Skip to content

The hordes are here

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark

Mr Postman delivered Hordes of the Underdark yesterday and I reinstalled the original Neverwinter Nights game and the two expansion packs today. This involved swapping in and out five CD-ROMs, entering three separate CD-keys (each roughly three jillion characters long) and updating the game (after updating the updater). All told, my NWN folder is taking up 3.51GB of hard disk space and I haven’t even downloaded all the hak packs I’m going to need to play on various multiplayer servers. Sheesh.

I tested the game in single player mode earlier and things went smoothly. The introduction movies played without stuttering and gameplay in the first few areas of NWN’s Prelude chapter were free of any glitches. I hope the multiplayer game is just as trouble-free but I suppose that would depend very much on my ISP’s whims and fancies.

I went online earlier and found the ping rate for World of Palladium was around 400+ which is playable more or less. I’ll give it a shot as soon as I’ve downloaded the hak pak and registered with the site’s forum.

In other news, Neverwinter Vault reports an organisation called The Education Arcade is using NWN as an educational tool to teach about the American War for Independence.

Among the things students will learn about the Revolutionary War during the exercise:

  • The Americans won their independence mainly because they had help from Red Dragons.
  • You need to be a Level 9 musketeer (at least) before you can slay a British General.
  • Before going into battle, it’s always a good idea to have your clergyman to cast “Bless” and “Protection from Small Metal Projectiles.”
  • +2 Matchlock Musquettes are completely badass.
  • If you slay an artilleryman, you get 100XP.
  • They spoke l33t a lot in those days.
  • It’s a little known fact the outcome of a number of critical battles was decided by server lag.

All right, I made those up. All kidding aside, I think it’s neat that educators are using PC games as a means of education. It’s educational and entertaining. Edutaining even.

(The HotU logo is from the fan site kit.)

Posted in Games, NWN.

Comments Off on The hordes are here

By Gobi – Thursday, June 10, 2004

Do it with style

Being new to MySQL, PHP, cPanel and WordPress, I expected to have problems with this site and I was concerned whether my host’s customer support would be up to snuff. It didn’t take long for me to find out.

I kept encountering the “500 Internal Server Error” message while attempting to access my site’s cPanel today. I was able to log into WordPress and FTP into my site so it wasn’t that big a deal. I did, however, notify my host and I’m pleased to report the reply was both prompt and helpful. I was informed the shortcut to cPanel had been rendered invalid after a critical patch for cPanel had been installed but a workaround was available. I’ll be delighted if all future problems with the site are resolved with the same efficiency and professionalism.

In other developments, I updated the look of the blog with Hadley Wickham’s Rubric style, the runner-up in the WordPress Styles competition. Like the other styles in the competition, it was released under the GPL license, which means users are free to share and change it. I’ve replaced the pen graphic that was bundled with the style with something different. Big Rolling Death Machine different. (That’s Tankorr from the Beast Machines series on the upper right-hand corner of this page in case you were wondering.)

Posted in Blogging, Software, WordPress.

Comments Off on Do it with style

By Gobi – Wednesday, June 9, 2004

WordPress impresses

Hype generally falls short of reality. This isn’t true of WordPress, however. The creators of this nifty piece of software claim you can install it in five minutes. Barring operator error, this is actually true.

I had my worries about installing WordPress since it requires a MySQL database and PHP and I had no experience with either. Fortunately, the process is straightforward if you follow the instructions given.

The installation was made a lot smoother because my host has cPanel X and the WordPress FAQ has simple instructions for creating a database using that front-end.

I did have a couple of problems defining the database connection in the wp-config.php file but those problems were very much of my own making. (Hint: Avoid installing WordPress at 4 in the morning because silly errors abound.)

Posted in Blogging, Software, WordPress.

Comments Off on WordPress impresses

By Gobi – Wednesday, June 9, 2004