March 26, 2008

G15 Support – Finally

 

One of the more over looked items that was added in GU43, was G15 keyboard support. Something I was ecstatic to hear.

Logitech G15 Support

EQII now supports the Logitech G15 Keyboard’s LCD display. You can enable/disable this option under Options->User Interface->Game Features. The data sent to the LCD window is extremely customizable.

The Default UI ships with five pages of data.
Page 1 is the title page and shows what each of the 4 buttons do when pressed.
Page 2 displays your current ping, packet loss, frame rate and bandwidth usage.
Page 3 displays experience for your adventure level, tradeskill level and achievement points.
Page 4 is a mini persona window showing your stats, health and power.
Page 5 displays the health and power for all members of your group.

UI modders can display any number of pages with each page showing any of the dynamic data already available to the client.

I’ve had my G15 for a little over a year now, and I love it. I don’t think I could switch to any other keyboard. I like being able to have my own profiles per game (granted, EQ2 is very limited with what I can do with those 18 keys, since they don’t allow keybinding past the 3 hotbars they give you to start with) and it’s something that should have been implemented long ago. I know a lot of people use gaming keyboards, and perhaps it just wasn’t known at the time how much this little feature would be appreciated.

My Cake is not a Lie

 

Boston Cream cake, it may not look like the fanciest cake out there, but it was delicious.

So, last night I asked to be demoted from officer in my guild. Nothing overly big, but I’m just feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities. We’ve had approx. 25 new recruits in the last three weeks, and I’ve tagged at least 90% of those people. I feel as though as an officer it’s my job to not only make sure new players feel welcome, but that they’re settled in the guild and game in general. I craft constantly for guild members (for no charge) and it’s slightly frustrating when the first thing a new recruit asks (who I’ve never even heard of before mind you) is for me to make them 300 bricks right off the bat. I admit now, I have a hard time saying no. I understand that no one’s forced me to take on the role to the extent that I have, but I feel as though it’s sort of my duty, if that makes sense.

I do like helping people, I’m not all mean. I do enjoy crafting house items for my fellow guild mates (ones I’ve known for a bit) and helping when I can. However, doing it daily from 6am-10pm is becoming more like a job then a fun game. That’s my reason for stepping down. I don’t mean to belittle the other officers or guild leader, but due to my constant play times, it’s just too much. Hopefully they understand.

Vanguard went down this morning for it’s weekly update, typically it’s Tuesday but last week and this week have been Wednesdays. I’m hoping they fix a few major bugs that are floating around. Since the server came down (well, it actually crashed, an hour before it was supposed to come down) I decided to take a peek into EQ2. I think I scared Calreth half to death when I suddenly showed up in guild. I left over two months ago (not intentionally, I was just going to ‘peek’ into Vanguard and then got swept up in the game) and have missed a few updates. There’s all sorts of crafting recipes now, and a whole lot of house items that I’ve never seen. I think I spend the better part of my EQ2 posts talking about housing and house items, and yet my own carpenter is only level 30. The itch to work on her and level is pretty strong right now. She’s also my 77 coercer, not that far away from 80, though I have no inclination to begin raiding or anything of the sort. The problem is that my characters are (at the moment) split between servers, which is a pain. I had even contemplated deleting some from one server, and starting them anew on the other. That’d be a lot (three years?) of work down the drain though. In the back of my mind I keep hoping SOE offers another free transfer option, or creates some sort of “move all your characters from this account” plan. Rather then the $50 each that I’d have to pay right now.

I noticed that fire place flames are now persistent even when no one has been home. Veteran rewards have been awarded by character and not 3 per like it used to be. There are froglok mannequins that I just laughed out loud about. My jeweler is still missing four pieces to her epic, but I’m not sure how easy that is to complete, no one seemed to be talking on the craft channels when I was on. Then again it was pretty early in the day and I wasn’t exactly looking to see who could help me out.

I’ve always been bad at playing more then one game. I like to dedicate myself to one or another fully. I do have station access though, and it seems a shame to be spending $30 a month playing just one of the listed titles. I’ve mentioned time and time again that I leave EQ2 and typically always come back, maybe it’s that time again.