Half-life 2 to use trangluar pixel maps.

I got an interview with Target, it went very fast. I talked to this 22 year old for my job. I wanted the job because I thought it was only one opportunity for it. I’m going to do stocking in the morning 5:30 – 12:00, but I don’t know if I got the job or not? I’m guessing not. I told her that when a customer steals something, I should yell out and say Stealer! Come back! Instead of immediately going to the manager or another store attendant. They all carry around walkie talkies so one person can let the whole store know. Oops! I forgot about that part. It’s true too. I should know, I played with walkie talkies when I was a kid all the time. It was the cheap versions for kids. Dumb really, you could shout further then the range of them.



Is it just me or is PS2 games getting like XBOX. In my opinion, game developers beefed up the console so it’s “over clocking” it. Putting the Dreamcast aside, the games never looked so good on my television! Poor dreamcast, I actually thought it would have a full lifespan. Than again we will still see Sega games, so I don’t miss Sega I guess. This article is all about Half-life 2, right?



Imagination is the limit, right, so I’m going to tell you some stuff that may or may not be true, but is so good that it should be. Planet Half-life updated their Half-life 2 section again. Take what I say with a grain of salt. I just talk about this because I want to gather info on my most favorite upcoming game, Half-life 2 for the PC. And there will be millions like me who will awe at the graphical improvements as much as the intelligence of the enemies…I want to learn about the technical side of the game, because it’s the 2nd most powerful gaming engine on Earth (First is ID software’s Doom III engine). I hate to speak word per word, but in a way their just trying to just say things to get hits! That’s all, how does it expect me to compete. I can! Okay, all I have to say about Half-life 2 is that the pc version looks as good if not better than the Xbox version. So far haven’t any of you noticed that most FPS take place in the future (unreal tournament, far cry, Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake) You are Gordon Freeman, a x-black mesa research facility survivor. Only one thing - I haven’t heard of Black Mesa? Valve made a side story of Half-life called Blue Shift released in 2001. Oh wait isn’t it that faculty where I was in the first game. In Black Mesa, you play Barney. Barney is a security guard. Barney and his friends attempt to get out of Black Mesa and Barney is the only survivor, aside from a few scientists and Gordon. Barney is going to play a role in Half-life 2. Barney was the good guy while the marines, black ops and aliens were the bad guys. It’s like a modern day western. Rockstar North is the first to come out with a 3D western shooter. It’s hard to believe that Valve used Half-life engine for 8 years (since 1995, when they began developing it) They’ve enhanced it with patches over the years, but Blue Shift added higher resolution textures to all previous Half-life games. (owners should know, I don’t) If Counter-Strike popularity still holds up, we may see people still playing Half-life in one way or another in 2007. I guess that Valve will package the new game along with Half-life and Blue Shift as free bonuses. Half-life costs 10 bucks at Wal-Mart. Certainly they can afford one more CD. I hope so. I generally just give blank cds a way, you can get 100 pack for only 25 dollars. Before, didn’t’ it bother you that Half-life looked exactly like Goldeneye, a popular FPS for Nintendo 64 put together by Rareware, in high resolution. Remember the paint in Goldeneye, the bare walls, hidden away by a blazing fast graphics engine, realistic explosions, stellar weapons, and a very strong multiplayer campaign. In fact, I don’t know why Half-life wasn’t for N64! I found most of my information off this weird webpage [ http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?faq=source_mod_faq ] You’ve got to check this out, the faq has an outstanding amount of info on Half-life 2! I knew it! HL2 uses Maya. I downloaded Maya over the internet 8 months ago. It was huge (150 MB) Maya is a professional modeling tool costing a whopping 800 dollars. It is very good at what it’s meant for. Never was able to make models out of it. I tried very hard, read online tutorials, and never could design models. This is a good webpage to learn how to make models with Maya [ http://members.shaw.ca/psyc3d/tutorials_maya01.html ] It sounds like the Source engine will be used in games for the next 6 years. Two months ago I guess I was absolutely right, Valve will include upgrade tools. Valve confirmed that level designers who made Half-life Maps will be able to update it to be playable in Half-life 2. Take it that the mod community is also willing to upgrade the textures to look as good the rest of HL2. http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?faq=source_mod_faq§ion=106159035033544900&question=106159124050453000 Half-life 2 will use the same level design program (Hammer) as Half-life 1 just a much newer version.

http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?faq=source_mod_faq§ion=106159035033544900&question=106159124050453000 The new Half-life 2 will use the same level design program (Hammer) as Half-life 1 just a much newer version.







Another interesting thing I found out about Half-life which explains it’s depth is that the Map size is 16 times bigger. The map size I’m talking about the image/texture map on any given object. The maps are going to be bigger then half-life. You know that in Unreal Tournament 2004, some of the larger maps are 50 MB or more. I’m guessing each Half-life level will be more than that. Remember all the characters, sound, lighting effects are going to be loaded within the map file. This new technology, sound and lighting is included in textures apart of the maps.



VERC says half-life 2 will have characters models that use 7500 polygons each. That’s the main characters. The smaller creatures will have half that much. Game designers call this comparison, LOD (level of detail) I’m surprised, and I thought the people would have as much polygons as Gordon’s hand does. (You see it all the time, it’s on the lower right part of your screen) VERC says that hand is about 2000 polygons.



I found out that the game will use 33 to 50 passes for each texture (filled with 2000 - 7500 polygons). 16.5 passes per second for 60 frames per second | 33 cycles per second for 30 frames if your computer can handle that many cycles. Data can only go so fast right so sometimes textures have to make multiple passes, Half-life is much more advanced than most games because it requires 33 passes. Mid-range computers may only be able to do 60 frames at 800x600 while faster computers can do 60 frames per second at 1024/968, but must be able to do the full (30-50 range) If one texture can do this than the whole level can be handled the same way.



I am going to answer the apex of all graphics engine questions. Why are triangles better than squares? Triangles are half a square so they can curve twice as much. It puts an end to squareish looking textures. I like to relate Goldeneye and Super Mario 64 with this, because I remember the box-like bodies. Hey, it was state-of-the-art in 1997. We can’t do circles because circles don’t evenly connect to each other, there would be gaps. With triangles, there are no gaps since all the edges of one triangle are parallel to the one across from it. What’s the next step in polygon evolution? Hexagons? Nvidia says it’s Geforce 6800 can do 4 quads per second. A quad is a 2x2 pixel tile. It’s too complex to put in words so I’m going to give you a diagram from Beyond3D.com. [ See the squares! They're converted into tranangles - well almost! ]







“As the diagram above suggests, rendering in 2x2 pixel quads can leave potential inefficiencies since at the edges of the triangle some pixels may fall outside of an area that requires rendering, meaning these pipelines are effectively not used as they can't operate on other triangles because some pipelines in the quad group are occupied. Yet the benefits of a quad pipeline organisation usually outweigh this pitfall.”



Talking about the game…I’m thinking I’m just going to download the beta myself. I hear from http://www.half-life2.org.uk/ (Damn British know more then I do) that the full version of half-life 2 is leaked on the Internet(SWEET!) I opened Emule (Person/Person sharing unity) Link: Half Life 2 Beta-Anon Only Hl2 100%.rar I found many hits claiming to be Half-life 2. I’m guess they’re all real. It seems that both come in 3 parts all 650 MB files – probably are cd images. That’s understandable since the game may come packaged with 3 CDs. It will be 7 months before Half-life 2 comes out commercially. I know some have Trojan horses, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take to play HL2 early. And I’ll be sure to tell everyone if it works and how stable the beta is.



Remember back to the first FMVs and how they shown characters that weren’t as bump mapped as today’s games. I agree with Final Fantasy fans when the next Final Fantasy game hits PS3, it’ll look very close to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. In my opinion FF: Spirits looks better then Shrek. In actual gameplay if graphics looked like FF Spirits, I would become dumb-founded. FF Spirits looks better than the Final Fantasy X cut scenes, not by much though. We’re not limited by media storage any longer. To discover myself, I just had to stick Final Fantasy X into my DVD-Rom drive and under properties where it showed the GIGs used, I found it to be 4.5 Gigabytes. WOW! Final Fantasy XI is much bigger using a hard drive just to carry the space. I should know, the PC version of FFXI is 6 700 MB cds that all need to be installed to you’re hard drive and the data is compressed so I got it, it took up 6.1 Gigabytes. It would have been much cheaper to just have 2 DVDs packaged into one case for the PS2 version. If you can put music on your drive than what’s the need for it? I really want to know. Xbox 2 and PS3 aren’t going to have a hard drive for this reason. We’ll start seeing more then one DVD for one game in the future cause soon DVDs aren’t enough.



Here is what I found out



1. Final Fantasy 10 used 4.55 Gigabytes

2. Metal Gear Solid 2 used 4.3 Gigabytes

3. Final Fantasy 10-2 used 3.9 Gigabytes

4. Jak 2 used 4.1 Gigabytes

5. Winning Eleven 6 used 3.4 Gigabytes

6. R&C Going Commando used 3.8 gigabytes

7. Xenosaga used 3.9 Gigabytes

8. Gran Tranismo 3 used 3.8 gigabytes



Now how can high res games be put on one DVD if a DVD only has 4.7 gigabytes of data? Isn’t this weird how games will soon use more then 4.7 gigabytes. Making two DVDs is probably as expensive as making 4 CDs. Sony should seriously think of updating to using MP3 for audio files and MPEG 4 for movies just to conserve space. MPEG 4 has a 1/10 ratio over uncompressed video with barely any image loss. There is also this popular format called Bink Video. [ww.radgametools.com ] It is used in some videogames today. Bink Video is popular to use for games because game developers don’t have to play big bucks to register for compression programs. The BIK conversion program is free off Bink’s website, works with both video and audio. Playstation uses a format called PSS. PSS is a compressed format for video. I liked it how PSone games used MPEG1 for video. The other day I tried to get PS2play to work. PS2play is the only real Playstation 2 video reader available to my knowledge. NGemu.com has it for download. I want to see the alternate ending FMV of Final Fantasy 10. I don’t need to see it, but it would be nice to just watch it when ever I want too.



You know I haven’t seen those mini DVDs that the Gamecube uses take off. Someone at school had one of those 1.8 inch mini disc and I thought he was rich. This was before DVDs came out so I didn’t know any disc except the CD.



I now have an 80 GB external hard drive! It came in the mail today. I’m surprised, it’s much bigger then my Apple iPod. I looked recently and iPods still cost 340 dollars at Target! Expensive, but worth it for those who want to carry 20 gigabytes of music in your pant’s pocket. I don’t need a second one. There is this term that I like to use – it’s called ‘delete’, and people worried about space restraints should use it sometime. The new MP3 players have FM tuners allowing you to record FM stations to MP3. People like me! LOL! If you think would you rather spend 50 dollars on a 128MB thumb stick or 100 dollars on a lithium battery operated 10 GB MP3 player that doubles as regular data storage? Me, I have two 128 MB and one 64 MB thumb sticks. The most I ever downloaded off the schools server was 200 MB. That was last week. I’ve downloaded 200 MB over a modem from night to day one time listening to the Internet Radio service, Shoutcast. I like shoutcast. They have new songs, and all you need is an Internet service provider to listen and rip the latest music. How can you expand what music you like if you don’t try new things? There are over 200 radio stations on Shoutcast. Shoutcast is best listened with Winamp.



I’m also trying to rip audio from my tv, it works very well. I’m getting 128 kbp (high quality) techno from satellite. Want to know the secret because to some people it’s no secret. Take headphone wire and hook one end to your tv’s headphone jack and the other end to your analog input jack on the iPod. You’ll know if you got any signal because the horizontal bars on the LCD screen will light up. It’s better then having an internet station open. I’m also going to try to rip some long sessions of Country and rock. Reggie and some Soft rock....I’m not sure about.



To end this entry I like to include an updated favorite playlist….



1.) Mario Piu & Mauro Picotto - Trippin On E

2.) Binary Finary - 1999

3.) Mauro Picotto – Pulsar

4.) Bruno Fergani – Trancelation

5.) Bruno Fergani - SunStorm Extended Mix

6.) LTJ Bukem – Moonbeat

7.) Tall Paul - Wizards Of The Sonic (Matt Darey Remix)

8.) DJ Mystik vs Sasha & John Digweed – Enjoy the Silence

9.) Blank & Jones - Cream (ATB Mix)

10.) Chicane -Autumn Tactics (Thrillseekers Club Mix)

11.) ATB- Sunscreen

12.) Mauro Picotto - Komodo (Megavoices Mix)

13.) Robert Miles – Fable

14.) Ayla Liebe (Atb Remix)

15.) Seb Fontaine - Cygnus X - The Orange Theme (Solar Stone Remix)

16.) ATB – Underwater World

17.) ATB – Angels

18.) Kaycee - Escape 2000

Which of my webpages do you like the most? servey!

I would like to ask bloggers to check out these three links of my webpage templates over a 2 year period. I would like to know if I should go back to my older template (which is by no means out of date) just not updated to current. I quite that template because I thought I could achieve something more, there is just something about “Ian’s Personal Webspace v4 that I can’t surpass. While Renegade Viking’s Awesome Webpage v5.0 is more awesome. You might realize that my latest template is modified for a 1280x960 resolution. Please change your resolution. I thought Renegade Viking’s Webpage 2004 was somewhat cool in my opinion, not the best (not the worst I created) because it has the curviness which was most inventive, but it was off centered I thought.



Link 1: Ian’s Personal Webspace v4 (2nd template of 2003)

http://www.geocities...alkers101/start.html



Pros

• Pretty JPEG menu bars

• 2 Javascript Nav Bar

• Everything is written on one page

• New Feature: tag board

• New Feature: instant messenger auto open

• Matrix green themed background

• 100% online. All my work with this template is online, not deleted.

• Has Ian’s RPG Guild – my RPG gaming pages with some of my favorite RPGS

• Gaming Reviews (very updated)

• Editorials working.



Cons



• Each HTML page without graphics is about 110 KB each (takes up sever space)

• I stopped my blog updates October 1, 2003

• With graphics expect to download 300KB. of graphics, IE5 will load graphics from temp folder to make it load faster the 2nd time)

• Photo Gallery doesn’t work



Link 2: Renegade Viking’s Webspace v5 (template 5 of 2004)

http://www.geocities...01/v2004e_index.html



Pros

• Everything is updated on one page that ever changes

• Much, Much easier to update and less time consuming

• Nice background?

• 100% text links, no unneeded graphics

• Most current information on myself except for a BIO

• Game list

• Most current software

• New feature: Software updates

• New Feature: Site Updates

• New Feature: Scrolling ad banners using java script

• Super Model Banner (I like hot women on my website)



Cons

• Not as nice looking as v4.0 overall Although I do like the background more than any enhancement on my webpage

• It seems that I’ve been force to conserve server space by putting information on html that loads in mini windows. Loading times improved, but readability as gotten worst. I weighed what I gained from what I lost using this.

• Doesn’t look as nice as v4.0



Link 3 : Renegade Viking’s Webpage (template 4 of 2004)

http://www.geocities...01/v2004d_index.html



• Pros:

• Rounded boards

• Automatically has information that I used in v2004 template 2

• Has super model Heidi Klum on it

• Links

• Good attempt to make a good page

• Had potential in I only worked with it more



Cons



• Looks buggy

• Graphics look out of place

• Uses smaller windows for information not quite used property. I thought this was cutting edge because it looked great on state-of-the-art webpages



Question I have.......



Which template do you like best! Please comment by using “Comment” on this page.



Some suggestions could be as follows…..

Which template listed above is easiest to navigate?

Does it bug you if a page takes 2 minutes to load?

Which page is the most stunning?

Which aspect of my 4th template of 2003 should I change? Since I agree it’s the best web template I’ve ever modified!

Do you like videogame character banners or super model banners? Please specify your favorite character or model.

Do html errors bother you? Will you close a browser window if one pops up?



Other templates I’ve made thus far (for reference)



Ian’s Squaresoft Webpage

http://www.geocities...01/square_index.html



Renegade Viking’s New Webpage (2nd template of 2004)

http://www.geocities...01/v2004b_index.html



Ian’s Personal Webpage 3.0

http://www.geocities...s101/february03.html (none of the months links work)



Renegade Viking’s Webpage v7.0 (7th template of 2003)

http://www.geocities...ers101/v7_index.html

Top Secret Government games gone commerical Inside

Hello Bloggers. My day went well. The subject today is Best selling Videogame according to the Guinness and military games developed for the military. Today was not as interesting as most days. More like a 4 out of 10 if you describe it as a productive day. It hasn’t occurred to me to just drop by the famous Guinness World Records website, at the TECH section. This kid on a message board at Mario128Central.com said he thought Orcania of Time was the best selling videogame ever. I didn’t know. I am surprised that I own all of the videogames that Guinness talks about. I advise everyone to just pass though this site. Half the website is in Macromedia Flash 5, which is great. These are official record breakers.



BEST SELLING VIDEOGAME IS



A.) FINAL FANTASY 7

B.) GRAND THIEF AUTO VICE CITY

C.) LEGEND OF ZELDA ORCANIA OF TIME

D.) SUPER MARIO BROS.



If you answered the last game, you’re right. This wasn’t the NES original, it was the Game Boy version. I thought the answer was Final Fantasy 7 because it was a very popular Playstation game. Everyone I talked too loved it. I also own GTA Vice City, but I don’t play it much anymore. Since Super Mario Bros. was on Gameboy, the handheld also got a place in Guinness as most popular handheld computer !!!!



Most Expensive Game to Develop:



a.) Final Fantasy 7

b.) Metal Gear Solid 2 – Sons of Liberty

c.) Shenmue

d.) Shenmue 2



I tried to trick you in thinking that it was the sequel of Shenmue. But the answer is Shenmue for the Dreamcast. It cost AM2 20 million dollars to make. (which also develops Virtua Fighter games.) I would have ever guessed it. I thought it was Final Fantasy 7, usually games with that budget has state-of-the-art graphics which Shenmue didn’t have. I own the Dreamcast game, Shenmue and Shenmue 2 for X-Box. When I saw the Dreamcast title, it came in 4 discs plus the extras disc. Each Dreamcast disc can hold 1.4 Gigabytes. It took AM2 seven years to develop, that’s amazing. Only one question….Shenmue 2 isn’t apart of Shenmue, starting where the original left off. I think that Shenmue 2 was going to be Shenmue 1 until spitting them up would prove less expensive for Sega. Shenmue is on several ‘most popular games of all time’ lists including ones from IGN.com, Game Informer, and of course Gamespot.com.



I am kind of interested what the world record was before? Was it Final Fantasy 7? I also heard somewhere it was Super Mario 64. Nintendo developed the N64 around the graphics engine supporting Super Mario 64, that’s why. It was also the first technical demo for the console.



Next, I got interested in a couple of war games made by game developers to train troops on the battlefield. Some of these games have true-to-life military tactics using state-of-the-art AI.



US Military War Games gone commercial



I have to say that not all WAR games are made for the US military. And not all games developed for the US military are in full 3D. One very good example of this is “Real War” created by OC Incorporated, a software developer funded by the USA. The game looks a lot like Command & Conquer in it’s 2D low resolution overhead mode with cheesy animations. The commercial version is developed by Rival Software. Rival is a game developer cross platform (PC and MAC). The military version has more learning curves. The commercial version has less, but the graphics are the same.



Counter-Strike is the most downloaded mod ever, requiring a full version of Half-life to play. It was created by (back then) average game designers that where shocked by amount of success the mod had. It was suppose to be just another mediocre Half-Life mod. The game became so popular that Valve and Sierra began to release it as an expansion pack for Half-life by paying the small developer staff money. In fact, the game studio is called Rural LTD, which was hired to develop the Xbox title, Counter-Strike. Counter-strike is a team based game much like Team Fortress. ( source: Military.com )



Probably the 2nd most popular war game released to the public is America’s Army Operations. This game is already one of the most popular online first person shooters, and it is made by the US Army. I know this because I own America’s Army 2.0a and the game’s severs are always full, it’s as popular as Call of Duty or Unreal Tournament 2004. The game doesn’t suck and it’s free for everyone. It was created based on the than state-of-the-art UNREAL engine. ( Source: Americasarmy.com and http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/wargames020821.htm )



Full Specrium Warrior TBA: December 2004 Xbox and PC



The USA Government also has had a state of the art military videogame that remained TOP SECRET until it’s unrevealing in 2003! The game called Full Spectrum Command. Full Spectrum Command is the smartest videogame ever. The Institute of Creative Technolegies first developed this game. In 2003, the US Government gave production rights too Pandemic Studios teamed up with THQ to mass produce it. The game, now called Full Spectrum Warrior, is going to be published for PC and Xbox around Christmas. It will be another Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon I think, but better designed and harder to finish. ( source: http://www.wired.com/ news/games/0,2101,60 688,00.html?tw=wn_st ory_related )



MRE – an extremely well developed tutorial developed by ICT (Institute of Creative Technologies.) Project costs government 45 million dollars. Project Leader…US Joint Chiefs of Staff office in D.C. Program displayed in a 150 degree theater screen that covers the whole room with a true to life sound experience (10.2 surround sound). I don’t know much about it except it sounds pretty awesome. The screen sounds a lot like the iMAX theater at the Science Museum of Minnesota. And that screen is absolutely huge. In fact the new Science Museum (built in 1999) was built around the projection screen. It’s suppose to be one of the biggest screens in the whole world.



Metal of Honor 1 and 2 were originally developed by the US government and than given to Dreamworks Interactive (game publisher) when the US military could no longer use it as a training option. Probably because the graphics are bad by today’s standards. The latest installments, Metal of Honor Allied Assault and MoH AA: Spearhead, are developed by 2015. Personally, I favorite it because it was my second WWII game I got for my 19th Birthday. ( source: Military.com )

DOOM 3 vs THE WORLD exclusive + best mp3 ripper ev

After school today we were talking about decibels in class and I felt ignored by everyone in the room except for Steve so I left early. Not the maturist thing to do, but I got a hint after I accidentally said the word “bisexual” in one of my sentences. I had some trouble saying decibel. The two words don’t rhyme. The class didn’t seem to forgive me afterwards. Now when I got to school on Thursday, I’m probably going to get a slightly lower reaction from some people. I’m not going to worry about it. I find it takes much more enery to worry about it then it does to ask questions. Hmm. Which would I rather do? Ask questions or try to find out what went wrong that day? I get points for being a good student. When I felt ignored today, I remembering saying the F word under my breathe as if I were speaking directly at them. That was why I took off – I felt I like I was going to curse out loud in front of people. And that is not like me at all. I sometimes feel that other people’s “superior intellect” gets the best of them. It’s kinda like this, I start talking about fading sound or decibels and “cha-chin”, something goes wrong and now I was ignored for some reason I don’t know.



Okay, to be honest, I can take a day of this. Two days, sure. Three days would be pushing it. And a week would drive me crazy. I think there is something wrong with school if this outcast feeling continues. I want to take these classes too you know, no body is going to piss me enough to leave WITC all together. If they want to insult me by leaving me alone, than it’s their lost….not mine. Though I wished I knew someone that would talk to me more often. College is like high school….you lose most of your friends after you graduate than you make new ones in college or I was suppose too.



So I got home, and I did my usual entertainment, researching better ways to compress audio and looking for new Doom 3 information. We finally got a release date for July 2004!!! That speaks for itself. Seems that Half-life 2 and Doom 3 are going to be released 2 weeks from each other. More exciting news is available, I now know ID software is going to incorporate Doom 3 into the Geforce 6000 series. Details below: .



I find that my Doom 3 and Half-life 2 posts got a healthy dose of views. That’s why I want to bring you some more news. Doom 3 will take full advantage of the Geforce 6000! Officially, the world’s 2nd 512 MB video card. Interesting enough, not the most powerful. Nvidia Quadro series is now and forever shall be the top line, most powerful cards available on the market today. Unless, of course, Nvidia decides to stop doing Quadro all together. Remember the law of diminishing returns applies here. The graphics with current 256 MB GPUs look so beautiful (UT2004 is a great example of high polygons count models and backgrounds running at 60 FPS with little latency. The current cards do a good job handling the 80% of any game out on shelves today. It won’t be until games that require 128-MB video cards to play, we’ll see some need for Nvidia’s latest Geforce. Take Halo for example. Halo was pretty popular a couple months ago because it looked pretty, but games are coming out now that look better then Halo now. Halo has some capability issues. It runs on my Radeon 9800 XT card very well, but will not run on any of my Geforce cards. I downloaded Nvidia drivers from last month. This is shocking, knowing the extremely popular Xbox version runs on a modified Geforce 3. The 1.4 patch fails to fix the bug. Bummer.



::: Doom 3 Facts I’ll list ‘em :::



• Doom 3 is a single player FPS with a cinematic full motion video cutscenes.

• We’ll see the same items those who played Doom II used.

• Doom 3 will take the horror genre to a new level and it’s a FPS

• UK developer Slash-Damage is working on Doom 3 multiplayer (team that worked on Return to Castle Wolfenstien Enemy Territory.)

• Doom 3 will take place on Mars

• Release date July 15, 2004

• Doom 3 to use combination of Pro Logic II and Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound

• ID software is tweaking Doom 3 to forcefully run at 60 frames per second. This means if your videocard can’t do 60 at current resolution, you’ll be forced to drop your resolution.

• Xbox version of Doom 3 confirmed to have unlockable full version of Doom II. Doom II in high resolution?

• Geforce 6000s series suppose to have biggest leap in graphics performance leap from current generation to Nvidia’s next generation. That and AMD’s 64-bit processor and you’ve got a very powerful gaming rig. But what’s state of the art technology if you can’t afford it? LOL!

• I think the Geforce 7000 series to be first 1 Gigabyte video cards on the market



::: Compressing MP3s :::



Best free software available:

CDEX Audio Ripper 1.51 – http://cdex.n3.net

LAME 3.97 decoder upgrade for CDEX - www.mp3dev.org/mp3/



I had a very tough time finding MP4 audio codec for my collection. MP4 is copyrighted and therefore not being easily downloaded as a plugin. I think the web browser gets confused with MP4 and MPEG 4. MPEG 4 is compressed video. Mp4 is compressed audio. DiVX codec is mainly used to compress video for transferring over the Internet, and it’s the most popular codec in video applications. I know this because I got 60 DIVX movies and 50 DIVX music videos. This wouldn’t be so out of the ordinary for someone with broadband, but I have a modem so I treat DIVX movies like it top priority stuff. First you have to extract the VOB files to your hard drive (damn it’s too big) I started to extract Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship to my hard drive for the first 4 minutes of the movie and it already took up 90 Megabytes. When I compressed it to DivX codec for AVI, I managed to get it down to 11 Megabytes. Of course, I also had to lower the resolution to 500x500. Not to mention compressing just a few minutes took 10 minutes to complete. But what about MP4 audio? XM Radio uses MP4. It’s more compressed than MP3 I know. What happens? I can get 25 to 50% better compression on my MP3s without faintness. I tried using DIVX 3.11 audio codec with CDEX and it wouldn’t work.



DIVX video is extreme hard to manage. I had to prepare a lot for CD burning. All my videos I had fewer than 702 MB I burned to CD. That’s about 50% of everything. The remaining 50% I have to either (1) transfer huge files over 10/100 megabit Ethernet or (2) take my DVD-RW drive out and insert it into my other computer so I can burn all the music videos and movies to several DVDs. I think option 2 will be the wisest choice. I could be wrong, though option one seems to be time consuming. WASTED TIME + TROUBLE-SHOOTING = MORE WASTED TIME. It’s like a catch 22 choice. When your dealing with my Ethernet, it’s safe to say I need a major upgrade. CAT5e upgrade to everything, no more hub! I’m cashing in for a switch board…. Latest technology is cool when it works. Three GIGABYTE RJ-45 patch cables are going to be expensive, ($80 – $150) so I’ll go with only two. I’m doing this over the summer if I get an application in at Manards. I may work the morning shift 5 days a week. I also applied for Home Depot and Fleet Farm in Hudson, Wisconsin.



I am hoping that today was just an off day and I don’t miss out. I think I’ll play my new games Tekken 4 and SSX 3. Tekken is fine, but not as good as Rachet and Clank: Going Commando. Oh and case you were wondering, I stopped playing Final Fantasy X-2 partly because I got stopped at the 3rd Chapter with Blobby type enemy that can kill you in one hit. I hate those. Luckily I was smart enough to save my game before I died. Hell, it got too involved. Sure it had a deep story, but you had to work on your character a lot and make sure it was ready for up coming bosses, that took time, time I didn’t have. Final Fantasy fans know what I’m talking about. If I was smart I would have skipped the scenario all together. It wasn’t a required one; it was a side-quest. I decided NOT TO PUT MY VIDEOGAME COLLECTION PICS ON MODBLOG BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO BIG FOR VIEWING. I will post them on my personal website later today. My collection is pretty big so you’d might like to take a look. I have a total of 117 games if you count Playstation (16), Dreamcast (34), Gamecube (16), Playstation 2 (37) and Xbox (14) games combined. I counted all of them. I have a full list on my website if you care too look. I’m more a game collector than a game player these days. You know, PS2 had all the RPGs and solid Racing games I just had to get one. I had to buy Xbox and Gamecube and PSone first before I knew I “had to have” exclusive Playstation 2 RPGs. I own 10 PS2 RPGS and I only played three of them (FFX, FFX2 and Xenosaga). I don’t have time to play all of them. They are like 35 – 50 hours a piece. Final Fantasy X was my favorite, though I’m itching to find out what happens at the end of Xenosaga. The first 20 hours of Xenosaga was pretty fun until I got lost in the game’s 1 out of 1000 possible places. It seems like you have to be at the other 999 places before you find out the right place to start a sequence so you can start over again much like how it was in Final Fantasy 10. The game advances by cut scenes which I am use to now. 40 hours of Final Fantasy 10, and 20 hrs. of Xenosaga back to back makes you a little bored of the both. It’s all good though. I went back to play Diablo 2.



Another interesting note I like to mention was yesterday when I was watching the FMVs off Playstation games on my PC. Yes, you heard right….PC! I admit, I was even kinda surprised that someone figured it out. Bypassing encryption and I don’t think Playstation runs Windows…in fact I know it doesn’t. It has a bios, graphics acceleration files, and sound sound drivers, and maybe some run time files kinda like Visual C++ would have. Visual C++ is what Microsoft programmers use to compile windows code for applications. This program is called the PSX Multi Converter. Comes in both Shareware and the slightly dated freeware version. The freeware version does crash more often and you can’t go full screen with it. You will like it much more because it never expires! It’s also possible to save your favorite FMV to AVI on your desktop. It’s much better to just scan the CD for movies and play the video off the disc. I very much enjoyed watching Final Fantasy 8 and Xenogears because I can re-watch the videos with detail, just to get full understanding of the game. The last FMVs of Final Fantasy 8 were 5 to 8 minutes long so I had to watch it at least 3 times to understand everything.



PSX Multi-Converter Homepage: http://homepage2.niffy.com/~mkb/

I want a memory chip in my brain too

Technorati.com has visited my site a lot in the 5 months that it’s been online. I don’t normally visit Technorati much. Though I found some interesting links. Remembering back on Star Trek: The Next Generation or even Star Trek: First Contact, Borg have implanted chips into our brains so that anyone enslaved would think like everyone else. Borg comes from the word Cy-Borg meaning half-human, half machine. Anyways there is an article on Technorati that made me shit my pants. I did this article on nano-probing article for writing class in high school, and the teacher though I was just making it up, but here’s the proof that I wasn’t making it up. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3632855.stm. I was saying that scientists will in the future insert tiny hard drives in our brains so we can remember things that aren’t humanly possible presently. How neural brain patterns and electronic computer hardware can communicate is the million dollar question. The article clearly says Cybernetics already made the first step in this new technology. Human brains excepting computer data to function as memory. It’s a scary thought having computers in your head to allow you remember everything. That wouldn’t be fair to the rest of people who don’t have a “memory chip.” This article wasn’t limited to just long term memory but also human made eye balls that give the blind, clear sight. Also chips that control people’s arm and leg movements. Do these chips train people’s brains to do common everything things or does it just take over the brain’s functions forever. Of course the argument isn’t going to be the cost, it’ll be if it can function all the time. It’ll probably run on a battery much like ethnic hearts.



I can’t really tell bloggers what I think of memory chips without knowing what is true so I made fun of the article with what possibility could happen to someone who uses a brain chip themselves. Cybernetic is not going to tell the full story until it works perfectly. And I think want I say would be possible in 30 years.



While they’re at it why don’t these scientists just add a miniature cell phone /w antenna and FM Radio and Internet ? Okay, it’s like this. Someone’s talking to me and I’m listening to the weather report inside my head. Someone asks, "What are you listening too?" "I’m listening to Sports.", I say. He replies, "Where? I don’t see any radio?" I joke, “No, I have a radio in my head, it’s made by Cybernetic Corp.” Oh how bizarre, man. Is it hard to concentrate? I reply, “Oh no, It’s the greatest thing ever, I have high speed Internet and I’m downloading music videos to my hard drive right now. Yeah, the Internet browser opens a window in my left eye. I just think and I’m at the site.” Oh, what do you do when your hard drive fills up? I chuckle and say, “Well I have a 400 GB hard drive in my head and it’s about he size of my fingernail so I download it to my computer at home via Firewire.” “What do you do to protect against viruses?” I respond, “Cybernetic gives me a virus protection which is apart of my service plan. I have to pay them usage fees every month.”



Worst yet, just think of the military technology that we could use from it. Currently we use HUDs in aircraft to control magnitude, altitude, speed, G-force, and the whole sha-bang. Pilots may not need HUDs anymore since technology would grant them control with brainwaves entirely. Of course, if the electrical system fails then he/she would be in deep water. So I don’t know how effective it would be. I can imagine though. Combine that with a GPS integrated fight navigation system, you got yourself a very powerful and intelligent aircraft, not to mention dangerous to the enemy. Remember, computers are stupid. They can’t think for themselves. They need instructions to work. And it’s a good thing, we don’t need the T1000 coming back to end humanity. I’m joking, I really am imagining.



Someone would see this coming and they won’t it. And I don’t think we have the technology to make artificial intelligence happen. I really don’t not in a 100 years. And if any of you believe that computers are going to take over the world, then you have been watching to many science fiction movies.

24 hour mayhem!!!!

I woke up noon Thursday and stayed up for the next 24 hours. This sort of thing isn’t good for me, but I do it anyways. I think I drank 3 Mountain Dew bottles that night. In the morning, my eyes started to sting and I couldn’t walk straight so I figured I should go to bed. Mostly I’ve been staring at the computer screen. I think I know what I want for Christmas now. Tigerdirect.com had a good price range for Athlon 64s based desktop computers. I liked the 1000 dollar ones. The Athlon 64 FX-51s are higher CPUs that have 200+ MHz clock speed than the mainstream version. But they double the price of a new computer. I need a new computer because technology is progressing. The question I ask myself is when should I get a new computer? So I raise 1300 dollars and get the next generation of computer hardware. Should I wait 1 year or 2 years to buy it? It’s an ever going dilemma. 18 months is a lot of time you know. It’s a choice I’m very conformable making. This time I won’t fry my motherboard and CPU by ESDing it.



I already know what I want:



Case with transparency with fancy design. I like blue the most.

Windows XP Pro

AMD Athlon 64 3600 or Athlon 64 4000

Soyo Dragon Socket 768 /w on board sound or a Nvidia nforce3 Motherboard

1024 MB PC2700 of RAM

DVD-RW+ 8/24/12

XFX or PNY Geforce 4 5700 256 MB DRR videocard

120 GB hard drive

100/1000 NIC



What should I do later today? Play with my multimeter? Hook it up to my car battery and see how many Volts pass through it. Fluke makes a tough multimeter so I’m sure it can do that sort of thing easily. Why do you think the whole unit is rubberized including the wire?



Last night I went online with Diablo 2 LoD and I leveled to 64. I was playing the Baal runs when I came across 3 characters that could do Battle Command, Windforce, firewall and some other skills that they could not normally do. They wear a rune called Call of Duty they made by mixing runes in the cube. The Mal rune is easy to find, but players want the most elite items if they give it away. It’s a new formula in the 1.10 patch.



I now have possession of the Region 1 PS2 Bios, SPCH390001.bat. I was really happy to get it for the PSXE2 emulator. I used eMule and I had to re-download off the servers because the servers on eMule change every 10 seconds. After 1 hour of download attempts, I got it. This allows me to play Playstation 2 games on my PC. I can legally have this file because I own a Playstation 2. Why don’t I just play games on Playstation 2? I do all the time though now in the near future I’ll be able to run it both on PS2 and PC. After someone fixes the CD-drive issue.



I talked to Shawn today. He graduated from Renaissance Academy a year before I did. In 11th grade I enjoyed talking to him. I’m not very knowledgeable in cars like he is. I often got confused when we he hyped up about 4 wheel off-road magazines. He’s the kind of person who would love monster truck rallies. One thing I picked up on is he doesn’t care who you are as long as you’re friendly. Everybody else were into girls and MTV music, he not so much. We got a better connection. Shawn does different things now. He is a mechanic and works on his own car. I am trying to get a computer technician degree. I never really was very close though we often talked with each other during lunch every day. To be honest I don’t know him too well. We once went to Home Coming at River Falls in 2002. That was after Brain (we called him Polebarn) left school. He went into the marines and he changed to a more aggressive person. I don’t see him and often I wonder if I should just forget about everyone in High School since we all go our separate ways.



I tried to get into the Navy once though I failed the test and I never re-took it. And here I am getting an entry level degree in network technician. To slow in math and that hurt me on the final test score. Though my reading level was better than most.



Does anyone want to send me a modblog message, and ask me if I need to change my mug shot? It’s already two years old. It was taken by a professional photo guy so that’s why it’s one of the best photos of me.

I got my PSone emulator to work! | Link to PS Bios

Hello. I got some great news and some not so great news. The not so great news is I can’t get my Playstation 2 emulator to work. The emulator I’m using is PCSX2 version 0.6. The EMU says it can’t run commercial PS2 games. It freezes up when I run the game. I am positive that it needs a BIOS. Somewhere you can upload a BIOS from PS2 using some Bios image tool at http://PS2dev.net. Something I’m sure I don’t know how to do. The good news is I got the Playstation emulator to work. I know bleem was was out for quite some time now. And no this is not Bleem! It’s better then Bleem. The one I am trying and to my surprise actually runs is EPSXE 1.6. I had to find the Bios (SCPH1001.dll) it was asking, lucky someone using iMESH had it. I also had to find a GUI. The emulator won’t work without it. I found one off ESPXE’s official webpage. So tonight I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VII on my PC (how exciting). It was a little awkward using the mouse as a joystick. My Noka AirFlow Pro controller is perfect for Playstation games. The still-low resolution graphics became a bit of a disappointment. But hey it’s Playstation on your PC with no fancy TV tuner card. I tried putting the emulator with all the required plugins on my server which made me a little mad. I was going to tell all my friends to download it. Now I’m waiting to get PS2 games running on my computer, which would be very nice.



I would love to give you everything including the emulator itself except all I can give you is the PSone BIOS as written above for now. http://www.pressenter.com/~scampbel/psonebios.zip. 410KB Games I’ve tested are Final Fantasy VII, Gran Tranismo 2 and Legend of Dragoon. They all work very well.



Some other personal news is someone at school deleted my Counter-Strike download. O_o. This was a major disappointment. Mom made a payment to Pay-Pal nearly a week ago to get America’s Army Operations 2.0A sent to us. It hasn’t arrived yet so I’m going to tell Mom tomorrow to check if any money was taken from her account. It’s called Internet Fraud.



I find it difficult to study homework. I admit that the books have good graphics in them, but that’s not what makes it overly easy. I must see reality of it all, if school was easy, 10s of millions of people would have same jobs I want. All it really takes is some determination and the will to read 20 pages every other day. Thus school being difficult enough for me to barely pass some classes. Computers are my livelihood. They control me. I must make them work! I knocked off zoning out in class even though I am tired most days from staying up all night. I don’t know the solution…perhaps it is making good grades. If I made good grades, I’d be real happy. I know what CISCO part 1 is like. It is 3 times as difficult as my current classes. I got a 71% final grade in Cisco at Chippewa Valley in River Falls. At WITC, I need a 72% of better to get a passing grade in CISCO. This is true in all my classes. See I’ll act mature like and say, “What’s in the past is in the past.” Which is the overwhelming truth in this case. I think I’ll play Diablo 2 for the rest of the night so I can go to bed, wake up at 1:30pm, and play catch up on missing assignments.



I wonder how Randy’s been doing this week. He’s my long time friend. Lately he’s been working double shifts at Somerset High School (Ozzfest is held there every year) When he comes over here, there really isn’t much for us to do except play a few rounds of soccer.



Two months until the Pierce County Fair. I haven’t gone there for 3 years since I had nobody to bring. This time though, I can drive myself over there. No sense trying to flatter young girls, I mean it could end up ugly. I mean what happens one of those gals gets me into trouble? Than what? Why meet someone you don’t know when I'll never see them again. Plus, they’ll figure out I have no money so they’ll loose interest in me very quickly. I like blonds with long legs and their bellys showing. It's very attractive to us men ya know. Sometimes we just look and don't know it. There's a word for it, "babe watching" I believe. To get back to why I'm poor. It’s all about the money. The man with the money gets all the beautiful high school babes! Damn right! Seen it myself!



It’s over at Glenwood City. Usually there are a lot of tractors there and a lot of amusement rides and Candy. Same rides come back every year. If you’ve been there in the pass 5 years, there isn’t really any reason to go back…same old rides, arcade, and booths, and games. I’ve been there since I was a kid. Now, I’ve pretty much grown out of all the rides. Though that “pop the balloon, win a price booth” is still there. To have a great time, Bob, Randy and I should drive over too State Fair grounds pass White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Now that we’re out of high school and Boy Scouts it should be much easier to plan a day for it. Haven’t been there for 4 years. That place has some awesome rides during the annual state fair. I am fond of the bungie cord that drops people 100 feet. There is free stuff including custom T-Shirts booths. 93X is going to be there, that’s enough reason to go. The state fair grounds has it’s own auto racing track. It’s not Nascar, but it’s exactly like Nascar in a way. Been there once myself, thought it was pretty exciting. Hundreds more people come to the state fair every year.



I took this quiz i found off another blog. As you can see I have no problems.


What's Your Problem? Find out @ She's Crafty

Easter is over | The Fall looks interesting.

Hmm. I thank all you bloggers for coming to my blog, it helps to make it so my blog will not disappear. First day of school today. Um, Joyce is getting into floppy drives. Ha, it’s really simple. How to install a floppy drive, huh, not very difficult. Earlier before break, our class took a test on everything MS-DOS.



Conventual memory, upper memory. We had to know the different memory modules (DIMMs, RIMMS, SIMMS). They had this question on our test, I got wrong, it really was a stupid question. Can you upgrade SRAM on a motherboard? I said true. She marked it wrong even though it was true, you can replace SRAM like you would DIMMs. I didn’t understand the system requirements for performance on WIN98. She says you need at least 128 MB RAM to run it well. I said 64-MB. While I never had 64MB on Windows 98, my friend did. Though there was a huge boost of performance adding extra 64MB, it didn’t run dirt slow with 64-MBs. In fact on the Windows 98 box, I say to her, it only requires 16 MB minimum and 64-MB for best performance. Take it that 128 makes everything faster and PC owners began to buy these computers late in 1999, like my parents did. It was a hard question for me because I upgraded to 256 MB to that computer just before I gave it away to my Dad. The answer was 128 MB for Windows 98 and 256 MB for Windows 2000/XP. I don’t know any computer that has less then 256 MB of RAM anymore. I don’t get why RAM is a big deal anymore. There are some people out there who still think 256-MB is a lot of memory. Would I blow those people a way when I said that my computer has 8 times the memory as the one I got in 1999. Next year, 1 GB of RAM won’t be a big deal anymore. I am saying this because I believe everyone should know that RAM doubles every 18 months now. It will be the industry standard. Another stupid question is does memory come in pairs of 2 or pairs of 1. Is this a trick question? My computers have 3 or more RAM sticks except for the Dell. She says that most computer come with 1 stick not 2. That sucks. Its crazy I tell you. Of course the correct answer is 1. Why should it even matter? In a year I’m going to upgrade my computer with another 1GB of RAM so it’ll be 2 Gigabytes (2000 Megabytes) for 160 dollars.



As for more interesting life experiences, I went to school. I got home, took a shower, went to bed. Easter went well. I thought it wasn't very good. Not like Christmas at our house last year. I brought PS2 & Xbox to my aunt’s house. The hottest game was easily Soul Caliber 2. My cousin, Josh, loved to play that game. Brian (oldest cousin and brother of David) took his Xbox out and we both exchanged played games. He's games sucked. I mean he thinks Xbox is the coolest thing on Earth. He has 35 Xbox games. In my opinon, Xbox is the worst console you can own right now. No good games or orginal games are scarce. Nothing seemed to play right, not even Halo. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was also a big game over there. Brian didn't like Morrowind. He played THPS 4 and I played THRS 3. It was fun. Brian didn’t have an Xbox LAN cable so we played separately. I talked to the relatives. I don’t think we had much to talk about. I asked Uncle Jim about his house. It turned out to be a less than exciting conversation.



I want to add a game on my most anticipated game list. The game is called The Fall – Last Days of Gaia due out this year. I admit I made a couple mistakes. For example I bought a game (Spellforce) that does not allow me to play with anyone, thus it makes it a horrible multiplayer game. Secondly I had high hopes for Anarchy Online. Not only a disappointment, I was about to get my money back. Until I though eh, when I can afford it, maybe I'll just play it. But if thats the case I'd just subscribe to Final Fantasy XI. Anarchy Online Shadowlands was a great buy though. It included Anarchy Online with two booster packs. It said though online fees required, the huge draw back. It was a serious let down for me. To get back to The Fall. The game looks promising. It’s a role playing game not an action game. Role playing allows your character to communicate with other players. Plus it has a most interesting plot. 25 years after the world got wasted by Carbon Monoxide machine (called terraformers) suppose to create life on Mars, instead got in the hands of religious activists dooming the Earth to a global wasteland. Few human habitats still exist in the year 2062. If you’re interested in the story go to http://www.the-fall.com/e/index.php?menu=story. I think it rocks! I’m interested about the hints of past relics of the early 21st century. I think I saw an F-150 in the screenshots. The game is developed by Silver Style, based in Berlin, Germany.



Other people may disagree, this game could flop! The truth is I never heard of this developer, I just know it has good looking graphics. I am still looking at Half-life 2 and will buy it the day it comes out because it is the sequel to Half-life. Half-life needs no introduction. Counter-Strike is finally dieing out, but never fear, all first person shooter fans have the sequel to look forward too. There are more first person shooters then any other genre out. Isn't that a bit scary fact? The best genre has the most games avaliable.



I'll be back to tell more tall talls of my on going saga in "Adventures in Farmland." Tune in later too look at Chapter 30 something. These chapters aren't really staying on the same topic, but they all star me cause I'm the man! Gotta read a chapter in one of my classes.

Second day of Easter Break...Installed Call of Dut

Today is one of those days with nothing to do. Yet there is plenty to do in Diablo 2. Yes, the graphics are horribly dated, yet the game is ever so strong in popularity. Gameplay is still top-notch in my opinion. No game can surpass it’s level of customization. Actually, this game is actually massive, I’ve haven’t completed hell for a few days, and every thing works. Though some gamers think Diablo 2 is very un balanced. The Amazon is by far the most powerful character and easiest to control. Such as I’m starting to do things in Level 54 that some players can’t do until level 65. If I can wear 880 defense armor with 70% magic find at level 54 than in my opinion I’m well off. It could be a lot worst.



In most games, developers are still finding the Quake 3 engine rules and kicks ass. Plus you can use the standard Quake 3 editor that comes with Quake 3 to develop your games. I wonder if that’s because some game developers were creating Quake 3 mods before they were veterans in game design. It can be highly upgraded with better textures and ID software is making a ton of money leasing it out to smaller developers. Yet we get pretty war Games like BattleField 1942, Metal of Honor Allied Assault, Call of Duty, Star Trek: Elite Force II, Return to Castle Wolfenstine, American Mcgee’s Alice, Deus Ex 2 – Invisible War, and the latest game from Konami, Apocalyptica. I’ll get into detail about this game later in the entry.



Okay, I had a chance to try out Return to Castle Wolfenstine, Metal of Honor Allied Assault and Call of Duty. All three run on the award winning Quake 3 engine, so there isn’t that much difference in graphics. Something I thing everyone reading this should know is the big war game of 2002, Metal of Honor Allied Assault, was developed by former RtCW programmers from ID software who left to create a new game studio called 2015. 2015 first project was Metal of Honor Allied Assault. After MoH: AA was published by EA Games, some of the lead programmers / level designers left 2015 to create the game studio, Infantry Ward, which developed Call of Duty, which got 2003 First Person Shooter of the Year by PC Gamer, Gamespot, IGN.com, Videogames.com.



I’d just played Call of Duty for the first time ever, and I know what to expect. I played MoH AA. Both are fun…that’s all I have to say. You can drive tanks and armored trucks in the game. That feature wasn’t in MoH AA. War games have become so realistic pass few years, you can see believable facial expressions, that in itself is amazing. The explosions are eye catching too. I just love to blow Nazis up. If you ever watched Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, or Full Metal Jacket, you know that not all soldiers just die. In this game you actually hear horrifying noises of dieing soldiers just like in the movies. Soliders that are all cut up. Legs, arms, Torsos missing. Anything gruesome in war is in these games. It will definally capture your anger. So real, infact, that you'll think you were on the battlefield yourself fighting in substantial situations. Biggest achievements are the hand signals in MoH and Call of Duty because it makes war that much more real then in last few years! As well designed as these games are…I find myself coming back to play Diablo 2. I know exactly why. In war games you can’t play to perfection in hundreds of items and 40 skills to master with every character. You can’t do that in first person shooters! The objective is the same, kill or be killed. And most noticeable, it’s very playable over a modem unlike 3D War games.



The future of PC Gaming



The future is appond us. We will see more game developers leasing game engines than ever before. I don’t care who is leasing the game engine as long as the graphics are state-of-the-art and eye popping. id software, Valve Software, and Epic Games are the biggest candidates. id software is coming out with the Doom 3 Engine, next generation engine that surpasses Epic Game’s UT 2.5 engine. Valve Software is coming out with the new ‘source’ engine. All three lease their source code to other developers, every ones happy as a result. The gamer is happy because he gets the best graphics for his money. The developer is happy because they don’t have to start from scratch which might have bankrupted them. And the game engine’s creator is happy because it makes money on older technology to fund newer game engines. I know the first developer using the Doom 3 engine is making Vampire: The Masquerade 2. Interesting fact is America’s Army uses UT 0.8 engine and that game is a free download. I know one true similarity in all these games. They all have the best frame rates and can carry ungodly amount of polygons.



Games I have my eyes on….



The first game I have my eyes on is The Matrix Online. It will take place after Matrix Revolutions will be a world when the Matrix still exists. The people in the Matrix now know they are in a computerized world though it will not seem that way since in the Matrix everything is 20xx when in fact the year is closer to 2450. The computers are human. The guardians of the Matrix are the Smiths. Everyone in the game has a choice of either taking the “green pill” or “red pill”.



Another game I have my eye on is Lord of the Rings Online. This places Middle Earth in a game world. The graphics are suppose to be state-of-the-art. I know that it’ll be a MMORPG. That’s it.



Another game I’m interested in is Apocalptica. This game looks fantastic, very much like Unreal Tournament 2003 but it uses Quake 3 technology. What’s God being called Neo-Satan for? Those Brits who developed this game forget that American’s aren’t into this new-age hippy stuff. I’m sure not. I’m not exactly from hick-ville, not I’m not into cowboys either. I’m closer to a cowboy nurd, except I hate being called nurdy. Yeah, us Americas are different from other parts of the world (not the fringe against immigrants and their customs) but American’s are into Country and NFL! The people I meet greet people by saying Howdy (I say Howdy to people all the time, and I’m not from Texas) It’s a American custom. Oh yeah, we call friends ‘partners’. Such as, “My partner and I are going to high tall out of here and go to the movies!” We call people who are scared ‘yellow’ or ‘cowards’ in Wisconsin.

Concluding our Lan party!

Microsoft’s next operating system wont be available for two more years. Thankfully, there has been screenshots updated frequently from Google’s Image Search Engine. I call it Microsoft Windows XP 2, but it looks like it’s going to be called Longhorn. Windows XP’s version is 5.1.2600. On the screenshot you'll notice there is a build number that barely surpassed 4000. We already know that Longhorn will look and run a like WinXP. This new build minimizes holes in Windows to make it harder for hackers to get into your OS. Good, less crashes, hopefully! We might want to update soon after, because Microsoft is going to stop support for WinXP in 2008. WinXP will then be 7 years old.





Microsoft next generation Windows (Longhorn) | Release date: TBA 2006



I use Windows as do many other people and I made a list on what I like see changed.



• I want to see Windows not crash or lag as much as it does when an application crashes

• Internet Explorer should have a popup blocker of it’s own

• Internet Explorer should have tabs like Mozilla does

• Microsoft should put in a powerful firewall and antivirus for critical updates.

• Make it easier to connect to networks.

• Tell me when the network card isn’t working by giving me popup, “your network card is not working”

• Add spellchecker to Wordpad

• Add support drivers for Nvidia and ATI videocards

• Send free service pack cds to subscribers. And also pay for shipping.

• Automatically add MS Tweak UI 2.0 to next Windows so users can make better use to virtual memory.

• Market OS with free Microsoft Game Studios videogame in same package for free. Like Halo, Age of Empires, Dungeon Siege

• Add support for Direct X 10.0!!!!

• Make Windows Media Player a lot like Winamp 5.0. Though it can be skinnable, it doesn’t have an equalizer on it, or a very good playlist window.

• Add ACE, RAR, GZIP capability with Windows Zip Archiver

• Make the desktop skinnable so you can change the header, the taskbar, the tool bar, the title bar so background will have gif like graphics.

• Make Windows backwards compatible with Linux OS.

• Go entirely 32 MB instead of being backwards compatible with 16-bit applications. And we already know Longhorn with also be 64-bit ready.

• Add DIVX, VOB, MPEG 2 and 4 codec to Windows Media Player when installed.

• Add bigger window to video-chat size with MSN messenger

• Add Realplayer and Quicktime to OS without having to download it.

• Add voice recognition to Wordpad without having to pay for expensive alternative.



(Xeon 1.0 can be downloaded at emulator-zone.com and the required XISO 1.5 application can be downloaded at Yursoft.cjb.net. Yes man, you must extract the whole game to your harddrive.)



• Microsoft should develop a working Xbox emulator for Windows Longhorn with joystick support.

• Add cut down version of Frontpage with OS

• Add Voice-over-IP feature so I don’t have to pay long distance charges when calling somebody!

• Bring back the Windows 98 scheduler

• Bring back drive defragmenter

• Have more options to clear hard drive from unneeded data. Such as registry cleaner, hard drive cleaner, option to delete programs your not using in that option under My Computer instead of having to go to Control Panel.



Oh yeah I had Bob over, I never had a friend over for weeks. Very lonely at home these past weeks. We played Unreal Tournament 2004. I kicked arse in that game. Good way to go frag and have good time. I set the bot difficulty to average so he could “get use” to game. After that, we played Sonic Pinball on Gamecube, it was entertaining though I sucked at it, and Winning Eleven 6 for Playstation 2. Bob won, Yugoslavia 1, USA 0. Then we went old school and took turns playing the oldie but classic Megaman 2 for NES. We beat Metal Man, and Flash Man, then we got tired of that. Because bob was kicking my butt when it was his turn so we came up with the idea off sticking Super Mario Bros. 3 in the system. Bob and I got to the part on the ship with the missiles. It was entertaining. Then we played Diablo. Bob had to set the IPX network setting because I don’t know. When we were ready to die, I used Bobafett’s Trainer and we both hacked our characters. It’s didn’t look like we were going to reach the end anyhow. Later that night, I just played 2 hours of Diablo 2. I made it too hell difficulty and rushed to Act 4 and my Bowazon is still at level 47. She’s under powered at the moment though I have a feeling that I can kick some minon butt in next few playing days. I think she’ll be better then average at level 65 or so. I have some 430 defense armor I wearing. And I have to wait 2 levels before I can wear some magic boots with 77+ defense.



And I got mad when the America’s Army Operations download got corrupted when downloading it to my external harddrive at school. So I’m getting a CD sent to me. This will be the first time I get a tactical game to play. Once you play one of these games, they’re all the same. Plus they’re harder then most games. Games are suppose to be fun, but not really difficult for the casual gamer, I think. I don’t know, it depends on the game. Some gamers play at the hardest setting until they can eventually beat the game. Some say that this sharpens playing skills, but I can not stand being killed all the time. I play games at normal setting.



That’s about as much I can think of before my brain gets tired! I have to have some brain power left so I can hit the books (homework), and then have just enough to function in Diablo 2. Back in a few days to type some more!!!

Direct Way a possiblity

Hi everyone, it is I, the great writer of Modblog. Bahahahahah! If I get Direct-way connection, I will burn the episodes / movies such as Family Guy, maybe some anime to DVDR. That is if my parents can afford it. We live out in the country so DSL and cable isn't avaliable, and will never be avaliable to us.



Don't you hate getting bandwidth used up by ads? Maybe it's because a Trojan Horse got inside your PC? To be exact the JS Seeker Trojan Horse. I got attacked yesterday. To prevent this you need to delete updater12.js in your windows directory, it's infected! You too can do this easily by going into DOS and typing in "del /f /p updater12.js" at the underscore. If you're don't have the virus, dos should say that updater12.js was not found. If it gives you bs saying the file was found, but couldn't be accessed, type attrib +r +a +s + h updater12.js than del /f updater12.js.



I have a favorite software / worst software survey at this link [ http://www.geocities...orstprogramlist.html ] Remember to hold down SHIFT to open a new window. It explains my most used programs, and the worst programs I downloaded! I mean performance effecting software.



I also updated my Squaresoft Webpage [http://www.geocities...01/square_index.html] Added a Final Fantasy X-2 review, added character bios to Final Fantasy 10, posted a exclusive desktop wallpaper made by me, and wrote a History of Squaresoft page under the Information tab.



I love my new pc, it is very fast. Multi-tasking is not a issue no more. I love it! Dad didn't put in a DVD RW in my Dell so I'm going to get one any ways. Than that way I'll have two DVDRWs for double the cd burning. It's good because than I use the DVD/CDRW with my other Compaq. This makes me want software called DVD Copy X. It's illegal to have now, it was just banned from all .com stores. The movies that you extract to your harddrive take up a whopping 8 Gigabytes! It's better to download compressed video off the Internet. It annoys me to reinstall the operating system when the harddisk gets 90% full. I am a expert at reinstalling Windows, really I am. I know everything there is to know about installing Windows. I generally load stuff as I need it, not all at once.



Till next time Sahara, adios readers!

Bob's coming tomorrow for LAN party

I hate to make this any longer, but I found out something very funny if I could pull it off. See at home, I have this very large traveling suitcase. I saw this 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 at school. Maybe I could take it home in the case w/o being seen? But that would be unethical…so I might as well forget it.



I saw at tigerdirect, I can get a Athlon 64 with motherboard for 350 dollars. The motherboard already runs on the same DDR RAM I already own. Where am I going to get 300 dollars though? From my parents? Possibility. Am I going to wait until Christmas to get an Athlon 64 PC @ 4.2 GHz. I may have to buy another case that’ll fit everything. If it works I’ll be so happy!



I am going to be serious now. Yesterday night was quite interesting. About 4 hours ago I went to town to download Counter-Strike and America’s Army. My ISP is so slow that it makes me ill. In 2004, people take advantage of their high speed Internet and I have every right to do what their doing. I drove slow on my way to Dad’s office. He has is office key on this key chain he keeps in the Grand Cherokee. I just barrowed it. So I got to his office. I took my Compaq with me since he’s business computers have company files that I don’t want to get deleted by a hacker. I hook up the Compaq and I try to connect. I can’t connect though his T1 line. So I hook up his company computer. I get connected to AAcommunity.com and I find the 658 MB installer off a minor link. He’s T1 line only goes 12 KB. I thought it would be 10 times that much. The file would take 12 hours to download. So I go home. There ends the idea of secretly going to my dad’s work to download files. On my way home about 10 minutes to midnight, I was followed by this car with his brights on. O_o So I look in the mirror and see that he’s riding my butt. I swerve to the left, regain control though I was driving in the middle of the road most of the time and slowly. There is deer out. Truth was he was driving so close, I kept looking at him in the mirror. He must think I was a drunk driving home. Some reason he lived on my street too. Freaky thing about it is I haven’t seen anyone on my street for nearly 4 years! Not kidding. After I hyper ventilated one day and since had experienced 6 hyper ventilations from 1999 – 2002 in a public environment. I’m much better now, I can control my hyper ventilations when I’m mad, though I find my self a bit excited most of the time. Does that mean I’m doing okay? Course it does. Truth is I don’t care if I never see anyone again on my street or in my class. To me, he’s and all the other 20 year olds are old acquaintances. And I’ve been pushed/forced to make new friends along the way. Yeh I know it sucks. I know sucks is sometimes an understatement. He knows I’m right about not disturbing anyone out in the country I use to know. He probably knows I am rarely seen by anyone.



Today, I am prepared for tomorrow’s LAN party. I got Diablo 2 LOD, Spellforce, Dungeon Siege, Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 3, and I might try Vampire Masquerades just because I’m on an installing frenzy tonight!



Here are some secrets I found out. Are you listening?



• Spellforce Order of Dawn can be booted on several computers with one cd. After you start the game, you can eject the cd. If you’re having problems with game not running, it’s because you have anti-analyzing on, and that’s bad. I first try the game in Software acceleration first. Believe it or not, 2 players LAN games wont work cause their needs to be more then 2 players to play. The 1.11 patch makes the game much more user friendly fixes lag and crash bugs too. Some guy on a messenger board says it has the Securom 4.88.00.0015.



o He wrote, “Start Alcohol and start the "Image Making Wizard", from the Data type dropdown select "Securom NEW (4.x/5.x) and read an image of the disc. Select a slow speed for the DPM measurement.

Once it has finished start the "Image Writing Wizard" and select your disc image and click Next, Select "Securom New (4.x/5.x)" from the dropdown again and click Start.



o To turn on the RMPS emulation start Alcohol120 and click Emulation on the left, in the dialog that opens put a check in the box beside RMPS emulation and click OK.”



o More information, http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread/t-85772.html



• UT2004, UT2003 work the same way as Spellforce. Take the original uncopied CD and boot it when you start UT200x and then you can eject after game is running. You can do this to as many computers as you want. UT2004 uses securom 5.0 an burning option in Alcohol 120%. Try burning UT2004 at 1x to ensure best results.



• Knights of the Old Republic can be installed on several computers and booted off one cd.



• Dungeon Siege can be copied with Alcohol 120% though you may want to copy your friends game since LAN games detect your game’s ID so you can’t play it twice.



• Diablo 2 can not be copied cause it has way to many errors. Though you can install Diablo 2 on several computers then make sure you have several copies of LOD handy. I have both 1.09d and 1.10. 1.10 is so fun and challenging that I will never go back to 1.09d. Maybe you can find a list off the Internet on how to copy LOD disc with Alcohol 120%.



• Unreal Tournament can run on your hard drive in multiplayer without CD. It can also be copied with Alcohol 120%



• Most games can be copied though remember to keep the original factory date or you're screwed. The game

detects this when it’s in your drive. Alcohol 120%, Nero 5x or CloneCD will not do this automatically. You must go into Options and set this yourself.



• Clonny XXL will tell you what copy protection your game has.



• Afterdawn.com is a great reference site for these kind of things.



This concludes my small FAQ on some games running in LAN and the ability to make backups of them.



On another note, yesterday I went to school and started a download on America’s Army: Operations 2.0A. No one was there except for a pesky janitor, and lucky I found a room open. AA downloaded at 25 KB/sec which is good enough for me. I am hoping that someone doesn’t ask about the minimized download screen on Monday. I want to own Ghost Recon for PC, though I am still having fun with the games I have. To ensure no one deletes it before I can upload it, I’m going back on Sunday. I had to leave because the janitor was rushing me. O_o All I have to do is take my MP3 player and upload it to that. I was also planning to download Counter-Strike 1.5, so what if you can buy it in stores for 20 dollars. I am unsure about it because I don’t play Half-life much. But then why does this mod attract so many gamers. It's cool, I know that part. I find it more fun buying games though. You get what you pay for the most part in my opinion. I might download it Sunday so I can get it Monday. I hear this rumor that Counter-Strike 2 v1.0 is a game option in Half-life 2. The mod team is working closely with Valve Software on this. Hmmm, goodie!



I’m Going to play Dungeon Siege now and Diablo 2 now. DS requires a lot of bandwidth so it makes it impossible to play over modem. I updated my webpage so it looks pretty slick now, more so than before. For all your viewers I’ll add whats above to this link http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/gamecopy.html for easy reference. Remember it’s just as simple to go to Afterdawn.com and find a post that will tell you what decoder to use.