Euge’s Ramblings

AvsP: Finished the marine segment.  Good game; not great.  Engine is good at what it does; obviously not a Doom3 or UT3 engine but it gets the job done.  Filmed a little bit of it; basically a last man standing kind of deal (Fraps recorded it a bit dark though).

Dwango:  Had a recent email from a player from the NY server.  Dwango was the premier on-line gaming service in the mid-90’s before internet gaming took off; it died in the late ’90’s.  Doom/2 and Duke3d were very popular multiplayer games on the service.  It wasn’t free but the price was reasonable.  When I was living in Oakland, I was a mod for both Oakland and SF, but nothing could beat the intensity of play and players on the NY server.  I made a half-hearted Dwango page way back when here.

Bought my first SSD drive for my laptop.  It’s not the fastest by any means but still faster than the 7200 rpm that it replaced.  Just don’t know how I’m going to live on 80gB of space. 

Haven’t had a chance to play it yet (thanks work!). But I came across a rather humorous chat thread about it @ shack.

Oh dear, what can I say… really had high hopes for this.

Where to start? Kinda liked the oldskool looking interface with the big font, but then when you try to configure your keyboard you have to go through like 4 menus just to find the configuration settings.

You do this for Marine, Alien or Predator seperately – so you’ll have fun setting all keys three times over if you are for example left handed like I am.

Ok, finally got that. Let’s go online!

Hmm, where’s the server browser? There’s none? This is madness!! Matchmaking only?? And they said it’s not going to be consolized. Oh well, it’s a demo – they might add that in later…

Ok, join a match, click, click…….wait……
wait…..
wait…..
wait…..
found match! (yeah!)
loading map
wait…..
wait…..
wait…..
wait…..

wait…..
wait…..
wait…..
wait…..

that map must be HUGE!!

wait…..
wait…..

Ok, it’s ON!!!!

…
Hearing gunfire, screams, evil hissing
And i’m IN!

….wtf? this is IT??? ??? That looks like arse… :/
What did they do to my graphics? UT99 looked better than THIS?? And what’s that map? Some corridors with cheap looking alien textures? I can go up and down some ramps? Yay… :/ Looks like one of those homemade maps from my 12 year old little cousin.

Ok, relax. It’s BETA.

The gameplay must be great.

Gleefully I climb some nearby wall and right underneath me see some Marine passing by. I’m ready to POUNCE baby!! Pressing jump………..CHAT WINDOWS OPENS UP?!?!? Marines turns around and fills my alien arse with lead.

What the hell.
Ok, going back into the menu. Damn, why did they have to hide that menu deep down? Jump=Y. Seems fine? Oh – there’s a message on top: “Some keys are duplicated” Cool right, I know know. Couldn’t you have said me that beforehand?? Why can I even use two commands with the same key???

But where is it? So I spend the next 2 minutes scrolling this huge abomination of a UI menu up and down finding the chat entry. Well, I can’t delete the key entry. I have to overwrite it. Aaalright. Back to the game. Hit ESC. Oh, that doesn’t go back into the running match. This only goes up one menu entry. So I have to hit ESC like 5 times just to go back for the game.

Whaaat the hell? Did they ever test this? Ever heard of usability?

So after an epic journey through the dephts of this genuinely horrific UI I went back the game, did some rollercoaster runs along some overbright lit lowres wall textures, searching for an enemy to strike. Hey, there’s a Pradator! I sneak up on him. Message pops up: “Hit ‘E’ to grab. I press ‘E’. My claws strike forward and turn the Pred into some blocky looking green mist.

Then i hit ESC ESC ESC ESC ESC. Go to Steam. Right click Aliens versus Predator Demo. Delete local content. Delete.

Sing to the tune of John Lennon’s classic, Imagine.

Imagine there’s no 3D.
It’s easy if you try.
No AGP for us, inside your rig, only PCI.
Imagine all the world’s games
rendered in 2D…

Imagine there’s no Anti-Aliasing,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to gib or frag for,
No Z-buffers too,
Imagine all the world’s games,
looking like Commander Keen…

Imagine no T&L,
I wonder if you can,
No need for 3dfx or NVIDIA,
Your computer’s just 2D trashcan,
Imagine all the world’s games,
sharing a chipset from S3…

You may say I’m a dreamer,
I might be the only one,
I hope some day you’ll buy a 3D card
And all 3D game fans can play as one.

ripped from http://archive.gamespy.com/halloffame/october00/voodoo1/index.shtm

Yes the voodoo1 was a revolutionary piece of hardware for its time.  Up until 1996 or so, there was no 3d in games; they all used the 2d card in your computer (and hence were really slow and ugly).  I remember the first time I ran GLQuake; not only did it look a thousand times better, but you could run higher resolutions for the same framerate as 2d.

Now video cards are more complex than CPUs; the latest 5870 from ATi has more than 2 billion transistors.  And they can do more things than just play video games; they can transcode video or crunch Seti many times faster than a CPU.  Pretty soon it will be hard to distinguish a game from the latest Pixar movie (here’s nVidia’s new GF100 architecture).

Truly a good time to be a gamer.

Who cares, right?  I have fond memories of the USFL though.  I was a big football fan growing up so this was great, football year round.  There were many good players as well, and it was competitive.  Luckily I rooted for the Stars; it was nice they played in every championship game, unlike my Eagles.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I attended the last game the USFL would ever play.  I even had great seats; about the fourth row up @ the 50 yard line.

And Trump had to go F it up… I can’t believe how arrogant he is.  It could have succeeded for years if he didn’t get involved or at least didn’t challenge the NFL.  Look how long Arena Football has lasted.

At least it wasn’t the XFL…

Dearest One good day to you,

I am introducing my self as Miss Stella Collins, I am the only daughter of late Chief and Mrs. Kone Collins. My father was a very wealthy Cocoa merchant in Abidjan , the economic capital of Ivory Coast ; my father was poisoned to death by his business associates during one of their outings on a business trip. My mother died when I was a baby and since then my father took me so special. Before the death of my father on November 2007 in a private hospital here in Abidjan he secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has the sum of Ten million, Seven hundred thousand United State Dollars ($US10.7M) left in fixed / suspense account in one of the prime bank here in Abidjan, that he used my name as his only daughter for the next of Kin in depositing of the fund. He also explained to me that it was because of this wealth that he was poisoned by his business associates. That due to the incessant political crisis in this country and to avoid been kill

by his enemies I should seek for a foreign partner in a country of my choice where I will transfer this money and use it for investment purpose such as real estate or hotel management.

Please, I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways:

(1) To provide a bank account into which this money would be transferred to:

(2) To serve as a guardian of this fund since I am still a small girl:

(3) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and also to secure a resident permit in your country:

Moreover, I am willing to offer you 15% of the total sum as compensation for your effort/ input after the successful transfer of this fund into your nominated account overseas. Furthermore, Pls indicate your options towards assisting me as I believe that this transaction would be conclude within seven (7) days you signify your interest to assist me,

Anticipating hearing from you urgently.

Thanks and God bless.

Yours Sincerely,

Stella Collins

I mentioned the Unreal Developer’s Kit a few posts ago; now they have released some HQ videos explaining everything you want to know about it (using the editor, etc.).  Very well done.

Star Wars – Reign of the Fallen from Darth Anonymous on Vimeo.

http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2009/11/linux-contractor-fired-for-using.html

Now, I’m going to ask you to remember that he was dealing with a Project Manager that is employed by a huge computer/server company with three letters in their name. She was in charge of switching a large credit card company with four letters in their name over to Linux Servers. It isn’t completely out of our realm of understanding that she didn’t know what Linux on the desktop is. I will give her that. But I cannot let slide her next inquiry:

“What’s this Foxfire thing?”

Too little time.   I’m still leaning on the Unreal engine; seems like they have the complete package compared to the rest.  And today Epic released the Unreal Developers Kit (has all the tools you need).

I loaded up one of my Quake 1 maps; ugh — fugly and slow . I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this; it’s not like I’m going to be doing this for a living.  But when I play a level like this, it is like “Wow!  I wanna do this!”

They don’t try to see
whats inside of me
I feel alone
like a drifter w/ no home

I’ve tried my best
but I can never find rest
I don’t know what to do
or if I’ll past the test

My spirit is torn, scattered and worn
I don’t know what I did, to deserve all of this
I have nowhere to run
no light from the sun

I’ve tried my best
but I can never find rest
I don’t know what to do
or if I’ll past the test

I want you to see
but I’m afraid
You won’t understand
leave me there to cry and let go of my hand
like all the others before
who promised so much more
When all they did was leave me to cry
and leave me w/ nothing but emptiness inside

© 2006 Michelle Haycraft

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