Tag Archives: gaming

It’s been a good year for Star Wars gaming

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It’s been such a good year for Star Wars gaming, and it has made my life much, much more interesting.

I should start from scratch.

Back in 2022, after watching the first season of Andor, I realized that I had the need to enjoy more Star Wars content. Alas, there were no new shows or movies coming up. I could (and of course I do) watch all existing 7 movies (Original, Prequels and Rogue One; and not Disney’s fan fiction), all of The Clone Wars episodes and some of the books (which frankly speaking I am very much lacking behind).

But wanted a different medium…

The search for a different medium started a rabbit hole which brought me back to gaming.

First, I found the most bestest MMORPG ever, Star Wars: The Old Republic. SWTOR for short. But oh no, it works only on Windows? Fear not! I installed Linux on a MacBook Pro 2015 and thanks to Steam’s Proton I was able to install and run the game.

The obsession of playing that game with better graphics, and everywhere, made me get a Steam Deck OLED, which is probably one of the best investments in my life.

And I ended up building a gaming PC (before the AI RAM crisis) in order to play more games.

I got invested into SWTOR so much that I deeply participated in the Mac beta Launcher and created, joined and befriended guilds.

This year, not so long ago, another Star Wars game has been launched: Star Wars Zero Company, or ZCOM for short. Yes, it’s basically an X-Com style game with a breath of Star Wars in it. I have not finished the campaign yet, but planning to do that by end of this year.

Last month also saw the launch of Star Wars Galactic Racer, a racing game with awesome Star Wars stories, a multiplayer (alas not split-screen) and some of the best (and optimized) graphics I’ve ever seen in a racing game.

But we’re not done yet! This year Broadsword announced that they are planning the release of the next expansion, and sometime this (or next) week, they are releasing a test client for DirectX 12.

And don’t get me started on the awesome community! It was just 6 months ago when we had the Battlefront II resurgence, with tens of thousands of players joining in!

In short, as a gamer and as a life-long Star Wars fan, it’s been an amazing year and I’m looking forward to 2027 to see what the community and the gaming industry is going to surprise us with.

The only thing I’m sad about is still the game development economics: I cannot believe that even when a successful game is released with large number of players, people get fired. Every publisher and studio is expecting their game to be as massive as WoW, to make as much money as Destiny, or to be as complex as… oh shit I ran out of games that I care about. But having 1 million copies sold is an amazing number, yet, somehow, the economics don’t work.

Anyways, I need to finish my work so I can play some SWTOR this weekend.

That’s all folks…

(Written on a BlackBerry Classic)

Antranig Vartanian

May 15, 2023

I like Windows because it’s the best for gaming!

Meanwhile on Windows: The simplest game that has been around for 30 years, Solitaire, has ads in it. You have to pay $2/month or $15/year to remove ads.

The design is ugly, it’s so ugly that the Windows XP version easily beats it and it takes at least 10 seconds to load the game, which used to take 1 second on Windows XP.

I’ve stopped using Windows 12 years ago, I’m not sure why everyone else hasn’t.

If I didn’t need to test network protocols every once in a while, I would be happier, because booting Windows feels like a pain already…

Apple Arcade’s TMNT Splintered Fate talking Open-Source and InfoSec

Ever since my Sony PS4 Pro’s HDD broke down last year I’ve been using my iPad as my main gaming device. There are some awesome games such as Moonshot, Dead Cells+ and my personal favorite, LEGO® Star Wars™: Castaways.

A day (or two, I’m not sure) ago, Viacom International Inc. and Paramount Global in collaboration with Nickelodeon released TMNT Splintered Fate. I’ve been playing the game for couple of hours now and I like it very much.

But this is not a game review, as I’m not a reviewer.

I’m not sure if people read/listen to game dialogs these days, but I do.

I just encountered DONATELLO, METALHEAD and APRIL talking about software, open-source and hacking.

Unfortunately, as I was not aware about the conversation, I had to restart the game from scratch twice so I record the the dialog.

Here’s a GIF and the dialog itself 🙂 I hope you appreciate it as much as I did.

Tmnt landscape

DONATELLO: Metalhead, can you give me an update on the microchip I gave you to analyze before?
METALHEAD: Affirmative. Analysis complete. Top-level configuration consists of standard StockGen operational code.
METALHEAD: Command controls for MOUSERs, etcetera.
DONATELLO: Open source?
METALHEAD: Both open source and proprietary, most of which we have already accessed in the past. However… the drive also contains inert sub-configurations, protected by military-grade encryption.
APRIL: What do you mean, ‘inert?’
METALHEAD: Hidden ‘ghost code’ that I posit contain command executables serving an unknown purpose.
DONATELLO: Hm. Kinda like the computer version of a sleeper agent.
METALHEAD: Affirmative.
APRIL: But why would Stockman hide ghost code inside his own code? It’s like he’s hacking himself.
DONATELLO: Yeah… it is strange. But we’ve gotta find out what’s in that hidden code before we can jump to any conclusions.
DONATELLO: Metalhead, do what you can to break through that encryption.
METALHEAD: Command acknowledged.
APRIL: Correct me if I’m wrong, Metalhead, but with this new info we should be able to… shall we say… borrow some StockGen tech to occasionally support you guys from afar?
METALHEAD: If you are equating ‘borrow’ with ‘hack into and control,’ that is affirmative, April O’Neil.
DONATELLO: Well! That’s exciting…
APRIL: Right? So, keep an eye open for some friendly support drops while you’re out there. We’ll have to keep it low key for now. Don’t want to set off any unnecessary alarms with the powers that be.

That’s all folks…