Pro Tip of the Day - mac

Pro tip: Play games with your spreadsheet program

Will — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000

OpenOffice.org is a decent replacement for Excel, but let's face it, it's kind of boring.

To spice things up a little bit, go to cell A1 and put in the value

=GAME("StarWars")

Then hit Enter. You'll get this

Pick your ship, dismiss the message (or read it if you can read German)

Then try to shoot down the ships. You use the mouse to aim and fire.

Okay, so the game's not all that good, but it could probably kill a lunch break if you really stretched it out.

Oh, and the game is cross-platform, too.

Pro Tip: Start wherever you want in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Will — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Diablo II is kind of a fun game and everything, but a little on the long side. But what if, after playing through the game a time or two that you just wanted to experience a certain part of the game, or wanted to try out one of the other classes without actually building it up from the ground?

Good news for you, then, there is!

First, update your copy of Diablo II to at least version 1.10. Just connect to Battle.Net and and you'll be in great shape. Then get out of you game and find your Diablo II shortcut. Right-click on it and select 'Properties'. Now modify the contents to the right of the Target field (after the quotes) so that there's a dash, the word 'act' and a number, all run together. So, if you want to start in Act 5, you'd append '-act5' after the quotes, and without the quotes.

Then start up the game and create a new character.

Enter the game and behold!

You're now at the beginning of the act you chose, your character's an an appropriate level, and you have all the skill points you need to spec your character any way you want.

What else could you ask for?

Pro tip: Give a Westfall chicken to your Horde buddies

Will — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000

This tip is a little bit complicated to pull off, but the rewards are... well, the reward is a chicken. A kind of rare chicken that can normally only be gotten by the Alliance characters on your server.

First, find a chicken. Any chicken will do. Then, target the chicken and do the '/chicken' emote in front of it. If you're lucky, the chicken will briefly turn into a quest-giver and give you a quest. If not, then you have to try again. It's kind of rare, so you might be there for a while.

Then you need to work your way to Westfall, along with one of your Horde buddies. Just make sure that you have some way to communicate outside the game, since you can't really talk to each other in game.

Then, work your way to Farmer Saldean and buy the Special Chicken Feed.

Then find any chicken you like and do the emote '/cheer' at it. Give it the feed and:

Out pops an egg. Once the egg is spawned, anyone can pick it up, even someone who hasn't done the quest, including people on the other side of the war.

Have fun with your chicken.

Thanks, DakotaS96, for help with getting the screenshots!