The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

Yes, I know that I’ve written about the fabulous concepts for Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning last year The monthly email newsletter for Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning is always chockful of new hi-res concepts and artwork for the game and last month’s edition was no exception. Yes, I know August’s newsletter is out but I don’t check my email that regularly

I sometimes find it hard to believe that Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning is an officially Games Workshop-licensed game since the amount of freely downloadable high resolution concepts and artworks is a huge difference from the usual Games Workshop practice of doling out small selections of their fantastic artworks over at their official websites. But then, I’m not complaining

© Mythic Entertainment / Games Workshop

The July edition also comes with not one but two brand-new artworks (probably brand new to me because I haven’t checked out the official website for quite a while ), the first one featuring a magnificently armoured Tzeentech Chosen against a Warrior Priest of Sigmar (who else!) and the second between a Dark Elf Witch and a High Elf White Lion. It’s the first time I’ve seen such a spendidly armoured elf and I like

© Mythic Entertainment / Games Workshop

And here’s the official packaging art illustrated by Dan Bader – I’m surprised that they didn’t pick one of the longtime Games Workshop artists for the cover but Dan’s work is fantastic nonetheless.

© Mythic Entertainment / Games Workshop

As for the concepts, it’s great to see new pieces by Adrian Smith, in creating some hideously mutated heretics of Grandfather Nurgle. I’m not really sure whether the Apothecary above can be trusted to heal anyone judging from his afflictions and gifts from Nurgle

© Mythic Entertainment / Games Workshop

A Nurgle zealot, also illustrated by Adrian Smith.

© Mythic Entertainment / Games Workshop

Yet another Adrian Smith concept, this time of a Dwarf slayer. Apparently the name of this crazed fellow is Garagrim Ironfist from the filename of this image.

© Mythic Entertainment / Games Workshop

This edition of the newsletter also provides a glimpse at some of the Dark Elf NPCs. The Dark Elf townsfolk like this merchant look just as cold and treacherous as their warrior kin.

Download the Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning concepts and commissioned artworks. If you’re a fan of the imagery of the Warhammer universe, I highly recommend that you subscribe to their email newsletter – it’s really a convenient way to check out all the latest concepts, artwork and wallpapers released over the past month compiled together with a selection of some seriously good fanart.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Favourite Illustrators of Warhammer 40,000 (I) – Adrian Smith
Favourite Illustrators of Warhammer 40,000 (VI) – Kevin Chin (King Mong)
Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer vs Adrian Smith’s Karrig Sturn
Keith Thompson – Illustrator
Warhammer : Mark of Chaos – Battle March Wallpapers

Katakijin is my favourite of the 10+ newly-discovered games I downloaded featured on the list of 365 games from Games Radar’s recent article about a year’s supply of freeware/open source games (and demos – unfortunately, they don’t exactly distinguish between the demos and the rest of the other games).

Created by Ultim8, Katakijin is a side-scrolling hack n’ slash featuring loads of ninjas – you control one particular black ninja who’s out to prove himself against a host of other ninjas with his dual katanas and flashy moves.

The controls are smooth and responsive which makes controlling and watching your nimble ninja leaping and running on walls extremely enjoyable. The sprites are very nicely animated which add tons of style to the combat – your foes explode in showers of blood and flying katanas (can’t believe each tiny ninja has so much blood in him ) If you’re still not convinced, just witness how your ninja makes his grand entrance into the game below

Style isn’t the only plus point for Katakijin since melee combat is quite tactical too – mashing of keys won’t help a single bit here since your ninja isn’t strong enough to stand and duke it out with multiple opponents at a time. Mixing evasive manuevers such as rolls and dashes with your attacks and parries will ensure that you don’t get cut to pieces in the first couple of minutes into the game.

The default keys as follows:

Movement
Move with cursor keys
Tap left or right twice to dash
Tap down twice to roll (good for evading attacks)
Press Z to jump.
Hold Z when jumping towards a wall to wallrun

Fighting
Press X or C to slash with your katana
Hold C for an alternative chargeable slash attack
Press Space to throw shurikens
Block attacks with Shift. Note that blocking two consecutive strikes stuns your ninja and leaves him vulnerable to enemy attacks. You can cancel out enemy attacks by pressing X when you anticipate an attack.

Download Katakijin or read more on GameRadar’s 365 Days of Free Games. There’s another (probably older) version of Katakijin at 64digits which is pretty fun too (comes with unlimited shurikens)

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Ninja Rinseout
Ninja Gaiden 2 Official Wallpapers
Tenchu Z Official Wallpapers
Blood in the Boardroom & Other ShadowRun Cover Artwork

A collection of 25 wallpapers featuring characters designed by Kaito Shibano for Marvellous Entertainment’s Nintendo DS tactical game Luminous Arc. Some of my favourites below from the official American site for Luminous Arc by its publisher Altus.

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

Now the main draw for me when it comes to wallpapers and promotional stuff for games are the “secret/unlockable” downloads. Luminous Arc has two additional unlockable wallpapers if you can guess the correct answer to the question when you select the Lucia wallpaper for download.

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

The first unlockable wallpaper is the alternative wallpaper of Lucia in a more eye-catching costume than the default white dress (above). Here’s a preview

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

The correct answer for this wallpaper to unlock this wallpaper can be found at githias’ blog.

If you enter a different word, you’ll get this one below instead

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

For more Luminous Arc wallpapers, check out the official UK site (7 wallpapers) and the official Japanese site (13 wallpapers – look under Special and click the orange button).

© Marvellous Entertainment / Rising Star Games Ltd

Some of the UK wallpapers above.

© Marvellous Interactive

A selection of the Japanese wallpapers.

Download Luminous Arc wallpapers from the official Luminous Arc websites for the US (under Extras > Wallpapers), UK and Japan.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Magna Carta (Korean RPG) Wallpapers
Korean MMORPG Wallpapers (I) – Soul of the Ultimate Nation
Orchestral Score, Wallpapers & More from Blue Dragon Fansite Kit
Archaic Sealed Heat (Nintendo DS) Wallpapers

After discovering unconventional military vehicles like the massive WWII 800mm “Dora” railway gun to more practical modifications of armoured vehicles by Israeli engineers as showcased at Israel’s Yad La’Shiryon Museum, I recently found this photo of of a modification kit produced by BAE Systems to convert a M113 APC for the OPFOR role. At least that’s what I think it is from its cryptic caption “Opp Forces Surr Training System”. (probably stands for Opposing Forces Surrogate Training System )

© BAE Systems

OPFOR (OPposing FORce) vehicles are essentially US Army vehicles dressed up to mimic the silhouette of their enemy counterparts (in this case, this M113 is intended to represent one of the Russian BMP family of APCs) While Russia is no longer perceived as the most dangerous threat to American interests nowadays, the ex-Soviet Union exported huge amounts of weapons and military doctrine across the globe decades ago and these weapons are still likely to be fielded by potential threats in future conflicts.

This M113 however, isn’t the most ingenious of modifications since you can’t really simulate a low profile BMP (2.45m in height, including turret) with a 2.5m tall M113 (excluding turret).

Below are two photos of more realistic (not to mention more imaginative) OPFOR vehicles as showcased at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) site.

A Visually Modified (VISMOD) HMMWV aka Humvee transformed into the BRDM armoured vehicle.

A OSV-T – essentially a modified M113A3 with a M2 Bradley turret – being used to simulate a BMP. More info on the OSV-T can be found at Global Security.

The USAF had a similiar (now defunct) programme known as Aggressor – I have seen profile illustrations of Northrop F-5s being painted in Russian desert camouflage and Soviet style stencilled serial numbers in some old magazines – gotta see if I can find out more on the Net.

Check out the BAE Systems Multimedia Library (tons of next-gen armour prototypes) or the Joint Readiness Training Center’s OPFOR vehicles.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
OPFOR Worldwide Equipment Guide
P.1000 Ratte Super-Heavy Tank
Armour Photos at Israel’s Yad La’Shiryon Museum
ACE Armoured Vehicle Scale Model Boxart
Armada International’s Complete Guides

I’m been searching for an application to convert some of my Opera bookmarks to a Link/URL table format as a spreadsheet in Excel or CSV format for several months now and I think have finally found one fits the bill (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this )

I basically wanted to transfer my current list of bookmarks to downloads and sites that I haven’t checked out in detail in Wikidpad which I store most of my personal Todo lists. More on Wikidpad in the future.

While I usually try not to recommend shareware here at The Download Munkey if freeware and open source alternatives exist, but at this time I’m hard-pressed to say if there are any other software (even commercial) that surpasses Bookmark Buddy‘s capabilities and flexibility in converting and exporting bookmarks. I do know there are free software to convert bookmarks for transferring between broswers, but I definitely haven’t seen any that can export to CSV (yet).

Below’s a a quick 3 step guide on using Bookmark Buddy to export your bookmarks to a more processable format (is there such a thing as processable?)

Import your bookmark list.

Mark folders and bookmarks that you wish to export (not needed if you just want to export everything in the list.)

Select format to export to. Remember to check Include only marked bookmarks if you’re exporting a partial list and you’re done!

The example here uses Opera since that’s the only browser I use but the other major browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox are also supported by Bookmark Buddy, of course.

Export and conversion of bookmarks is only one of the many features available in Bookmark Buddy. To be honest, I’m not exactly familiar with Bookmark Buddy since I only used it for an hour or so to convert my Opera bookmarks to CSV but here’s a list of the more usable features I found while fiddling with it last weekend.

• A central repository for storing, organizing and visiting internet bookmarks in your preferred browser. Should be very useful for people who regularly use different browsers and want to share the bookmarks between them without the hassle of trying to keep the bookmarks in every broswer in sync.
• Delete duplicate bookmarks via Edit > Manage Duplicates
• Scheduling of bookmarks to visit using Smart Folders.
• Checking of updates to your bookmarks in the background so that you don’t waste time visiting sites that haven’t been updated or have been moved or disappeared.
• Encryption of your list of bookmarks with a 128 bit Blowfish algorithm for the paranoid.

Download Bookmark Buddy or check out the features. The application is available for a 30 day trial and costs 29.95 USD to register.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
NirSoft.net – My First Stop for Quality Utilities
Foxit Reader vs PDF-XChange Viewer vs Sumatra
Combining PDFs with PDFTKBuilder
Lifehacker.com – Productivity and Software Guide