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23 July 2009
Favorite Movie for June and July 2009 (Testing Google Doc's form)
by 鬼徒二等兵 at 3:35 PM 0 comments
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09 May 2009
Online multiplayer FPS gaming in Malaysia
Disclaimer: The following are view based on my personal observation only. Was going to cite some sources for guidance but laziness took me over. Might reedit a bit some time later to fix the sloppiness of this random rant. Here goes:
First person shooters or FPS are a popular genre of action oriented games. FPS when played online multiplayer co-op or PvP with other humans are a lot of fun because of the teamwork and challenge that another human provides. Such games could see a bigger online community in Malaysia but there a factors contributing to the lowered acceptance of FPS gaming online. I'll describe a few features that I've noticed among the local gaming scene that affects this.
While the FPS crowd is not exactly small, RTS and MMORPG are more popular than FPSs. Counter-strike was once very popular here earlier this decade but is now in decline. Most CS player eventually moved to newer games such as the Battlefield and CoD series.
Many buyer of original game did not see a sizable online gaming community in Malaysia. The rampant piracy of computer software in Malaysia made online gaming under appreciated. Many gamers would just get pirated copy of the game and finish the single player mission and probably acquire and play the next hit game if online multiplayer doesn't work due to invalid CD-Key being blocked.
FPS games requires low network latency of below 50ms to be playable. Further reducing interest in online multiplayer FPS gaming, TM, the local ISP that monopolize the local fixed line broadband is worsening it's internet service every coming day. Users speculate it's due to TM over subscribing customers. Recently since 31st March '09 TM's ADSL users has seen the worst degrading in internet service since the 2007 Taiwan undersea cable breakage. TM claimed to have fixed the issue during mid April but a visit to a local forum thread proves otherwise.
Pinging IPs in peninsular Malaysia currently gets a latency result of around 50-70ms. Pinging across the South China Sea to East Malaysia will see ping response time of 70-100ms. Even the latency within the country is not optimal for smooth FPS gaming.
Finally most FPS requires dedicated hosting with adequate bandwidth. Unfortunately dedicated FPS server hosting is not exactly cheap here. Game server hosting is yet to become a competitive business here. Price for low resource game servers like HL or Source engine can be reasonable at RM8 per slot because it's low resource requirements allow shared hosting where multiple instance of the game server can be run on a single physical server.
For games like battlefield2 and cod4 when serving up to 32 clients system resource consumption will quite be heavy. Only 1 or 2 instance of the game server can be run on one physical server unless the hardware is powerful. But then hosting in data centres mostly allow rack mounted servers only and such servers are very expensive especially in powerful configurations.
So I like to conclude that online multiplayer FPS gaming in Malaysia still have a few obstacles to overcome before we'll see game servers of our favorite FPS popping up. With players and free slots of course. Piracy is the major influence to the online gaming community. Piracy reduces the number of original games bought therefor the publishers and local distributor doesn't see the then need to spend on game server hosting for the community. Furthermore as pirated games are usually blocked from joining legitimated servers, a game server will not see much players.
The 2 other influential factors are lower cost of game server hosting and better network latency. But because of the piracy factor, why host a game server when they are no one joining?
First person shooters or FPS are a popular genre of action oriented games. FPS when played online multiplayer co-op or PvP with other humans are a lot of fun because of the teamwork and challenge that another human provides. Such games could see a bigger online community in Malaysia but there a factors contributing to the lowered acceptance of FPS gaming online. I'll describe a few features that I've noticed among the local gaming scene that affects this.
While the FPS crowd is not exactly small, RTS and MMORPG are more popular than FPSs. Counter-strike was once very popular here earlier this decade but is now in decline. Most CS player eventually moved to newer games such as the Battlefield and CoD series.
Many buyer of original game did not see a sizable online gaming community in Malaysia. The rampant piracy of computer software in Malaysia made online gaming under appreciated. Many gamers would just get pirated copy of the game and finish the single player mission and probably acquire and play the next hit game if online multiplayer doesn't work due to invalid CD-Key being blocked.
FPS games requires low network latency of below 50ms to be playable. Further reducing interest in online multiplayer FPS gaming, TM, the local ISP that monopolize the local fixed line broadband is worsening it's internet service every coming day. Users speculate it's due to TM over subscribing customers. Recently since 31st March '09 TM's ADSL users has seen the worst degrading in internet service since the 2007 Taiwan undersea cable breakage. TM claimed to have fixed the issue during mid April but a visit to a local forum thread proves otherwise.
Pinging IPs in peninsular Malaysia currently gets a latency result of around 50-70ms. Pinging across the South China Sea to East Malaysia will see ping response time of 70-100ms. Even the latency within the country is not optimal for smooth FPS gaming.
Finally most FPS requires dedicated hosting with adequate bandwidth. Unfortunately dedicated FPS server hosting is not exactly cheap here. Game server hosting is yet to become a competitive business here. Price for low resource game servers like HL or Source engine can be reasonable at RM8 per slot because it's low resource requirements allow shared hosting where multiple instance of the game server can be run on a single physical server.
For games like battlefield2 and cod4 when serving up to 32 clients system resource consumption will quite be heavy. Only 1 or 2 instance of the game server can be run on one physical server unless the hardware is powerful. But then hosting in data centres mostly allow rack mounted servers only and such servers are very expensive especially in powerful configurations.
So I like to conclude that online multiplayer FPS gaming in Malaysia still have a few obstacles to overcome before we'll see game servers of our favorite FPS popping up. With players and free slots of course. Piracy is the major influence to the online gaming community. Piracy reduces the number of original games bought therefor the publishers and local distributor doesn't see the then need to spend on game server hosting for the community. Furthermore as pirated games are usually blocked from joining legitimated servers, a game server will not see much players.
The 2 other influential factors are lower cost of game server hosting and better network latency. But because of the piracy factor, why host a game server when they are no one joining?
Labels: tmnet
by 鬼徒二等兵 at 11:51 PM 0 comments links to this post
29 April 2009
All You Need to Know About Broadband in Malaysia
An interesting listen to an industry insider on Malaysia's current state of broadband internet. Yeah, I said "listen". That means you'll need speakers. The interviewee points out how the government's senseless spending of tax payers money - that's RM14 billion mind you - can be put to better use.
http://www.bfm.my/All-You-Need-to-Know-About-Broadband-in-Malaysia-Wong-Kian-Lon-Founder-of-Biz-Surf-Wimax-Techtalk.html by 鬼徒二等兵 at 7:06 AM 0 comments links to this post
An interesting listen to an industry insider on Malaysia's current state of broadband internet. Yeah, I said "listen". That means you'll need speakers. The interviewee points out how the government's senseless spending of tax payers money - that's RM14 billion mind you - can be put to better use.
http://www.bfm.my/All-You-Need-to-Know-About-Broadband-in-Malaysia-Wong-Kian-Lon-Founder-of-Biz-Surf-Wimax-Techtalk.html by 鬼徒二等兵 at 7:06 AM 0 comments links to this post
04 March 2009
Online multiplayer gaming in Malaysia
Was looking around for Google "app engine" created web apps and found a survey creator on the app gallery - http://www.cafesurvey.com/.
So I've created a simple survey seeking to understand numbers in online multiplayer gamers in Malaysia particularly. The survey is over here at - http://www.cafesurvey.com/?fuw15vem.
Please take some time for a go on the survey. The results can be found here - http://www.cafesurvey.com/viewResults?fuw15vem
by 鬼徒二等兵 at 3:01 AM 0 comments
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02 December 2008
the night was happy
Damn, still too small to see. The brighter one should be Venus and the dimmer one should Jupiter and the crescent smile surely is the moon. by 鬼徒二等兵 at 12:36 AM 0 comments links to this post
Damn, still too small to see. The brighter one should be Venus and the dimmer one should Jupiter and the crescent smile surely is the moon. by 鬼徒二等兵 at 12:36 AM 0 comments links to this post
01 December 2008
delicious and cheap
Found some old pics lying on me hdd by 鬼徒二等兵 at 10:30 PM 0 comments links to this post
Found some old pics lying on me hdd by 鬼徒二等兵 at 10:30 PM 0 comments links to this post
09 August 2008
Sarawak statewide blackout
A friend from Sarawak informed to me that his contacts throughout major towns Sarawak are experiencing blackout just 20 minutes earlier. My contact at Kota Kinabalu reports normal electric supply over there.
Telephone and mobile telco networks are still operating at this moment. Probably running off diesel generators. by 鬼徒二等兵 at 7:54 PM 0 comments links to this post
Telephone and mobile telco networks are still operating at this moment. Probably running off diesel generators. by 鬼徒二等兵 at 7:54 PM 0 comments links to this post
09 April 2008
450D in Malaysia
An investigation to Canon's new Canon EOS Pro Centre at 9th floor, Berjaya Time Square reveals that they've gotten the much anticipated EOS 450D DSLR for sell. Announced earlier this year, the EOS 450D is the successor to Canon's previous entry level DSLR - the EOS 400D.
Amount the numerous improvement most notable are live view, a larger 3" LCD sreen and improved autofocus. The EOS 450D is the 1st among the Canon DSLR family to adopt the more economic SD standard of flash base storage.Preliminary reports from various websites testing the production model found the 450D producing slightly better noise level than the 400D is succeeds.
As the world awaits the EOS 450D's release on March 2008 as stated by Canon, Canon quietly delayed it's release into April and until now Canon has yet to make an official announcement of the EOS's 450D. The official at Canon EOS Pro Centre mentioned that Canon has started shipping EOS 450Ds out to dealers. A demo unit however is unavailable at this moment.
The official I spoke with mentioned that there will be an official launching event at the EOS Pro Centre soon and attendee are invited by invitation through Canon Malaysia's official website. Be on the lookout at http://www.canon.com.my/ for the invitation form which is going to be updated soon according Canon. When asked whether there will be demo units of 450D available to be tested by attendees at this weekend's Pikom PC Fair at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, the official was not informed.
The Canon EOS 450D kit is selling at RM2999 with the EF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens and the EOS 450D body is selling at RM2699. Canon will be offering EOS 450D with attactive packages during the launch event. by 鬼徒二等兵 at 7:32 PM 1 comments links to this post
An investigation to Canon's new Canon EOS Pro Centre at 9th floor, Berjaya Time Square reveals that they've gotten the much anticipated EOS 450D DSLR for sell. Announced earlier this year, the EOS 450D is the successor to Canon's previous entry level DSLR - the EOS 400D.
Amount the numerous improvement most notable are live view, a larger 3" LCD sreen and improved autofocus. The EOS 450D is the 1st among the Canon DSLR family to adopt the more economic SD standard of flash base storage.Preliminary reports from various websites testing the production model found the 450D producing slightly better noise level than the 400D is succeeds.
As the world awaits the EOS 450D's release on March 2008 as stated by Canon, Canon quietly delayed it's release into April and until now Canon has yet to make an official announcement of the EOS's 450D. The official at Canon EOS Pro Centre mentioned that Canon has started shipping EOS 450Ds out to dealers. A demo unit however is unavailable at this moment.
The official I spoke with mentioned that there will be an official launching event at the EOS Pro Centre soon and attendee are invited by invitation through Canon Malaysia's official website. Be on the lookout at http://www.canon.com.my/ for the invitation form which is going to be updated soon according Canon. When asked whether there will be demo units of 450D available to be tested by attendees at this weekend's Pikom PC Fair at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, the official was not informed.
The Canon EOS 450D kit is selling at RM2999 with the EF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens and the EOS 450D body is selling at RM2699. Canon will be offering EOS 450D with attactive packages during the launch event. by 鬼徒二等兵 at 7:32 PM 1 comments links to this post
20 May 2007
Zergling are cute
Zerglings and Xenomorphs. Both are very cute and adorable creatures. Blizzard Entertainment will bring us another opportunity to care after the Zergs in Starcraft 2.
Announced yesterday at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea, Startcraft 2 will feature the return on the 3 original races - Terrans, Protoss and Zergs will be rendered in full 3D on a custom 3D engine.
It seems the player will be able to dynamically change camera perceptive during gameplay as seen from the gameplay footages from Gametrailers.com.
Links:
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=4868
http://pc.ign.com/articles/790/790128p1.html by 鬼徒二等兵 at 5:06 AM 0 comments links to this post
Zerglings and Xenomorphs. Both are very cute and adorable creatures. Blizzard Entertainment will bring us another opportunity to care after the Zergs in Starcraft 2.
Announced yesterday at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea, Startcraft 2 will feature the return on the 3 original races - Terrans, Protoss and Zergs will be rendered in full 3D on a custom 3D engine.
It seems the player will be able to dynamically change camera perceptive during gameplay as seen from the gameplay footages from Gametrailers.com.
Links:
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=4868
http://pc.ign.com/articles/790/790128p1.html by 鬼徒二等兵 at 5:06 AM 0 comments links to this post
16 May 2007
jamaycka strikes back
According to Zone-H's attacks archive more than 10,000 web pages were attacked by jamaycka since the beginning of May. Zone-H's archive limits listing of attacks to up to 50 pages so I can only see as far back to the 8th of May for listing of all OSs attacked by jamaycka.
Majority of the pages were running Linux while 104 of the attacks were on FreeBSD systems. All attacks on FreeBSD systems occurred only on the 7th of May 2007 as recorded by Zone-H.
According to a victim's blog, a lot of Malaysian webpages hosted by a local webhost - hive.com.my - were affected.
Targeted websites are still being defaced by jamaycka as listed by Digital Attacks Archive: today's verified attacks.
Following the attacks since earlier this year, jamaycka is still actively defacing thousands of websites a day. Do we now know the methods used by jamaycka to gain root access on these compromised systems? How do we secure our systems from attacks of this manner?
Links:
www.zhongg.com/guides/how-to-restore-a-website-hacked-by-jamaycka/
www.zone-h.org/component/option,com_attacks/Itemid,43/filter_defacer,JaMaYcKa/ by 鬼徒二等兵 at 10:53 AM 0 comments links to this post
According to Zone-H's attacks archive more than 10,000 web pages were attacked by jamaycka since the beginning of May. Zone-H's archive limits listing of attacks to up to 50 pages so I can only see as far back to the 8th of May for listing of all OSs attacked by jamaycka.
Majority of the pages were running Linux while 104 of the attacks were on FreeBSD systems. All attacks on FreeBSD systems occurred only on the 7th of May 2007 as recorded by Zone-H.
According to a victim's blog, a lot of Malaysian webpages hosted by a local webhost - hive.com.my - were affected.
Targeted websites are still being defaced by jamaycka as listed by Digital Attacks Archive: today's verified attacks.
Following the attacks since earlier this year, jamaycka is still actively defacing thousands of websites a day. Do we now know the methods used by jamaycka to gain root access on these compromised systems? How do we secure our systems from attacks of this manner?
Links:
www.zhongg.com/guides/how-to-restore-a-website-hacked-by-jamaycka/
www.zone-h.org/component/option,com_attacks/Itemid,43/filter_defacer,JaMaYcKa/ by 鬼徒二等兵 at 10:53 AM 0 comments links to this post
