Straight Jacket Type Fun
10/31/2003
Happy Halloween.
First, I became excited at this headline over at BluesNews. "Copyright Protection Exemption Granted for Obsolete Videogames." But if you read the article I guess this means Abandonware still isn't quite legit yet.
"In response to a filing by Brewster Kahle of The Internet Archive, Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons, and others, the Librarian of Congress granted exemptions from copyright protection measures in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to obsolete videogames. The exemption applies to games that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, and it determines a format obsolete “if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.”
More Freedom Force 2 news. Can't wait!
Hey, can't get a date? No worries! You're computer soon can get one. You still can only watch though. WTF.
10/30/2003
Man oh man. Anyone else have a Diamond Monster or Monster 2 card? My how the mighty have fallen over the years. But, Diamond's coming back apparently.
My first screenshot of Call of Duty multiplayer. I don't know what the guy was talking about in the team chat.Install was a snap, setup was pretty simple and the multi runs smooth on my server. Check this site for how to setup server
My server for CoD: 65.247.172.55
It certainily is different from Wolf.
There were Linux server binaries out but they were pulled. I've also learned there's no plan for a Linux client. But there are for Apple? That's odd.
10/29/2003
Ok, admittedly I was caught up in Diablo II. For about a month then the monotony finally made me stop rather abruptly. Go back through Nightmare? No thanks. But, for those of you who just can't get enough of capturing unique items like the +3 Strap On Emerald Dildo of Fertility or whatever, there's a new patch for Diablo II.
And from it, I ask this: What's the point of different classes now?
The skill and monster systems are now completely data-driven. Skill balancing is simpler and quicker. Monster control/populating/creation is simpler. Although done for our needs, mod-makers should like these changes, too. A major result is that nearly any skill can be used by any character class.
So, basically, all classes are the same now? A druid is a paladin is an amazon? Pointless.
New Leisure Suit Larry confirmed. That's good news. But to really ratchet up the hype for the game, the it'd be a real coup if they could get Snoop Dogg to make an appearance in it.
10/28/2003
IGN.com has a review of Call of Duty up already. How? I don't know. But notice in the review the screenshots are not of new levels but stuff either from the downloadable movies or the demos. Ok, fine, the single player is great, the AI is better than most and blah blah blah. And multiplayer. Oh cripes, read this crap:
The last two types of games are for teams. There's Search and Destroy, which like the name implies, challenges one team to plant explosives and destroy one of two objectives, much like Counter-Strike has been doing for years. The second is Retrieval, which challenges one of the teams to find and pick up an object and get it back to the retrieval zone, much like Return to Castle Wolfenstein did so well. Both of these types of maps are played like Counter-Strike so that you only get one life. You die, you're out until the next round.
Hasn't this CS plague run long enough? To be fair, I haven't played it, and perhaps any misgivings will be offset by them adding Punkbuster support soon and a much more impressive game engine and a more enjoyable theme: shooting Nazis.
Come on Down! You're the next contestant in Hell!
Heh. Irony at it's finest considering what happened here. "DNS Servers More Resilient" Please don't shut me down server admin.
Bonus Chapters for Max Payne 2. This now makes the game half as long as most games.
10/27/2003
Well, since no one asked. Yes, the site was down. DNS issues with the host but it's fixed now.
You've probably already played it (since I had the link a while back) but there's a second (again) Call of Duty Demo.
Now there's stuff going around about the newest Catalyst Drivers. I honestly don't understand a lot of it except that people are having problems with overheating and other bizarre things. So, caveat emptor I suppose.
And hey there all you who bought the HL2 ATi bundle, buck up now and play some four year old games. And get exposure to the "wonderful" Steam system.
10/23/2003
Play a Quake3 engined game? Then you probably know about the Frames-Per-Second tweaks you can do to make it easier to jump, right? Of course you do. Well, kiss that all good-bye in Doom3.
The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames. A fixed tic rate removes issues like Quake 3 had, where some jumps could only be made at certain framerates. In Doom, the same player inputs will produce the same motions, no matter what the framerate is."
I know that RtCW and ET you could tweak /com_maxfps to whatever you wanted but now it's capped to 60fps. Hmph. Oh well. Game will probably be so intense most rigs will be lucky to pull off 40 anyway.
10/21/2003
Wow, who would've guessed it boys and girls?! A patch for Max Payne 2 because of crashes in Windows 9x. You mean, Windows 9x platform is unstable?!? OMFG! Get Windows 2000 Pro or XP Prof.
Steam Update out.
Woops. Steam update pulled. <Insert steaming pile jokes>. They keep up this much in and out they'll have to NC-17 that software!
Ok. It's official every game I'm looking forward to has now been friggin delayed until 2004! Half-Life 2. Check. Doom 3. Check. Total War: Rome. Check. Finally, Raven Shield 3: Athena Sword. Check. Which is of course opposite of what they said before about Athena.
Matrix in Egypt. No dates for you!
Just watching Conan O'Brien. New Cheech and Chong movie? Stoners unite!
Monopolies are bad? Of course! But. Wait a sec. Ok. I'm officially confused.
And just to be sure we have fun with the RIAA today. A producer is suing the music industry, specifically Destiny's Child (Beyonce, Kelly, Michelle Williams) for, get this.. stealing!!
Robinson's attorney claims the producer later heard the song ["Survivor"] used in a commercial, without his permission. Robinson said the song would have been his big break in the music industry. "I know right now I would be one of the biggest, most sought-after producers," he said at a news conference Tuesday.
And just to spice things up, here's a hot pic of the ladies. Meow!
10/20/2003
And now to show my age, here's a great story about a new: Leisure Suit Larry 8? I played the original when it came out. Back in 1985 or so. Whoa. Scary story about this: a science teacher in 6th grade I had he tried to talk to me about the game one time. Wierdo.
A game called Chorme went gold. I know, I never heard of it before. Plus there's already a patch for the European version. Green blood or something probably.
10/18/2003
Hi. I'm old.
I wish I had phobias. Then I could write off my game playing time on my tax returns as mental therapy.
10/17/2003
Ok. So, the big thing out right now is Max Payne 2. Even more interesting is the reviews. I'm going to categorize them.
Sucking up: here.
Honest and to the point: here.
Has Gamespot ever found something wrong with a big name game? I mean hell they liked Black & White even! Oh that's right, they don't play a game long enough before writing a review.
Halo demo. I won't waste my time. Neither should you.
10/16/2003
Got Windows? Go update your box. Right now! Big scary problems with Windows.
Ok, so will the game last longer than the movie?
Naturally, like most of you, I bought my Matrix:Reloaded DVD the other day. Now here's my quandry. I like DVDs. No love 'em! It goes without saying that the quality you see on a DVD is way superior to anything you could get at a theater. I can see so much more on my simple Toshiba 27" TV with digital stereo than I could at any theater. Darks and lights are much crisper and since there are three basic colors in these Matrix movies (black, white, and green) being able to see dark and light areas is important. But theaters wash out the color or dim the bulb to make them last longer or whatever the hell else they do (Ebert's gone off on this a few times).
So my question is, what's the hold up on getting some sort of streaming content out for first run movies. It could be through cable, satellite or even the 'Net. In fact, if you have a burner, be able to download the DVD and it's encoded to run once and then destroy itself or something fancy like that. Put some markers on each chapter or something to where you can't play each chapter over and over either. Something like that. Charge $14 for the download or something which easily wipes out the cost of the theater, the snacks, and putting up with stupid people in the audience. Movies cost $10 is some areas per person so charging $10-15 wouldn't be an issue.
Oh yeah I always forget the OMGWTFHAX0rZ part of the equation.
10/15/2003
You want cool? You got cool all right here! As if the annoucment that Freedom Force was to be sequelized isn't cool enough, there's going to be Nazis in it to decimate. Two groovy things there: Beating up Nazis and wearing tights while doing so. Yee haw!
10/14/2003
Wow. The Register is reporting that Israel is laying the proverbial smiting on Microsoft.
The Israeli Ministry of Commerce has suspended all governmental contracts with Microsoft, and indicated that the ban will last throughout 2004. The de facto suspension means no upgrades for the duration, at a time when Microsoft is looking to roll out its Office 2003 upgrade; and the Ministry is said to be examining OpenOffice as an alternative.
PainKiller to be out in Late 2004. Some preview here.
Want free stuff? Who doesn't! Activision's offering a free Alienware monster box on the Call of Duty website. Normally, I'd put the link right to the registration of the contest but the entire CoD website is Flash so no can do. But no prize till around 2004? WTF.
10/13/2003
John Romero to Midway games?
Romero, on the other hand, will, according to our source, re-shape the internal studio and head-up one of Midway's forthcoming games.
Wow, this weekend was hot momma weekend at the movie's. Kill Bill with the delicious Uma Thurman and Vivica Fox and then Intolerable Cruelty with the melt your horomones Catherinze Zeta Jones.
And no, I still won't buy it! Nope, nope, nope!
And thanks to the fellas over at Penny-Arcade for a reminder about Painkiller:
Painkiller is a first-person horror shooter, designed to satisfy a gamer's hunger for intense, fast-paced action. It’s an adrenaline addict’s nightmare, where hellish monsters swarm in seemingly endless mobs.
Sold!
10/12/2003
Another demo for Call of Duty is here. This is the second map that was shown at Quakecon. Nothing warms the heart like shooting Nazis.
Noooooooooo.. Total War: Rome delayed till late 2004 and not out in early 2004.
10/11/2003
Ok, look here and read software game developer people. Please please PLEASE stop making all your games have some sort of vast government conspiracy with tinfoil hats be an integral part of your game! Let me pull from my current Max Payne discount adventure:
This game was going soooo good up to Part III. Dispensing justice to mafia warlords is like being tapped on the shoulder by your favorite diety and getting a free pass to blow away people and all will be forgiven when you shed your mortal coil.
But now, in Part III, what do we have? A big frikkin government conspiracy, government trying to make super soldiers while running down halls wearing gas masks. I've played this game before. It was called Half-Life! I saw some ropes that the soldiers had rapelled down and for some reason had a big Half-Life flashback about not getting too close to them. I also started scanning the ground for head crabs.
They should've stuck with the drug warlords/mafia slant. It was working so damn well. But no!! And now, as I spellcheck this post, I realize my sentence structure is reading like the melodrama dialogue in the game.
I ain't buying Max Payne 2. Forget it. They had me around their calloused trigger finger until this Part III and the evil one eyed man who rambled about the Gulf War I and crap like that.
10/10/2003
More Half-Life 2 crap. Anyone else not reading it anymore?
As if that wasn't enough bad news, there's another expansion for Counter-Strike.
Elite Force 2, which I wrote about in the past, has been patched.
10/9/2003
Could the age of water cooling a PC be in our future? I sure hope so.
So, in anticipation of Max Payne 2 coming out I went and purchased Max Payne 1. From this I've come to several conclusions after getting to Part II of the game
1. 3rd Person shooters are still and always will be, inferior to first person.
2. Bullet time is kinda fun but why did reviewers get super wet about it?
3. Dialogue from the 1940s is pretty lame. I know Quentin T. pulls it off to a degree in his movies but it's not close to being this cheesy?
4. The guy who is Max looks like a football towel boy in the cut-scenes and an Italian gangster in the game itself. Therefore, I've started calling him Gilbert Painoli.
5. Nice graphics. Decent sound
6. Buying games after they are out of their first run is easier on the wallet for sure. $20 for Max Payne isn't a bad deal at all.
10/7/2003
More asshattery involved with Half-Life 2. Heck, even CNN Money is getting in on this due to the fact that Vivendi is distributing the game and they've had a ton of trouble.
When hackers broke into the computing system of Valve Software, they stole more than just the source code to Half-Life 2. They also stole enough game maps and other components to put together a playable build of the game. Today, five days after the first leak, they have released that build.
Look, I do Admin stuff and I know Newell was blaming some exploit in Outlook or something like that. But my question is what kind of security is in place there to where someone could get into your internal network and even onto a particular machine? Is there firewall have holes like some rotted swiss cheese? What about anti-virus or IDS systems? Do they even have someone to watch the major security message boards so they'll know to click that WindowsUpdate button? What about a link to Microsoft Office's website and get some patches there, too?
I don't blame the individual user but I DO blame whoever is supposed to be monitoring their security. If it's someone internal, fire them. If it's some external group, litigate and litigate hard!
Tried to get an interview with the people doing Call of Duty but Hellchick over at Activision said no can do as they're in crunch mode. Bummer.
I don't know if anyone else has picked up on this disparity in opinion but this Wired article suggests that the HL2 code being stolen wasn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.
Gifford Calenda, who has run development teams at game giant Electronic Arts, said he wouldn't want to be in the shoes of Valve Managing Director Gabe Newell. Still, Calenda said the issue of proprietary code is overwrought. He stressed that it takes a lot more than code to make a hot game. A great story line, art and sound are all essential. "Many executives believe that source code is valuable and has to be protected," Calenda said. But in the gaming industry, it's difficult for any company to stay ahead based on programming talent alone. "In reality, people move from job to job and exchange ideas, and any great coder can do what's needed to produce a particular effect," he said. One gaming industry executive, who asked not to be named, went even further in minimizing the theft's importance. He noted that rival developers likely would stay away from downloading the stolen code, calling it "(expletive deleted) antimatter."
Yet, now the code is being tweaked till April? Which is the truth I wonder? Is the source code important as the two tables from the mountain or is it not? Blues seems to suggest this whole story is still being developed but you would think that they'd still release at Christmas.
If anything they should just get Punkbuster/Even Balance working on some anti-cheat software for this game. It's done wonders for Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory, IMO
10/6/2003
Max Payne 2 went gold today. Unlike the first one, I might get this one. If only to see what the hype is about regarding this game.
And today Blue is ranting about Battlefield 1942. Hey Blue, one website nut to another, go play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. You'll enjoy it a whole lot more.
10/5/2003
So, is the stolen Half Life 2 code that important?
Though troubling, many saw the theft as less than catastrophic, given that source code represents a game's underlying engine -- determining such essentials as how the action within a game is portrayed -- but is unplayable without art and sounds, which apparently were not stolen.
So in one sense yes, but what good would it do to someone unless they're going to make their own game off of it. Regardless, someone with the juevos to go after it deserves a nod. And a kick in the groin
Ok, so Phoenix, the BIOS people and not the crappy football team, want to work with Microsoft in having Windows integrate tighter with the BIOS, including, "to more closely integrate the basic building blocks of the PC with the Windows operating system."
Where's that leave Linux? Oh, probably screwed. If they do this the hooks in the BIOS should be open to anyone. And then Microsoft should also give all their money back to the poor. As you can guess, neither will probably happen.
10/3/2003
News today? Not a whole lot except that I finally finished Homeworld 2. I know I wrote my review before finishing but now that it's finished, I even enjoyed it more. Yeah, it's hard to write a witty review of a game when you like it so much. Go buy it. Just.. go.. NOW!
10/2/2003
OMGWTFHAX! Someone went deep undercover and got some Half-Life source codin. Yikes! This message from Newell reads like some sort of bizarre hacker pr0n.
At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).
"And then he took off his pocket protector and ravaged me with his switch."
The people that made Halo are releasing the dedicated server "early." Ok. Look. ANY single player game should have the dedicated server on the CD anymore. When there are sites popping up dedicated to helping admins setup dedicated servers you know there's a demand. So just do it in the first place.
10/1/2003
With their 64-bit processor, AMD is truly going for the big prize. It's nice to see the market get turned upside down a bit and now Intel is reacting. While I'm sure that might make most stock holders of Intel nervous, as a tech person it's good to see such competition being fostered. Personally, I hope AMD succeeds and grab a bigger market share chunk.
"When we made the move from 16 to 32 bits, we were asking why we needed to make the move," Enderle says. "But by mid-decade no one doubted it. We always go through this cycle."
And Microsoft settled another antitrust suit with those who bought their software through direct sales. Final cost: $10 Million. Microsoft spends that much on their company picnics. Gimme a break!
Gaming news.. hmm.. gaming news.. uh... Half-Life 2 I guess
"G[ame]S[pot]: Looking back at the project, what's most new in Half-Life 2?
G[abe] N[ewell]: There are a lot more levels for you to be thinking about what you're doing. There's a physical dimension--there are objects in the world. You can use those. You can pick things up and drop them on people's heads, to give a really simple example.
But there are much more complicated things you can do around that, which the AI and creatures can do as well. There are people. You're never alone in the game---or almost never alone. You have to think about how are they going to react and what are they going to do. A lot of times, they have goals and you don't, and you have to make up your mind about what you're going to do around them trying to achieve something."
There are people in the game? And goals? And you have to make decisions? Brilliant!! No wonder everyone's so looking forward to this. So much new stuff to see!
Come on fellas, tell me why this is worth my $50-60. This ain't doing it for me!