Games as Artforms

By BloxMaster

I’d like to quickly state that this is my first ‘article’ and it’s a bit of a departure from SiamJai’s articles so I’d like to say that if you are not into intellectual or opinional essays, some of my articles might not be for you, and you have my permission to skip them freely.

There are people who like to play games, and then there are those who like games as an art form. Naturally, you can be somewhere in-between. I think sometimes people get confused as to what people actually mean when they say ‘Games as an art form’. What does it mean? Why are games art? Do they have to have nice graphics to be artsy? And most of all, should I really care if games are an art-form? Let me explain it from my point of view.

Firstly, the expression ‘games as an art form’ indicates that like more typically thought of art forms, games are also art. The most basic answer I can give to express that games are art in the same way music can be art, or a painting, is that in nearly all cases, a game is made with an expression in mind. This is similar to how one may make a drawing for a friend as an expression of their bond; someone can make a game to express many things as well.

Game: a collection of art forms
If you want to go further, I would argue that games are actually a large collection of art forms. They can be one of the most elaborate pieces of art. In addition to this, they are actively enjoyed by many people. They are rare in that they engage with viewer, in this case, a player. Although from the outside games may or may not seem like art, when you pull them apart, you can understand why most of them are in fact art. Read the rest of the article here

Scarlet Stranger: a hacker’s goldmine

By SiamJai

Have you ever played games that look and feel great at first glance, but after five minutes or so you’ll come across glaring design mistakes and game-breaking technical bugs? These unpolished gems are a goldmine of secrets for the cheat-conscious gamer; a few simple hacks often reveal unused goodies the hasty developer carelessly left in the game.

Enter Scarlet Stranger, a Zelda-esque action RPG with charming graphics and all the shortcomings mentioned above. The folks at Jayisgames did a great job reviewing the game already, so I’ll only mention stuff relevant to this post.

1. Get secret items via inventory hack.
There are about half a dozen items that didn’t make it to the final game, but are still there, hidden. These include quest items such as a map and compass, along with interesting upgrades like the pouch that upgrades your carrying capacity.

To hack this, hook Cheat Engine (CE) to the Flash player, start a Flash*8 search and follow the steps below:

1. Visit the shop with some item in your inventory (a piece of rock or wood will do).
2. Drag that item into the first crafting slot.
3. In CE, search for the itemID (for values, refer to the table at the end of this post).
4. Remove the item from the crafting slot.
5. In CE, search for 0.
6. Add another or the same item back to that same crafting slot and do a search for its itemID.
7. Soon you’ll get only one address. Put something into the crafting slot again, change its ID to one of the rare item IDs, say, 9.
8. Remove the item from the crafting slot, and voila: in the inventory, the item morphs into your desired item!
9. Repeat for other items and values as desired.

Elovac FAQs

By SiamJai

Thought I’ll address some common questions here:

1. Is that really a Moongate? Can I use this in online moongates?
Yes and yes. Just change all values to 0 and every item in a Moongate usermap will become free to pick.

2. Isn’t that stealing?
No. This cheat doesn’t affect the original data on the server, so the next visitor will see the exact same thing that you did before you picked up anything.

3. The codes don’t work in my game. Why?
Locations in the memory change occasionally depending on how Elona loads its modules. This will affect all CE codes that don’t have static pointers, including Elovac for the time being.

4. How can I make the codes work?
Elovac can be re-tuned In four easy steps that are listed here on my blog. Also, you can see in detail how I do it, in a YouTube video.

5. I got some ideas to improve these cheats. May I?
Go ahead! Credits are appreciated but not required.

6. That music is really cool, where can I get it?
Music4YourVids.co.uk They have some really nice free-to-use stuff there.

7. I’ve got a question not addressed here. How can I get in touch?
Post your questions in the comment section here. Good ones will be added to this FAQ.

Elovac re-tuning

By SiamJai

The day may come when Elovac no longer works for your game (or didn’t work to begin with) for whatever reasons. No worries though; it’s easy to fix it. Think of it as an old piano that needs fine-tuning now and then to work as it should. This is how it goes:

1. Get into an empty shelter.
2. Drop an item (stacked is best).
3. In CE, search for the amount of item you dropped.
4. Pick up the item(s).
5. In CE, search for 0.
6. Add the only remaining address to the list of addresses.
7. Offset this address by 54 using Smart Edit (Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Enter).
8. This address is the new Elovac item 1 address. Compare it with the old one.
9. Get the difference between the new and old address using a calculator in hex mode.
10. Using the difference, offset all the addresses in Elovac by another Smart Edit.
11. Check it in the nearest town, when most values are 1, you got Elovac working. Congrats!

Check out this video where I fine-tuned Elovac using the above method:

If you have any questions, post them in the comments below. Have fun!

Elovac demo

By SiamJai

This video shows Elovac in action at an online moongate. Look at all that loot! ^_^

Elovac: pick up anything, anywhere!

By SiamJai

Elovac is a series of Cheat Engine cheatcodes that enable players to pick up items from the ground, even when they’d normally not be able to. With these codes, it’s possible to pick up items on moongate usermaps, among other things. Check out Elovac in action here. And this is how to use it:

1. Open elovac1.ct in Cheat Engine.
Check the values; most of them should show the same value depending on your location:

2. Turn all 1s and 5s into 0s, so you can pick up items from local towns and online moongates. Easy as pie. And now some pics in spoilers:

Click to Show/Hide

Elona – a Divine Party

By SiamJai

Parties in Elona are crazy affairs, but they tend to get stale once you have no trouble impressing even the toughest audience. When even Loyter is groveling at your feet at the first sound of your godly Stradivarius, it’s time to raise the bar. How about impressing the gods and goddesses of Elona in a party quest? I tried and succeeded, with a little trick.

And this is how the party went down:

1. After starting a party quest, invite the gods by wishing for them by name:
   

 

2. (optional) Perform for the gods to see how much they like it:
   

 

3. If the above didn’t work out, throw a love potion at a god. They will glare at you, but their ‘love’ status immediately turns into ‘satisfied’, as if you pleased them by performing:
   

 

4. Profit:
   

So that’s how a divine party goes down in Elona. But if you feel particularly gutsy and have Contingency, you could aggro Ehekatl to have her Mewmewmew everyone into oblivion – including her fellow gods. Then pick up all their cards and figures and get your Museum to that #1 rank it deserves.

Have fun! ^_^

Wind Waker Icons Download

By SiamJai

Recently I’ve got my hands on a set of 20 gorgeous Wind Waker icons that brought back some great memories from the game. Figured there might be some out there who could use them. If you’re one, feel free to download the file below:

Then just open it in Fireworks/Photoshop or other capable image editor and enjoy!

Animated brush painting

By SiamJai

Have you seen one of those ‘writing by an invisible hand’ animations? I think they’re pretty cool, and I wondered if I could pull off something similar with the method I thought of the other day. A couple hours later, I got the answer:

Click to Show/Hide

What do you think? I kinda like how it turned out, even though the animation as a whole is a bit rough around the edges. I can easily imagine using the same techniques to do calligraphy with a pen, or even just letters appearing written by themselves. It’s definitely a fun thing to play with, so tune in for more to come! ^_^

Humbug Secret Ending

By SiamJai

Once in a while an intriguing game comes around with even more intriguing secret goodies. Humbug is one of those games, and its secret items unlock a second, slightly cooler ending, seen here: