Saturday, July 10, 2004

Updated Half-life 2 info | Chankast demo links

Hi, Welcome back again to my fantastic site. Today’s topic is updates on Half-life 2, the best first person shooter for the next 2 years! At least that’s what I think. More on the story, you play Gordon Freeman in the year 2025. Unlike Half-life, where the aliens were contained in Black Mesa, they are now unleashed lurking throughout the Earth, depleting all it’s resources. The resistance picks up, of course, is when human kind must figure out how to get rid of the aliens. Even with the aliens gone, the Earth resources are very scarce. It was Gordon’s fault in the first place! Players will get to relive the first Half-life in Half-life 2. Two games in one! That’s good for me, I haven’t played Half-Life in years.



Confirmed Minimum Required Specs for Half-life 2



700 MHz Pentium 3

128 MB of RAM

32 MB Nvidia Geforce 3 or ATI Radeon 4000

3.5 GB of hard drive space

Media format - DVD or CD-ROM



The paragraph I promised everyone here in my last blog entry is finally up. Theoretically all these demos / emulators can run on Chankast 0.25. Chankast is the only Dreamcast emulator capable of running commercial games (through ISO files). You don’t need any programs to put on CD; you just need the ISO image. Then make the ISO image runnable by using DAMEON TOOLs (freeware) or Alcohol 120% (shareware). Be warned, the Chankast .25 requires to user to have Direct X 9.0 graphics accelerator installed. This can be installed by installing newer computer games that came out between mid 2003 to present. Or you can go to Microsoft’s own webpage, and download Direct X 9.0b graphics accelerator http://www.microsoft...directx/default.aspx. I hear that Direct X 9.0c will be out very soon like a month or so. What ever you do - stay away from the DX 9.0c beta, I hear it’s got some of those crash bugs lurking about. I have personal experience on this. Games today will not let you downgrade if there is a higher version. Microsoft had one thing right, for games like Diablo, they let you install Direct X 5.0 too because Diablo is so old, it won’t recognize Direct X 7, 8, 9 as graphics accelerators. Direct X 5.0 is only 5 MB uncompressed anyways.



Software Links



http://dev.dcemulation.com/

http://www.dcemulation.com/



As for Gamecube, I haven’t found any Dolwin demos. Sorry. I’ll keep searching on my free time. Remember, I want to say I emulated a Gamecube demo too.



Anyways, I had nothing to do so I emulated one of my all time favorite N64 games, Extreme G on Project 64K. I like Extreme G because the bikes go fast speeds on a futuristic track. The game looked above average on N64 in 1997. There is techno in the game, sort of like an enhanced MIDI. I hear the XGRA dance tracks are crazy. I don’t know, but since I’m a fan of techno, I want to hear what a brilliant dance remix sounds like? Sort of like a Beethoven trance remix. I want to play that game and own all the Extreme G games. I can’t find this game at Wal-Mart or Target. I have to go into Woodbury, MN to get it. I’m sure Game Stop will have a used copy. I haven’t been there for 5 months at least. I thinking I’m getting the Xbox version because that version is the most detailed of all the XGRAs. I remember being really good at the first Extreme G. The sequel was released on N64 as well as Playstation. XG2 wasn’t as good as the original, but it did have CD quality tracks, the N64 had midi. The 3rd game was released on all the consoles, and was better than Extreme G in game play and sound. XGRA is the forth game, and I really want this game. Extreme G had potential, and it clearly stated that in Extreme G 3 – that is if you’re a fan of motorcycle racing at 500 MPH.



Right now I have a new Play list and this one is Techno



1.) DJ Micro – BT – Godspeed

2.) DJ Liquid – Never Surrender

3.) DJ Liquid – The Next Millennium

4.) DJ Liquid – Carte Blanche

5.) ministry of sound - sandstorm (original mix)

6.) Paul van Dyk – For an Angel

7.) ATB vs Seb Fontaine - universal nation

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

9.) DJ Sasha & John Digweed - Enjoy The Silence

10.) Sonorous - Protonic (Ronki Speed Mix)



I found free Anti-virus software on the Internet. As most of you know the big players in Antivirus are McAffee and Norton. However, they make you pay for their software. So the program I’m using is AntiVir 6.26. It already found the Click Reaper virus on my computer! Wow and I haven’t partitioned that long ago! Thanks AntiVir for your free Antivirus. There is a catch though. To update, you’ll have to re-download the 5.5 MB program each time. There is also another catch. Antivirus program’s like these are the ones you have to trust. Antivir is freeware and with no guarantees. And I can still, however unlikely, have viruses on my computer. I have the latest version of Antivir, so more than likely my computer is virus free!



I played my flute yesterday, and than again today - twice. Flute is a very interesting instrument. I use to play at an intermediate level, now my fingers get tangled on the keys. I can play a couple Bach songs. I started when I was in 3rd grade. I can play almost all notes on the flute. There are two notes I can’t play on a graduated flute. The beginner flute has 2 less keys. I play jazz music sheets. Jazz is cooler than classical. Although I don’t hate playing classical. In flute, you’ll have to blow in it 3 different ways. It seems like when I play a high F note, I need to blow in the flute a 4th way which some people can’t do until their 3rd year, because the 3rd highest blowing doesn’t work well enough. I got taught by Jenny Starr who gave me private lessons. I played in band, and in homecoming band. When I drink water I can make a high F or high G, soda pop doesn’t mix well with flute playing…because it dries my mouth up. I decided to stop playing for 3 years since I had ‘more important things to do’ in computers. If I remember correctly, playing the flute stole time away from my Diablo 2 time. That was my choice. Was it the right choice? I don’t know.



Anyways, I have been playing Mario Kart Double Dash. I played Mario Kart 64 on my computer via Project 64K with a pc controller. 50cc is easy. 100cc is sort of difficult, but I can make do. That was cool. Mario Kart use to be my all time favorite N64 game. Now that I don’t play it anymore except through Project 64K. My cousin and I played Mario Kart 64 all the time. Two thumbs up! David hated playing it after a while, but he would because I wanted him to play it. For a short time we played Extreme G. He was at my house. Then we played Gamecube in late 2001.



I went to bed for a couple hours since I had nothing to do after I played the flute the first time around. Blowing makes me tired! This was around 8:30 PM. I played some simple Star Wars sheets to refresh. Then I played some jazz (Fugace, Javanaise, etc) Javaanise is a good sheet song. I have the MP3 of a flute playing Fugace and this song so I know exactly what the melody is. The song is easy although there are Fs in there somewhere. I sometimes forgot that high F# (sharp) is also high E b (flat). The high F# in Star Wars didn’t sound right so I tried high E# although it was a high F#. Flutes play melody, not the Flats which bass instruments play. I wanted to quit right there, but I kept playing anyways.



I watched the Olympic Games trials. I enjoyed it. These are the fastest runners in the USA so that’s pretty fast. The runners that ran the 100 meter dash are all black. I want to know why there aren’t any white runners good enough for it? I think the games are in Athens this year. First time the Olympic Games are going to be in high definition. We don’t have a HDTV because we can’t afford it. Best Buy sells some for fewer than 1000 dollars, although my parents would like to see one priced at $800.



Tomorrow I may be seeing Bob again. We are long time friends. Bob hasn’t exactly been seeing me all the time. He might come over for a couple hours. I should install Unreal Tournament 2004 so we can play tomorrow. So I can kick his ass in it. I have some maps on CD so I can add them if I please. Usually in these games I’ll set the skill level to Skilled. Not if any chance I can’t do skilled then I will have to set the level down to experienced. I have set the level to Godlike, but the bots kill me every 10 seconds. It’s doesn’t go well this way. Godlike gets me too aggravated. Last time we played UT2004, Bob actually beat me in one game. So his skill level isn’t at the lowest (he’s quite capable of killing me). He can be a mean lean killing machine too. I think I’ll install Call of Duty too since that’s a good FPS to play on. Call of Duty seems to be very accurate to the actual war. I don’t know. I just play the game. I don’t know anything about what happened in WWII except for a few major battles. Call of Duty is where I crouch to the ground and aim straight with my sniper to shoot crout or mow down some enemies with my machine gun. Crouts are smart. They can hear your footsteps! O_o. Sniping is so cool. Only bad thing is if someone sees you, you can’t turn around and change your weapon with the mouse wheel fast enough. But that’s okay – it’s only a game.



Hmm, I haven’t updated my personal website in 2 weeks. Last time I think I only added an updated Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xenon news page to “Ian’s 512-bit Generation News Page”. I checked the side bar and some links are broken. I will need to fix those. My site is still functional.



This is Ian Signing Off

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