Game.Salesmunn.com

So I was watching At World’s End on Blu-Ray last night and about 3/4 of the way through the movie, the final turbine exhaust fan kicked in on my PS3.  The final fan, or what I think is the final fan, is the 3rd Tier exhaust for the PS3.  I’ve heard this fan before but only during Folding@home and is one of the reasons I rarely run that anymore.  Forget energy consumption, I don’t want to hear that fan blaring.

The problem is with my wall unit, which has ports that grant insufficient airflow for the consoles in it.  I had a few hours earlier today, so I figured I’d see what I could do with some stuff around the house to cool the PS3. 

I started off by measuring the temperature behind the PS3 running Folding@home.  It topped out, with the max fan, at 118 degrees directly behind the unit, which was pretty damn hot (and loud).  I ran UT3 for about 20 minutes and it actually hit 120 degrees.  How to cool it?

I had recently drilled holes in the back of my wall unit for extra ventilation but that didn’t make a bit of difference.  I needed a fan.  USB powered PC fans were running online for about $20, which was much more than the $0 price tag I was looking to spend.  After digging through my box o’ crap, I found an extra Antec PC fan and a spare USB cable.  After splicing the two together (with masking tape, all out of electrical tape) I had a USB powered fan.  Cost = $0.

The image below is the fan laying behind the PS3, blowing the air out from behind the system.  New top temperature was 113 degrees, about five degrees colder than before but the ps3’s fan stil kicked into high gear. Not good enough.

So I decided to build an exhaust fan into the top of the wall unit.  I don’t own a jigsaw, so my power drill will have to do.  I measured out and drilled an exhaust fan directly above the unit.

I had to make sure the sawdust wouldn’t get all over the PS3, so I slapped together this sawdust catcher first.  Right about now my wife walked by and said, "I don’t know what the hell you’re doing but that paper towel looks hideous."  and keeps walking.  I didn’t bother explaining, I was on a mission.

(you can see some of my exhaust holes in this pic as well)

The pic below shows the near-final hole, before I smoothed it out.  It also shows my messy fan mod, it looks much better in-person, trust me. 

The final product shaved a full five more degrees off of the fan, never toping 110 degrees.   We watched Order of the Phoenix on Blu-Ray last night without the top-speed fan ever kicking on. 

Success!  And it lightly illuminates the PS3 as well.  It kicks on only when the PS3 is powered on, so it’s always on when I need it.  Good stuff!

–
Salesmunn@gmail.com

Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: SCEA
Release Date: 08/09/2007
Players: 1-2 (offline)

Colored blocks fall and you’re tasked to clear them; chances are you’ve completed that task thousands of times. It’s been a time tested formula for puzzle video games throughout the years, regurgitated in many iterations from Dr. Mario to Columns to the incredibly successful Lumines.

When you consider the seemingly endless list of color matching titles that have hit the market, it’s pretty staggering to imagine one that costs $2.99 could even compete. Surprisingly, Sony’s Japan Studio has somehow tossed out a cheap puzzle game that accomplishes the one and only task necessary; it’s actually fun to play!

Piyotama at its core is simply a color matching puzzle game. Colored eggs are laid above off the screen from the, "PIYOMAMATM" or Mother Piyo (Hen). The laid colored eggs tumble into your vertical play area for you to clear by matching four like colors either vertically or horizontally. To match the colors up, you slide the rows of eggs side-to-side, always holding three swappable eggs in a queue of sorts to the right or left of the play area. This "queue" can be flipped around using the face buttons, allowing you to pull like-colored eggs from one row and place them strategically in a row above or below their origin.

Once you have four eggs lined up, they glow and begin a quick hatching process. If you continually match colored eggs within the next few moments, you will create a combo and drastically increase your score. Getting a combo of two or three is fairly easy to accomplish however after a few days with the game, I’ve only been able to reach a high combo of 11. High scores on the Playstation Network show high combos near 30, which is pretty hard to imagine.

While all of this might seem incredibly basic, the additional game play twists make things much more complicated than it first appears. As you clear eggs below, pockets of empty space will accrue and with a gentle vertical flick of the SIXAXIS, eggs hop and tumble into unfilled holes. A horizontal motion with the controller acts similarly to a tilt in a pinball game, shifting the tube in your desired direction. One wonderful aspect of Piyotama is that the SIXAXIS motion controls are perfectly implemented here, they never feel tacked on or unnecessary at all.
d yet very difficult to master. Like an eggy game of chess, you’ll consistently need to plan numerous moves ahead. This necessity to plan causes some problems in higher levels, as the eggs really begin to pile up. When the area begins to fill with eggs, It’s hard to resist the urge to just toss eggs from one row to another hoping for a positive result or just shake the crap out of your SIXAXIS. Sometimes this is successful but thankfully, it’s definitely not the most effective way to amass a high score.

Graphically, Piyotama has a crisp and colorful cartoon presentation up to an unnecessary 1080p resolution. The backgrounds are colorful, yet completely static with only your previously hatched Piyotami floating around it. The colors change from one level to another but it definitely doesn’t affect the game the way the backgrounds would in a puzzle title like Lumines.

The musical score in Piyotama is enjoyable yet equally simple. While the tunes complement the cutesy, chickadee theme well, I yearn for a few more tracks to crack eggs by. You’ll hear the same few tunes loop in the background over and over throughout your time with the game. They’re very happy and catchy songs as a whole, which makes it even more disappointing there aren’t more of them.

Three main game modes are at your disposal here; Piyo COOP (not to be confused with co-op, this is COOP as in, "chicken coop"), Free-Range, and a 2-Player multiplayer mode (which is unfortunately offline only). COOP mode has a 300 second "egg timer" that slowly counts down, forcing you to clear as many eggs as possible within the time limit. Free-Range, my personal favorite, continues until the play area is full of eggs or the mother hen dies of exhaustion (okay, I made that last part up). The offline only multiplayer is fun if you have an experienced friend to enjoy it with but unfortunately, the high learning curve assures this won’t be a common occurrence.

Overall, Piyotama is an great game and I recommend any PS3 puzzle fan should take it for a spin. It successfully spices up the everyday, color-matching puzzle genre with an interesting flavor of its own. For a dirt-cheap price of $2.99, it’s pretty hard not to recommend adding this to your PSN library.

Official Sony jargon:

KEY FEATURES

*Fast & Fun Gameplay - Easy pick up and play – either solo or against a friend. Match 4 or more eggs of the same color to hatch the piyos. Hatch the rare egg to complete each level.
* Infinite Levels - Enjoy colorful characters, carnival music, and playful scenery in full HD at 1080p. Test your skills in timed play or play timer-free.
* SIXAXIS™ Wireless Controller- Nudge controller side to side to fill in gaps, and shake up and down to force matched eggs to warm and hatch instantly.
* Global Online Ranking - Perch your hatching skills worldwide.
* 1080p resolution

I’ve tossed up a PS3 compatible video of Ratchet & Clank PS3 from Sony Gamer’s Day. Gamers Day, the event that gamers aren’t invited to, you know.

Anyway, navigate to this blog from your PS3 Web Browser and click the link below to save it to your hard drive. This will be available for a limited time, meaning only a few days, so get to downloading.

Ratchet & Clank Developer Walkthrough

**Note: For some reason, the PS3 will store this video in the music folder, but if you copy it out to a memory stick or flash drive, then import it back in, you should be fine. Make sure you create a folder named, "VIDEO" to put it in on the memory stick otherwise, no dice.**

I’ve been reading (and responding to) all the comments and questions regarding the install and thought I’d respond to them in a separate post.

Q: What build of Ubuntu did you use on your PS3?

A: I used 7.04 for Power PC and PS3, which can be downloaded HERE

Q: What did you use to burn the image onto a disc? Mine didn’t work.

A: I used Nero to burn the image onto a CD and the PS3 didn’t have any trouble reading it.

Q: What about a "Part 2" of your Ubuntu Linux install video?

A: That’s an idea, but I’m not sure it’s really needed. Once the steps on the video are completed, the installation is no harder than a standards Windows setup. If you can’t install Windows then maybe you might want to take a back seat on Linux for awhile.

Fooling a bit more with Ubuntu tonight. It’s interesting to toy with the interface and see what interesting stuff it can accomplish.

I wonder what else I can find?

My Ubuntu video is uploaded and should clear YouTube sometime soon. Once it hits, I’ll toss it up here and on Aeropause.

Ubuntu is working like a charm on my PS3. As a matter of fact, I’m blogging this from it right now. After firing up the system, it automatically told me that 11 new updates were available and after a quick download and install, it was done.

I’m impressed there’s no need for network setups of any kind and that all the necessary basics are here: Gimp and Open Office 2.2. The system is much more responsive than it was while running off of the CD but the initial boot was longer than I would normally want.

Other than that, it’s running great! I just uploaded a couple files to my photobucket account for posting here. I edited them via Gimp on this system without issue.

The War Room

Newbie Ubuntu Install on a PS3

Preparing the PS3

Backing up the PS3 was very important, I’d hate to lose what I’ve done in the past few weeks with the system. I pulled all the photos and audio off via USB drive first and tossed them onto my main PC for safe keeping. I also deleted all the game trailers and fluff that I can easily just download again later. Game demos went in the trash as well, except for Ninja Gaiden Sigma, I haven’t beaten that one through yet.

Fire up the backup of the PS3, 2.3gb of data backed up onto a 4gb USB flash drive in about an hour and thirty minutes, no big deal. I missed a CSI a few weeks ago, time to fire up the 360 and download that episode and watch it in the meantime. At least the backup tells me how long it’s going to take (and was surprisingly accurate) so I can just do something else in the meantime. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell me the size of the actual backup but I had a feeling a 4gig stick would be enough.

Formatting

This surprising took a matter of moments. About 2.3gb of data on a PS3 was formatted by “Quick Format” in about five seconds. I expected it to take quite awhile. Reboot.

Okay, queue orchestra. System still has all my previously set user profiles here, guess everything isn’t deleted. I login as myself and see it’s squeaky clean and fresh. Pop in the Ubuntu disc and it shows as a data disc.

Boot installer

Instructions say to go to “Install other OS” so off I go. That link scans the disc for a few seconds and finds the boot file, only option is to cancel or continue. Easy enough, continue. It installs in a few seconds. It’s taking longer to write this than to actually go through the motions…..so far.

Booting Ubuntu

Now I follow the directions again and boot into Ubuntu. Simple enough, system reboots and my HDTV goes blue for wayyyy too long. Okay, does it not work with the HDMI out? Not good. Oh, here it is. Just took a few moments. Now I get the “kboot:”prompt just as the instructions stated. Very nice, I wonder if the “official” logitech wireless keyboard works now?

Well I’ll be damned, it does work! Ubuntu logo and some distorted graphic underneath. Looks like it crashed, damn. Okay, no big deal. Reset the PS3 and see what happens. System reboots after a moment, reading the Ubuntu installer disc and it’s loading via the CD now. Slow load but it’s loading, apparently I’ll get the option to install to the hard drive at some point. I’ll wait…at least it’s still seeing the touch pad.

About a minute later, it’s just sitting there. I see a “Install” option in front of me. Let’s do that shall we? It’s doing something now, I probably should have recorded this whole thing. That would’ve been the “journalist” in me but alas, I am a game-blogger. I’m not held to journalistic standards at all. Where was I?

High-Def Only

Okay, let me go back and start over with video in standard def….well maybe not. It seems the resolution in standard def is too low to display the windows within the CD boot of Ubuntu. Video will end there and back to HDMI out I go!

All I’ve got to say is that this sucker better boot faster when it’s fully installed. This CD boot is nightmarishly slow. I was trying to time it but I’ll have to wait for the video, I lost count.

I read through some of the bugs on the Ubuntu website, one seems to be that if you don’t manually configure your partitions, the install will crash. I chose “manual” from the partition setup and just left the numbers as they were. I didn’t see any option to change the partition sizes at all, so I just accepted the settings that were there, (10gb and 512 swap.)

The installer is rolling along and it seems that “manual” option during install dodged the bug. This whole process is simple enough so far. 3 hours and counting, if you count the hour and a half backup of the PS3 in the beginning.

Thankfully I opted for the monitor with Picture-In-Picture.

Here are the notes from our un-recorded podcast discussion today.

TCP: 80, 443, 5223
UDP: 3478, 3479

UDP: 3658 (However, you may need to use a different port number when you are connected using a NAT router.)

"The PlayStation 3 is a video game console created by Sony Corp. Aside from playing games, it also offers an option to install other operating systems such as Linux. This page gives instructions on how to install Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu onto a PlayStation 3. The instructions contained in this page will work if you have the PlayStation 3 firmware version 1.60 or greater installed."

The links below are where the Live-CD images are located. Download the Ubuntu distribution you intend to install on the PlayStation 3.

Opinion Piece on the Lies of the Gaming Industry (via Threespeech)

"But eventually the industry will wake up. When gamers start growing older, and they look back at what they’ve played over the last decade and realize that the most fun they’ve had was on the SNES they’ll move on to other, more satisfying forms of entertainment, be it movies, music, or even (gasp) human interaction. When the bottom line gets affected, you’ll see the industry cope. The companies that see it coming will be able to move and adapt, and those mired in the garbage that is most video game production will be left behind.

One day, the consumer and the media and the developers will realize we’ve been chasing after progress what we really need is the same thing people have been doing for hundreds of years: the ability to feel human and be entertained at the same time. Until then, feel free to go pick up the highly acclaimed, hyped and well reviewed Ultra Awesome Game 16… because the higher number means it’s better, right?"

Engadget has a snippet about this sick little helicopter alarm.  Apparently it launches through the air with a horrifying chopper noise that won’t stop until you catch it and put it back on the holster.  How awesome is that!? 

My brother would go absolutely nuts over something like this, too bad his birthday passed and…….ooh…..too bad it’s fifty beans.  Talk about a great way to scare an unsuspecting spouse.

Via Engadget

So here it is, I finally decided on an HDTV. I’ve been looking for something that fits into
my current apartment hutch but is still very high quality and an
acceptable price.

I settled on a Samsung LNS3251D LCD HDTV. (Specs here,
for number junkies.) I had originally settled on the $1440 TV at a price
of $1199 from a friend of a friend who works at a PC Richards in Brooklyn. On Black
Friday, I went to a local PC Richards to sign up for their credit card
and afterwards, check out my TV. Just so happens they were having 1-Day
sales on almost everything, my TV was now $1099. I was going to wait
but….SOLD!

I needed something to replace this hunk of shit.

The model I picked is actually pretty expensive for only a 32 inch,
but it includes 2 HDMI inputs and every feature I was looking for. It
also has very, very dark inky blacks. Looks better than I thought it
would.

Setup was disgustingly easy for this thing, even though I look
baffled in this picture. I have the HD Cable box waiting for me in the
local service center and I’m going to pick it up later on today.
Luckily, HD Cable boxes are completely free from Cablevision.

Finally got it setup….

Plugged that sucker in and the first game I played was some co-op
Gears. Absolutely excellent picture. Next up, a quality surround sound
system.

I got to spend some quality time with the PS3 during Sony’s Playstation 3 Source event in New York City.  I have to say I came off much more impressed about the system.  Overall, the titles are more polished in their current state than anything that was released for the PS2 at launch.  MotorStorm and Resistance: Fall of Man were definitely the highlights of the party.  Call of Duty 3 was definitely true to the series, which fans of the series will be happy to hear I’m sure.

I’ve questioned Sony’s controller decision in the past but after using it for a few hours, the SIXAXIS is as great a controller as the Dual-Shock ever was.  I didn’t have any trouble getting used to it at all.  The R2 and L2 triggers are hinged at the top and bend down, meaning, they actually perform like triggers.  The Xbox 360’s triggers push into the controller where the SIXAXIS triggers bend slightly farther back.  It’s not bad, just slightly different.  The controller was noticeably lighter than the 360 pad but I’m sure you knew that already.

Resistance: Fall of Man

My playthrough was actually only single player, but I was on-hand to see a 40 person match take place before the night was over.  Sony apparently had reps at remote locations in the US and Japan to challenge us and it was nice to see it in action.  I didn’t see any significant lag at all, almost led me to believe it wasn’t online.  I soon knew it was, however, because there’s no AI in the world that jumps up and down on your corpse after they frag you.

Resistance looks top notch and I now feel ashamed to have been worried.  Insomniac is an excellent developer and Resistance lives up to their standards.  I’m not a huge FPS fan, preferring 3rd Person instead, but I’d play a lot of Resistance if it was in my living room.  A Sony rep had to practically rip the controller out of my hands.  It had solid Next-Gen visuals with refined controls and a tried-and-true FPS experience.  All that with a launch title?

MotorStorm

MotorStorm gathered the, "oohs" and "aahs" from the crowd all night.  Every few minutes, you’d hear a burst of laughter come from the MotorStorm corner of the room.  The game seemed to carry the best visuals on the system.  There was definitely some crazy mud effects to be seen.  In certain spots, the tires actually tear grooves in the earth.  It’s something I’ve never seen in a racing game before.  Think of how the water responds in Baldur’s Gate or the Champions titles, but now it doesn’t spring back.  I just hope you can turn off the slow motion crashes, they got a little annoying after awhile.  The controls were a little floaty in an ATV Off-Road Fury sort of way, but not to that extreme.  It’s a showpiece for the system, but I doubt there’s much depth there.

Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom

Untold Legends looked clean and crisp, however it’s going to suffer from the same hang-ups that UL2 did on the PSP, repetitive gameplay.  It’ll keep the Hack n’ Slash fans happy, but probably no one else.  It would’ve been nice to be able to try this out co-op, because that’s what this type of game is all about.  I can imagine it’s pretty engrossing with multiplayer.  I’ll have to wait and see.

Odds and Ends with the Games

Sonic is just as bad as the 360 version and Genji felt especially shallow to me.  Gundam was….well…boring, but I’ve never liked, nor played any Gundam titles so it would be really unfair of me to judge.  The rep who watched over the title approached me after I finished playing it and asked,

"What’d you think?"  I glanced back at the TV and turned to her,

"That sure is a nice monitor."  and walked away.

The sports titles through the collection all looked outstanding, especially NHL 2K6, although it was one of the few I never got a chance to play.  I also didn’t play Lair because it was truly nothing new.  Everyone’s drooling over Lair but I just haven’t seen anything yet to cause me to be overly excited about it.  I was treated to a walkthrough of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance by an Activision rep.  It looks great but everything was a bit too shiny, what’s up with that?

The Opposite of Butta-Face

My main highlight of the day was actually sitting down and getting some quality time with the PS3’s interface.  Thankfully, Sony had some PS3’s sitting on a desk hooked into gorgeous Sony monitors, Sony keyboards and (Microsoft) mice for us to freely bang on.  Others at the event were actually unplugging the SIXAXIS controllers and plugging in their cameras to view their pictures live in the browser.  It was then that I realized it’s time to upgrade my home PC, those images were pulled and rendered unbelievably fast. 

The photo viewer rendering options on the PS3 are breathtaking, the kind of thing you fire up and just let run when you have guests over.  I hate to say it, but it makes the photo viewer on the 360 Dashboard look like something from Fisher Price.  It’s odd how Sony made something as boring as a photo slide show worth looking at, much less captivating.

I played with the PS3’s infamous "Remote Play" feature for a bit.  I was able to create a WiFi, WPA-secured network within the PS3’s network settings, then connect my PSP.  Of course, without the newest firmware release, I couldn’t remotely play anything.  The connectivity is there, though, and all Sony has to do is roll out the firmware.

Another notable feature I found in the interface was the "Install other OS" option.  I imagine this is where a PS3 owner can install that Yellow Dog Linux you should have heard about.  Still, if that’s the plan for this option, why not just call it, "Install Yellow Dog Linux".  Are there other OS options in the works, possibly another verison of Linux?

Final Thoughts

The showing was successful one for Sony.  I’m impressed with the game lineup compared to what we were subjected to at the PS2 launch.  While Resistance and MotorStorm definitely caught my attention, the promises of Devil May Cry 4, MGS4 among others guarantee that I’ll be buying a PS3 down the road, the system is just way too hot to be able to deny.

I’ve received an invite from Sony to attend their Playstation 3 Source party on November 2nd in NYC.  Looking forward to attending.  A lot of the specifics are still very hush hush, but I’ve been told I’ll find out more in the next week.

I can’t deny that Sony’s black beauty has really been picking up steam lately and all of the the hands-on previews of the system hardware have been excellent.

The PS3 interface is gorgeous as well and PSM happened to have a PS3 in-house to film their most recent vodcast. Unfortunately, the interface was demonstrated by an absolute stooge of a Sony Rep. It’s painful to listen to him attempt to demonstrate the features of Sony’s most precious piece of hardware with what seems to be no previous knowledge of the system.

Watch this brief video clip in awe of the Rep getting stumped on the difference between “Game Saves” and “Game Data” as-in, your regular game saves and any downloaded data for your games. Aside from being horribly unfamiliar with the product, if they guy had ever used a PSP, it would’ve been obvious to him. He should thank whoever in the audience gave him the classic “throat clear to get attention and signal to move on” move.

I haven’t posted in awhile.  I now write for Aeropause.com with whatever free time I have.  I’ve found the need to post here as well more often, so I plan to definitely do that.