SWTOR screenshots using FRAPS

Getting the material for this post killed 3 birds with one stone! No, not real birds, metaphoric ones. :p After a long day of slaving over a hot blog, taking these screenshots gave me something to post about, gave me a chance to play with the FRAPS application I bought the other day and… it gave me an excuse to play SWTOR [Star Wars The Old Republic] during the afternoon, guilt free. Come, have a look!

The lady with the dreads is, surprise, surprise, my gunslinger Meeka. I have had a Meeka in almost every single MMO I have ever played. Not one of them has ever looked anything like me – they’ve all been tall and deadly – but each one has had a little bit of me in there, in the wish fulfillment department if nothing else!

This latest Meeka is badass with an attitude but I like to think she has a heart of gold – all 24 carats of it. [Click on the picture to get a better look].

Meeka is quite obviously my favourite toon [gamer-speak for character].

Next up we have a little eye-candy… for me. Sadly, like WoW [World of Warcraft] and most western MMO’s, the males in SWTOR are all bog ugly, except for this one. Miir is the only cute looking male in the whole game. He also speaks with a very sexy British accent because he is a Sith and all Sith are evil. Something about that didn’t quite come out right…

For those who are interested, most MMO’s are designed around two factions – one good one not good. The reason for this is to give the blood thirsty amongst us a reason to whack at each other in player-vs-player battles. So. Most of my toons belong to the Republic and hence are ‘good’ but Miir belongs to the Sith Empire so he is ‘bad’. Well actually Miir is probably one of the few ‘good’ Sith in-game because that’s the way I play him but you get the idea. Frankly he was just too cute to resist.

And finally we have Ktah. She is a Republic Trooper and does the whole soldier-speak stuff, like saying ‘affirmative’ instead of ‘yes’. For some reason I find it hard not to role-play her as a poker-up-the-bum moron. No offence to any real soldiers out there. Ktah’s only redeeming trait is that she can be stubborn about ‘doing the right thing’, sometimes even if that means going against orders but generally she’s a bit boring. I also have a Jedi Knight but she is just too boring to post about. Whoever came up with the Jedi Knight concept needs to be shot.

So there you have it – a woman with attitude, a pretty-boy and a soldier. Are all three me? Not likely but they are a lot of fun.

And now to something less frivolous. Was buying FRAPS a good decision or not? The answer to that is a resounding YES! I love it. However before I start singing the praises of FRAPS I should confess that until now I have been taking screenshots using the most basic of all tools – the PrintScreen button on my keyboard.

Yes, yes I know, only dinosaurs use PrintScreen and MS Paint but you see I really haven’t had to do much graphics work for years so scrooge that I am I made do with the primitive tools available for free. If you have used these two tools then you will know how primitive they are. If you haven’t then I won’t bore you with an explanation. Just take my word for it that it’s a horrible process.

Now to FRAPS. Installation was a breeze and setting the application up for taking screenshots was just as easy. I changed the destination folder from the default folder to a location where I knew I’d be able to find it again. Then I changed the default screen capture key from F10 to F12 and voila, all done.

Using FRAPS has been just as easy. When I see an image I wish to capture I just hit that F12 key and continue playing. Behind the scenes FRAPS takes that image, assigns it a name and automatically saves it to the destination folder I specified. Literally too easy.

So the moral of this post is : if you take more than 3 screenshots in any given year then I highly recommend FRAPS as an easy to use alternative. I bought the application outright because I’m anal like that but I think you can download and use the free version if you want. There may be a few less functions and bells and whistles with the free version but it sure beats PrintScreen and Paint.

cheers

Meeks

 

SWTOR – my companion just made a pass at me!

As many of you may know I play Star Wars: The Old Republic [hereinafter called SWTOR] and I am enjoying it. Well, last night I was in my ship, chatting with my male companion Corso and doing a bit of ‘flirting’…

[Hmmm...-thinks- I may have to backtrack here a little otherwise they are going to think I'm really strange]

Ok, in SWTOR your character inherits a companion npc* quite early on in the game. This companion fights with you and is a little like a Hunter’s ‘pet’ in WoW* except that it gains affection towards you instead of ‘loyalty’.  Most of this affection is linked to the choices you make while you are questing – do or say ‘good’ things and it grows, do ‘bad’ things and it diminishes. The more affection your companion feels for you the more effective it is as a companion. I’m a female Gunslinger [don't ask] and my companion is a human male who acts as my tank* so logically the more it ‘likes’ me the better it will be as a tank.

Now I had read that  it was possible to have a ‘romance’ with your companion so I was a tad curious to see how this would play out. My first clue happened a few levels* back when I’d ‘flirted’ with another npc during a quest. I suddenly noticed that Corso’s affection went backwards [as evidenced by the red light and minus number that flashed up on the screen]. Was my companion… jealous? How interesting…

Clue no.2 happened last night. As I said, Corso and I were in the ship and the question icon was floating above Corso’s head so I clicked it only to discover that my sweet, country-boy companion was drunk! Not rolling on the floor and being obnoxious drunk, just drunk enough to make a pass at me! Being a responsible woman of mature years I did not lead the poor lad on for long but, I cannot tell a lie, some primal part of my sub-brain was a little chuffed. Yes, I know, how can a grown woman flirt with a digital picture and enjoy it?

Sadly, my strangeness does not stop there. A few minutes after all this drunken flirting, and after being told that ‘You are the strongest woman I’ve ever met Captain’ [how can you not love a 'man' who says things like this?], Corso and I were down on the planet trying to finish off a quest when the truly odd thing happened. This particular quest was one of the ones with ‘stages’. You complete one part and at the end of it you get a message flashing up on screen basically saying that you have unlocked the next stage. I generally just grit my teeth and keep going because the rewards for completing all stages are better, however last night I was tired so when I realised that another stage was about to be unlocked I took the ‘bad’ choice on offer. In this case I had been sent to find a serum that was needed to save the good guys from a plague I can’t spell. To get the serum I had had to fight my way through umpteen corridors and chambers full of evil pirates and I was tired. I wanted to finish and go to bed.

So what was this bad choice that I made? Well, I could force the pirate medic to give me the serum or I could let it keep the serum for all the ‘sick pirates who would die without it’ while I went off somewhere else to find another batch of serum to take back to the ‘good guys’. Like I said, I was tired. I wanted to go to bed and these were just digital people. Right? So I chose to let all those poor bad guys die. AND THE RED LIGHT AND MINUS NUMBERS flashed up on screen from Corso!!!!!!

I had blotted my moral copy book and my companion was displeased with me

Did I laugh it off as just a few numbers that I could make up the next day? Did I log off and go to bed with a clear conscience? Like hell I did My heart sank and I think I may have blushed. I know I wished that I’d given in and done the rest of the stupid quest. And I know I felt ashamed of myself – both for betraying my principles AND for being such an idiot about a damn game.

Unfortunately, like so many of our real life decisions, once made they cannot be withdrawn so now I know two things -

1. I can’t roleplay for nuts and,

2. Even imaginary moral decisions are important to me.

Is this a hangover from my Catholic upbringing? Or is it more about who I am and how I see myself? Whatever my personal answer may be I know I won’t be taking the easy option again. I also know that I won’t be playing my Sith character anymore unless the storyline allows for some kind of ‘conversion to the light’ when a Sith accumulates too many ‘light’ points. It might be interesting to see how a ‘good’ Sith storyline plays out but my nerves are still a bit too jangled to find out. If anyone has played a good Sith and can give me some pointers I’ll be eternally grateful.

cheers

Meeks

npc* – non-player character, in other words a character controlled by the game AI.

WoW* – World of Warcraft online

tank* – a class that defends other players by drawing enemy fire onto themselves

levels* – a form of in-game progression based on the accumulation of XP [experience points]

SWTOR – first impressions

SWTOR [or Star Wars The Old Republic for the uninitiated] is one of the newest mmo’s to hit the internet and I began playing it just two days ago.

Yes, I know I should have been writing instead but honestly, SWTOR seems to be functioning more as a carrot than as pure cat waxing at the moment [see my blog 'the joys of procrastination]. Knowing I have something to look forward to in the evenings has kick-started my writing again so I refuse to feel guilty!

Ahem. Cat waxing aside I am enjoying SWTOR much more than I thought I would. All the reviews I read suggested that it was not particularly innovative and that is quite true; apart from having cutscenes for most of the missions and allowing players to choose between three response options the mechanics of the game seem much the same as most other mmo’s I’ve played. But. SWTOR does seem to do what it does a bit better than most of its peers. For starters, it is refreshingly bug free for such a new game. And then there is the joy of playing without lag.

As an Australian player I have always accepted lag as an inevitable part of gaming in a country with such a small player base, so discovering what play on a genuine oceanic server can be like has blown me away. None of my toons is high enough yet to get to a large player hub but I’m hoping the lag-free experience continues.

At a more mundane level I am also enjoying playing as a ‘Smuggler’. For those who haven’t rolled one yet, smugglers are similar to rogues or thieves but with guns and grenades.  Unlike the classic rogue class though there are no arcane skills such as going invisible. Instead we have the concept of ‘cover’ and to me this is an innovation. The cover skill/ability allows smugglers to use the terrain in order to minimize the damage they take. When you go into cover your toon literally jumps/rolls behind a rock. Once in cover you have the choice of a set of cover only skills which include lobbing grenades and bombs at the enemy.

Because cover is a battle skill it means that playing smuggler becomes a strategic experience that changes with each new set of enemies and that has given the class a degree of fun I really was not expecting. If you haven’t tried smuggler yet then I really do recommend it as a fun alternative to all the Jedi Knights out there.

At this point I’d give SWTOR a solid 8/10. It isn’t the great leap forward we are all waiting for but it is fun and deserves credit for the incremental innovations it has brought to mmo’s.

And now I’m going to go do some writing so I earn the right to play some more tonight. -rolls eyes-