9/30/2003
Call of Duty on October 29th. Do you feel the excitment? No, neither do I. Maybe the multplayer will be good though.
And our friendly neighborhood CIA is looking to make a video game to help their analysts think outside the box.
The goal, he said, is for "our analysts to become accustomed to looking at the world from the perspective of the terrorists we are chasing."
What's there to think about really? They want us (Western folk) dead and think we're out to destroy Islam or some such nonsense. Gimme a break.
9/29/2003
Finally! Homeworld 2 Review. Please note there are 15 missions in the game. I have finished up to 12. For all I know 13-15 could completely suck but I doubt it.
9/28/2003
Phew. Pentium 5s clocked at 5-7GHz? Gawd.
Whoa..What do you get when you combine bowling balls and explosives? You get fun is what you get!
Oh man, WTF! More IM B.S. between Yahoo! and Trillian. Booooo.
I'm going to be working on a HomeWorld 2 review this week. I hope to have it soon. I've gotten to Mission 12 so far and I think there's 14 or 15 missions.
9/26/2003
Matrx Revolutions trailer here
More Steaming pile of updates! And oh woopity freaking doo, more updates to Counter-Strike. What is that, version 50? Anti-cheating software? Oh they forgot it again.
9/25/2003
Gabe and Tycho aren't excited about Doom 3. I can see their point but I will still buy it. I want to see exactly what my 9700 can handle. I don't think this will provide them any sort of validation or make them puff our their chests and say, "See, Sphinx agrees with us" but I just wanted to throw in my two cents. And please give me my change. Thanks
I'm posting this link since I had to read it to know what indemnify means.
Shock gasp and surprise!! Half-Life 2 delayed again!! No way!
Sphinx found what he wants for Xmas!
9/23/03
AMD has released their Athlon64 today. Here's a full write-up. And a few highlights:
With an impressive frame-rate of 507.1FPS, the Athlon 64 FX-51 outperformed the "classic" 3.2GHz Pentium 4 by 8.7% and surged past the Athlon XP 3200+ by a healthy 24.5%. It seems like AMD wasn't just slinging marketing hype, when they said the FX-51 was a "gamer's CPU"!
Price is a little steep though:
$733 - AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 processor (operates at 2.2GHz)
$417 - AMD Athlon 64 processor 3200+ (operates at 2.0GHz)
For an 8-15% increase it's nearly double the price? No thanks. But, maybe when the drivers and Windows XP-64 are optimized things will be better.
9/22/03
id stuff about Doom 3. 'Nuff said. Go read.
Because Enemy Territory is a free game, that opens it up to a more newbified crowd. To that end, this is also the crowd that does not understand the term "patch" to mean anything other than something you put over a hole in your pants. Therefore, before patching my ET server from 1.0 to 1.02, I backed it up. What's this mean? Right now I have a server which can run both the original download of ET as well as the patched version. Therefore, I have restarted the 1.0 version of ET server. I can switch at any time though and could even run both flavors though the CPU usage with both running is a concern. The server IP is 65.247.172.55:27999 |R| 6 Map Shrub.
What's this?!? A new Serious Engine and possibly a Serious Sam demo down the short-term road?!?
9/21/2003
Yar! Not only was there a Talk Like a Pirate Day this past week but there's even an online game coming out soon where you can be a Pirate. Avast!
9/19/2003
Everyone go over to BluesNews right now and wish Blue the best of luck right now as his mother fell very ill.
Call of Duty website redone. Turn down your speakers and make sure Flash is installed. It's loud. Personally, I like reading websiters rather than hearing them!
9/18/2003
All right, I've figured this out now. The company makes a game like Homeworld 2 but knowing people will probably hack it they make it so dang hard that you need to buy the hint book :(
So Sphinx what did you do all day Thursday? Hint in the pic:
Third mission is tough!
Already hitting the forums for help.
9/17/2003
Microsoft is enacting their own twisted idea of the Marshall Plan:
Included among the initiatives is a program that will allow schools to obtain new Windows software for personal computers donated to schools, as well as deeply discounted licenses for the latest versions of Microsoft's software.
So, instead of the airplanes dropping food and supplies over Berlin we're going to sprinkle copies of Windows XP Home across the world?
And more from the YAWN Department. Sun to unveil alternative to Windows. Give it up already. Geesh. They've won already. No one likes it and even if Microsoft is trying to play nice now the way they earned their monopoly will, to me, always be questionable, if not down right criminal.
Finally, need to speed up your Wi-Fi? Here ya go.
9/16/2003
I remember about 20 years ago some fellow saying that 640K was enough in a PC. Now someone at Intel is saying the same thing about RAM in relation to 64 bit computing.
I could think of a host of fun reasons enthuasists might like to have more than 4GB of RAM. How about installing your favorite game on the RAM or even the base OS. I don't know if this would be possible but how about installing the OS to RAM on boot up from a re-writable ROM chip or something. When the machine reboots the data is transferred from the ROM to the memory. Windows 2000 or XP running at 4ms latency in my DDR RAM? MMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Or even more practical for companies, how about writable RAM with a base image of the system stored in the RAM. No more Ghost or RIPREP.
Hey Intel, how about letting the users determine what they do or don't need! If they don't want AMD and Apple 64 bit processors then ok. But if we do, you'll be kicking yourself in the butt won't you?!
And if you want a laugh, read Firing Squad's Enemy Territory strategy guide. Here's a snippet that gives me a laugh:
There is really only one rule that has to be maintained on an ET server – don’t camp spawn points or the only chokepoint out of an area. While there’s nothing wrong with dropping artillery or mines on one of the two routes (either the broken wall or the caves) out of the Old City on Oasis, you shouldn’t drop it right on their spawn or on both exits at the same time. It’s just bad karma, liable to get you hated on that server and maybe even kicked or banned.
Here's a better idea. Play better so you don't get camped!! Duh. Part of the game folks. We've all been camped harder than someone at Crystal Lake. Deal with it!
And so, did Homeworld 2 ship today or is it supposed to be on shelves?9/15/2003
When I upgrade my motherboard I think I'm going to give the Serial ATA drives a shot. Here's a review for some of them
9/14/2003
And more fun between Nvidia, ATi, and Valve!
The poster asks: Whatever happened to just making hardware, and making games?" I'll tell ya what happened. It became a business! Duh duh duh..
And dammit!! Enough is enough with the Counter-Strike!!!
I'm sorry. I'm outta here. I'm going back to laughing my ass off at the Conan special
9/13/2003
Some of my friends are getting all excited about Halo coming out for the PC. I am not with them. It's a console game being moved to the PC. Console shooters sucks so I don't care.
Giga-Byte is set to release some Athlon64 motherboards soon. My last two motherboards have been Giga-Byte and while they aren't the best for overclocking I've never gotten into overclocking since I know I'd probably screw it up somehow. Regardless, I've been very pleased with the two Giga-byte boards I've bought and will probably make it a third here pretty soon. Might even really get crazy and try Serial ATA. No ribbon cables? Fine by me. Hate those things anyway.
9/12/2003
Congrats to Dallas company Ritual for getting a new expansion pack to make. In fact, go congratulate Levelord while you're at it since he's one of the Ritual's finest.
If you play games, chances are you have at least one SSI game. Well, they're being sold off.
And Apple (Jobs flavor) being sued by Apple (Beatles flavor?) Huh...
9/11/2003
Note to any other Wolfenstein Game Admins: Back up your directory BEFORE applying a patch. Yikes. 1.02 really made a mess of the shrub configs. Time to reinstall!
NVidia crying some more. This time about Half-Life 2 stuff.
The optimal code path for ATI and NVIDIA GPUs is different - so trying to test them with the same code path will always disadvantage one or the other. The default settings for each game have been chosen by both the developers and NVIDIA in order to produce the best results for our consumers.
9/10/2003
I wish that Microsoft and Valve would keep their reach around to themselves. And of course the Gamespot talking head had to give it's two cents as well:
"Half-Life 2" and its DirectX capabilities have been critically hailed by GameSpot, which recently wrote, "'Half-Life 2's' characters are so detailed that even [their] eyes are modeled in great detail. So when [one character] was made to look toward the screen, the effect was that she was looking right at us, rather than staring blankly at nothing, as game characters tend to do.
Enemy Territory patch coming out today. Info here. Patch link here.
9/9/2003
Raven Shield patch to 1.41 is out. Go get it. And if you're running a public server, be sure to get the Punkbuster component
Place your bets. Place your bets. Operation Flashpoint 2 delayed to 2005 "at the earliest." 2:1 that it's first half of 2005. 6:1 second half. 20:1 it's cancelled.
9/8/2003
Apple is upgrading their devices. It's an improvment.
9/7/2003
Games > *. Quote action:
The average Madden 2004 player will spend, conservatively, 100 hours mastering the game over the year. That's four million sets of eyeballs times 100 hours. HBO's mobster smash The Sopranos drew an average of 11 million viewers for all 13 one-hour episodes last season. That's 143 million viewing hours for the most popular show on cable TV. Do the math.
9/5/2003
First, sorry Blue about the loss of your grandmother.
Never ending movies for Call of Duty. Look guys, save some of it, okay? I won't feel a need to play if everything is shown beforehand.
Multiplayer bots for Return to Castle Wolfenstein? So, someone could do this on their own time but it couldn't be included in the final release of ET?
And in sad news: more Black and White 2 crap to download. One of the Worst. Games. Ever! I need a Sid Meier game now to feel better.
9/4/2003
Homeworld 2 Screen shot? Sure!! Damn near longest cut scenes I've ever seen in a demo. Oddly, I enjoyed watching these though. I'm not saying Gamespy should've tried to corner this demo though just to be sure that's clear. It even includes multiplayer, two single missions, and some instant action (fight CPU one-on-one!) Heck yeah.
Protect the Banana
9/3/2003
Homeworld 2 Demo here.
Games are too hard for the lowly huddled masses! I think most of them just still suck! The games and the people.
9/2/2003
Demo of Homeworld 2 Tomorrow. I think I might need to play the first one again just to be sure that it still kicks as much ass as I recall.
No Punkbuster in Jedi Academy? Pppppppthhh. Whatever. I'm starting to see that if there's no punkbuster, the multiplayer is not as much fun on public servers.
Speaking of no Punkbuster, Raven Shield 1.41 patch delayed. Again.