Software Fri, 14 Aug 2020 14:11:59 -0500 Joomla! - Open Source Content Management en-gb (Christ Centered Gamer) RPG Maker VX Ace (PC)  

Software Info:

RPG Maker VX Ace
Developed By: KADOKAWA
Published By: Degica
Released: December 10, 2012
Available On: Microsoft Windows
Genre: Game Development, RPG
ESRB Rating: None specified (games made with this could range from E-AO)
Number of Players: Singleplayer
Price: $69.99
(Humble Store Link)

Role-playing games hold a specific allure for gamers because they allow the player to feel a direct connection to the world they are in, including having a direct impact on their avatar in terms of growth and the world in terms of their involvement. RPG Maker VX Ace takes this to another level by letting you make the worlds you want to feel a connection to.

RPG Maker VX Ace is the last in the line of the RPG Maker franchise to use the Ruby scripting language to power the engine and is also the last engine in the franchise to be limited to Microsoft Windows operating systems. As a game creation tool, it comes pre-made with all the basics needed to make a top-down, tile-based RPG game like was in vogue in the late '80s and '90s.

The engine is a simple one, and while it does not come with a guided tutorial, it has easy to understand documentation for how to make your own game and the database comes preloaded with basic data and templates for making your own game. More content can be found on the official forums and blogs providing further instruction and resources. There is also Steam Workshop integration, allowing fans to share content, including resources and entire games made with the engine.

RPG Maker VX Ace

Strong Points: Has a perfectly arranged engine for easy creation of 2D, top-down, tile-based RPGs
Weak Points: Lots of potential in the engine requires advanced knowledge of the Ruby scripting language
Moral Warnings: Some cleavage-baring enemy graphics in stock resources; RPG-based violence if the battle engine components are utilized; some occult like imagery available in the stock tilesets and animation files

Graphically, RPG Maker VX Ace uses 32 x 32-pixel tiles that have a high fantasy focus in the stock resources provided with the game engine. The character sprites are typical "chibi" or super-deformed looking as opposed to realistic, though resources for more realistic looking sprites can be used. Animations are essentially a series of PNG files with sound effects that the database arranges in a looped pattern, which the user can further customize to the limits of their skill. Battle scenes can be mixed and matched for different foregrounds and backgrounds. There is also a "parallax" background for maps with transparent areas that can be added to give a feeling of depth and animation, like moving clouds or stars. Battler graphics for battle scenes are shown in a front-view default engine with a high fantasy style like the other art.

Musically, the provided resources have a classical fantasy sound to them, provided in the OGG sound format. Sound effects also follow this theme, and the engine allows assigning sounds and music when and where the player deems appropriate. All of them sound pleasant on the ear, and there are built-in options to control volume and pitch for all audio files.

Control is largely mouse and keyboard-driven, though the created games have a degree of compatibility with common PC gamepads and related accessories. Stability is excellent in the base engine, and while the creation engine and games made for it were intended for Microsoft Windows, both can run quite well via Wine/Proton in Linux.

RPG Maker VX Ace
Score Breakdown:
Higher is better
(10/10 is perfect)

Game Score - 84%
Gameplay - 17/20
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 8/10
Stability - 5/5
Controls - 5/5

Morality Score - 88%
Violence - 7/10
Language - 10/10
Sexual Content - 9/10
Occult/Supernatural - 8/10
Cultural/Moral/Ethical - 10/10

The game provides a basic character sprite and face maker, which is adequate but limited and does not make faces in profile view like the stock resources, but forward-facing only. The Ruby powered engine allows players to add their custom scripting to the engine if they so choose, and even if the user is no scripting expert, there are a massive amount of resources available at this time all over the Internet. Some basic knowledge of how to edit Ruby scripts is recommended if one needs to tweak these scripts for your specific needs, and tutorials in Ruby can be found in multiple fora if one needs some instruction on this.

Morally, RPG Maker games can be as clean or depraved as the player wants them to be, the engine stock resources can be discarded entirely and others can be used if the creator desires.

As for the stock resources, aside from a few battler sprites showing a bit of cleavage for some of the female characters, the vast majority are tame, generic fantasy stock character drawings. A few of the animations have generic-looking magic circles, and a few generic hexagram "magic circle" tiles exist for those wanting to add an evil or mystical look in some maps, but that's about it for anything of moral concern. Again, their usage remains entirely up to the game creator; they can be ignored or discarded entirely. The battle engine, if used, provides for turn-based RPG style violence, but one can make a game with no combat if they choose.

RPG Maker VX Ace is definitely worth the purchase price, but given it's often available via massive discounts and on sites like Humble Bundle, it's worth snapping up in those locations, where resources can also be gotten very cheaply often at the same time. Morally, games made with RPG Maker are only as concerning as the creator wants them to be, and while it not an ideal engine for making more than a certain genre of games, it's a worthy one for those wanting to specialize in 2D, top-down RPG game creation.

]]> (Daniel Cullen) Software Sat, 25 Jul 2020 05:00:00 -0500
OpenRA OpenRA

In the world of real-time strategy games, one of the undisputed masters of this craft is Westwood Studios. Their creation of Dune II and later Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn put them on the map for pioneering a new game genre. Command and Conquer: Red Alert only burnished their image as RTS pioneers and added more laurels to their crown. Except for Dune II and it's remade update Dune 2000, the aforementioned C&C TD/RA games are now freeware, and with the advent of the OpenRA engine, easily enjoyable on modern computers.

OpenRA is a cross-platform engine recreation for the games Dune 2000 and the first generation of Command and Conquer games. This engine will work on all modern-day operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, before the engine is discussed, the games it supports are another matter.

Dune 2000: While supported, this game is NOT in the public domain as freeware, it must be legally acquired (in its original CD format or copied to digital ISO equivalent) so its files can be used as a basis for the engine to play them. Dune II is not supported and is also not freeware.

Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn: (also called C&C1) was legally made freeware in 2007, and that includes the Covert Operations expansion. The Sole Survivor spinoff is not covered by this engine (either legally or with support for it) and is not required.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert: This was legally made freeware in 2008, alongside its expansion packs Counterstrike and Aftermath. The Retaliation PSX game is not supported, nor any of its content, and remains a commercial product.

All the freeware game CD images needed for OpenRA are available in multiple places on the internet, though it is highly advised to obtain them from the places recommended in the OpenRA official help documentation, some versions are poorly dumped and cannot have their content imported by OpenRA. OpenRA can work without the freeware files, installing a barebones version needed to play basic singleplayer and multiplayer.

OpenRA is not an exact source port, it is a reverse-engineered engine that is supposed to emulate the first-generation of Westwood's RTS games (which all used the same code), and while accurate for the most part, it also comes with many quality of life features like higher resolutions, improved UI, and other enhancements to improve fidelity and keep networked gaming stable. Modding support is also fully supported, both for the engine (which is open-source) and for the game content, so the engine and the content it can support by modders are fully open to modification. While it's code is currently adapted for the 1st-gen Westwood games, it's creators intend to make it support the second generation of Westwood games, especially since Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun and it's Firestorm expansion are now also freeware, but this support remains a work in progress at the time of this writing.

The only significant criticisms of OpenRA are its multi-player bias and its lack of improvements to the base game files in terms of quality and fidelity. As to the first criticism, while the single-player component is generally stable and the levels playable as originally intended, OpenRA's feature set is set towards making multi-player long-term viable, with the single-player seemingly playing second-fiddle. Admittedly, this could also have been said of the original games, but it is more pronounced for this engine given the feature set is heavily focused on the multiplayer enhancement side of things.

As to the other complaint, EA Games (the current holders of Westwood's properties) have confirmed they are working with Petroglyph (which has many former Westwood alumni) on complete remasters of the C&C games OpenRA covers, only they will be upgrading the visual assets and basing their remaster on the original (as in, not reverse-engineered from scratch) source code used when the games in question were first released. The time of the release of this remastering is yet to be announced at the time of this writing, but the OpenRA project does not compete with it and there have been no objections from EA to OpenRA in any form.

If one wants to experience the games covered by OpenRA at present and wants to do so without complicated and often difficult workarounds to make them work on modern computers that poorly run them in this day and age, you could do a lot worse than OpenRA. And more importantly, if one is a Dune 2000 or first-generation Command and Conquer fan, this engine is a free, open-source way to relive some RTS nostalgia for games that defined an entire genre for all time.

]]> (Daniel Cullen) Software Wed, 09 Oct 2019 03:45:42 -0500
MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro 11.5 boxart
Software Info:

MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro 11.5
Developed by: MiniTool
Version reviewed: 11.5
Price: $39 for one year of updates, $59 for lifetime upgrades

Thank you MiniTool for sending us a Pro license code to review!

We recently reviewed Aomei’s Partition Assistant Professional and were pleasantly surprised with all of the features it offered. Both Aomei and MiniTool have free versions of their utilities, but some of the advanced features require a Professional license to use them. Though both programs allow you to recover data from a partition level, in order to use Partition Wizard’s data recovery feature, you need to have the $99 Ultimate license.

The Professional version has lots of great utilities that go above and beyond partition creating, resizing, deleting, and copying. If you’re concerned about the integrity of your drive, you can run a surface test on it to detect bad blocks. As long as the drive has been initialized in Windows, you can run a customizable speed test on it. You can change the sizes of the files and the length of the cooldown time between tests.


Strong Points: Lots of handy utilities along with easy partition management
Weak Points: Data recovery support is $99 with lifetime upgrades

If you’re switching out your hard drive/SSD you can easily copy the partitions or the entire drive using this software. There is a wizard for cloning a hard drive to SSD which is handy since many people upgrading to SSD are migrating over to a smaller drive.

When you want to securely erase your drive there are many methods available in this software. You can quickly fill the sectors with zeros or ones. Filling the sectors with ones and zeroes takes a little more time. The drive can also be erased three or seven times over using Department of Defense (DoD) standards.

There are several master boot record (MBR) utilities including the ability to rebuild it or convert it to Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) partition table (GPT). GPT is the newer standard that supports UEFI. One nice benefit of GPT is the support for more than four primary partitions. In fact, GPT can support up to 128 primary partitions. With that many partitions, this program will be invaluable when it comes to keeping track of them all!

This application is pretty straightforward and easy to use. The Windows 10-like interface has all of the main features one click away at the launch screen. When creating or changing partitions, the changes will not take effect until you apply them. You’ll get a standard disclaimer that overwriting partitions will delete any data that is there. Make sure you know what you're doing or else you’ll have to put your faith in the recovery tools!


]]> (Cheryl Gress) Software Sat, 21 Sep 2019 17:47:44 -0500
Daggerfall Unity (PC) In 1996, Bethesda Softworks released the most ambitious open-world RPG of its time. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall had a massive, if incredibly buggy experience that was only partially functional in some ways, but for a game meant for DOS, it still was ambitious. Now, in 2019, one can play the game as it was originally intended on modern-day computers.

However, before we cover the engine, one must make something clear. This is not a source port, as the source code is admitted lost by the developers, so the creator of this Unity-based recreation instead took the original game files from the released version, built a game engine to load them, and rebuilt from scratch the necessary code to make all the intended features of the original game work as they were originally designed.

This means two things. One, this engine is devoid of the bugs and glitches of the original engine, both good and bad. Two, this engine, while able to run in a "retro" mode for those who want the grainy experience one could get playing on DOS, is intended to provide a higher fidelity experience.

Daggerfall Unity

Another good aspect of this engine recreation is a feature later Elder Scrolls games come with: modding. The original could be modded, but only to a limited degree, as modders had to fly blind without the source code and engine tools. This recreation comes with a documented API and developer tools available for free, and while the version at the time of this writing still has some aspects of the modding API not fully completed, it is already possible to modify many aspects of the game engine.

Daggerfall Unity supports Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. Android and other portable platforms are not directly supported, but the creator has said they would be willing to bless and assist such efforts. Bethesda Softworks has offered no objections to this project either. Daggerfall was released into the public domain as freeware, and thus there are no known restrictions on the scale and scope of this project. The only thing this project requires is a copy of the original Daggerfall game patched to version 2.13, a copy of which may be found in numerous places, including the DFWorkshop downloads page.

Daggerfall Unity

At the time of this writing, the engine is in an alpha state, but that means all features of the original Daggerfall are fully functional, even those that did not work on the original XnGine used in 1996. Daggerfall Unity still requires more polish according to the developer, but in its present state, it is playable from start to finish.

I have tested this engine on both Linux and Windows, and it scales admirably, though it is recommended one has a dedicated graphics card (anything powerful enough to run the original Skyrim at medium-high at least would be ideal) and 2-4 GB of system RAM, as this engine provides far more advanced graphical capabilities and the potential to provide HD graphics on par with later Elder Scrolls games if one uses some of the currently existing mods for upgrading the original visuals.

Daggerfall Unity provides a full, completely free engine for enjoying one of the largest attempts at a wide-open world, and it is recommended over trying to run the original game in DOSbox, though that remains an option.

]]> (Daniel Cullen) Software Sun, 15 Sep 2019 16:26:50 -0500
Aomei Partition Assistant Professional  

Software Info:

Aomei Partition Assistant Professional 
Version reviewed: 8.4
Price: $49.95

Thank you Aomei for sending us this software to review!

Back in the 90s you had to share four IDE connections between CD drives and hard drives. It wasn’t uncommon to split up or partition a hard drive to organize it or share it between two operating systems like Windows and Linux. I often partitioned my Linux drive to have a data partition that was formatted in either FAT32 or NTFS so both operating systems could access the files on it.

Most operating systems let you partition the drive before installing it, but what if you need to make changes afterward? Back in the day you could pay for the now defunct Partition Magic to adjust your partitions visually. Linux’s Fdisk utility is daunting but free to use if you’re not afraid of using the command line interface. GParted is an excellent GUI program if you have a Windows manager running in Linux. There is also a free bootable version. Windows Disk Manager is pretty easy to use and navigate once you have Windows installed and running.


Strong Points: Lots of great utilities/features; Free version available
Weak Points: Two computer limit per license

With so many options, what does Aomei Partition Assistant Professional bring to the table? I was pleasantly surprised to see what was bundled into this software. Not only can you align, backup, create, copy, delete, merge, resize, and split partitions, there are lots of other handy features too! You can scan your discs/partitions for errors, securely format them (with many rewrites), migrate to an SSD, change file systems, recover data, and clone hard drives. One neat feature that the professional version allows you to do is change your Windows serial number. This is handy if you do a lot of hard drive image clones throughout a company/building.

It’s worth noting that the free version is quite capable of doing most tasks and is worth checking out. The secure wiping and date recovery are professional version features along with the ability to change Master Boot Record (MBR) types. If you want the ability to move free space to another partition, convert partition types, or use the command line, you’ll want to consider buying a professional license. The license key will only work on two computers though.

I found the software very easy to navigate and use. With it I removed my Ubuntu partition and opted to use Windows 10’s Linux Subsystem by running the Administrator Power Shell command: Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux. After the command is ran, the system will need to be rebooted and you can install a Linux distribution from the Microsoft store. I added Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Resizing my Windows partition didn’t take effect until I applied the changes. Again a reboot was necessary and the software booted my system into a Windows PE environment and made the necessary changes without losing any of my precious data. Afterward, my hard drive partition was 100GB bigger.

If you’re looking for an easy to use disk partition program with some extra bells and whistles, check out Aomei Partition Assistant Professional. It’s free to try and the professional version has some very handy utilities that are work looking into.

]]> (Cheryl Gress) Software Sat, 17 Aug 2019 16:05:22 -0500
OpenMW OpenMW

Sometimes the classics never fall out of fashion, and when it comes to gaming, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is considered a timeless classic.

However, the developers behind the project this review discusses feared the game engine would eventually be unable to keep parity with the advance of technology, and even now it still needs supplementary programs to fix issues dating back to 2002, so they decided to create an open-source re-implementation of the TES3 engine called OpenMW.

OpenMW is a cross-platform re-implementation of the TES3 executable code and game editor written from scratch that supports Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Linux based desktop/laptop PCs of multiple processor architectures. It requires a legal copy of the original assets of TES3 (though it is also possible to load original assets for original projects and some experimental tests prove compatibility with assets from later Elder Scrolls games), after which one can use this to run Morrowind without the original game executable, which was a 32-bit only Microsoft Windows exclusive application.

OpenMW is currently in beta, Version - 0.45 is the current stable release at the time of this writing, but even at this early date it is possible to complete the main game campaign of the original Morrowind without any major issues, and already have fixed many issues that were impossible to fix in the original engine code.


Graphical enhancements are theoretically unlimited, and while the engine is still hobbled by the animation engine of Morrowind being fairly primitive (and they had to design to accommodate this for now), the current progress of OpenMW allows for many modern shader-based features that the original engine could never support. It's includes distant land generation as a stock engine feature, and in it's 64-bit state has no theoretical cap on memory save the limits of the user's computer, which allows for a lot more graphical assets to be displayed while maintaining a high framerate.

Sound and video support are fully implemented using open source alternatives for the original middleware needed to render both, and while the engine is unable to resolve some issues that plagued the original engine regarding certain sound scripting, all sound and video from the original data plays more or less perfectly.

Controls are much the same as the original game, though OpenMW provides easier movement via the field of view alterations and much more easily remappable controls. Stability is also greatly improved, and while it still has issues relating to their engine that is still being actively worked on, many engine stability issues from the original executable code have been dealt with and are no longer a problem, and the game crashes due to problems that plagued the original engine is nigh nonexistent.


However, the project does have some limitations and concerns. Legally, Bethesda Softworks has given the project their blessing, but have expressed strong disapproval of porting the engine to run commercial assets on non-desktop/laptop PCs. Legal arrangements have been made to assure Bethesda this is not the intentions of the developers. While they cannot prevent their code from being open-source and thus complied to do so by third parties, legally the OpenMW developers do not support or sanction such matters as a "first-class" citizen, meaning, this is not their primary goal (at least for rendering any commercial assets owned by Bethseda themselves). Original content that does not rely on commercial assets owned by Bethseda is completely acceptable for use in any non-computer port, a condition the OpenMW developers have agreed to support.

From the standpoint of the modding community there is no built-in support for certain scripting programs that have made the original game far more extensible. Support for many of the most common features is already part of the OpenMW engine and plans to port the functionality of many popular third-party tools and coding extensions have been discussed and such would not be overly hard to do in many cases. In short, modders may possibly see many third party extensions integrated into later builds at some point.

Overall, this project is still very much a work in progress at the time of this writing. Regardless, it shows a considerable amount of promise in achieving complete parity with the TES3 executable and game editor code. It already can serve as a quite well featured (if still incomplete in some areas) open-source replacement of the original Morrowind engine, meaning those other than people who have 32-bit compatible Microsoft Windows operating systems will have a viable way to enjoy Morrowind and other games made using the tools provided by this project's engine for many years to come.

]]> (Daniel Cullen) Software Sat, 06 Jul 2019 16:06:38 -0500
Aomei Backupper Professional Edition  

Game Info:

Aomei Backupper Professional Edition
Version reviewed: 4.6.3
Developed by: Aomei
Price: $29.95 (to upgrade from the free version)

Thank you Aomei for sending us this software to review!

Earlier this year we reviewed the $29 MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 Pro and it performed well for our cloning of a mechanical hard drive to SSD of the same size. Both programs offer similar features at the same price point and have a trial version that lets you backup and restore data free of charge.

If you want to do a system clone, use boot up utilities, backup to DVDs, schedule/trigger backup events, or sync files and folder in real-time, you’ll want to purchase a professional license. The cheapest option only lets you install it once and you do not get free updates. For an extra $10, you get lifetime updates. If you need to install it on 2-5 computers, prepare to spend $99.95.


Strong Points: Easy to use; free version available to try
Weak Points: If you want to have lifetime updates or multiple installs you’ll need to pay extra

For this review, I used Aomei Backupper Professional Edition 4.6.3 to clone one Windows 10 1TB SSD to a similarly sized but faster SSD.  I used two USB docking devices that should be plugged in and detected by Windows before launching Aomei Backupper Professional.  The software has a convenient clone menu which is where I went to begin the hour-long process.  To start the clone you need to specify which drive is the source and which one will be the destination.  Be sure to have the drives selected correctly or you may overwrite your data!  Once the clone was completed, I plugged the new OS drive back into my desktop and it booted up flawlessly.  Before adding my old OS drive back into my system, I formatted it to avoid any confusion within Windows.   

Since mechanical drives are bigger and cheaper, it’s not uncommon to migrate to a smaller but faster SSD. Aomei Backupper Professional lets you do a system clone from one bigger to a smaller drive. Unfortunately, the drive I wanted to test this out on requires completely disassembling my desktop to access it behind my motherboard. I don’t plan on taking my computer apart until I upgrade it in the fall. I plan on using this software to clone my difficult to reach 500GB mechanical hard drive to my spare 256GB SSD.

Aomei Backupper Professional Edition

I rely on cloud storage so I don’t use dedicated backup drives. If I did, this software would make backing up super easy. It can check backup images for errors, combine images, and explore them to retrieve specific files off of them. The file synchronization is nice for real-time backing up of important files and folders. With real time, any mistakes are also copied over so be careful!

For advanced users there are handy PXE (network) boot tools and options to create bootable media. Although the image deploy menu is visible, it’s only accessible if you have the $449-$799 technician versions.

For personal use, it’s worth checking out the free version of Aomei Backupper. If you like what you see and can use the advanced features, upgrading is both affordable and worthwhile.

]]> (Cheryl Gress) Software Wed, 03 Jul 2019 12:35:09 -0500
MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 Pro  

Software Info:

MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 Pro
Developed by: MiniTool
Release date: January 29, 2019
Price: $29

Thank you MiniTool for providing us with a Pro license to review!

If you care about your data, you should back it up. Plain and simple. There are many backup programs available and what’s nice about MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 is that they offer a free version to try to see if it’s right for you. The $29 Pro version lets you schedule backups of files, operating systems, and even hard drive clones. For extra security, you can encrypt your backups to make them harder to access.

The ability to backup and restore remotely is cool, but for our test, we used my laptop with the source and destination drives plugged into a USB dock. My daughter had a 256GB mechanical hard drive that she was looking to replace with a much faster SSD that’s the same size. Switching to a smaller SSD was possible with the disk clone tool. For this scenario, both the drives were the same size and the cloned operating system was Manjaro Linux.


Strong Points: Easy to use; supports Linux file systems; works as advertised
Weak Points: Business licenses are more expensive for the ability to backup/restore Windows Server OS

The first step in MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 is to specify the source drive and the backup destination. Be sure to select all of the partitions if you want an exact clone. The drive image took over an hour and a half to complete. It got slow around 78% and the drive may have had some bad sectors. Good thing we’re replacing it!

Restoring the drive image to the new drive was a bit quicker at fifty minutes. Not only did it bring over the partitions, but the master boot record as well, so the laptop booted right up as if nothing happened (but much more quickly)! I was anticipating having to run boot-repair tools, but that was not necessary.

If you’re just looking to do backups instead of drive clones, MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 has you covered. There are three backup modes to choose from: Full, Incremental, and Differential. Each backup begins with a full and you must specify how many backup images you want to keep before any of them get deleted. Incremental backups store a full and a few smaller backups before deleting the older ones and repeating the process. The differential stores both large and smaller backups, but doesn’t discriminate on which to delete when the queue is full. There’s an animation to demonstrate how each mode works if you’re a person that prefers visual demonstrations. Full backups can be mounted and looked through if there is anything needed from them.

MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1 Pro

The sync feature is great if you want to keep a particular folder current and backed up. The synchronization can be determined by time, size, and content. This option would be perfect for network shares, external backup devices like USB drives, or removable hard drives.

In the tools menu you can create bootable media, add boot menus to Windows, mount/unmount backups, clone disks, and start/stop PXE service. PXE stands for Pre-boot Execution Environment and that's used for booting up computers from their network card. I used the backup/restore feature when cloning my daughter's drive and it worked perfectly. I’m not sure how much differently the clone disk option would have been. It seems pretty straightforward; you need both a source and a destination drive that are not the drive with the operating system running on it. If you need to back up your operating system drive, you’ll need to make a bootable USB/CD/DVD.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with MiniTool ShadowMaker 3.1. It made the hard-drive-to-SSD transfer for my daughter real easy. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in replacing your hard drive/SSD or backing up your data on a regular basis. The asking price of $29 is reasonable and it includes one year of updates.

]]> (Cheryl Gress) Software Mon, 29 Apr 2019 13:07:53 -0500
GameCaptr boxart
Software Info:

Developed by: simplitec GmbH
Published by: simplitec GmbH
Release date: October 13, 2016
Available on: Windows
Price: $24.99

Thank you simplitec GmbH for sending us a review code for this software and the video editing DLC. 

Since we frequently do Twitch streams and YouTube videos, we’re always on the lookout for easy to use software that doesn’t consume a lot of system resources. OBS is free and easy to use and GameShow has some nice features that take a little more tweaking, but look great when finished.   What sets GameCaptr apart from the others is its cell phone app that lets you remotely monitor your system resources and manage your streams/recordings.  That is if you can even get it to record in the first place.

Every time I launch GameCaptr I get an error stating that the program was already running. Sadly, that annoyance is nothing compared to the bigger issues that this software is plagued with. Proud of my new laptop, I wanted to see how it fared in the built-in benchmarking tool. The benchmark seemed to be running as I saw command windows in the background opening and closing.  Upon completion, each of the categories (processor, graphics, RAM, hard disk) received a 0%.  I decided not to share that score on Facebook or compare it with others online.   The benchmark tool did work on my desktop though.  


Strong Points: Mobile phone integration with real time stats and the option to control game recordings through the app; out of date driver notifications
Weak Points: Streaming and benchmarking features are broken along with the ability to report the bugs; no updates or fixes in months

When I first installed this application, I was still in possession of my Asus i7 laptop with a Nvidia 660M graphics chip and I was able to stream once or twice with it.  However, the mobile app connectivity did not work because it timed out before I was able to authorize it on the laptop application.  I was able to get the app to function on my desktop with an AMD R290X, but the streaming would not work. Now that I have my new laptop, I can’t even get GameCaptr to accept my Twitch stream key which I know is valid as it works with several other programs flawlessly.  

Posting on the Steam discussion forums was fruitless as I was told these issues would be addressed in an upcoming patch and there hasn’t been any updates since October.  I was told to use the report bug tool, but it gave me an SMTP error when trying to report the issue.  


On a positive note, the phone app looks nice and is easy to navigate.  The Steam app has a few quirks of its own though.  The Steam library integration is nice and you can tweak each of the games or apply the changes to all of the games in your library.  The Twitch key input area isn’t easily accessible unless you click in a specific spot and delete the existing text there.  Sometimes the Twitch servers would run off the screen and make it hard to select the one I preferred.

The video editor seems straightforward and easy to use.  It's a shame that I never got to test it out with videos that I recorded with GameCaptr.  Given that the main features of this application are clearly broken, I recommend steering clear of this software entirely until the issues have been fixed.

]]> (Cheryl Gress) Software Tue, 24 Jan 2017 14:14:37 -0600
Gameshow 3.2 boxart
Game Info:

Gameshow 3.2
Developed by: Telestream
Release date: August 16, 2016
Available on: Windows, Mac
Price: $29 with a year’s worth of updates

Thank you Telestream for giving us a license key!













]]> (Cheryl Gress) Software Sat, 05 Nov 2016 14:12:52 -0500