Jason Magee

Two New Games

Feb 21 2022

I’ve recently finished two more games which I’ve forgotten to post about!

Night Forest

Image
An attempt to create a small horror game

Count Castle

Image
Tile based counting game for kids

Guernsey DrayTek VDSL Settings

Sep 25 2021

Below are the best settings I’ve been able to figure out for VDSL in Guernsey using a DrayTek router.

Image
WAN >> General Setup
Image
WAN >> Internet Access
Image
WAN >> Internet Access >> WAN1. Use your ISP given username and password. Sure suggests using MTU of 1500 and JT 1492, I couldn't see a difference
Image
This is also an interesting area because it gives some insight to what your line is capable of

menus.gg

Aug 28 2021

Guernsey people: I’ve created menus.gg to host local menus because a lot of local eateries don’t have a website or only provide them on the dark-side (Facebook). Feel free to get in touch with any additions.

Image

Just to clarify, it was designed to look like it is from the 1994 GeoCities catalogue!

Microsoft Teams Webcam Crashing

Mar 2 2021

I recently purchased an extremely cheap webcam (wansview 1080P) only to find it constantly crashes when used with Microsoft Teams. Initially I wrote it off as a feature of the cheap webcam but I’ve since discovered that Microsoft Teams is the culprit.

The symptoms include:

  • Microsoft Teams locking up for a few seconds followed by the webcam not working
  • The webcam image freezing
  • The webcam image going black
  • The webcam not being released (it has a light when in use which doesn’t turn off after Microsoft Teams gets its little paws on it)

I’ve managed to fix it by using Open Broadcaster Software’s Virtual Camera feature. By doing this, you effectively give OBS control of the webcam hardware management instead of Microsoft Teams. Then, you tell Microsoft Teams to use the OBS Virtual Camera instead of the actual webcam and it all works as expected. You’ll just need to remember to start OBS and turn the Virtual Camera on/off when you want to use it.

Playing Half-Life 2 in 2021

Jan 27 2021

(+Episode 1 and Episode 2)

Guernsey has entered its second Coronavirus lockdown so I’ve decided to replay Half-Life 2, Episode 1 and Episode 2. I’ve spent some time looking into what mods to use to get the best modern experience and documented my findings below.

Firstly, for Half-Life 2 itself, you absolutely want to use Half-Life 2: Update . This sort of officially endorsed mod adds…

  • Complete lighting overhaul including enhanced lighting, more detailed world shadows, and full High Dynamic Range Lighting (HDR).
  • New particle effects and improved fog.
  • Countless bug fixes, correcting both visual and game-based issues.

while not messing with the gameplay.

Now, you could stop there but to take it to the next level I’d recommend MMod . This mod claims to do:

“The goal of Half-Life 2 : MMod is to enhance and expand gunplay, combat mechanics and the immersion factor by giving the Player more options and combat opportunities as well as refine how the Player handles his arsenal. Half-Life 2 : MMod also offers minor AI enhancements, extended abilities for combine soldiers, multiple bug fixes, enhanced visuals, VFX re-design, sound redesign and much much more, while keeping nearly every new feature in the mod totally optional.”

I am immensely impressed with most the improvements in this mod. The sound improves are great and the weapons feel like they pack a significant punch. This mod works with Half-Life 2: Update, EP1 and EP2 to boot. Even if you don’t like something, the changes as optional so you can just switch them off from the menu (e.g. lens dirt - why would anyone want that?).

Here are some screenshots of my play-through.

Image
Image
Image

I haven’t gone this far but the next step seems to be using SMOD which adds new weapons, bullet time, melee, new NPCs amongst other things. I felt this was going too far from the original but maybe I’ll give it a try after this play-through.

Guernsey Voting Spreadsheet

Sep 13 2020

Feeling overwhelmed by the Guernsey 2020 election? Me too. So, I’ve created a Google Spreadsheet allowing you to rank who you’re going to vote for between 1 (yes) and 5 (no).

Here’s a link to the template , feel free to use it.

Step 1. Go through the options and fill in the ‘Chance for vote’ column with your view. 1 being yes, 5 being no. There are links to their YouTube videos and details on the Election 2020 website on each row.

Image

Step 2. Check the Output sheet to see how many you’ve voted for in each rank.

Image

If you find any problems with it, please send me an email .

Closing up discuss.gg

Sep 9 2019

I’ve decided to close discuss.gg after several years of running it. It had peaks and troughs over the years but more recently usage became minimal. Thanks everyone who used it!

For portfolio purposes, I’ve attached some screenshots below.

Image

Steam Like Firefox Theme

Jul 7 2019

Today I tried something new and created a Firefox Theme based on the colours of Steam. It’s on the Mozilla Add-on website here . The entire process was relatively painless although I’m not sure Mozilla’s automated approval process was happy with the SVG so I switched to JPG.

Image

The source code is here .

DragonRuby Global Temperature Chart

Jun 8 2019

I have a bit of a soft spot for the Ruby programming language. Something about using it is enjoyable. I’ve mainly used Ruby in the past for websites via Ruby on Rails so I was pretty pleased to see the Ruby games framework DragonRuby get released recently. During my day to day work I do a lot of maths and charting but I’ve never written a chart from scratch before so here is my attempt at a line chart using DragonRuby .

Image

The source code is here and the global temperature data came from here .

So far my impressions of the framework are good. It’s brand new so clearly isn’t feature complete and I’ve had a few problems but the developers are doing a great job of sorting things promptly.

An App for that: No Nom Nom

Mar 31 2019

I’ve recently release a new Android App to track intermittent fasting, which I’ve been doing in real life for a few months now. The app is mostly for my own use but figured I’d put it on the store in case it is of any interest to anyone else.

Image
No Nom Nom

Lightweight intermittent fasting app that allows you to start a fast for a target period, get notified when the period is up and keeps a history of previous fasts.

Here are some screenshots from the app.

Image
Image