Just finished Torchlight 2 beta. Very addicting game. This game is going to be a huge hit – especially with a $20 price tag vs Diablo 3′s hefty price of $60. The game is not nearly as dark and gritty as Diablo 3. It has more of a cartoony feel to it but the game is extremely entertaining to play.
Oh, and Torch Light 2 has Internet, LAN, and Offline modes. Blizzard could learn a thing or two from Runic Games.
Hmm… Diablo 3 or Torchlight 2 Beta this weekend? What to do..what to do. OMG I can have a ferret for a pet? Torchlight 2 Beta it is!
I was majorly disappointed to find the nView Desktop Manager was missing from my new video card’s drivers. After some research, I discovered that Nvidia has decided to remove the nView utility from their latest driver downloads. I was able to extract the nView setup files from an older driver package (266.58). I installed nView by running nviewsetup.exe with the “/f” switch.
You can download the nView setup files here. Extract the files into a folder and run nviewsetup.exe. Don’t forget to use the “/f” switch. Or just run the included install.bat file instead of nviewsetup.exe
Most gamers store their game shortcuts in Steam’s game library because they don’t like to clutter up their desktop with more icons. This is a great solution except for one small problem. Steam has this annoying little habit of randomly removing shortcuts to any non Steam games from your games library.
So what can be done? The answer is fairly simple. All you need to do is make a backup your Steam’s shortcuts.vdf file. I recommend doing this after adding a new game to your game library. There are multiple copies of the shortcuts file so you want to be sure you back up the right one.
1. Locate the folder where Steam is installed.
Let’s use d:\games\Steam as an example.
2. Navigate to d:\games\steam\userdata\Your Profile #\config .
3. Copy shortcuts.vdf to shortcuts – Copy.vdf
That’s it. Anytime your shortcuts go missing, simply exit Steam and copy shortcuts – Copy.vdf back to shortcuts.vdf, overwriting the corrupt shorcuts file. Restart Steam and your shortcuts will be restored.
You may also download this handy batch script (.bat) file to do the job for you. Just place it in your \steam\userdata\Your Profile #\config folder and create a shortcut to the batch file on your desktop or Start menu. Here is the source code to the script for those who are paranoid about downloading batch files to your computer:
@echo off
CHOICE /C:BRQ /M “(B)ackup Steam Shortcuts, (R)estore Shortcuts, (Q)uit”
IF ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO End
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO Restore
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO Backup
goto End:Backup
CHOICE /C:YN /M “This will replace existing backup. Are you sure?”
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO End
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ConfirmBackup
goto End:ConfirmBackup
copy shortcuts.vdf “shortcuts – Copy.vdf”
echo Backup Complete
pause
goto End:Restore
echo.
echo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
echo.
echo Please make sure you have completely exited out of Steam first!
echo.
echo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
echo.
pause
del shortcuts.vdf
copy “shortcuts – Copy.vdf” shortcuts.vdf
echo Restore complete. Restart Steam.
pause:End
Here’s a little game i’ve been playing. I got it on Steam for 6 bucks. So far I am loving it!
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is an exploratory action adventure with an emphasis on audiovisual style. Traverse a mythic little realm, use a sword to do battle & evoke sworcery to solve mystical musical mysteries.
If you’re like me and having to constantly battle insomnia then you want to use every sleep aid you can get your hands on. A sleep machine can reduce anxiety and help you fall asleep. You can spend $40 on a low end sleep machine, but you can easily build one if you have an old laptop laying around. An old desktop works just as well but consumes more power. The computer sits idle throughout the night so you don’t want to waste more electricity than you have to.
Here are the parts I’ve used. This project cost me $0 because I had everything I needed just laying around.
To make sure the laptop’s bright screen didn’t keep me up at night, I configured Windows XP power settings to blank the screen after 1 minute. I also have the laptop configured to sleep after a few hours. There isn’t much sense having the laptop on all the time. As an added bonus, I don’t need to remember to power off the laptop when I wake up in the morning.
Hope this helps someone!
“Social Fixer for Facebook” (formerly known as Better Facebook) is a free browser extension that improves the Facebook site by eliminating annoyances and adding lots of great enhancements and functionality. It runs in most browsers and installs in just a minute.
Falcor, the official office dog of Runic Entertainment makes his videogame debut in Torchlight II.
