Distant Worlds 2 – Been There. Seen It.

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After three months of gameplay participating in the Distant Worlds 2 expedition in Elite Dangerous, I managed to arrive at Beagle Point, one of the farthest systems in the galaxy.

INV Deep Space I in the Beagle Point System

This included several thousand jumps (each jump takes about one to two minutes), scooping fuel, repairing the ship and such things. There was a tough schedule by the organizers, including several waypoints on the expedition.

There is already a in-game sickness called Space Madness.

Space madness is a psychological condition that some pilots get while traveling in deep space for long periods. It’s a bit like vertigo, and is caused by being adrift without any reference points.

Once you get there you will have an incredible view of our galaxy.

As far as I know, the simulation behind the game creates systems when being visited the very first time. There seem to be some awesome algorithms. E.g. when Kepler 425reb was discovered, the simulation already had a similar system generated before and was updated accordingly with the real data.

I finally arrived there with a delay of two weeks behind the official schedule. All pilots arriving there, are rewarded with a certificate of completion, which I can proudly present.

Distant Worlds 2 Completion Certificate

There is also an in-game reward, an emblem to be shown on your ship. This, however, can be only equipped when being docked at a spaceport. This will take another few months to arrive at the nearest station.

A few thousand gamers went there and back. If you want to follow my trip back, you can have a look at my Twich channel where I stream my way back when being in the game.

Elite Dangerous: PYRIE EURK QX-U E2-0

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While I took part in the Distant Worlds 2 Expedition in Elite Dangerous, I eventually arrived at PYRIE EURK QX-U E2-0 which was the third black hole I visited in the game. While the nebular gives a very special view on the balck hole, I dropped into this system quite unprepared. My ship dropped out of supercruise and was somewhat damaged. After traveling several weeks without any savepoint (some ten thousand of lightyears) this was quite some exciting moment.

Personal Remark

From time to time I will post some remarkable waypoints on this blog. Elite Dangerous is an evolving game, some kind of a space simulation, which is largely covered in the press. In case you want to contact me in game, feel free to find me using my XBOX Live with my gamertag aheil.

Elite Dangerous DW2 Mass Jump on XBOX

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As you might know, I am very in the space simulation Elite Dangerous. It is a remake of the 1984 game Elite, which actually was one of my very first games on Amiga. Todays Elite Dangerous is quite some grinding game. While you can drive on planets with some kind of buggy, you can grind for ship, trade and explore the vast numbers of star systems in our galaxy. There is an interesting background simulation with different factions trying to influence the state of star systems, the economics theirs and so on. While there is no crossplay functionality, all players do work on the same background simulation, which again forms communities over all supported platforms (PC, XBOX and PS4) playing virtually together.

While players have only discovered less than 1 percent of avaislable star systems, at the current rate, it will take the community more than 50 years (yes, fifty) to visit all star systems in this game.

From time to time there are community events. Right now, there is an eight-month event called Distant Worlds 2 where more than 10.000 players travel together to the most remote system known in the galaxy which is called Beagle Point.

While I joined one of the coordinated jumps along the trip, I was able to record a video of the jump, which again I want to use to try out the sharing capabilities of videos on this blog. Said that, enjoy the video.

Handbrake Xbox 360 Streaming Error 69-C00D10E0

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Recently, I started to convert some of my old media files using Handbrake to be streamed using a TwonkyMedia Server to my Xbox 360. After converting some of the files, I realized my Xbox won’t play the files due to a status code 69-C00D10E0:  

Statuscode: 69-C00D10E0

The Xbox support forum provides an entry exactly for this issue, however, the information given there is not quite helpful. That’s what they say (to be honest, that’s what I already had in mind):

Error code 69-c00D10E0 is preceded by the following message:

Unplayable Content
Status Code: 69-c00D10E0

Problem

If you’re seeing this message and error code, it means that the file is too large for streaming, the file may be corrupted, or the codec needed to play the file is missing.

More helpful would be a list of supported video and audio codecs, a list of not supported combinations or similar. Therefore, I had to dig somewhat deeper and to figure out how to work around this issue.

Choosing the Right Preset

I used a earlier version of Handbrake before, providing a dedicated Xbox preset. Version 0.9.8 of Handbrake does not provide such an default preset anymore. Instead you can chose Normal or High Profile from the Regular section for playback with Xbox 360.

Handbrake Presets

Normal should work fine with he Xbox 360 System Player. If you are looking for a better video quality, choose the High Profile, though. Using High Profile, by default, the checkbox for Large file size is enabled. Eventually, that’s the problem, Xbox 360 System Player cannot play the streamed file as files generated with this flag contain 64-bit pointers, allowing a file size larger than 4GB, which the player simply cannot deal with. Therefore, just uncheck this one to generate Xbox 360 System Player compatible files.

Lage file size disabled

Choosing the Right Audio Track Order

Another issue with the Xbox 360 Player is its inability to let you choose the audio track to play. I was wondering quite a while, why some encoded videos where played using the wrong audio track and – even worse – Xbox does not let you choose another track.

After some trial and error, I figured out, Xbox is playing the last track in the list of audio tracks encoded by Handbrake. You maybe haven’t realize this at all as native speaker only interested in the English track anyway.

Audio Tracks order

Eventually, the secret how to use Handbrake to encode media files or you Xbox is to put the audio track you want to play on Xbox System Player on the very bottom of the list.

Keeping these two settings, you generate perfectly streamable media files to be played with Xbox 360’s System Player.

The XBOX Blackout

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After dealing with a RROD a couple of years ago, a few weeks ago, my replacement Xbox also went down to the dogs. No replacement this time. Actually, it seemed some solder joint was broken.

With a new box, this time a Xbox 250GB Slim, I was confronted with the data migration issue. Luckily, the new Xbox already has the drivers for the migration kit build in, which means you can connect your old HDD directly to the new box. Therefore I made use of my old Data Migration Kit.

XBOX 360 Data Migration Kit

To make the process of upgrading easier, first set up your new box with a temporary account. Connect the old HDD to the Data Migration Kit and plug in the kit to the new Xbox. It will recognize the kit and ask whether to copy from or to the new console.

Copy Content to XBOX

Afterwards you can select what copy. The only drawback is you cannot copy already installed games from disc. These you have to reinstall at a later point in time.

2012-08-31 14.30.19

Once started this process might take quite a while. I haven’t found anything on the Xbox site about data migration to a 250GB disc or the new boxes. However, luckily the guy in the following video pointed out how it works and that the software/drivers a re part of the new Xbox. 10 minutes worth watching.

Once accomplished, it might be necessary to transfer the rights on digital content to your new Xbox following the steps on http://www.xbx.com/drm.