The picture above is a Raspberry Pi playing a 1080p video (Prometheus trailer from the Apple Trailers site). What's more, it's not playing it from the local SD card storage, it's playing it from a cifs-mounted volume. And it plays it totally smoothly. I threw a higher bitrate 1080p video at it and it wasn't so happy with that (potentially due to ethernet performance) but for the most part 1080p should be alright, and 720p moreso, if it is encoded in h.264. More thoughts and explanations after the cut.

• Firstly, you'll notice in the picture above that it is running a window manager and video, but the video extends further out to the sides than LXDE does. As I mentioned previously, the display doesn't have everything used on it, but the video does go from edge to edge, indicating (as Andrew figured) there is an allowance for overscan built in. Still, omxplayer doesn't seem to respect this which is good for me!
• The video application I used, omxplayer, is dead easy to install, but took me a while to find the instructions. The version listed below has been packaged into a .deb to make things easy, and will use the Raspberry Pi's hardware for h.264 acceleration. Follow the steps below and you'll get it installed. This is all thanks to spennig on the Raspberry Pi forums.

wget http://seyrsnys.myzen.co.uk/rpi/omxplayer_0.0.1-arm.deb
sudo dpkg -i omxplayer_0.0.1-arm.deb
sudo apt-get -f install

• omxplayer is run from a console, with the syntax "omxplayer name_of_video.mp4". I didn't need any other modifiers, though I may end up looking into seeing if I can get the rest of the screen blacked out. I was surprised to see that it would happily play video in LXDE launched from an LXTerminal session, and still played back the 1080p video smoothly. The CPU usage graph in the lower-right betrays the fact that the 700MHz ARM processor still gets completely used while doing this though, but it's still smooth. I didn't do any long video testing so I don't know for sure that it won't suffer from memory leaks or the like.
• I did run into one issue, which I haven't yet found how to resolve. I didn't have to change the audio output to select for audio to go out via the analogue stereo audio output (it's connected to a DVI monitor, so no HDMI audio). However, when I played video that had AC3 5.1 audio, the channel layout was confused. The centre channel, reserved for dialogue, came out of the left speaker. I'll have to do further looking in to whether omxplayer can force a stereo downmix. I attempted to force omxplayer to select the analogue audio output as the only audio output but I could not find the right name for the output. I installed lshw and tried using lspci, and checking /dev/snd, but couldn't find the information. Something else to dig in to.
• The videos I used for testing weren't stored on the SD card itself but on a cifs volume, served by Samba on my Linux Mint KDE machine. This forum post gave me some information here, but essentially it was a case of typing the below lines to get the software utilities installed, the mount destination folder made, and the volume mounted. Note that only the last command has to be run to mount the volume in subsequent occurrences.

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
mkdir /mnt/storage
mount.cifs //1.2.3.4/storage /mnt/storage user=username -o

sudo passwd root

I received my Raspberry Pi today! I've had a little bit of time (very briefly) playing with it tonight and have some initial thoughts and observations on it. I'll play with it a bit more tomorrow. I'm running Debian Squeeze as a starting point, just so I could get a glimpse of what's to come.

• Firstly - connected via HDMI, it won't use the whole of my 24" 1920x1200 monitor. It uses a resolution roughly 1800x1000 (I forget the exact dimensions). I went into the display settings and didn't have an option to change it otherwise. Strangely it leaves a black border around the screen, whereas typically this display won't keep pixels in the right places as it should, which implies that this is something the RPi is doing.
• The setup process - I'm running a Linux computer, and used dd to image my 4GB SD card. Since I'm using my Sony PRS-505 as an SD card reader, it took ages to do (4706 seconds - 78 minutes - for 2GB of data! So long I had to look up how to check its progress to make sure it hadn't crashed) but it got there eventually. After that I had to increase the partition size of the main volume as otherwise it is limited to 2GB. The link has instructions for imaging for Windows and OS X too, and instructions for resizing the partition on the RPi itself as well as on a separate Linux machine.

• There's no power button or such on it of course - connect the power cable and it'll turn on, with an LED to let you know this. When you tell Linux to shut down, it won't do the final power down stage itself, it'll halt the system but you'll need to disconnect the power cable to turn it off.
• Once started up, I thought my keyboard wasn't working with it. After a little head-scratching (I've got 2 Apple thin USB keyboards and one seemed to work, the other seemed to work only for a few seconds) I realised that it would cut off the keyboard that had a USB mouse connected to the internal hub. Disconnecting this mouse, then disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard resolved the issue. I used a (different) mouse connected to the second USB port and this setup had no problems. The RPi will happily support devices being disconnected and reconnected while it is running, so no worries there.
• Debian Squeeze boots up reasonably quickly, and though I didn't do much on it (I didn't seem to have a spare ethernet cable to get it onto the Internet) it seemed reasonably quick. I haven't tested out video playback yet though, something I'm keen to do.
• Debian Squeeze only has the one user available for login on it, with the username/password as pi/raspberry. This worked fine for logging in in the first place, but the password didn't work when trying to reach a secure-access preference. I'll play around more with this tomorrow. Relatedly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of available system setting applications. For this reason, I think I may end up trying out another flavour of Linux designed for the RPi.

I'll post more as I play with it more. Any questions, let me know - either comment on this page, mention me on Twitter or on Google+ (links to the right).

I finished Mass Effect 3 yesterday, finishing a series that I've loved on and off over the past few years, and I've been dying to talk about it with someone but no-one I know has completed it yet. I should say that right now that this whole post will have major spoilers so if you care about discovering the plot for yourself at all then don't read this! It's also long and wordy but with a super-brief tl;dr at the bottom, after the break!

Just quickly before I start - my Shepard, above, is a female paragon soldier, she's done all of the stuff in the previous games, and has had a relationship with Liara from ME1 through Lair of the Shadow Broker. I'll be writing this all in this perspective, but for those who haven't played any of the games in the series, these choices and be different depending on the choices you make.

So ME3 starts with Earth coming under attack from the Reapers, then Shepard is ordered to leave the planet so she can get help from other races. The other races are trying to protect their own borders but they'll need to work together to win (Babylon 5 war against the Shadows, anyone?). The first step is to Mars to find out about the Crucible (and to collect Liara), where we also find out that Cerberus, a shadowy organisation from the second game and the book series, are after this same information for unknown reasons.

The leaving earth scene is beautiful, enhanced by the music by Clint Mansell. To me, it sets the mood for the rest of the game, so if you've not played any of the games then watch the video below. If you have played the games already you'll probably want to watch the scene again!

What really stuck with me throughout this game is the level of desperation felt by Shepard, her team, and everyone else in the face of the Reapers. This feeling only increases as the game draws to a close, particularly when Kai Leng gets the Prothean VI with the vital information about the Catalyst. Shepard felt it. And I did too.

You'll also get characters die at various points throughout the game. Not your party characters, but party characters from ME2. Shepard felt it, and I did too. In fact, I cried for 2 deaths. At a few points in the game, Shepard will have a dream where she's chasing after the child from the video above. And again, they're super-atmospheric. The last dream includes whispers from characters who have died, haunting Shepard as she continues her journey.

Oh god they're haunting. And so beautiful.

I don't think any other game I've played has given a real sense that this war feels desperate to the same extent that this game does. The last section of the game (set in the city I live in, London) carries on this feeling throughout. It's almost as if I could actually fail this, though of course we know that the game will end with victory against the Reapers (presuming your effective military rating is high enough!) and that's not something that games generally bring across. One of the final scenes involves a headlong dash in the face of a Reaper, and it was terrifying. Shepard makes it, but not before getting badly wounded and having to limp the final part, her armour burnt off from some areas of her body. I played the game on hardcore and some of the areas in the whole London mission were really tough, which really added to the atmosphere.

Before I talk about the ending, just want to talk about the romance side of this game. There aren't many games, movies or books that provide a lesbian with a relatable romantic story, so Bioware games hold a special place in my heart because they often do. They've always been pretty clumsy though (it is, after all, a sub-plot in a computer game). ME2 disappointed me at first because (amongst other reasons) they removed any sense of romance between Shepard and Liara, though this was explained in Lair of the Shadow Broker in a way that fit well. In it, Shepard promised Liara that she wasn't going to die (again) and would always come back to Liara so they can have lots of blue babies together. Then, in Mass Effect 3, they greet each other like lovers near the start which is good, but then later on Shepard has to actually tell Liara that she wants to be more than just friends again. For like the third time. Sigh! Felt a bit silly, but as I said romance in these games is a bit clumsy so I can make do.

The other reason why Mass Effect 2 disappointed me was because of the lack of the main plot - it's there, but rather limited. Much of the game is based around building a team with story content that has nothing to do with the mystery of the Collectors and the eventual victory over them. You can basically summarise large sections of the game as "Shepard increases the size of her team and runs some errands to make them like her more". This lack of coherence around a single driving plot rather annoyed me at first but I ended up loving the game anyway, once I knew what to expect.

Mass Effect 3, however, feels much more coherent in this regard. Whereas the game does have a similar idea, recruiting alien races to defeat the Reapers, the actual missions where you go off and garner support don't feel disconnected from the rest of the game. The first such mission, for instance, sees you going to a moon of Palaven, the turian homeworld, to extract their military leader from the midst of an epic battle with the Reapers, and you also add Garrus to your party in this mission. In comparison, the get-Garrus mission in ME2 had you going off to Omega to chase up a lead about some awesome sniper dude to add him to your team... Which doesn't really have anything to do with the investigation into the Collectors beyond 'I need another body in my team'. So I much preferred ME3 over ME2 in that regard.

The Ending

The ending to Mass Effect 3 has been rather controversial. It basically boils down to a "choose one of these cutscenes out of three" thing as with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Except in this, each of the choices you make will result in your character dying (with the bullshit gimmick being that your effective military strength score is high enough you won't - sounds reasonable, except the only way to get your score high enough is to play multiplayer to increase your galactic readiness multiplier, and even then the only benefit is that you get a 5-second cutscene that shows some burnt out N7 armour taking in a breath). The choices themselves don't really matter, just as in DXHR. You just get a slightly different cutscene at the end and that's it. I even picked the ending I didn't mean to go with and didn't feel too fussed. Then there's pretty much nothing in the way of an epilogue, and you don't even get to see if all of your party characters survived. Hell, the final cutscene for me had Liara stepping off the Normandy after it crashes fleeing Earth... Yet I had to go through the very final section of the game thinking "did Liara die in my final charge back on Earth like everyone else who took part in the charge?" - how did she get into the Normandy?

I'm very much a fan of characters dying in stories. You often see stories where important characters come through changed, but alive, which jars me a bit as being unreasonable - how can someone go through so much and live? So I was totally okay (though sad, hence the crying) when characters died earlier in the game. But Shepard dying is a bit different. Players are invested in the party characters, but the level of investment in Shepard is on another level. Furthermore, this meant that Shepard couldn't keep her promise to Liara to settle down after the war. This broke my little heart it did, and I cried as I walked up to meet my fate. Shepard's fate, rather. See, I was so invested in Shepard's character that my thoughts were closer to "I don't want to die" than they were to "I don't want this video game character to die". And that emotional impact is what I mainly took from the ending of this game. I can rewrite quite how the ending went down in my imagination - Shepard survived, reunited with Liara and lived happily ever after - but I certainly couldn't remove myself from the emotion I felt from that ending, and the whole game itself. The ending is certainly flawed and could do with improvement, but bloody hell did it have a powerful impact on me. I finished it at around 9pm Saturday night and it took the rest of the evening and Sunday to come to terms with the despair. I've still not been able to make it past the third track in the OST (the second one being the Clint Mansell piece in the Leaving Earth video above).

tl;dr: I really enjoyed this game. The ending's flawed and has a lot of gamers up in arms, but personally the main thing I took away from this was how hard the whole game hit me emotionally, perhaps more so than any other game.

LCD etc. monitors have a fixed grid of physical pixels, as we all know. As a result, the natural resolution is an important thing to stick to for aesthetic reasons. Let's say our monitor is a 27" or 30" 16:10 monitor with a natural resolution of 2560x1600, but we don't have a computer powerful enough to play games at that resolution or want to record our gameplay. But 1920x1200 or 1280x800 are both okay. Which should we choose?

In practice, whichever you prefer the look of! In theory, 1280x800 should look better most of the time - probably. Why? Read on for the nerdy explanation.

To demonstrate visually, I'm going to use small pixel arts of an arrow I drew in GIMP. Each one will be in an image that has dimensions based on 1/100th of the vertical resolutions mentioned above: so 2560x1600 becomes 16x16, 1920x1200 becomes 12x12, and 1280x800 becomes 8x8. This just makes things easier. So the highest resolution arrow, 16x16, looks like this.

Note that the red dotted line on the edges is simply to demonstrate the size of the pixels in lieu of a proper grid.We can see that this arrow looks pretty nice, with even vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines.

Next, is our 8x8 arrow.

This is clearly a lower resolution version of the arrow above, and looks a lot blockier. However, it recognisably has the same characteristics - the diagonal lines have the same thickness as the vertical and horizontal lines.

Let's transform this 8x8 arrow to fit into a 16x16 grid using no interpolation (or in video terms, no resize filter).

The arrow looks exactly the same, but we can see the grid has got a lot smaller. The result is that each pixel of the arrow now takes up 4 pixels. 1280x800 fits perfectly into 2560x1600 four times. This is the same reason why Apple went with the same ratio in resolutions for their Retina display, so that apps that do not have Retina-compatible graphics can still scale up even if it looks a bit blocky.

Now let's look at the 12x12 arrow.

This arrow has a lot more detail than the 8x8 arrow, and in itself looks a lot more recognisably like the 16x16 arrow. But what happens if we transform this arrow to fir into a 16x16 grid? Let's start with no interpolation first.

This arrow now has substantially different characteristics. The vertical and horizontal lines are now 2 pixels wide, and along the diagonal lines there are parts where the line is a 2x2 pixel square rather than a 1x1 pixel square. This now looks like a different arrow. Why? Because there's no easy way to draw 12 pixels into 16. Let's do the same transformation with the Lanczos3 filter.

The filter has tried to even things out somewhat, which has helped with the diagonal lines (though it is still possible to see points of higher concentration of black) but the vertical and horizontal lines are now still visibly 2 pixels wide, but dimmer. The arrow has a lot more quality compared to the 8x8 arrow and is still recognisably the same arrow, but it lacks the sharpness as a result of the filter.

Which should I use then? The highest possible resolution or the multiple-of resolution?

Before writing this, I would have definitely have said to use the multiple-of resolution. If the monitor or graphics card that is doing the scaling does not have any filters available to it, then using a non-multiple resolution would look rather different. However, if the device doing the resolution scaling does use a filter, then it would come down more to personal preference, and perhaps application-based preference.

I'm not happy with that. If I'm recording, what about recording at 2560x1600 and scaling the video down?

Another possibility, if you're wanting to record and have a computer capable of that. However, this would negatively affect the resultant video file itself. If we scale the original 16x16 arrow down to 12x12 using the Lanczos3 interpolation filter, this is the result:

Note that I have not added the grid this time so as to show the blurring lines. Comparing this 12x12 image to the original 12x12 image, we can see the earlier one is far sharper. If you're considering recording then you should definitely record at the resolution you wish to output at, so as to give the viewer the best possible experience.

Wait, doesn't anti-aliasing get around most of this?

Yes and no. While this would avoid some defects as seen in the 12x12 to 16x16 conversion due to scaling a blended line rather than a sharp line, it could potentially blur the line far enough that it would look weird. Also, anti-aliasing doesn't necessarily affect UI elements and the like so these would be unchanged.

So, what do you suggest?

or

tl;dr

If you're just playing games, play at your monitor's natural resolution. If that's not possible, experiment with other resolutions and see what you can cope with (comparing to the natural resolution as a baseline) and if there's nothing you can cope with then you'll either need to get a smaller monitor or upgrade your computer.

If you're recording, always record at the resolution you want to put files out at but know that this'll sacrifice the quality of what you see locally. If you're not happy with the quality you see yourself, then something needs to change other than the resolution of the game itself - be it the way that the image is scaled or your monitor to remove the need for scaling.

• My /played to level 50 was nearly 5 days on the dot (about 5 days 15 minutes). To complete my class quest took me about another 4 hours.
• I left Voss at around level 49, and did the last little bit on Correlia. I quite enjoyed Voss, but do wish that mixed-faction towns were planned a bit better. To add to what I said last time, you don't get flagged for PvP if you've just landed on the planet and entered the zone, but if you've just come from elsewhere on the planet then anyone can attack you with no intervention from guard or the like. Given a few minutes of not being attacked you'll lose your PvP flag, but it's still not a great way of doing things.
• Once I hit 50 I basically lost all interest in side quests. All I did was my class quest and the main planet quest. Side questing in this game is good but I tend to prefer big story lines. When I no longer needed the exp these quests pretty instantly felt like too much of a grind to bother with.
• The class quest ending at chapter 3 - I thought that each story would be more chapters than this (I had heard of there being 5 or 6 chapters). If you include the prologue then there are 4 chapters per class quest. However, they have left it open to having more chapters, and I suspect that more may come in without extra expansions - perhaps later ones just weren't ready for release?
• Overall impression of my Trooper's class quest: not too interesting. Much better than anything I've experienced in an MMORPG but still not as good as I would have hoped. The first chapter had a story I was engaged in, but the two other chapters introduced a completely new enemy or objective which meant I just didn't get too involved in them. I'm looking forward to the class quest of the Jedi Knight (which I have rolled, and have got up to level 8 with so far).
• I leveled the whole way using just one companion, and now have him at 10000/10000 affection. I've started using one of the other companions instead who's a bit more designed for tanking. Means I have to do more healing though as he takes aggro from more mobs!

I've started leveling a Jedi Knight, I'll check in occasionally to comment on the differences. Now that I'm 50 I can start covering the end-game as it stands a bit more, so keep your eyes peeled for future updates!

• The first flashpoint, The Esseles, paints a really nice picture for how flashpoints will play out in terms of interaction with the story versus killing a couple of bosses and collecting loot, but as I mentioned before, Hammer Station and Athiss go very much against this and feel much more like a bog-standard MMORPG dungeon. Fortunately, Taral V and Maelstrom Prison do not disappoint, and have far more story interaction within them. If you haven't played either of these instances but enjoy the stories this game contains, they're well worth playing.
• I'm currently on Voss after finally having left Belsavis (hooray!). Voss is the first place I've come across with a city hub shared between factions, with each faction having it's own "wing" and all of the normal vendors found in a shared area. When I landed, I was warned against starting any fights with the Empire by an NPC, which lead me to presume that, like WoW, any fighting would result in any aggressors being attacked by lots of guards. Nope. I was ganked right by the commendations vendor in the centre of the city and not a thing happened to the person who attacked me. This... strikes me as being an incredibly stupid design choice, and I'm hoping it's a bug.
• I'm still enjoying being a healer in this, which is good. Today I went to a Heroic 4 area with a couple of guild members and a random, and had a good time there. The challenge with the Trooper class is keeping things steady over a long time, due to the ammo mechanic - you want to keep your ammo at 8 or higher as much as possible so you can get the higher rate of ammo regeneration. Burn through your current reserve of ammo quickly and you'll not be able to regenerate quickly enough to maintain a good DPS output, maintain threat, or in my case, keep your team alive. We had some trouble with a boss in this area, but we did take him down. When the boss's damage output increased approaching the end, I had to cast more heals to keep up but then ran out of ammo, even though I had been more or less fine all the way through. This resulted in a couple of party members dying, but fortunately the boss died at about the same time as the second member died. It was good to see a fairly challenging boss fight even in just a Heroic phase - I had figured out much of the strategy by our first wipe, but one guild member mentioned on voice comms that he found it good practice for future challenges.
• I've heard that the opening operation content is rather badly tuned, and is rather easy... It's worth bearing in mind that this game was only released just over 2 weeks ago! However, I do hope that this doesn't cause subscriber numbers to cut down, and that Bioware can tune the current content or bring out more soon.

Next stop: Level 50! Once I hit 50 and complete my class quest, I'll finally be able to take a look at some operation content for myself. A big thing that I want to do is to roll an alt though - I've been fairly disappointed by the Trooper's class storyline (though I've still not finished) and I'm hoping that the Jedi Knight story will appeal to me more.

• My /played is now 3 days 14 hours.
• I completed chapter 2! Wow, that went a lot quicker than chapter 1. A bit disappointing that the storyline didn't evolve more than that. Basically, whereas chapter 1 had  6 planets in it I think (not necessarily in order: Ord Mantell, Coruscant, Taris, Nar Shaddaa, Alderaan, Tatooine), chapter 2 just has 3, Balmorra, Quesh and Hoth - and Quesh is a really small planet in comparison to most others, represented by its level range of 36-37. I started the chapter at level 31, completed the chapter at level 39, and I'm now into chapter 3.
• Hoth was the first planet where a small part of my questing area obviously overlapped with the questing area of the Empire. Previously, planets have been designed so that Republic and Empire don't cross paths, which makes sense given the storylines generally involve Republic questing in areas with Imperial mobs and (presumably) vice versa. This meant my first real run-ins with Empire players, and it turns out that in solo PvP I have a lot to learn. Not really surprising given this is my first time playing a healer class!
• Speaking about PvP, it seems like the Republic on my server is kind of not very good at warzone PvP. Oh well, thankfully I'm mainly interested in this game for the storylines.
• I got my level 40 mount and training, and I think I'm at about 200k credits now. I know a lot of people have been having trouble affording mounts but I really haven't. Basically, I've just not bought anything really. I've not bothered selling stuff on the auction house either. I've just been vendoring everything I've come across but without buying anything. I had slicing too but that has since fallen to the point where I don't have enough skill to gather any more, and that's been the case for some time. So I guess the best advice I can give is don't buy anything!
• Once I've finished the story content for this class, I'm absolutely going to roll another class. It'll either be a Jedi Knight or some sort of Sith class. I think I'll likely play a Jedi Knight first but undecided. This isn't because I don't enjoy playing this class or because I want to be SUPER FORCE USER, but because the storyline never quite gets as epic as I'd like. I'm doing things that a special forces soldier does, but I never feel quite like I'm doing anything quite as epic as in other BioWare games. Still, I'm in chapter 3 and that isn't the last chapter, so I guess things could still change. Don't get me wrong though, I'm still enjoying this.

Think that's all I've got for now. If I don't post again I'll be back just before the new year. Take care!

• At a little bit into level 37, my /played is now 2 days 22 hours.
• I completed chapter 1 of my class story! After wrapping up Taris and Alderaan, I had a quest to go to a space station to conclude the chapter. Don't want to give away any spoilers, but my worries that the story would basically just end with "you haven't saved the day, the same mission continues in chapter 2" were unfounded - the story of chapter 1 (and by extension the prologue) is a separate package from chapter 2. When chapter 1 ends, I "get a break from my duties" before returning and asking for more, where I am given an entirely new overall mission to complete. So that's now what I am doing.
• Near the start of my chapter 2 story line (when I was about level 31-32) I returned to Tatooine, as part of the quest line. On my first visit to Tatooine, the intended questing progression took me through some of the planet but left large amounts of it unexplored. While I'm sure that much of this is to keep Republic and Empire players separated to an extent, it's also clear to me now that some areas are simply for higher levels. In other words, while a planet may have a certain level range listed, for some of these planets this is simply the level range for your first visit there, but you may have the opportunity to return later on to experience some more content. So while the planets have a very obvious level progression path at face value, BioWare have spread content around to create a better overall narrative.
• Another example of the point above is Nar Shaddaa. There's one area in Nar Shaddaa, a planet that is (off the top of my head) marked for levels 20-24, that contains heroic areas around level 30. Later on you can return there as part of some quest lines, which for me included a companion quest line.
• I seem to be on the losing team more often than not in warzones, which is rather annoying. Hmph.
• I've finally figured out the potential contained within the modular items system in TOR. It's pretty interesting actually. Basically, armour and weapons of a better-than-average quality don't simply have a base set of stats but have slots to fit upgrades in, and generally have enhancements already fitted. So, for instance, an assault rifle may have a colour crystal, a barrel, a mod and an enhancement. Any of these modifications can be removed or replaced at any time, and doing so can improve your item. Also, aside from increasing the bonus stats that the item provides, upgrading these items can actually change the most basic stat - damage dealt for a gun, or armour for armour - depending on the quality and level of the modification inserted. As a result, you can potentially stick with the same gun for many many levels by simply modifying it to keep it competitive. It's an interesting system that is worth doing a video about some time.
• Since starting on chapter 2 of my class story, I've now been to a few additional worlds - Balmorra, Quesh, and Hoth. Balmorra is another large world, but Quesh is pretty small, about the size of 1 zone on other maps. I've only just started on Hoth, but I suspect there will be a fair amount of content here since it is an iconic planet of the film series.
• I decided to start going around with my head-slot item hidden. I miss seeing Fneb's face. At the same time though, it feels weird to see her running around in heavy armour without a helmet. Would have loved for there to be an option of "remove helmet in conversation" - just like that clone trooper dude does in episode 3, removing the helmet whenever talking to someone. I imagine that'd be a nightmare for the production team though, particularly with all the different hairstyles available. Anyway, for now I'll be going with head-slot hidden, but I may change back, who knows!
• I was worried about running out of ammo (the Trooper's ability resource mechanic) when healing, or having to form a specific ability rotation to ensure I don't dip into lower regeneration rates, but so far in both PvP and party-size play I've been okay. The occasional time where I've had to really burn through and just spam heal someone has been rare enough that I can use my ammo regen-boosting cooldown to save the day. I'll be honest, though; I'm still worried that I'll have to simply form an ability rotation to maximise healing output in larger groups, particularly larger operation in PvE, in a similar fashion to an aimed shot/multishot rotation for a Hunter in classic WoW (which was something that bored me to tears). But doesn't seem to be a problem in party-level content or in PvP.
• A couple of abilities worth mentioning regarding healing as a Trooper: Advanced Medical Probe and Trauma Probe. The latter is gained from a talent and is super handy - a small heal whenever you're hit, can only happen every 3 seconds or more, 10 charges. But it doesn't consume any ammo to cast, is an instant cast, has no cooldown, and if you're in a group then it stacks. Aside from the obvious "cast it on your main tank in a party" use, it's also super-useful elsewhere. In solo PvE I can cast it on my tank, and it'll give him enough life that I can damage enemies down for a fair while and generally have a much easier time. Warzone PvP is where it's really helpful. In disorganised warzone play Trauma Probe allows me to not have to worry about healing myself so I can stick with healing others, unless someone specifically begins to focus me down. I can just shrug off stray shots and AoE damage. Handy stuff.
• Advanced Medical Probe, without any talents in healing, seems a bit dumb. Compared to Medical Probe it uses less ammo (2 compared to 3), casts slightly quicker, heals for a little less but has a cooldown. But with talents it improves a lot. The cooldown is reduced (I believe from 12 seconds to 9), but AMP will also put a HOT (heal over time) and a 10% armour buff to the recipient of the heal. And for good measure, it'll reduce the cost of your next MP to 1, meaning that you can cast both AMP and MP for the same cost as normally casting MP. Much better!

I still have no voice but my throat no longer hurts. I'm hoping to have some video content up soon as a result.

• My /played is now 1 day 22 hours 40 minutes. I was only really playing for 3 hours today (that's how much video I recorded), the other additional time over last time was idling around between getting into the server (securing my space in the queue etc.) and eating dinner.
• There's now at least 1 level 50 player on my server, 50 being the level cap for this game.
• I believe I'm getting near to the end of chapter 1 of my class story. This gladdens me as so far my class story hasn't been some sort of epic adventure as I'd hope. Elevating the protagonists/antagonists and their journey above the rest of a conflict is often what happens in Star Wars, such as the conflict between Luke and Vader while the whole of the rebellion is going on, and this helps draw you in. While the Trooper's class story does do this, I'm still simply a soldier, not a Jedi or Sith, and so an element of wonder is lost. I don't want to say much about the story since I don't like spoilers, but what I will say is that, at the moment I'm basically just hunting down some dudes. It's more interesting than that but that's what it boils down to. Since the story is quite a few chapters long though (I've heard either 5 or 7 chapters long), there's plenty of scope for some really exciting stuff.
• Story content isn't limited to just the planets. You do get some locations that will only appear as a location you can go to once you're at a certain part of a quest line, in much the same manner as in Mass Effect 1.
• Another supplemental note; you can access flashpoints (all of them, some of them?) from the Fleet, which is a nice touch. There's basically a shuttle bay place, you enter the instance and a shuttle drops you off at your location. No need to go to the specific world location or such.
• Every single BioWare game does this, and it annoys me every time. How hard can it be to have the characters actually HOLD something when giving an item from one to another? Why does it always have to be off screen? I'm sure you could figure this out!
• I finally joined a guild, Excessum! Looking forward to playing some group content with these guys.
• As a Commando healer I appear to be pretty much useless in one-on-one PVP. In group PVP though I can do alright. I think I need to get a bit more used to being a healer though, in general.

Time to tidy up in here, order Christmas presents and sort through my recorded video to find what's good. Take care!

• Mount! Mount mount mount mount mount.
• The expensive part of the mount is, surprise surprise, the training to use it rather than the speeder itself. Once you've got the training for the mount (which you get at your normal class trainer for 40k credits) you can buy a mount (for 8k credits). Using the mount adds it to your Abilities under the Vehicles tab and removes the item, so you don't need to worry about having an inventory slot always taken away by your speeder. This level 25 speeder increases your speed by 90%.
• The speeder only takes 0.5sec to cast. Using it does not supersede and remove the "Sprint" ability, so the only thing that'll toggle the Sprint ability off, other than the player using the ability again, is dying.
• If you enter combat you won't immediately drop off your mount, but if anyone hits you you will, and with an animation that seems to indicate you very briefly get stunned. Watch out for those packs of ranged enemies when getting from A to B!
• I'm now at 1 day, 18 hours and 40 minutes /played.
• The first planet I played through today was Nar Shaddaa, a level 20-24 world. Since I was near the top of the intended level range already I skipped more of the sidequest content than I had before so I could get through the planet quicker, but the thing is that this game has good enough sidequest content that it probably should be explored.
• Similarly, Tatooine was my first planet with a speeder, and so the first planet where I begun to skip a lot of mobs where possible. Previously I had been fighting anything in my way because it was kinda fun to do. I guess I might be getting a bit tired of the same thing by now - hardly surprising considering how much time I'm spending in-game!
• Talking about the sidequest content - one of the big sidequests on Tatooine was actually more interesting, and had more exciting moments in it, than the class quest.
• Voice acting: I'm yet to come across any bad voice acting, and overall have been very impressed by it. However, the whole "Imperials = English people = evil" when it comes to accents has been taken to another level. Previously the Star Wars series had Imperials with posh English accents (which in itself is interesting - do the Imperials of TOR-era Empire have anything to do with the Imperials of the films? Why do they have the same accents?) but I came across two Imperials who had English accents that weren't stereotypical-posh-Brit voices. I suppose that, regardless where you come from in England, you're still evil in Star Wars's books.
• I'm still surprised at how much exp you can get through doing warzone PvP. Generally speaking I was getting around 10k exp at the conclusion of a match - even if I lost, if it wasn't a walkover I'd still walk out with that much exp. If you simply want to get to level 50 as quickly as possible, doing the maths to see if PvP is the quickest route is worth doing.
• Unless the remaining talents and abilities make a really big difference to the Commando class, I can see single-target healing (for instance, healing a main tank in an operation) getting quite dull. A good healing rotation appears to be advanced healing probe-healing probe-hammer shot-healing probe-hammer shot-(maybe another hammer shot)-healing probe-repeat. This is a rather simplistic view, as it doesn't include kolto bomb for the healing-received buff any targets get, but thinking of it in those terms does somewhat remind me of hunter aimed shot/multishot rotation from classic WoW, which was boring as hell.