How to block ad banners in Opera

 I wouldn't do a blog-psoting about it if I had found it easily on the iNet so that's why I want to explain how you can block ad banners in Opera. Until the next update of Opera messes up everything again.

It might not work that "oh so creamingly exciting"ly as with the "oh so great" Firefox browser but it's still easier than blocking each and every single picture on each and every single subpage on a website. [...]
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The first thing you have to do is visit a website that features one or lots of nasty of those banners. For example Game Trailers. When you see a banner, right-click on any free space and select "Block Content...". Shift+Click on all the images you want to block, then click on "Details..." in the bar that just popped up. Oh, btw: never click on "Cancel" on that very same bar because the Opera developers failed at this point - instead of cancelling just the recent changes you made to the page, Opera cancels all blocked banners on that page. Awesome! (-.-' ).

Anyway, in the Details dialog (which is called "Block Content") you edit each line and replace all subfolders of a website with a simple asterisk, much like this:
http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/*

You even can use the asterisk in an advanced fashion:
http://media*.break.com/*.swf

Also, delete the lines that are double now. Keep that list clean. Okay, click on "Close" and "Done" and you're finished. You can also access that "Block Content" dialog via [Tools > Advanced > Blocked Content...].
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New type of enemy AI

 I just heard a sentence in a review for a game that is quite status quo, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" or as I like to call it SwTFU. [...]
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Here's the sentence: "There's a lot of freedom in how to tackle each fray but there's really no need to utilize it as the same boring combos always get the job done." So, there are a lot of skills the character can use as a dark jedi but they make more effort than simple bashing. In other words, the enemies don't bother adjusting their approach to the character (which is synonymous to "avatar" or "playable object on screen" in my terminology) and to the player's (the human entity with the controller in his hands) way of killing them with one single combo, so in return the player does not see the necessity to develop his way of playing the game. This is sad, especially if you consider how artistic the Jedi skills look. So much work (of design artists, motion actors, programmers, sound creators, etc.) made disposable, pushed aside for a "Punch, Punch, Kick, Lightsaber slash" or whatever.

I already thought about this topic of enemy AI while playing "Metal Gear Solid 4" on the "The Boss Extreme" difficulty which is unplayably realistically difficult, almost impossible. Almost, I've seen a speedrun, or more like a "godrun". It is an incredible choreography, with the goal of no unavoidable gunfights, no continues, no deaths, no kills, no rations in mind - and that fast. The enemies see your character even if they are on the other end of the street, very far away. Sometimes they see him/you out of the corner of their eyes, even when standing orthogonally to Old Snake. I'm not exaggerating.

My point is, in regard to the five or six difficulties of MGS4, I guess the enemy AI of the normal difficulty is kept low *deliberately*. Less realism, but more fun. Probably in all the other games of earth, too. If not most. Not because of technical incapability or lack of programming talent or whatever, as I always thought before playing this game.

Hm, I kinda lost track of my thought here. The whole excursion to MGS4 should make my line of thoughts clear that enemy AI has to be challenging but still fun, IMHO. Maybe not challenging in that they see your character earlier or do more damage but more of a "tactical intelligence" so that instead they react and therefore *interact* with the player. The player, not just the character. So that sad things like paying 6o bucks for twelve hours of doing one combo all over again - mingled with a little bit of story - won't ever happen again.

Stick Sensitivity Dimmer

 Now, I've had this IMHO awesomely great idea of how to improve FPS games (first person shooter), the aiming/turning in particular, then tried to work it out so that people who don't live inside my head could reasonably understand what I want to express, in its course expanded its purpose to be also useful for RTS games (real time strategy) and finally wanted to try to implement it on my own as I found the old PS2 Demo Disc containing YaBasic, but the PS2 Dualshock 2 support for YaBasic is more than primitive. Maybe I could still write a little piece of code on the PC but in order to make this work I need a controller I can plug into my PC or an adapter or something. [...]
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So here I am trying once more to write it down properly. Which is why I should finally start talking about it: the idea is called an "Analog Stick Sensitivity Dimmer". It is supposed to use the analogue-ness of the controller's buttons and triggers to change the sensitivity of the stick(s) gradually, in-game, off-menu and on-the-fly.

Why do I want to make the player juggle with this complex feature? Because except for one game in my entire gaming career, namely GoldenEye 007 for the N64™, I haven't experienced a single game with a controller-driven aiming functionality that was fun to play and didn't make you want to hook up a USB keyboard 'n mouse. All the other games either were too sensitive or too insensitive. If the controls were too sensitive then the slightest stick tipping resulted in a far too intense moving of the crosshair / character, but if they were not sensitive enough your character would need hrs. to turn by 18o°. At least that's what I think.

"Why even bother?" you may ask as more and more games are equipped with a hidden in-game auto-aiming functionality. And by "hidden" I mean it isn't said in the booklet of the game or in a tutorial how unimportant it is to aim accurately because there is a auto-aim feature built in with which you can just fire the shit out of your enemies - that's how my friend plays FPS games - instead of aiming for weak body parts - the way I like to play. Where's the challenge in that? Senselessly spit-firing without hesitation. He always shakes his head in incomprehension for my way of playing and I do ... well, vice versa. And what also makes it "hidden" in quotes is that there's no way to turn it off. Now, don't get me wrong. Not every game is like that but there still are quite a lot.

On a side note, let me take into consideration that most FPS games have an aiming button/trigger to somehow deal with this exact same problem, although all games I've experienced so far have used this "traditional" aiming feature in a digital way, on or off, which is unlike what I want to do. Sometimes the aiming even comes with a zoom and if I think about it, an equally gradual zoom would be a great way to visualize the "dimming" of the sensitivity. That way the player could probably learn faster how to handle the dimmer.

I've even made an excel sheet to demonstrate more clearly the benefits of my dimmer. The idea is to, deliberately, make the analog stick in charge for turning and aiming far too sensitive too aim so that you can turn quicker. By 18o° in less than a second, for instance. And when you push the dimmer in all the way it is far too less sensitive to turn around but all the more sensitive to aim with shocking precision. Expressed in an example: scanning an enemy standing about 1oo feet away with your crosshair from toe to head in let's say three seconds.

In the resulting chart ("traditional" vs. "with dimmer") I tried to take the deflection of the stick - in other words: how far you tilt the stick from "not at all" to the maximum - and the resulting angle a character in a FPS game would turn within one second of this amount of deflection and oppose them to each other. You can see with the "traditional" control setup you have two different sensitivity levels - no more, no less - but with the dimmer you have way more. 256 to be precisely, plus the default sensitivity, although I didn't enter all those 256 levels into the chart. The number 256 is derived from the simulated analogue-ness of the buttons which still are digital but "just" with 256 pressure levels. Does this number include 0? Then you don't have to add the default sensitivity, I guess ... Anyway I hope you get the point.

Naturally you would have to get accustomed to the dimmer first, in order to use it properly. I can't imagine that I'd be able to play with it properly without a few minutes., let's say a good half an hour or so, of playing like that or absolving a good tutorial before really getting the feel of it - even if I was the developer who invented, programmed and tweaked it. But then theoretically the aiming should become extremly accurate, don't you think?

And regarding the aforementioned expansion to RTS games: the same problem of too sensitive vs. not sensitive enough coming from porting a PC game with a mouse cursor to a console without a mouse (by default), or maybe rather coming from the mere nature of RTS games is one of the reasons why there are so few RTS games for consoles, am I right? Well, theoretically you could also use the dimmer to let a mouse cursor flit or creep across the screen.

There might be a possibility that, against its generous profit, this complex aiming system is unplayable for one or the other player because you have to hold so many buttons/sticks and watch how much you push them that the frustration will win over the fun. But I think it's worth trying anyway because once you've acquired the skill to play with the dimmer I think the benefit is all the more profitable. So, if you're a game developer, if you read all the way to the end and if you're just as fascinated by that idea as I am, then please, go ahead and build it into your next game. Please take this idea as long as I'm not able to create my own game with it. Take it as a gift. For the sake of gaming all around the world.
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