Games for Windows LIVE will not be closing July 1 2014

There have been a number of rumors going around regarding Games for Windows LIVE since a statement (shown below) was found on Xbox.com, in August 2013, stating that Age of Empires Online would be closing on July 1, 2014 due to the closure of GFWL. This caused a lot of panic in the achievement community because the closure of GFWl would result in every achievement on the platform to become discontinued. This statement was pulled shortly after it was discovered, if I remember correctly only a few hours, and nothing much had been heard since.

In the months after the statement, a number of publishers patched their games to use Steamworks and remove GFWL completely from them. This combined with no official statement from Microsoft lead most to believe that there was a good chance that GFWL would be closing in July. As time passed and July 1 grew nearer and nearer it seemed more and more suspicious that there had been no official statement about the future of the service. That statement, however, surfaced today.

According to an article on gameinformer.com that can be viewed here, Microsoft released a statement (quoted below) stating that GFWL will not be shut down on July 1 2014.

"We are continuing to support the Games for Windows Live service. As previously announced, as part of the retirement of Microsoft Points the Xbox.com PC marketplace was closed. Although customers are unable to purchase new games from the marketplace or receive title updates, they can continue to enjoy previously purchased content by downloading them through the Games for Windows Live client as usual. We remain committed to investing in PC gaming in the years ahead, and look forward to sharing more in the future."

In addition to this statement from Microsoft Namco Bandi and 343 Industries also released statements about their games that use the service. A 343 team member posted a statement, that can be viewed here, on the Halo forums stating they will continue to support the GFWL service. Namco Bandai released a statement on their Tumblr page, that can be viewed here, stating that Dark Souls will continue to be supported with GFWL for the foreseeable future. These statements along with the above statement from Microsoft make the future of GFWL look pretty good.

Just a reminder to achievement hunters. Although GFWL will not be closing on July 1, Age of Empires Online will be closing its servers. Make sure you finish up everything you want to do before then, because when the server close the game will no longer be playable.

Other Blog News
I have not forgotten about all the other stuff I have been talking about, I have been dealing with school my extremely incompetent school administration, travelling, and scrambling to finish some of my GFWL games. I will be back home next week and I am going to try and get everything done then and update the site with some new stuff to make things more easy and more tidy. I also plan on posting about all future server closures, rumored or confirmed, in all games with LIVE achievements.

School is over, new projects, and possible site move.

Hey readers,

School is finally over and I have time to do stuff again. Yay! Now that I have more time I am going to be able to start working on a few new projects that I have been wanting to get into for quite awhile now. A good friend and I have been discussing collaborating on a new project, completely unrelated to PBaE, but very related to achievements. We are going to need a blog name and since "playingforachievements" is a very suitable name we are likely going to use that, which brings me to my next point.

I have been wanting to dedicate a blog to PBaE for quite some time now, but like everything else, that has also been put on hold. I think this would be a good opportunity for me to move it to its own site. None of this is final yet however. If and when I do move it, everything will remain where it is currently, in addition, vital posts will be duplicated in the new location. I may or may not move update notes depending on the amount of work involved. All of the new posts would only be posted in the new location. In either case I plan on doing some upgrades and tidying of the blog in the near future as well.

Finally, I want to start working on my other blogs again. I really want to start updating my cooking blog again. I really enjoy cooking and have a number of great recipes to share for anyone interested. The last thing I want to start working on is my new project that may or may not be involved with the first new project I mentioned. Since details with that are still uncertain, I will be posting those pots here for now. I have been collecting games since I was very young and have come across amazing and horrible things in my searches so I thought I should start writing about some of these things for fun. I want to try and have the first post out in a couple of weeks. I have already decided what I am going to write my first post about and I will leave you all with this video for now.

Until next time,
Randy2727

New Songs 4/27/2014

Hello readers,

I went through the submissions I received this week and upload everything. Thank you to all of you for your submissions. There were a few double submissions so I gave credit to the first person to submit the file. I listed all of the contributions below. There is now a complete set of files for Track Pack 2, Country Track Pack 1, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero Van Halen.

Anonymous Contributors
-3 Dimes Down
-Afterlife
-Any Man of Mine
-Beatle Beat 12
-Black Hole Sun
-Brainpower
-Call Me
-Can't Let Go
-Can't Let Go (Country Pack)
-Cry Lonely
-Day Late Dollar Short
-El Scorcho
-Free and Easy
-The Gambler
-Girl U Want
Girls Who Play Guitars
-Gone
-Good Times
-Gunpowder & Lead
-Hillbilly Deluxe
-I'm So Sick
-I Get By
-I Told You So
-Indestructible
-It Hurts
-Just What I Needed
-Me and My Gang
-Message in a Bottle
-Monkey Gone to Heaven
-Mud on the Tires
-Nightmare
-On the Road Again
-Outside
-The Perfect Drug
-Pleasure Pleasure
-Rio
-Saints of Los Angeles
-Satellite Radio
-Seven
-She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy
-She's Country
-Simple Man
-Sin Wagon
-Snow (Hey Oh)
-Suds in the Bucket
-Swing
-This Ain't a Scene It's an Arms Race
-This One's for the Girls
-Time is Running Out
-Time We Had
-Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld
-Why Do You Love Me
-You've Got Another Thing Comin
-Zero

lll Gambler lll 
-Little Guitars

Patrick F
-Come to Life
-Double Vision
-The End of Heartache

Tons of new songs. Guitar Hero Van Halen and Rock Band now complete (almost).

Hello readers,

Thanks to a very hard working contributor that wishes to remain anonymous, there is now a complete set of files for Guitar Hero Van Halen as well as Rock Band 1, almost. There is a problem with the Little Guitars file in Guitar Hero Van Halen. I have taken a look at it and I can't find the problem, but it appears to be something with the unedited file. It will probably take some time so I doubt I will get to it until the summer when I finish school. If any of you can pinpoint the problem you are welcome to submit it. The new Van Halen songs posted are Jamie's Cryin', Jump, Panama, Romeo Delight, Runnin' With the Devil, Unchained, and You Really Got Me.

Rock Band has a complete career set so all of the drum related achievements should now be easily obtainable for all.

When I was going through my files I found that I had created some of the requested The Beatles Rock Band songs that hadn't yet been uploaded to the site. The songs I added were And Your Bird Can Sing, Birthday, and Hello Goodbye.

I also realized that I forgot to post the links to the Frets On Fire forums with the download links for the MIDI files in the tutorial video. I have now updated the video with the links.

I will continue to do updates when or if new songs are submitted.

Until next time,
Crandy

PBaE charting tutorials are finally here! And there are a few new songs.

Hello readers,

It is spring break and I finally have had enough time to do a long needed update and make the drum charting tutorial videos. There are a lot of things I would like to do to improve the blog but unfortunately that will have to wait until the summer. In the mean time I posted the tutorial videos here in a separate post. I didn't post them in this update because I want to use the tutorial as a reference post similar to the file directories. I have also made an email, PBaE.Crandy@gmail.com, where you can submit created songs to be posted on the blog if you wish.

I charted a few new songs as well, they are: Blood Doll, Burnin' for You, Creep, Intruder/Oh Pretty Woman, Painkiller (GHVH), and Somebody Get Me a Doctor in Rock Band format. I also charted American Idiot in Guitar Hero format. All of those songs can be found in the directory as usual.

Until the summer,
Crandy

MIDI charting tutorials.

The videos below explain how to obtain unedited Guitar Hero and Rock Band MIDI files and how to convert them for playback through either a MIDI Pro Adapter or a Guitar Hero drum set. I hope to eventually add tutorials in the future for keys, pro keys, vocals, and vocal harmonies.

Note Numbers

Unedited Guitar Hero Note Numbers

101 - Green
100 - Orange
99 - Blue
98 - Yellow
97 - Red
96 - Kick 1
95  - Kick 2 (Expert + only)

Unedited Rock Band Note Numbers

100 - Green
99 - Blue
98 - Yellow
97 - Red
96 - Kick

Edited MIDI Pro Note Numbers

48 - Yellow
45 - Blue
41 - Green
38 - Red

33 - Kick

Edited Guitar Hero Drum Note Numbers

49 - Orange
48 - Blue
46 - Yellow
45 - Green
38 - Red
36 - Kick

Download Unedited MIDI Files

MIDI Pro Adapter Charting

Guitar Hero Drum Set Charting

Puzzle by Nikoli X Sudoku achievement guide (Windows 8)

Puzzle by Nikoli X Sudoku for Windows 8 has five achievements for 200 gamerscore. All of the achievements can be unlocked in the demo or the full version of the game. This guide will walk you through unlocking all five of the achievements as easily as possible. 

The first achievement can be unlocked by quickly scrolling all the way through the help menu. The next achievement is unlocked by clearing five puzzles in shuffle mode. These puzzles will count toward the next two achievements for clearing ten and twenty of the game's twenty unchanging puzzles. After clearing shuffle mode move on to clearing the other fifteen puzzles in the game. Each cleared puzzle will have a crown under the puzzle number. The achievements for clearing ten and twenty puzzles are misleading. They actually require you to clear ten and twenty different puzzles. The twenty puzzles in the game do not change and the solutions are all listed below. The achievement you will likely unlock last is the achievement that requires you to have a total play time of one hour. This achievement is buggy and usually does not unlock at one hour. It usually unlocks closer to two hours. If it has not unlocked by the time you have finished all of the other achievements you can simply let your device idle until it unlocks. 

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

Puzzle 3

Puzzle 4

Puzzle 5

Puzzle 6

Puzzle 7

Puzzle 8

Puzzle 9

Puzzle 10

Puzzle 11

Puzzle 12

Puzzle 13

Puzzle 14

Puzzle 15

Puzzle 16

Puzzle 17

Puzzle 18

Puzzle 19

Puzzle 20

Congratulations on completing all five achievements in Puzzle by Nikoli X Sudoku.