Jefklak’s Codex

- And buy Ninjatown - Venan Entertainment’s cute Tower Defense style game on the Nintendo DS. Most of the levels are not that difficult (except a few frustratingly difficult ones, as all TD games) but that shouldn’t bother you at all. I personally love the game’s smooth and relaxed gameplay. It does not come with that much chaos as other Tower Defense games - you can’t build on every single tile of your map and spam a lot of towers. Well actually you can only build one tower and increases your ninja’s line of sight.

In Ninjatown, it’s all about creating ninja “dojos” . There are a lot of different types of dojos and each one houses a specific ninja. Some ninja’s are slower but stronger than their brethren, while others are quick and nimble, but don’t pack that much of a punch. Using the right ninja skill at the right moment is usually the key to victory. You might even be forced to sell dojo’s when the next enemy wave appears to build specific anti-enemy ninja’s (anti-flying, anti-quick units, …). Secondary structures like tea houses (wuh? They help speed up your ninja’s movement, of course) and training dojo’s help incease ninja statistics to nearby dojos.

So what’s so great about this game? Besides style, the clever but simple design and the lovely art style you mean? It’s kind of another indie-game and those people really need your support! At a lot of stores, Ninjatown sells for only £20 or even less, so don’t be a jerk and buy the game. End of announcement.

(Yeah it’s been a while, I guess people who still visit Jefklak’s Codex are out of their mind!)

Due to popular request. All other visitors, have fun with the muppets
Curious animals, those chickens.

Watch the story video!

It all starts with one interested chicken, looking for something nice to eat. As soon as it notices you’ve got something worthwile, more chickens show interest.

“Gimme gimme” - roughly translated: pôk poak pôk.
So I try to be a smartass and run around the corner to watch them go at the back of the shed.
Guess what happens, once a chicken has shown even some interest in you or your “stuff”, they are virtually unstoppable.

“Ha!” I think, watching those primitive animals behind the glass of the garden shed door.
One of the chickens is smart enough to fly against the glass to draw my attention. *bang*. *bang*.
So I open the door. The unstoppable chickens win some territory by immediately entering the shed.
Continue reading…  ›› 

From now on you can browse all Flickr uploaded photos within Jefklak’s Codex from the Photos index page! Thanks to the Flickr API and the Tantan Photo album Wordpress plugin. I dug a little bit into the Google Maps API and mashed some code samples together within the album lib to automatically include GPS coordinate information inside an inline google map widget. The result is quite nice. For example, have a look at this pretty beach view:

(Clicking on the image links to the inline photo page, not to Flickr) Album pages also include a google maps widget to give you a rough idea of the location, so do the tags. For instance, browsing to the photo tag ‘Drenthe’ gives you a nice overview of the general location for the tag Drenthe - which is of course in Drenthe, Netherlands. Most photos are automatically tagged thanks to my new cellphone the Nokia N82, equipped with a 5MP camera including Xenon flash. (Of course all decent camera’s still blow it away when you compare picture quality or closure times…)

In addition, check out the renovated Sitemap appendix. All Flickr tags have been completely integrated into the ever growing list. Cool eh? Also, clicking on a marker in a group tag or album page highlights the photo on the top.

Getting your hands on retro (PC, obviously) games can be pretty tough nowadays. Remember those big cardboard boxes, containing 10 floppy disks and a huge poster printed on some cloth? If you buy a game today, you get a plastic DVD box with a tiny manual, sometimes even not colored. If you want more swag, you’ll need to buy the collector’s edition, which means things like on-line preordering to be sure you’ve got one of the limited printed boxes, and paying more than $10 extra. At this moment, ebay may offer a solution for you but most games are slightly damaged and more than overpriced.

Great, I can replay Jagged Alliance again!

CD Project offers a solution to the desperate retro gamer; a solution called “Good Old Games” (GOG). Essentially it’s a on-line webstore dedicated to retro and old PC games which are not that easy to find anymore, even in budget edition. You can subscribe to their service and for only $6 download the games. Of course you won’t have the goodies included either, but hey. The project is in open beta phase right now, so go to http://www.gog.com to try it! More information:

When it launches in September, CD Projekt’s Good Old Games will offer cheap, DRM-free digital downloads of long-lost old-school PC titles like Fallout, Fallout 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Sacrifice, Descent 1-3 and Kingpin: Life of Crime, among others.

Priced at either $5.99 or $9.99, these aren’t straight re-releases. CD Projekt has done work to ensure that each game is now compatible with Windows XP and Vista, going so far as to create a custom installer for each game. A closed public beta demonstrating this is set to go live on August 1, with the site currently accepting applications.

Read an interesting interview about piracy concerns and more at shacknews.

After almost a year, Jefklak’s Codex finally got an overhaul. The old wiki/blog combination did not work out completely as expected, and most spam bots weren’t that friendly towards the completely hacked pmWiki engine. So right now, Jefklak’s Codex runs on Wordpress! It’s much more dynamic, and a lot easier to manage and extend the website, instead of mostly manually hacking some php file to get a decent result.

I hope most people who visit the site now and then will find their way. Feedback is always welcome, feel free to comment on this entry - which by the way does not require registration at all, but does require administrator approval. Another way to keep unwanted comments at bay. I did add all old (relevant) articles to the new database; such as reviews, gameplay movies, guides, savegames, tips, and more. If you’re not sure where to go next, consider taking a look at the Codex Appendix. It contains a full alphabetically ordered list of articles and relevant tags.

The famed hotel-restaurant “Scholteshof“, located in Kermt (near Hasselt), Belgium, has been abandoned for a few years. The domain is very large and used to contain a tennis court, multiple ponds and multiple surrounding gardens, two restaurants and the main hotel itself. Not much of these things are left nowadays, except the gardens, who are becoming one big wood. It is funny to research the place on for example google, and find pictures and videos from the past. It looked amazing back then. Many famous people used to visit and stay here, and some even came by helicopter. Take for example this link. It contains nice a looking video of how the hotel used to be, and some information about the food:

Roger Souvereyns, a collector and a man of sense converts an old farm dating back to 1742, an ancient dwelling of the Bailiff of Steevoort, into a peace haven where gastronomy and lifestyle inter-relate quite harmoniously. In the eleven-hectare estate with kitchen gardens, vineyards and herbariums, all of which provide directly the cooking with the first-quality products, the Scholteshof surrounds you, at any time, of superb art objects, which intermingle with the valuable precious antique furniture, the goal of which is to offer a varied and cosy setting. Let’s discover his cooking all quality-based on specific products so as to find out the authentic tastes, while preserving the natural flavours and aromas, all this thanks to simple preparations, such as these fillets sautés, truffles and goose-liver in carpaccio, or these roe-buck undercuts, pear in red wine and beetroots.

Continue reading…  ›› 

Yesterday I stumbled upon a really interesting website, urbex.nl. The website is dedicated to ‘urban exploring’, something I honestly never heard of before. Urbex activists explore abandoned places all over the globe: old castles, to-be-demolished industry zones, abandoned train stations and much more. This “hobby” raised my attention especially after looking at some pictures on that website (especially the residential ones, like the ‘ghost’ castles in Namur). Wouldn’t it be great to explore such a huge place, without anybody interrupting your adventure?

So I had to try it myself. There is a little abandoned farm just over the bridge where I live, approx. 1km from my home. I used to cycle in that area when I went to high school, and the building always got my attention when passing by. I decided to grab some quick pictures, hopefully without disturbing any temporary inhabitants. The result? The photo on the left.

As you can see, there are fences in front of the building, recently added, I suspect to keep falling parts off the road. A lot of rich people (meaning huge penthouses) live in that area, they wouldn’t like to have a little scratch on their big Mercedes SUV, wouldn’t they. This farm was built near (but now you can say in) the woods, not in the residential area. Problem: entering the building without damaging anything. The fences are closed, climbing would raise suspicion (and might tear my clothes, heh). Luckily I found a way through the trees at the back of the house.

Continue reading…  ›› 

Report Content

• Soloing - the Introduction
• The Blade Kit explained
• Used Baldur’s Gate II Setup

1. Part 1: Irenicus’ Dungeon
2. Part 2: The Circus Tent & Slums Slaves
3. Part 3: A Tanner & More Slaves
4. Part 4: The Astral Prison
5. Part 5: Daystar & Mae’Var
6. Part 6: Some Beholders & a Lich
7. Part 7: Druid Grove & Guarded Compound
8. Part 8: Planar Sphere & Kangaxx!
9. Part 9: The Shadow Temple

Introduction

With a small group of Forgotten Realms fans at Shrimprefuge, we decided to take on the Baldur’s Gate world using only one character (hence solo). For most of us, this will be the first solo run so I figured we (and other readers) could use a report writeup as the characters progress through the game.

Before picking the class bard and kit blade, I did some basic research on how to play and which strategy should work - and which won’t. The most resourceful report was definatly andijvieschotel’s one from the BioWare forums. Thanks to him, I managed to get through some very otherwise tough portions of the game, especially in the beginning. Let’s get on with it, shall we.

The Blade Kit

For those who are not very familiar with Bards in Baldur’s Gate, here is the official kit description.

The blade is an expert fighter and adventurer, whose bardic acting abilities make him appear more intimidating and fearsome. His fighting style is flashy and entertaining, but is also quite deadly.

Advantages

May use Offensive Spin and Defensive Spin abilities once per day per 4 levels. Offensive Spin lasts 24 seconds, granting the blade +2 to hit, +2 to damage, and an extra attack. As well, all of his attacks do maximum damage for the duration. Defensive Spin lasts 24 seconds, roots him to the spot, but gives -1 AC per level of experience. This armor class bonus does not go over -10.

May place three slots into two-weapon fighting style.

Disadvantages

Only has one-half normal Lore value.
Only has one-half Pick Pockets percentage;
Bard Song does not become better with levels.

Continue reading…  ›› 

   

Ported to the Nintendo DS

by

TheChuckster, WinterMute, Jefklak

DSDoom is a port of Doom to the Nintendo DS based off the Prboom source tree because of its purity and portability.
PrBoom is a version of the classic 3D shoot’em’up game Doom, originally written by id Software. See the file AUTHORS in this distribution for a list of authors and other contributors, and a history of the projects PrBoom is derived from. dsdoom is made available under the GNU General Public License. See the file COPYING included in this distribution for details.

Important: There will be no more active development. Please do not mail or ask in the comments section about any new version, as there will be none. The source code has been released, feel free to add as many features as you want. I only copied this page from the old Jefklak’s Codex webpage for future reference, nothing more. Please be aware that there are already several newer, ds doom  1.1 spin-offs available on the internet.

Continue reading…  ›› 

There you have it! After the “recent” compatibility update of ScummVM, an adventure game interpreter which is able to run on almost any platform, Goblins 3 is now also supported. You’ll have to download the daily SVN build because release version 0.10.0 is still not fully ready yet. With a little bit of luck, maybe even Woodruff could become playable. That would be awesome, since DOSBox or native running on WinXP gives you a horribly bad resolution. For those of you who never played any Goblin adventure/puzzle game: it’s basically combining and clicking to progress to the next screen, full of more annoying but very humoristic puzzles. Sometimes Blount gets help from Chunk the Parrot (I think it is? Stupid pixels!) or his potential girlfriend.

Another Goblin adventure playable on the DS.