WuphonsReach Blog

Video footage while testing my "Deadlier Explosives New Vegas" mod. It ramps up the damage on explosives so that they are a lot more useful and deadly.40mm IncendiaryHere's what the 40mm Incendiary grenades are capable of if they are made slightly more powerful (using the "Deadlier Explosives New Vegas" mod)....

This is unmodded Fallout New Vegas gameplay. In this video, I'm using a level 20 character with 56 in explosives and the first level of the Demolition Expert perk along with the new explosives weapons to establish a baseline for how well they work against a variety of foes.We're starting...

There are some big changes to the way Fallout New Vegas works compared to Fallout 3. The basics are:Level cap of 30Perks given on even levels (every other level)Lots of skill checks in questsSome weapons have skill/strength reqs to use effectivelySo, with that being said, here's what I think my...

Some miscellaneous images from Fallout New Vegas:

There are four basic combinations that you can pick for graphical options in Fallout New Vegas. HDR probably looks the best out of the options, even without AA.None with Zero Anti-aliasingNone with 2x Anti-aliasingBloom (no AA)HDR (no AA)Note that in general, you can't use Bloom/HDR in combination with AA reliably....

As with Fallout 3, one of the first questions in New Vegas is "where do I safely store my stuff?". Back in the days of Oblivion, Bethesda coded things so that (nearly) all containers would reset with new contents whenever the parent cell (room/area) was reset 72 game hours after...

The caravan card game in Fallout New Vegas is a dialog option when you converse with many (not all) merchants. It allows you to challenge them to a game of cards and the winner takes the pot (of caps).The rules are explained in the PDF manual, but sometimes it's easier...

One of the new features in New Vegas is the concept of weapon mods. They allow you to take a basic weapon like a varmint rifle and add features like night scopes, silencers and a lighter stock. Other weapons have different mods like larger ammo magazines or increased damage.

Fallout New Vegas is built on top of the same engine as Fallout 3, but Obsidian has introduced or changed some key elements of Fallout 3. Some of these take the Fallout series back towards its roots, others expand on things that were only possible via mods in Fallout 3.Damage...

Looks like Steam was added to Fallout New Vegas late in development. There are half a dozen INI files in the steamapp folder tree for FO:NV. For instance there are:C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas\Fallout_default.inilow.inimedium.inihigh.iniVeryHigh.iniSome people have an INI file in the following Steam folder as well (apparently part of Steam Cloud,...

Part of the fun of a new Bethesda software release is all the bugs that they manage to cram into the box at release. I haven't seen many of these personally yet.First up, the Poltergeist effect:Dog eyeballs hanging in the middle of the air:The moonwalking dog glitch:My personal bugs that...

Ugh, there goes my weekend. Fallout: New Vegas (the follow-on to Fallout 3) has been released. And if it's anywhere near as good as FO3 was - I'm going to spend lots and lots of time playing it, and then lots and lots more time creating mods for it.For some...

Saw this while running around in Moonglade after patch 4.01 landed. It looks like a smushed night elf who has apparently been dead since before the patch landed last week.More oddities from World of Warcraft. The druid guards were going crazy and patrolling in weird patterns. (Apparently someone had managed...

Some of the more powerful creatures (okay, most of them...) in Baldur's Gate have special attacks that can bbe very disabling. The foul beasts and special spells to use against them are listed here in alphabetical order.AnkhegsThe easy way to deal with Ankhegs is to have your fighter rush up...

I'll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but this is generally how I've been approaching the prologue and the first two chapters of the main storyline.Character Class: So far, I've tried a pure cleric and a fighter/cleric. On the whole, I prefer the fighter/cleric multi-class dwarf because it...

A bunch of gameplay videos from Baldur's Gate (using EasyTutu UI at 800x600):Visiting Beregost for the first timeThis is the cut-scene that plays the first time you visit Beregost. It also shows how to disband Xzar and Montaron from the party. Generally, if you're not going to create a neutral/evil...

So, I've pretty much run into a solid road block at this point.Gotta have a thief: Someone needs to be able to detect traps for places like the cave south of Candlekeep or the Naskhel mines. Early on, the obvious choice is Imoen. But what about when you dual-class her...

Is Baldur's Gate still worth playing after 10 years? Yes, with a few caveats.Graphics: The graphics of Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast are extremely dated at this point. It was designed back when 640x480 VGA was all that could reliably be relied on, so it uses a...

In Baldur's Gate, you use the number keys (1-6) to select individual members of your party. But you can also use keys 5-9, 0, "-" and "=" to select some or all of your party. That can be useful for times when you want to select half your party to...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The AD&D 2nd edition rules are very rough on low-level characters and parties with low-level characters. You're going to experience lots of deaths until you figure out how to micro-manage your party.GeographyFirst off, a bit of early geography is needed. Herein...

This is from chapter one, immediately after meeting up with Imoen. On our way to encounter Xzar and Montaron, we got ambushed by a pack of diseased gibberlings. Since there were only two characters in the party, they overwhelmed and killed the main character.(The UI is EasyTutu at 1024x768, a.k.a....

EasyTutu at 800x600:EasyTutu at 1024x768:EasyTutu at 1280x960:

Here is an example of the original UI at 640x480:Here is what things look like after you setup EasyTutu for 800x600:EasyTutu at 1024x768:EasyTutu at 1280x960:Personally, I find that the 1280x960 is a bit too small, it sizes up the 640x480 by exactly 2x pixels so while it does retain the...

Here's the original Baldur's Gate title sequence and introduction movies. This was done back in 1999. Back then, 15fps movies in tiny resolutions were all the rage and somewhat cutting edge. Now it looks a bit dated. Yes, the cut scene videos don't fill the screen, but that's because the...

Official sffworld Game Review (minor spoiler about Imoen)Universal Hints System: Baldur's Gate ReviewGames First!

While the WoW servers are down, I'm trying to get back into Baldur's Gate. Which was a great game back in the day, but really looks a bit dated now and I'm having trouble seeing past that. Anyway, random tips and hints and tricks:Imoen (dual-class): Various theories abound, some of...

The cataclysm is coming! The cataclysm is coming! (I bet that the gnomes had something to do with it.)With the upcoming changes in World of Warcraft's 3rd expansion, named "Cataclysm", Blizzard is going to be doing a very large revamp of the old world zones that haven't been touched since...

Civilization V 1.0.0.17 release. Playing as Japan on a large/fractal map on warlord difficulty. Japan has been at war with England since the dawn of time when they tried to horn in on our peninsula.Part 1 opens with my units massed for an attack on London from Hastings. As you...

Civilization V 1.0.0.17 release. Playing as Japan on a large/fractal map on warlord difficulty. Japan has been at war with England since the dawn of time when they tried to horn in on our peninsula. So after multiple wars, things have finally reached the point where England has only two...

This is a Large/Fractal map at around 1820 AD, with most of the world settled. The yield icons are showing incorrect values, but the tooltip is correct.Leader Scene Quality: MediumOverlay Detail: LowShadow Quality: LowFog of War Quality: LowTerrain Detail Level: LowTerrain Tessellation Level: LowTerrain Shadow Quality: LowWater Quality: LowTexture Quality:...

One useful tool with Civ5 is some sort of blank hex grid (made up of hexagons in the same orientation as Civilization V does it). So here's a free 24x24 grid that I whipped up. Note that the first image is 3716x3256 pixels, so you may want to use the...

Roads in Civilization V now have a maintenance cost. At a cost of 1gp/turn for roads and 2gp/turn for rail it adds up quick. This means that you need to choose carefully where you run roads and rail lines. A good general design principle is to "think like a tree...

Here's a list of the ah-ha moments, or the things that will trip you up as you move from Civ4 to Civ5:Religions are no longer in-game, but there is a social policy regarding religion which is exclusive with Rationalism.The hexagon system will take some getting used to.Roads are no longer...

Game play footage from the demo version of Civilization V which came out this week (the demo is actually a few weeks old). The demo is limited to 100 turns and has some other limitations, but it's enough to get your feet wet.In this section, I explore the options screen...

So I played about an hour's worth of the Civ5 demo (downloaded via Steam). The full game was released this week, but I'm not going to purchase it right away.First impressions are "there's something interesting here" - but there's not enough in the demo to suck me in (I quit...

Digging up some oldies. First up is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which I first played back around 2007. This shows the exit from the starter area (the City Prison Sewer) which puts you on the northeast corner of City Isle. Not a lot of action in the first 12...

Here's what things look like as of rev #55 in the source code tree:svn://svn.wowace.com/wow/wtasknote/mainline/trunkNot happy with the title, but it will do for now. I'll have to get some folks to word-smith that.This revision was mostly about moving the (3) buttons in the lower left to match up with the...

Shows how to do somewhat of a speed run from the entrance to Blackrock Depths (BRD) to Pyromancer Loregrain who drops Formula: Enchant Weapon - Fiery Weapon (an enchant with about a 13% drop rate). This is the route to take if you don't have the Shadowforge Key yet.The route...

Traveling from Vengeance Landing in Howling Fjord, back to Tirisfal Glades via the zepplin. Then over to Durotar via the cross-ocean zepplin before heading north again to Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra. This is usually faster then taking the walrus people's turtle boats if you are going west (BT) to...

Been doing some more hacking on wTaskNote this week. At this point I have code that:- creates the add-on- sticks a button on the minimap- sets some defaults and has a basic config box- initializes our data tables with some dummy data if the user has nothing yet- walks the...

With WoW:Cataclysm only a month (or three) away, it's time to start reading up on what will change for Add-On authors.Preparing for Cataclysm (WoWGrunt)- Futher deprecation of getglobal and setglobal - Retirement of the event globals Patch 4.0.1 (WoWWiki)- see the User Interface section at the bottom of the listPatch...

One of the things on my to-do list prior to WoW's Cataclysm expansion is to hit up the old-world zones that are going to be changing and take one last look around.Questing in Barrens, pre-Cataclysm. Starts at Camp Taurajo in the south, fly north to the Crossroads, then west to...

Here is an extremely basic concept, that is worth demoing. Let's assume that you have an Add-on created to the point where you can show/hide your frame with a minimap button or slash command in the chat window. Now you want to tie into some event handlers for your frame...

One of the things I think I'm going to tackle before WoW:Cataclysm comes out this fall is to write an add-on for World of Warcraft. Specifically, one that will let me jot down notes and make checklists so that I can keep track of things. Prior to this I was...

QBar looks interesting, it takes all those quest items in your bags and puts them on a bar for you to use. Now, Blizzard has made things a lot better with their new quest tracker panel released during the WotLK era, but there are still a few items/quests where the...

I figure if I'm going to get stuck using a fel-puppy, then I want his spell lock on the same key that I used for the succubus' seduce spell. Spell Lock / Seduce combination macro:/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead, pet:felhunter] Spell Lock; [pet:felhunter] Spell Lock; [target=focus,exists,nodead, pet:succubus] Seduction; [pet:succubus] Seduction The above should...

Zalazane's Fall event, a precursor to the Cataclysm expansion later in 2010.Part 1 of 5 shows the basics of getting the letter in Ogrimmar, then riding south to Sen'jin Village to help the Vol'jin's Darkspears.Part 2 of 5, we get a quest to capture frogs for "Da Perfect Spies" then...

Yesterday started the retaking of Gnomeregan (in year 32 of the timeline) after being lost nearly a decade ago (year 25 or so) during an invasion of Trogs where Mekgineer Sicco Thermaplugg convinced King Mekkatorque to flood the city with radiation. For the past few years, the poor gnomish race...

Now that I have almost a week of playtime under my belt with the warlock, I'm going to think out loud for a bit. I left the game sometime after patch 3.2 hit and before 3.3 hit. According to the "Dots and you: The Affliction Warlock Thread" thread over at...

Things I have not missed:Blizzard still has not managed to crack down on gold-seller ad spam in public channels. Nor have they fix the speed hacks and the ability of a hacked group of clients to spell out words and patterns with characters in-game.The ADHD kids.The RP griefers who plop...