UI Design Nuclear Snap
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The project was to design a simple User Interface for a children’s game of snap for the Nintendo DS.
The target age group was 10-16 year old boys and the game was to be based around the inclusion of robots for the players character and the opposing character. All other elements of the design were al my own ideas.
The nuclear explosion picture was sourced from http://www.zazzle.co.uk/americanmilitia/explosion+gifts
UI Design Animal Snap
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The project was to design a simple User Interface for a children’s game of snap for the Nintendo DS.
The target age group was young children and the game was to be based around the inclusion of a hippopotamus for the players character and an alligator for the opposing character. All other elements of the design were al my own ideas.
New Hard Drive in PS3
I replaced me 60 gig hard drive in my Play Station 3 to a 320 gig a few days ago and I wish I could say that it all went as smoothly as every guide tells you it will, but it didn’t.
I found the hardest part overall was getting the replacement hard drive, as I was using an old 2.5” portable WD hard drive my first step was prying it out of its case without harming the hard drive itself, which I have to say was completely nerve wracking! Unfortunately I did end up breaking the case into a few pieces in the end but as it was a spare it wasn’t too much of a loss if you want to reuse the case there’s really not much hope of being able to, so make sure your sure about taking it apart before you do anything!
Ok so step by step and problems i encountered along the way:
1: Obviously you’ll need to back up everything from your current hard drive. If you have a 60 Gb hard drive you’ll need a 60 Gb hard drive to back up to and it MUST be formatted to fat32 format for it to work. I couldn’t get your hands on a hard drive big enough to hold my data because fat32 isn’t used as often anymore, so I just used a 4 gig pen drive to back up just the save data.
2: Make sure your trophies are all synched and de-activate your account in account settings. You wont need to delete your profile as long as it is de-activated it wont count to your 5 profiles, and you’ll still have all your data on a backup hard drive if your new one for some reason fails.
3: On the bottom of the Play Station there’s a small black cover, pry this open from the RIGHT hand side. Screw out the large blue screw under the small metal tag on the bottom of the hard drive case. Once you have screwed it out you can use the metal tag to pull the hard drive to the right and then out.
4: Unscrew the hard drive from its case from the 2 screws on either side. Mostly the screws should come out alright, but in my experience two of the screws just would not come out no matter what. The only solution was to use a flat headed pliers and then they came out just fine. If you made the mistake I did and ended up breaking the threads on the screws then you’ll be glad to know that when the hard drive goes back in it will be ok with just one screw on either side so you don’t have to worry about using broken screws.
5: Slide the hard drive out and slide the new one in, screw back in and put back into the play station the same way you took it out, making sure you slide it back into the left fully; you’ll know when you see the holes for the large blue screw line up. Put the blue screw back in and the black cover on and now its time to turn on your Play Station 
6: The first thing you see will be a message asking to format the new hard drive and click ok.
7: Your account details should still be there just select to re-activate in the same way you de-activated it.
8: Connect the hard drive you backed up everything to and start copying over, this can take a long time. If you did what I did and only backed up your save files then you’ve got a long day of re-downloading all your games ahead of you.
So I hope this helps and enjoy all the awesome new space on your Play Station 3 
Blue Toad Murder Files: Episode 1 Little Riddle’s Deadly Dilemma Walkthrough
OK maybe noone in the owrld will be interested in this at all but it was really fin to make 
Enjoy this walkthrough for quick and very easy PS3 trophies!!!
NOTE: All questions are the same no matter which character you choose
SCENE 1
TRAIN STATION
Puzzle: The Blue Toad Agency
Description: Match the correct names with the members of the agency
Solution: Characters in order from left to right:
- Vanderbosh
- Dakota
- Maple
- Dickens
TOWN HALL
Puzzle: Dead Man’s Diary
Description: Add in the available letters to make sense of the diary entry
Solution: The diary is written backwards:
I met the doc and told him I was mad that I got the wrong pills
So the solution looks like this:
slLip gnorW eht toG I taHt dAm sAw I Mih dlot dna cod ehT tEm I
CASE QUESTIONS 1
Q: What was the colour of the train that brought you to Little Riddle?
A: Green
Q: The station master implied that he’d argued with the mayor over what?
A: A tea room
Q: By whom was the holiday to Little Riddle arranged?
A: Mother
Q: Who did the constable say he was going to call?
A: The inspector
SCENE 2
DOCTORS SURGERY
Puzzle: The Doctors Diagnosis
Description: Fill in the blanks in the prescription to make sense of it
Solution: Reading from left to right:
- Worried Patient
- Massive Levels
- Sleep Patterns
- Sticking Plasters
- Dose of Antibiotics
- A dose of Senecal
WINDMILL
Puzzle: Staring at Sails
Description: Figure out which of the windmills sails is different to the rest.
Solution: Sail C
TRAIN STATION
Puzzle: Lost Luggage
Description: Figure out which bag belongs to the old woman
Solution: Top left bag
THE JEWELLERY SHOP
Puzzle: The Final Payment
Description: Use the information given to work out how much money was paid by the mayor
Solution: 3 pounds 7 shillings 5 pence
CASE QUESTIONS 2
Q: What did the station master say the mayor was going to do about the tea room?
A: Look into the matter again
Q: Who does the miller say he can tell you about his meeting with the mayor?
A: The Town Hall Clerk
Q: Why did the mayor receive the wrong medicine?
A: The chemist misread the prescription
Q: The Jeweller appears originally to come from which country?
A: The USA
SCENE 3
LITTLE RIDDLE HOTEL
Puzzle: A room for the night
Description: Use the information the hotel owner gives you to work out how many guests are already at the hotel
Solution: 11
PUB
Puzzle: The pub’s pipe problem
Description: Connect the right taps to the right barrels
Solution: There are two types of pieces you can use here a Cross and one with two Corners
- Top left: Corners Piece
- Top right: Cross Piece
- Middle: Corners Piece
- Bottom left: Cross Piece
- Bottom middle: Corners Piece
- Bottom left: Cross Piece
TOWN HALL
Puzzle: A shadowy figure
Description: Figure out the route that the shadowy figure tool in order to catch up with him
Solution: Route B
HOTEL
Puzzle: Finding Mrs. Whatshername
Description: Match up the pieces of the face until you have the image of the old woman from the train station.
Solution: Eyes No.3 = Small Circular Low Down
Nose No.3 = Large Nose with a semi circled line of wrinkles under the nose
Mouth No.3 = Tiny mouth with lines lipstick and wrinkles that match up with the nose lines
CASE QUESTIONS 3
Q: Who did the hotel owner complain had been booking people into the hotel?
A: His wife
Q: Where does Mrs. Gossip live?
A: Near the stream
Q: What is the inspector’s name?
A: Inspector Bragg
Q: What is the name of the pub?
A: The Cloak and Dagger
SCENE 4
TOWN HALL
Puzzle: The Mayors Last Day
Description: Use the clerk’s description of the day to figure out which path the mayor took to his office
Solution:
- Carpet Stairs
- Light Door
- Heavy Door
- Stone Stairs
- No Door
- Wooden Stairs
- Office door
MRS GOSSIP
Puzzle: As the Doctor Ordered
Description: Use the information given to choose which medicine bottle contains the medicine that Mrs. Gossip is supposed to take
Solution: Bottle B
HOTEL
Puzzle: WHODUNNIT?
Description: Find who shot the Mayor
Solution: The Miller!
If anyone likes/comments on this then part 2 will be coming soon
Another Code: Two Memories
Today I want to talk about “Another Code: Two Memories” for the DS. I haven’t tried the follow up game for the Wii just yet but I’ll be dropping down to xtra vision soon enough!
Apart from the game having an obvious enough ending with no plot twists, and let’s face it, we all love our plot twists, it was a good story line and interesting enough to keep me playing at least.
Ashley
So, about the game itself. You play as Ashley who receives a 14th birthday present from her dead father. Yes that right, her dead father. It turns out her father isn’t dead and wants to meet her on a deserted island for no apparent reason. Ashley arrives on the island with her aunt Jessica and realises that her father is nowhere to be seen. Jessica heads off to find him but when she doesn’t come back Ashley gets worried and follows her aunt. She hears a scream from across the bridge and that’s when the game begins.
The game was made by the same company that worked on “Hotel Dusk: Room 215” which I am currently trying out and the game play is quite similar. It’s basically a point and click investigation game where you’re able to pretty much interact with everything you can see. As Ashley you have to make your way around the island investigating the history and interacting with several characters and objects around the island. There are items you must collect and use at the right times and places you have to visit in the correct order along with an onslaught of puzzles and mysteries to solve.
The most interesting character that appears quite often is the ghost of a young boy simply named “D” who Ashley meets early on it the game. He opens the option to a side quest in the game where not only does Ashley have to find her aunt and father, she must investigate D’s history and discover why and how he died. If you complete this quest you unlock a secret section to the ending so it’s really worth doing as you move through the game.
I thought it was a really enjoyable game and I can’t wait to try the sequel!
Cate West: The vanishing files
There’s nothing more I love doing at 4am than putting down my DS and thinking to myself “yes, you’ve cleared another game.” Last night I started and finished “Cate West: The Vanishing Files” in about 5-6 hours which I think was pretty good timing.
Ok so what exactly is the game about? I happened across it purely by accident on Amazon when it was recommended to me after I bought something completely unrelated. So I looked up the game and decided to try it. It’s your average point and click and find stuff detective puzzle where you find clues in totally over cluttered rooms to find evidence to figure out who the ultimate bad guy is.
DS Gameplay
So in this particular point and click game, you are Cate, an author who goes to promote her book and runs into a tall dark handsome man in the book store. The man drops a photo of a church and you pick it up and suddenly you get these flashbacks of a fire at the church. After that point you receive visions to do with certain crimes that all seem inextricably linked and the local police force, headed by Ben, the tall dark handsome man from the book store, request your help to solve the series of crimes that all contain a mysterious religious undertone.
Of course you find out that all the crimes are connected by a mysterious villain who sends you subtle hints as to his identity. The whole game ends in the final confrontation of the villain where the story ties together quite well, if not predictable, and leaves room for a sequel as Cate agrees to keep helping the police force.
Anyone who knows me will know I love these kinds of games but this one was slightly different to the rest of the games in that things could change size which bothered me a little but also made the game a lot harder so in a way it added to the general experience. The time limit I thought was a little too generous with almost 50 minutes allowed for certain parts whereas Mystery Case Files’ game “Millionheir” for the DS, you were only allowed 30 seconds to find each object being slightly too little time.
I thought “Cate West: The Vanishing Files” had a good story and separate little side quests to keep the player entertained and with the added bonus that unlike many point and click detective games you rarely visited the same locations twice which eliminated a lot of the repetitive problems that this genre of games can run into.
For anyone interested, Cate West is available for PC, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii and the demo can be downloaded from: http://catewest.com
PC Gameplay
And just some facts from the web-site:
February 6, 2008: Cate West – The Vanishing Files gets an amazing 4.5 out of 5 review score at Gamezebo!
February 13, 2008: Cate West tops the charts at #1 on Real Arcade and Gamehouse!
Rhythm Paradise (part 2)
Just a revision to my previous review of Rhythm Paradise for the DS… After clearing all its 30 levels and the final remix, which is really really hard may I add, you get to watch a run through of a space game and watch… thats right, the credits! Finally I felt I had achieved something and had cleared an incredibly hard game.
Thats when the next 20 levels show up…
Rhythm Paradise
OK so I finally get Rhythm Paradise for the DS and I swear it is really, really hard! I got to grade 6 with distinctions from the Royal Irish Academy of Music in piano and even I have trouble with some of the games and as for getting a perfect score?! Forget it! I found the easiest way of getting through wasn’t to rely on your musical ability (thank God some of you might think) but to count your way through it. Everything in the game is just based on number sequences, counting and recognising patterns so calling it a music game makes no sense to me at all! I’ve unlocked 25/30 levels so far and it’s all the same patterns being repeated over and over again yet I still play it because of some morbid fascination with the games ability to drive me insane!
Simply put it’s infuriating and addictive. Anyone that has a tendency to stop playing a game because it’s hard should not play Rhythm Paradise because levels can and probably will leave you stuck for almost an hour, but the animations and the imagination put into the individual games are really quite good e.g. farming, food, space invaders, robots playing table tennis, dancing etc. all of which involving the player tapping the touch screen at the exact moment of a particular tune.
This game is nothing like other music games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band because there is either very little or no visual guide as to what you are supposed to do, it doesn’t tell you to press the green button or the red button at a particular time, the player has to decide what to do based on the musical sequence playing at the time. The game will drive you completely insane but if that’s what you’re looking for in a game then it’s perfect for you!
Is Wow worth it: The follow up
Since I put up the blog about WoW I’ve had a lot of people telling to me just get the files from someone who already has it. Everyone seems to have missed the point; I do not want WoW. I was looking at it from a point of view of someone who just walked into a shop and purchased a free trial of a game. Apart from word of mouth or publicity on the net, and now the few ad’s on the TV what does WoW offer to someone that just wants to try it out without buying it? Nothing.
I don’t particularly want to play WoW but since the interest somewhat grabbed me for a short while I decided to install it to TRY it out. But by the time the game was installed my patience has long but run out therefore abolishing any desire I may have ever had to play the game. “7 million players online what are you waiting for?” Waiting for your damned patches and watching the last little bit of interest seep from my bones while you steal my bandwidth and time.
View your Windows PC on your DS
I finally got my Nintendo DS working as a remote desktop for my laptop! A program called Win2DS 0.8 lets you remotely access any Windows machine that’s running Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7
Download Win2DS 0.8: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85195
Ok so first step is to simply unzip win2ds.zip onto your desktop. Easy yeah?
NOTE: You need a modchip/flash capable of loading Homebrew apps on your DS to complete this tutorial.
Now it gets a bit harder:
Configure your wireless card to use a channel between 2 and 11
Simply saying:
Right click on My Computer and go to Manage
On the left side go to Device Manager and select Network Adapters
Select your wireless card and change the value for the channel in there
Go to Windows Firewall, and make a port called whatever you want (calling mine DS just made it easier for me to locate) and set it to port 8888 UDP
Get your computer’s IP address by opening command prompt (run-cmd) by typing ipconfig
Start win2ds.exe on your computer. Create a password and click “start server”
Now for the DS side of things:
Copy the ds2win.nds file to a DS flash card (I used an R4 but it should work on any flash card)
Turn on your DS, and run the ds2win.nds option. Pick the Auto Connect option
If it says it cannot connect you may need to re-configure the wireless settings of your DS in any game capable of wi-fi connection.
Enter your computer’s IP on the DS
Enter the password you put on the computer server into the DS
You should have a new menu, pick the remote desktop option and YOUR DONE
