Mass Effect 3 questions

As someone who played (and loved) the first two Mass Effect games on the PC (after being badgered to just try them by a good friend), I'm on tenter-hooks waiting for the third installment's release on Friday (after the USians got theirs today).

As I'm moving between platforms these days and having a whale of a time in multi-player on XBox, including in the excellent multi-player section of the ME3 demo, I've had a few concerns about the PC/XBox divide, here are the answers I've found:

• Can I transfer saved game files from my PC to my Xbox360?
• Does the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer component has any effect on the Single Player component and vice-versa? [sic]
• Will I miss out on anything by not playing Mass Effect 3's multiplayer?
• Does multi-player levelling count between games and across platforms in Mass Effect 3?
• What modes of multiplayer are present in Mass Effect 3?
• Does Mass Effect 3 require Origin?

Tons of useful info there to keep me interested and informed until the final release!

EVE Central Market Upload Utility Trojan Keylogger Warning

Please see the update at the bottom of this article. I no longer suspect EVE Central or it's Market Uploader utility of any wrongdoing here.

So a friend of mine found that around a £1000 of money had been siphoned from his bank account recently (all in bank transfers of under £150). After talking to the bank about he found that the attacker had got into his bank account using the web login.

The question then became, how did they get his password? Like me, he works in IT so is pretty savvy about security generally, so had no idea how anyone could have got a keylogger onto either his home or work PC.

After much searching around he finally found this blog post a Mule in EvE: Learn and live to fight again that pointed to the fact that someone else had found a Trojan keylogger (a piece of malicious software similar to a virus that logs all of your typing and sends it to someone else on the internet) hidden inside the popular Market Upload utility from EVE Central. This is a popular tool that allows players of the game EVE Online to upload data about the ingame market place to a website where analysis can be run.

He rang me to let me know (as I also play EVE and have this tool installed), and sure enough a "deep scan" by Sunbelt Software's VIPRE Antivirus found the following trojan on my PC: Trojan-Spy.Win32.KeyLogger.acm, hidden in the "evec_upload.exe" file in the "EVE-Central MarketUploader".

Not good news, so one removal, uninstall and a few hours changing passwords later, here we are warning the rest of the public about this. As EVE-Central doesn't have any kind of public forum to post in, I'm putting this up here whilst I mail the developers for comment.

Please note that I am not blaming the EVE-Central developers here at all, I have no idea whether they are simply the victims of being unwittingly hacked themselves, or whether they are doing this deliberately. Also there is the possibility that this could be a false alarm and something in the way the Market Uploader was written is accidentally triggering a false warning in the anti virus software.

I am also most definitely not blaming CCP or EVE Online. CCP have made a great game that many, many people enjoy every day, and neither myself or EVE-Central are affiliated with them.

Update 20/8/08: Having carried out further investigation and emailed back and forth with Yann of Eve-Central it seems that we were too hasty assigning blame here. I no longer suspect EVE Central or it's Market Uploader utility of any wrongdoing here. I'm sorry for any misunderstanding or distress that could have been caused by this.

An up to date version of the VIPRE Antivirus doesn't pick up the "EVE-Central.com MarketUploader" as any kind of malware (or 'bad' software) at all.

From Yann:

I've been distributing the same package file since mid 2007. Its been at some time been listed as a Trojan all these major AV products, but detection had improved so the false positives were eliminated within a few update cycles.

It seems that some fairly old virus was written by someone using the same software that Yanne used to create the Market Uploader. This means that it has ended up looking slightly similar to an old virus, and has been at one time flagged up by many of the major anti-virus products, and then cleared again a few updates later as they fine-tune their virus detection.

This is a bit like if I used the same powerdrill to put up my shelves, as some serial killer used to do nasty stuff to people. Just because we both used the same tool, and both used it to drill holes, doesn't mean that I had anything like the same intention or outcome as the murderer.

Hmm tortuous analogy!

EveBerry

This post's been sitting in my queue for a while, sorry!

Vlad (of Mozilla and Firefox fame) posted to the EVE-Online fourms a while ago about his new EveBerry tool, that can be downloaded here: EveBerry -- a BlackBerry EVE Character Monitor:.

It's similar to EVEMon and market monitoring apps, but for your Blackberry smartphone (assuming you have one, I do) and is very, very cool and very, very useful.

That's all!

Maximum w00tage!

So MSN just announced the winners of their World's Best App contest today (or maybe late yesterday, can't do these timezone calculations in my head

Have a look down the list of winners, see that game in 2nd place called Connect Four? I made that

Edit 11/2/06:
Looks like its official! The official "Inside Windows Live Messenger" blog has just posted an article on Messenger’s Worlds Best App Contest Winners.

Play Connect 4 in MSN Messenger!

My first entry to the MSN World's Best App competition, an online, multi-player version of the classic Connect Four game, has just made it through the checking process and is now live on MSN!

Please try it out, have a game with me, or anyone else you know on Messenger: Just click here to play multiplayer Connect Four! (requires Internet Explorer and MSN Messenger) Please play it as much as you can, and if you have any comments, questions about it or problems with it I'd be very grateful if you could please leave me feedback on my MSN Space.

Thanks, and please play it as much as you can, every time you launch the app counts as a vote for me :).

Oh, and if you've got your own MSN Space and you'd like to spread the word, just click the BlogIt! button to put it straight on your Space.

So, Javascript is a workable programming language!

I've used a fair bit of JavaScript code in the past to add client-side flourishes to web-pages and build simple, calculator-style apps, but I've never really done anything very complex with it before.

I think that probably the last time that I tried writing any serious kind of an app using JavaScript was back in the Netscape 3/IE 3 days, and it was very, very painful. Since my apparently futile attempts to work around myriad browser bugs, implementation differences, browser differences, DOM differences (not that I even really knew what a DOM was then, did people call them that then?) and so on, I've stuck to simple work with form boxes, style changes and simple things like that.

Then came the MSN Messenger World's Best App competition, and I'm suddenly in the middle of building a really fairly complicated platform for building simple multi-player internet games, and I'm doing it all in JavaScript. Well, I might eventually build in a bit of server-side persistance with Perl, but that's going to be completely independent of the client-side bits and only really for providing the icing on the cake (I'm even thinking of implementing save-game client-side rather than saving on the server).

So obviously one of my first unconscious choices was, just how hard can I make this for myself? Well to answer that I took a look at my favourite web testing platform: Gecko/Mozilla and realised I couldn't do without all the amazing development, testing and debugging tools it gives you, and decided that I was going to make the core of the program totally cross-browser (obviously this can only go so far with an app that is going to eventually use the MSN Messenger API for cross-internet comms, but I'll be going right up to that line). So we have hurdle one, it must work in both IE5 & 6 (as per competition rules), and Mozilla (to allow me to use my favourite tools) and also Opera (as I didn't feel like leaving it out)!

Next choice, if I'm going to make it run on all three web browsers it had better use standards as far as humanly possible (so that theoretically compatibility should just work, no giggling at the back there!), and if I'm going to code it to W3C/ECMA standards, then there's no point in going half-measures, so no browser specific coding allowed. If it's being coded to standards, without any browser-specific code, then why not pick a decent standard? So XHTML 1.1 loose it is (and by that I mean also testing with an XML MIME type to trigger the totally intolerant strict XML processing mode in Mozilla browsers).

Quick summary of choices made simply to make my life harder, but also more challenging and interesting:

1. All parts not dependant on the MSN Activity API must work in:
   • IE 5 & 6
   • Mozilla/Firefox
   • Opera
2. Stick to standards, no browser specific hacks or code paths
3. XHTML 1.1 loose doctype
4. Must also work when served to Mozilla with an XML MIME type.

So, I'm not getting much sleep lately!

A Retrospective of Star Wars Galaxies Facts

This is the first of a series of posts of info that I'd previously compiled and posted to my old guild's website. I'm backing them up here in case they go missing (since the guild has!), it will be cleaned up, edited and added to later.

---

Rage of the Wookiees and Kashyyyk info:

ROTW related Friday Features:

• Kachirho: The main Wookiee city on Kashyyyk
• Etyyy: The Rodian Hunting Grounds
• Myyydril Caverns
• The Avatar Space Station
• Space Mining
• Ships
• Cybernetics (and it may just be my slightly warped mind, but it does seem that robotic parts can be sexy!)
• New Mounts and Speeder

Pilot FAQ (lists the new ships and how to get them, and their stats)

Idiot's Guide to Space Mining

RotW Loot:

A lot of the new random loot drops (from http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...essage.id=22970 which also has links to other loot and reward pictures)

Master List of RotW Loot

New Kashyyyk NPC/Creature Loot List

Jedi Starfighter Quest and Details and Pictures (note that as this is Anakin's old fighter, and its Darth that gives it out, you'll need an Imp alt to get it)

The Explorer's Guide to the Clone Relics

CU info:

Though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, the SOE Knowledgebase actually has some useful information in it for once, as well as looking at these out of game, remember that its also accesible via Ctrl+H ingame!

SOE KB article 15690: Combat Upgrade Changes: Index

SOE KB article 15691: Combat Upgrade Changes: Weapon Certification List

SOE KB article 15681: How do I /peace out of combat?

SOE KB article 15674: What happened to Battle Fatigue?

The always useful (and little known) Top Known CS Issues - CU - ROTW (and remember that in the Ctrl + H holocron ingame there's also a regularly updated top known issues page with a big button of its own)

Combat Upgrade FAQ

Entertainer Inspiration Buffs

Doctor CU FAQ

Information on CU Armor for Customers

Post CU Weapon Cert List (its slightly different, and has more info than the one in the official KB)

Tuesday Tips, read on through the thread (ignoring trolls) and there's loads of other useful info in there too

Center of Being

Pass-Through Assisting

BASIC FORMULA FOR DAMAGE PER SECOND (DPS)

Take your min damage, add to your max, Divide by 2, Then divide by your weapon speed/modified speed

ie. [(min+max)/2]+elemental damage/speed.

eg 400-800 3.0 speed.

400+800 = 1200

1200/2 = 600

600/3 = 200, your base damage per second is 200 dps.

a 400-800 weapon with 90 elemental damage of 3.0 speed.

400+800 = 1200

1200/2 = 600

600+90 = 690

690/3 = 230 dps

(from weaponsmith forums)

Creature / NPC Con Colours

* Grey - Too low, not worth fighting

* Green - A small amount of experience, should be an easy fight, could be trouble if there are more than 1 or 2 opponents

* Blue - Ideal target, decent experience 1 on 1, but could be tough if there are 2 or more opponents

* White - Even Target 1 on 1; good fight

* Yellow - Dangerous fight; stronger than you, but you might win

* Red - Very dangerous fight. Unlikely you will beat this opponent

* Purple - Certain Death

Main Combat Upgrade Official Docs Index

Misc CU Hints and Tips from the Community

* Remember that everything has changed.

* Treat it just like you are playing a new game and having to learn about it.

* Many of the special abilities are on different timers. Pay attention how long your special abilities take to complete and which "cool-down" groups they are in. Then, you can time your attacks so that while one attack is "cooling down", you can use your other attack to stay in the fight!

* Don't SPAM! Combat is different and you need to pay attention to what is going on

* Know your recoveries!

* Keep an eye on that Action Bar!

* Don't "assume" that specials will do what they did before the upgrade

* Use the Line of Sight, use the -ROOT- Attacks, and make sure before going in understand that your first move my not be the right move all of the time.

* Always consider adding your state recovery abilities on your toolbar for fast access - especially KnockDown Recovery.

* After traveling, make sure to store your vehicle before entering combat. It can save extra wear and tear on it by preventing NPC's and creatures from attacking it if you leave it out in the world

* If you are incapacitated, be sure to turn your auto-attack off while laying on the ground otherwise when you get up your attack will go off and you could be incapacitated again by getting the attention of an angry creature or NPC!

* If you turn combat spam to brief mode (options->misc), you can drag the combat tab to its own window and make it small, you can have a nice view of combat taken/delivered without sacrificing the chat window. To enhance this, set up sentence colorization to your name and you can differentiate yourself from other people in combat

* See your local chef for Dustcrepe and Jaar; they can provide an instant cure for Disease and Poison, respectively. These will be useful to have around for combatants without a Doctor present. Your local chef can also provide Cavaellin Cremes and Starshine Surprise! Both of these will decrease incapacitation time

* Listening to an entertainer for a few minutes will give you a percentage bonus to most forms of experience gain for several hours. New players/characters: be sure to listen to an entertainer or pick up entertainer yourself - it works in camps out in the field too!

* If you're getting lower than expected damage with your typical weapon, swap over to a weapon with the other damage type (kinetic/energy) if you have one. It often makes a big difference

* Watch your action/mind bars! If they drop too far, your auto-attack will shut down and you'll need to re-attack! The fastest way to die is to just be standing there because you didn't realize that you weren't attacking.

* If you have medic skills, using them in a fight can buy you time to get your action bar recharged. If action gets low, slap down heals for a few cycles to give it a chance to recharge; they drain little enough action that your regen will outpace the amount they use, and the heals will mostly counter or even outpace the damage you're taking.

* If your target BAFs, run and gun. The friends will eventually drop away and you can finish your target.

* You can no longer solo a Krayt, so don't try!

* When you see a RED con, it REALLY means you will not win!

* Weapons have Max ranges, use your "roots" and "snares" to your advantage

* Deathblow - Creatures and NPCs who perform deathblow will currently do them every time, and from range. You need to be careful out there!

RotW Concept Art

Thank you, and goodbye! If anyone else has any helpful info to share, go on and reply!

Don't Mind Me

If any of you could click my Kings of Chaos recruiting link, I'd be very grateful.

Its a painless process, just click the link and then answer the simple "What number is in the box below?" question, and then I gain power!

Power! muhahhahaha!!1!!one!

Best Update Notes Ever!

Star Wars Galaxies
*** Mar 05, 2004 Test Center Update ***

• Misc: Gave Mon Mothma some clothes