Bit of a long title, right? Anyway, on Saturday I attended the second annual Music for Change concert. Music for Change is held for Free the Children, aiming to raise funds to help children living in poverty through education. It is also supported by my school HTS, or Holy Trinity School. I never attended the 2008 concert so I wasn’t sure what to expect of this years, so it was much to my surprise how good the performances were! The night started with opening speeches from the MC, Andrew Ascenzo, and Jacqueline Mok. Immediately after were speeches from Marc and Craig Kielburger, the people who started FTC back when they were only twelve. It’s something to hear Craig speak, as it’s extremely powerful - as far as I’m concerned he is the best speaker I’ve ever heard. Why? Because he is really passionate about what he’s saying - there’s no comparison, even to presidential speeches from Barrack Obama.

After the opening speakers the music got started. Literally everything was if not the best at least enjoyable to listen to! In particular performances by Louise Kent, Andrew Ascenzo, and Molly Johnson stood out. Louise performed a single song, Some Days, which was uplifting and convinced me to buy her album (a rare thing as I usually only buy songs individually). Andrew was a part of the Victor Cheng jazz trio - I didn’t expect a particularily memorable piece  as jazz is not one of my favourite genres, but the songs here had the amazing quality of constantly moving between classical and jazz genres, along with a great piano accompaniment. Finally, Molly Johnson brought the night to a close with some jazz tunes but more importantly plenty of character - the way most events should end. I fully expect a 2010 Music for Change and will gladly attend.

While it’s a lot less important or amazing, I do have a few other topics I’ve been waiting to post about. First is a small Windows game called Infiniminer, made by Zachtronics Industries. It’s available for free and while the servers seem to have quieted down the past few days I still recommend everyone gives it a try. I’ve been making a lot of changes and submitting them to my Git branch; this being the first time I’ve used Git, I’ve found it very useful but not at all user friendly. Anyway, Infiniminer is a 3D mining game whereby a couple teams compete to try to dig down, retrieve loot, and return to the surface. there are four classes specializing in digging, building, exploring, and just blowing stuff up. More interesting than the main game is the sandbox mode, whereby you have unlimited resources and can build hold underground cities and roads and such. I once saw a server that had the entire underground carved out (the server was set to have no lava, which is a very dangerous problem otherwise) so that they could have mid-air walkways and flying temples - crazy stuff. While the game has its rough edges, which I’ve slowly tried to fix with my repository (seriously, it’s got a lot of fixes and features that improve gameplay), I still say that everyone should give it a try, especially if you have any LAN parties or similar events.

The final comment I want to make is something that has struck me as odd for a while - in Windows 7 the Notepad++ find window doesn’t close properly and instead obscures the window, half-transparent and unresponsive. For anyone else having this problem, I just found a solution by this blog post; just disable transparency or set it to “always on”! I didn’t even know Notepad++ had the ability to make the find window transparent when it uses focus! Excellent fix.

Usually I end up relying purely on Avast! or AVG as a virus scanner, but recently I’ve been giving ThreatFire a try. ThreatFire is a lightweight free security solution designed to work alongside regular antivirus software. Unlike most virus / malware / rootkit scanners ThreatFire doesn’t just check a signature database to find malicious programs; instead it watches what processes are doing. As a result it notifies you if that program you just downloaded is trying to change IE settings, if something just deleted itself, or if that exe extractor is installing a Trojan while it works. This last situation happened to me and ClamWin (my current antivirus, though I’ve found Avast! better) didn’t notice.

For the low price of free ThreatFire uses only 2 MB of memory to protect your Windows computer from viruses and malware that may not even appear on you virus scanner’s database - while it doesn’t replace the traditional scanner it is an excellent addition. It received a 4.5 on PC Magazine and appeared on their list of 11 Critical Security Security Apps. False positives are low and successful identifications are high, making it an easy choice to install. While my own testing has been much more limited than PC Mag’s I’ve still found it to be successful and it’s on my list of must-install applications, which can be seen here.

Aside from testing ThreatFire I’ve been trying a game called Combat Arms. It’s another free-to-play Nexon title, meaning you’re sure to see people who’ve paid for customization; however no gameplay-modifying items are cash payment only, so at least there’s no trouble there. While the game seems to have a lot more camping than I’ve seen in CS:S I’d still say to give it a shot, especially if you have some friends with mics (though you’ll need Skype or another VOIP client). At time of writing I’m still only at Private rank but I’m slowly working my way up. I’ve also written a scraper script that can get info from the Nexon profile pages - I’m planning on making it store info in a database and generate graphs, of KDR statistics for example.

Two days ago Rebellion reminded me of what I originally was doing with this site - freeware game reviews. While I have no plans to go back to doing that, as the free game market isn’t exactly saturated, I still do have a lot of experience with various titles and have as a result compiled a list. So, here are my top 20 freeware games:

1. TrackMania Nations Forever: Fantastic graphics with great racing action, all free. The multiplayer is fun and the tracks imaginative - with an easy to use editor and infinite replayibility, this game should be played if at all possible.
2. Starsiege: Tribes: Originally a commercial produce, the first Tribes game was released as freeware quiet a while ago. It has great fps action and gametypes, plus it’s almost guaranteed to run. The multiplayer is still active to this day.
3. I Wanna Be The Guy: IWBtG is considered one of the hardest games made, especially for freeware. It’s unforgiving and at the same time well-designed. Since it’s also a small download, it should be tried, though no guarantees of getting past the first screen.
4. BZFlag: A multiplayer-only tank game, BZFlag is simple but fun. There are objectives to reach, a variety of maps, and a lot of power ups that change the way your tank functions - from genocide to lasers to ghosting through walls. It’s very dynamic and unique but never gets too complex.
5. Sam & Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die!: This is a freeware release of the commercial game from Telltale games. It’s a point and click adventure game with fantastic humour. Even if you use a walkthrough you will laugh, though really you shouldn’t have to consult one.
6. Nethack / Dwarf Fortress: I’m grouping these because they are both ASCII games and about equal in overall quality, though they are worlds apart for depth and type of gameplay. DF is more of a rts game, by which you guide a nation of dwarfs to victory. Nethack is the classic dungeon crawler that has been in production for over 20 years now.
7. Cave Story: A Japanese platformer with an English patch, Cave Story features RPG leveling elements along with an interesting story and fun gameplay. It’s unfortunate that it’s not a particularly long game.
8. Knytt Stories: A great episodic-user-created adventure platformer. There are many different situations you can download - my favourite is “Don’t Eat the Mushroom”, which should be played no matter who you are.
9. Echoes / Torus Trooper / Mu-cade: All three are arcade-style games that are have good concepts backing them up and can be played quite frequently. Mu-cade is a combination between Robotron and snakes that relies on physics - push other snakes off of the playing field and your snake’s tail grows longer. Torus Trooper is a simple shooter that has amazing speeds of thousands of Kilometers per Hour available. Echoes is a Robotron and asteroids combination with a retro feel. Coming it at only a few megabytes in total, these three can be put on a flash drive and played on almost any computer.
10. America’s Army: Though a heavily bloated ad for joining the military, America’s Army does have some unique and interesting gameplay if you take the time to get it. It features some tactical elements along with weapons that seem more realistic. You really need to rely on your team in it.
11. osu!: A clone of “Elite Beat Agents” for the DS (and its Japanese predecessor), this is a mouse driven rhythym game. You click circles when their shrinking outer rings reach them, in time with the music. Featuring a library created by the users (and probably copyright infringements), there are many songs playable. It also has online leader boards and multiplayer. It is very fun, especially if you have a touch-screen computer.
12. TA Spring: An incomplete but growing reproduction of the original Total Annihilation. I consider TA the best rts of its time (better than Starcraft) and while this reproduction has a ways to go it’s looking promising.
13. Ac!dbomb: A gamemaker creation, Ac!dbomb is a puzzle based game about defusing bombs. Unique gameplay, good music, fantastic concept, and even a newer commercial version with a level editor!
14. Fraxy / Warning Forever: Two games based on fighting modular bosses. The first features user made content, the latter is procedurally generated. Warning Forever in particular is an amazing challenge.
15. Trilby: The Art of Theft: A game by Escapist Magazine’s Yahtzee, AoT is a platformer that incorporates stealth along with other aspects for a short but fun game. For more on this, look at its page or this Yahtzee-style youtube review.
16. Gridwars: Very similar to the xbox live Geometry Wars, so much so that the creator was actually contacted to take it down. You’ll have to hunt to find it but it’s got more depth than the original Geometry Wars and just as much of an addictive quality.
17. Frets on Fire: A freeware Guitar Hero game. It plays almost identically to Guitar Hero, just with different graphics and user created song maps. I’m still waiting for a freeware Rock Band
18. Within a Deep Forest: Another 2D platformer adventure. Has unique gameplay, environments, and a cheesy evil scientist story!
19. Synaesthete: A unique music-based shooter, this Digipen project has you running around while simultaneously playing a three column music note game, where successful hits fire your weapon. It’s quite cool and unique.
20. La Mulana: A puzzle oriented platformer of insane complexity and length. Why is this not higher on the list? Because it is vague and unforgiving at times. However, just watch Deceased Crab’s videos of it for some help.

I wish I could put Gmod on there, as it would have gotten #1 - but $10.00 is more than free, unfortunately. Likewise, Cortex Command is shareware. A few other freeware games worth a try:

• Savage 2, a multiplayer FPS RTS combination that I haven’t gotten the hang of yet. I feel like I should put it on the list but I just don’t know enough about it.
• Icy Tower, the classic freeware title most people have heard of.
• Step Mania, a DDR clone.
• Tower of Goo (Unlimited), a simple game that has led to the Wii and PC game World of Goo.
• String Theory, a hard but interesting game where you guide your low-grav character through a level by throwing elastic strings that stick to objects.
• Ramjet, a game about jets that can’t fire but can break, where you destroy each other by ramming - fun on a LAN server.
• Gate 88, a slightly flawed but great game that’s a combination of an overhead asteroids-style shooter with rts elements. Once again, it’s best when you play with other people - it’s just unfortunate that the game doesn’t have more depth.
• Flywrench, a gamemaker game where you pilot an aircraft that based on its state changes colour. Touching anything that’s a different colour will kill you.

Oh yeah, go visit You Have to Burn the Rope right now. If it doesn’t load download it - don’t worry, it won’t take up much of your time.

Don’t you hate it when people comment on things just to be first, no other reason? Anyway, it’s fine with a blog post

To start it off I wrote a bit of a history for the about page - the full page, under “Navigation.”

Aside from that, there’s not much to say right now. I’ve got a unique project I started as a gmod gamemode, but no details yet - aside from the fact that it’s going to be a FPS, RPG, and RTS combination! More on it later.