrected. It looks like it was an issue between the game and the Gamespy servers.

Just got my invite….now what do I do? I plan on playing around more tonight.I currently have 5 invites that I will give out. The first 5 people who are registered users on this site who post in the comments will get an invite nomination. (It says that it takes some time for it to be sent so be patient)

Since programming is a hobby, I figured I would try something new……a framework. I decided to use a framework for 2 reasons. The first was to hopefully streamline development. I seem to sometimes get caught up on some of the back-end systems and the project never proceeds. By using a Framework, I hoped to remove some of drudgery of coding. (Which did and did not happen.) My second goal was to find a framework that would be easily scalable to add more complexity as I built the system.

I started by doing a ton of research. After reviewing a ton of Frameworks and their sample code, I narrowed it down to 3. CakePHP, Codeigniter, and Zend Framework.

Zend was my first choice. I will admit that it is probably the most impressive from a feature set but I found it to be confusing. I also think that it is more for the professional programmers and not us weekend warriors. If I was going to start a project for work, Zend would probably be my first choice to give another shot.

CakePhp was up next. CakePhp had some awesome tools to help put together a skeleton of the site. My biggest issue with CakePhp was its reliance on those tools. Most of the tutorials we based around using the tools to “auto-build” portions of the program. While this was nice, I found myself fighting with those tools too much and spending too much time trying to learn the tools.

Codeigniter was one of the first that I looked at but I ended up coming back in the end. Codeigniter and CakePhp both use the MVC (Model – View – Controller) philosophy. CakePhp holds you to those rules where Codeigniter allows you to deviate if need be. Codeigniter also was the easiest to get a basic site up and running. It was as simple as download, copy files to your web directory and then edit a couple config files. Within a couple minutes I had a site with user controls such as login, register, profiles and such. (I downloaded DX_Auth library which added all of that functionality)

Now the hard part has been learning the MVC philosophy and the details of the framework. After about a week of trying, I feel pretty good about my choice. I still occasionally run into issues but Codeigniter has one of the best User Guides I have ever seen. The level of detail and ease of use is top notch. As someone learning from scratch, this is a huge resource.

My next post…..coming up with the game idea.

As a long time pen-and-paper role player and an avid video game player, I have always wanted to develop my own game. Back in the early 90′s, a couple of friends and I developed a Mech combat game that was our first attempt to create a system from scratch. With a blank notebook(We used paper back then), some colored pens, a ton of dice and some Lego’s we created an Anime based Mech combat game. It was broken in so many ways that we never really played it more than a couple times. But it got the juices flowing.

At some point in High School, we started creating text based adventures in VB. We created pretty complex combat systems and inventory systems. The only problem was that it was only fun for the small group of us that worked on it. (We did get an A though)

Fast forward a couple years and another game system. I had started learning Flash and realized I could create all types of graphical games. That is when I realized I am a systems guy and not a “graphic” guy. I ended up spending so much time trying to create basic graphics that my games rarely went anywhere.

That brings me to today. I consider myself pretty close to an expert with PHP. Over the last 7 years or so I have been working with PHP through work and in my free time. (Full Disclosure: I am not a programmer by trade….I am in Transportation. Programming is a hobby. A useful hobby but a hobby) On and off for the last couple years I have been toying with the notion of creating a web based game. Shockingly, Facebook is what inspired me to do it. I saw all of the basic games like Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, and Ninja Wars…..scratch that. Ninja Wars could be awesome though. That is when I realized even a basic game with limited graphics could be fun.

So that brings me to starting my project. I plan on keeping a record of the good and bad of creating a game while creating it. I currently have the game up (A couple people have been playing a VERY basic version of it). I hope to have frequent updates regarding the development.

I was chosen to host a Windows 7 Release party!

I am thinking about streaming stuff on this site. What do you think? Any suggestions?

I also plan on giving away some of the Swag I get if anyone is interested. Maybe I could come up with a simple contest…..any suggestions?

I returned recently to the MMORPG fold by playing Warhammer Online. In pretty much every MMORPG that I have played (Too many to count), I normally play a support class. I decided on my return to WAR to play something I had never tried before…..a Healer. (A Zealot to be exact).

My reason for this stemmed from my first month playing WAR when the game released. I played as an engineer and saw the complete lack of healers as a major problem. I also figured playing a healer would be a low stress way to blow off some steam after a hard day at the office. Boy was I wrong……..the amount of abuse healers take from the other players is amazing!

So that got me to thinking, maybe I can help shed some light on the whole situation from an unbiased view. So here are 5 reasons your are/aren’t being healed.

1) My first priority is keeping myself alive

Surprisingly a dead healer really will not help the group. So if I am being assaulted by assassins, thieves, and mages….I AM GOING TO HEAL MYSELF! If you help me remove the threat to me, I will be more than happy to heal or rez you.

2) My second priority is to my party

A good party has a mix of talents. My job as a healer is to insure those guys stay alive. If you are not part of my group, I might not even notice that you are taking damage let alone die. Playing a healer is like playing Wack-A-Mole, you smack….er heal the characters when you see the life bar move. The hard part is juggling multiple characters while trying to keep an eye out for danger. Add into this more players and the job gets even harder.

3) Don’t go running off and get mad when you die

Nothing is more frustrating than seeing (or not seeing) your wall of tanks disperse around corners. Unless you have a heal ability that does not require line-of-sight, you can not heal. Stick together….running off just makes you an easy target and I am not running off to find and rez you….sorry. It is not worth a run back from thewar camp/city/graveyard for me.

4) Don’t get mad when you die and blame the healer 

I know it is frustrating when a healer “misses” and you die. The first response I got when a party member dies is “%*)#@$() HEALERS! WTF! WHY ARE YOU NOT HEALING!”. First….we are healing….just maybe not you. Second…..we are probably healing someone more important to our survival. Third….you might want to take responsibility for your own actions. If I had a dollar for every time I would see an armored up tank go running head-long into a massive group of enemies and then get upset that he dies in about 1.5 seconds….I would have at least $15 dollars. Please understand that we do our best to help but we are not miracle makers.

5) Sometimes we want to do something different

One of the reasons I chose a Zealot in WAR was that it actually could do a little ranged damage. If everyone in my group is healed up, I like to contribute a bit of damage to the fight. What is frustrating is when I hear (more like read) angry players telling me to quit attacking and start healing. I know that is my JOB but the last time I checked…this is a GAME! If I wanted to sit around and see how fast I can push buttons over and over again, I would take a typing test.

Hopefully this will help shed some light on the Healer class and why we do what we do.

You can now follow us on Twitter @onebuttoncont.

Thanks!

To make a long story short… Mythic is having some ISP problems at the moment and I am unable to log into Warhammer Online. I am not the only one, either. There is an official thread going on over at the warhammer forums, which is currently being spammed by fellow players who are also going through withdrawals.

There are two issues people are running into at the moment, and stop re-booting your PC and deleting your warpatch.bin file over and over again right now, because it’s not your fault. James, a mythic forum admin, tells me that the problem is their ISP, Verizon’s fault. If there is truth in that statement is up to you, but here are the errors you are probably typing into google as furiously as you can:

“The patch client was unable to update the file [C:\Program Files(x86)\Electronic Arts\Warhammer Online - Age Of Reconing\warpatch.bin] (0 total errors encountered). Please ensure the game is not already running and there is free space availble on the disk.”

or a variation of that error containing:

“cant find patcher.prod.sig at patch server (0 total errors encountered).”

Assuming this is not being caused by a large group of Aion Fanboys targeting a DdoS attack on Mythic’s servers, this should all be cleared up in a few hours (hopefully). Unfortunately it will also probably involve a server rollback, so if you were gaining massive renown at the exact moment the servers went down (like me), you will have to do whatever you were doing all over again.

It appears to me, that a lot of new players are freaking out about this hiccup. As a seasoned MMO player myself, I am used to things like this happening randomly and often. I sympathize, though. It’s my day off too, and I was looking forward to some RvR… Oh well, I am off to read some Warhammer novels while I wait for the problem to resolve itself.