Saturday, July 21, 2007

My IMDB votes

You can now track my movie vote ratings on IMDB.

You may need to create a free user account on IMDB to view the votes.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Screen toggle for Dawn of War game series

The following is code to allow the player to toggle the screen controls off and on to get a nice clear screenshot without the game user interface. In this case press "Control z" to toggle the controls off and on.

** These instructions are for the DoW games not installed from the STEAM service. STEAM uses a different file and folder structure than the DoW games you install from boxed retail. Post a query on the STEAM user forums about where to put autoexec.lua for any DoW game from STEAM. Also, see this screen toggle code on the STEAM forum. **

For boxed retail versions of DoW games ...

Place the text code in a file autoexec.lua in the Dawn of War program folder (or in Dark Cursade program folder). Each time you run the game the autoexec.lua file will be read.

Dawn of War screentoggle; file name and location -
E:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn of War\autoexec.lua

screenmode = 0
function toggle_screenmode()
if screenmode == 0 then
taskbar_hide()
message_hide()
screenmode = 1
else
taskbar_show()
message_show()
screenmode = 0
end
end
bind("Control+z", "toggle_screenmode()")


Use a game startup icon without -dev command line option.

The screen toggle will only work when you are playing on a map (or a replay of a map). It does not work at any main menu screen.

(BELOW - click image for full size) Here is the location of autoexec.lua (Dark Crusade); put in same folder with game .exe for DoW 1 or DoW-Winter Assault ...



(BELOW - click image for full size) Here is the notepad image of the text contents for autoexec.lua ...

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Awesome game music

This will be a post I update occasionally.

Memorable music scores are most often associated with films. More and more computer game developers are hiring sophisticated composers to write for their games.

Here are a few off the top of my head which have superb music scores to rival the best film scores ...

[July 3, 2007]
Prey - visually awesome game that plays Escher type tricks with gravity. Great music score. A couple tracks as page background. Visit "Media" page, click "Creative Labs Demo" under Music. Find numerous samples of the composer's game music at his web site - Wikipedia article, visit "External Links"

Dawn of War - one music track as page background playback. Each faction gets it's own signature score as well as context sensitive music tracks during a game.

Saga - just ran across this, when the game is not yet released. Click the My Nation menu link to load the Flash to hear several music tracks. Really outstanding score.