Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

SWTOR: Tips & Tricks Part II

By

On January 9, 2012

In Gaming, MMORPG, SWTOR

I have put together another list of tips to share with everyone that is playing Star Wars The Old Republic. If you have made it all the way to 50 by now then these tips will probably be of no use to you. However, if you are just starting out, you might find these tips useful too.

  • Show Me The Credits! – Training and Crafting Missions get expensive. You will be forking over 3-3.5k per ability by the time you get into the early 20s. Also, speeder training will cost you 40 Gs at 25 (and a speeder bike will cost you an additional 8k). So make credits fast!
  • Focus But Don’t Hurry – When you are questing focus on completing your class quests. You unlock ships and companions as you progress through your story. However, don’t skip the other quests; the story and rewards are worth the time.
  • Make Them Happy – Your companion will complete crafting and mission quests faster the more you build up affection. I know its difficult to resist punishing Vette, but there is a greater output to getting her to like you sooner.
  • You Don’t Have to Tank/Heal – Regardless of which advanced class you roll, you can always DPS. All the advanced classes have a DPS tree; how you spend your talent points ultimately determines your role.
  • Crafting Conundrum – Sometimes its terribly difficult to pick the right profession. The Codex is your friend. Visit all the profession trainers to gather all the codex entries and use the information to help you decide.

That is all I have to share. I don’t think I am going to share many more tips. I think its important that you find some things out for yourself. I will be doing a post soon where I break down all the classes, which I hope people find useful as well. Enjoy Star Wars The Old Republic!

SWTOR: Vette Doesn’t Seem To Mind

By

On January 5, 2012

In Gaming, SWTOR

People are so inane it’s infuriating! The recent SWTOR rancor (see what I did there) floating around the Internet is that people are uptight because the Sith Warrior class has the option to “abuse” their companion.

Wait!! It’s not cool to be sadistic??!! Why am I just now finding this out??

Yes, when you first get Vette she is wearing a shock collar. You have the option, occasionally, to shock her for being insubordinate. There is a means to an end for it, she will eventually turn evil (her story is that she’s essentially a captive republic smuggler). You do have the option to remove her collar, which is actually the option I chose. In fact, here is a tip for you, the sooner you build affection with your companion, the quicker they will complete crafting quests and tasks.

I just don’t understand why people get so upset over pixels on a screen. I’m not going to buy into the argument that it promotes domestic abuse and violence. No it doesn’t! That’s asinine! Wouldn’t you rather the player “abuse” a video game character then a real person? It’s up to the parents to teach their children the difference between pixels and people.

I’m sure this is all happening because SWTOR is the new kid on the block and it’s rivals are just looking for fodder. This will all blow over in a week. I’m just tired of people blaming video games for bad parenting or a bad moral compass. Here is my advice for all these antagonists, life is a lot easier to endure when you buy the panties that don’t bunch up!

Cheers!

For Newbie iOS Developers

By

On January 5, 2012

In Apple, Programming, Technology

After talking to a good friend of mine who had several questions for me on how one would get started developing iOS apps, I thought my advice was worth putting into a post. After all, I’m still a bit of a newbie iOS developer myself. So I thought I would share my experiences for other aspiring developers while all of the steps are still fresh in my mind.

The IDE

There are going to be some costs up front, especially if you don’t own a Mac. The IDE for developing iOS applications is Xcode and it can only run on a Mac. There are some projects out there that have tried to create a windows IDE but I haven’t seen anything that was successful and wasn’t a painful process to setup. You can try running a Virtual Machine and install OS X but you might run into some hardware complications. Honestly, if you are serious about developing iOS apps, go out and buy a Mac.

iOS Developer Program

Once you have a Mac to use for development the next thing you want to get is Xcode. You can download Xcode from the Mac app store and you can either pay $4.99 or you can sign up for the iOS Developer Program and download it for free. The iOS Developer Program is an annual subscription of $99 a year. Obviously you get more amenities other than Xcode for free. If you plan on distributing your app via the app store and/or you want to deploy an app to any iOS device (including your own) you will need to sign up for this. Xcode does come with an emulator so if you want to hold off until you are more comfortable, that’s what I would recommend, but bear in mind the emulator cannot test any email or Internet/Wi-Fi functionality.

If you want to develop apps for the Mac or Safari, they each have their own developer programs and will cost you another $99 a year for each.

Recommended Readings

I know that the Internet is an abyss of developer forums, tutorials and blogs which may, or may not have sufficient information to get you started developing iOS apps. I initially started out by searching for iOS tutorials and most of the advice people had was to go out and buy a book, so I bought two. Here are the two books I bought, which I highly recommend:

Subscribing to the iOS Developer Program also gives you access to developer resources such as videos, libraries and forums. You can also get code level assistance from Apple engineers (apple developer link).

The App Store

I thought I would finish with some things to keep in mind when you go to post your app to the app store. When you submit your app it first has to be reviewed and this process can take up to seven days, depending on the complexity of the app. You are responsible for setting the price of the app; you will receive 70% of the sales revenue, Apple will take 30%. There are no additional fees for posting free apps, credit cards, hosting or marketing.

That’s all I have for now, I hope you found this useful. If more tips come to mind, I will do a part two or something. Good luck!

Cheers!

A Dichotomy of Degrees

By

On January 4, 2012

In Programming, Technology

Most of the time I blog about gaming with the occasional current event or gadget thrown in. As someone who has been in the software development industry for about 10 years now, I thought perhaps I should start finding some career related topics to blog about. I’m not some high profile industry pundit nor do I work for any major computer or software giants, however I do feel like I offer a unique perspective on the industry.

If you know me personally, or have read the About page, you already know that I was a dual major at Purdue. I not only got my bachelors in software development, but I also earned a bachelors in organizational leadership (which is essentially a degree in HR). I feel like my degrees are an interesting dichotomy, a left brain degree and a right brain degree, but I feel that having both of them has served me very well so far in my career.

The days of stowing programmers in dark closets are ending. The introduction, and growing implementation, of agile development has many programmers having to be more interactive with other departments within a company. Communication is paramount now more than ever which is why I feel like my organizational education has not only helped me integrate into collaborative groups but has also helped others (the tech savvy and the non-tech savvy).

I think having the two degrees has also given me the unique ability to view an organization not only from the technical perspective but also from a non-technical perspective. I know many programmers, and other tech savvy people, may not like to admit it, but we can be a little obtuse sometimes. Management’s decisions to do, or not do, something may seem infuriatingly illogical on the surface, but there is always other factors that managers/directors/presidents also have to consider. There might be additional costs, additional resources, budgetary constraints, or even political reasons behind the decision.

I’ve already had a few times in my career where I felt strongly against a decision but I understood the reason for the decision. So, instead of protesting, I tried to help the others understand the reasons and help them find a way to cooperate. I know it’s tough to be a peon, especially in larger organizations, but learning to cooperate and collaborate will go a lot farther than refusing to adapt and change.

So that’s my spiel. I think if I keep going I’m just going to sound like I’m repeating myself. I hope that I have provided sufficient evidence that I’m competent enough to discuss industry topics. I do welcome and appreciate your feedback and topic suggestions either in the comments of this post or on Google+ and Facebook where I’m sure I have posted the link here. Thanks.

Cheers!

What Happened to “Frag”?

By

On January 3, 2012

In Gaming, General Cogitation

I’m an old school gamer. I started on Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog. I graduated from console gaming to PC gaming when I went to college and I began with first person shooters like Half-Life and, of course, the infamous Quake. Quake was the game everyone played at LAN parties, no matter what the latest gaming fad was at the time. It was a staple.

As is common in every gaming community, Quake players developed various colloquial expressions. The most common word among the nomenclature was “frag”. There were t-shirts, bumper stickers, and various other paraphernalia that donned various phrases using the word. If you are not familiar with the word “frag” it meant that when you killed someone, or you were killed, you weren’t just mortally wounded; usually fragged meant your death was a grisly explosion or dismemberment that left parts of you scattered about. The MMO genre doesn’t have such graphic fatalities so, I think, “frag” loosely evolved into the word “pwn”.

Personally I like frag better and I wish there was a way to bring it back. The fact is MMO gamers have already established their own set of colloquial expressions so introducing a new term would be very difficult. Also, the games themselves would need to properly reflect what it meant to frag, or be fragged, when a player dies. Somehow I can see such macabre graphics being met with much opposition once the ESRB became involved. If the ESRB rating is too mature it could adversely impact the sales of the game.

Personally I think introducing these kinds of deaths to an MMO would be pretty cool. Sometimes such visual indications of victory can make you feel extremely triumphant. Maybe one day an MMO will come along that has this feature, and maybe one already exists that I just haven’t played yet. Either way, it was a fun trip down memory lane and reminiscing about Quake has made me want to go dig up my old install disks.

(P.S. The image I used for this post is the iconic image used by Penguin Computing who are known for delivering high-performance computing solutions.)

Cheers!

Happy New Year!!!

By

On January 1, 2012

In General Cogitation

Wishing everyone, everywhere a Happy New Year. I hope your 2012 is prosperous, safe and joyful.

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