Randy Came Over!!!

Yesterday and today I posted a couple posts in Ian's Smashing Good Software Blog. I also updated my videogame post to version 1.18 SP1. Added those games I bought in the past 2 weeks. Yes, I added a few games too it including Splinter Cell and I have no idea why I missed that one. My friend Randy came over with his girlfriend. I wanted to show him my MP3 collection than Halo 2. He refused the play “Cooperation Mode” in single player so we played slayer. I think he got me twice, but I killed him a lot more. We didn’t play soccer this time around. I showed him Guilty Gear X2 Reloaded and Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball. He thought that the Japanese chicks in Guilty Gear X were too dumb. It’s kind of like an animated cartoon, and one character had a big thing with teeth come out of her butt – yeah, just too prove to you how strange this game is. Then he thought that Dead of Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball was all graphics. In his opinion, the graphics were really good, but the game played average. The first thing too do is hit the A button a lot than I hit the A button again to serve the ball only pressing the Y button to spike the ball. I kept winning. Afterwards, I played Metal Gear Solid 3, and I do play as Naked Snake (same guy who plays Solid Snake) at the beginning of the game. One time I fell of the ledge, the other time I was shooting an alligator and drowned in the quick sand. I spent most of my time looking for the damn backpack of Snakes so I went to the ledge to backtrack which is why I fell off! At the beginning, the game has live video of the code war and Cuban Missile Crisis. Then I opened Tony Hawk Pro Skater Underground. It played good I kept beating Randy in tricks and, no – I wasn’t very good at getting them. The best way was staying around the ramps and pressing the X button a lot of times, and landing properly. I landed most of the time. I wasn’t trying too pull off huge stunts all the time. Getting to 100,000 points took 25 minutes. I think Tony Hawk Pro Skater Underground had improved graphics over Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. The game looked great for an Xbox game.







Today, I was looking at the message boards (mostly on a site I call Catharton Electrica) because that’s what I like to do on Sundays plus drinking Mountain Dew. I found out that PS3’s “Cell” chip might be over 4 GHz. It’ll do multi-threading….what is that? We do not have any processors on the market over 3.4 GHz right now. Certainly PS3 will do the job that will last Sony for 5 or 6 years.PS2 certainly isn’t going away very fast, and people still buy them regularly. It is interesting that people still buy technically outdated hardware which explains people do not care if they have extremely high resolution graphics like what high-end PCs can do. Games are the most important aspect of buying a console. I am sure if you type in “Playstation 3” into this blog’s search bar that you’ll get some entries on it.



Later - around 2PM - I went too Toyriffic to try to resurface Guilty Gear X because by PS2 wouldn’t take it. I was waiting for the disc to be resurfaced for 20 minutes there. There was only one guy operating the whole store, and there was a line of people wanting to pay for their games. What’s with Dungeon and Dragon cards these days? I am not into that sort of thing. Is it somehow cool? Well, anyway, the store operator said that I shall get a refund if the disc still didn’t work due to a laser burning the disc all the way through. I got home to play it, and the disc didn’t want to play. Sacrilege! How can it come too this? So I felt bad so I played Guilty Gear X3: Isuka when I got home. Isuka plays a lot like X2: Reloaded on Xbox. You can’t really tell a difference in graphics. The PS2 controller has more buttons than the Xbox controller S therefore the set up gives you more options. I’ll keep this short in saying this is really weird. An IGN reviewer said there was crazy cheese rock in this game. I know what Cheese rock sounds like. I look at Gamestop.com to see if there are any copies at the store, and I would have to travel 42 miles just to get a new used copy in West St. Paul, Minnesota. I thought well I could get lost in West St. Paul. It’s funny though, that Game Stop in the city has 4 copies of this particular game, but the other Game Stops have none!



I found some great updates audio codec I use:



LAME 3.97 beta 4



We all know that MP3 has taken over the web and is by far the most popular Audio codec..... Damn iPods! It's not the best loosyness audio codec too use in terms of quality, but the more recent LAMEs have taken commercial quality audio to new levels. A 128 kbps MP3 encoded in LAME 3.96 or LAME 3.97 sounds as good as a newer WMA codec and OGG codec. LAME doesn't sound that great at low bit rates (16, 24, 32 kbps) . I leave that up too OGG and WMA. Still it's one of the best MP3 codec.



For use with CDEX

CDEX 3.51 Front End

Other LAME libraries (RAREWARE.ORG)



OGG Vorbis 1.1



Personally, I am using this codec for my personal audio files. It's not half bad and it is as compressed as any MP3. Yes, that's 990KB per Minute at 128 kbps. Only 460KB at 64kbps. It's a great codec, don't get me wrong. It's fastest with CDex. Surprisingly a voice conversation sounds as good at 32kbps as at 128 kbps. I shall not find any difference. That's progress for yeah. No worries about this codec being illegal - it's free and legal. Too bad hardware based MP3 players do not support OGG. If you had a audio test between this and LAME, Vorbis would win only by a small margin. With the soundcards in PCs today - you can hardly tell the difference anymore because the digital enhancement is so good.



For use with CDEX

CDEX 3.51 Front End

Other OGG Vorbis libraries (RAREWARE.ORG)



Hear my files at Ian's Videogame audio reviews



MPEG 4 AAC Audio



I've tested this codec and MPEG 4 files actually end with ACC instead of MP4 like I thought. It's compression is better than MP3 by a small margin. Your probably getting 100KB better with every minute of 128 kbps compressed audio. It is better. Okay how does it sound? It sounds okay - same as MP3. AAC audio isn't updated by Psytel any longer so MP3 surpassed ACC in quality a bit. Yes, the compression is better....only a little bit though.



Psytel AAC encoder 2.15 and Fast AAC encoder

CDEX 3.51 Front End

Other MPEG 4 AAC libraries (RAREWARE.ORG)



MUSE PACK 1.15 (NEAR CD Quality CODEC)



Muse pack is another LOSSYNESS (perfect sound) codec. This one is open source. In short a 140 kbps audio file compressed in MPC is as compressed as a 128 kbps MP3.

Winamp and Quintessential Player support both. This is an open source answer to MPEG 4 ACC audio. I don't suppose it's an issue with broadband users. Another thing is the file must be a WAV to for this too work, but that's okay since CDEX can make wav files for you.



MUSE CODEC (*.MPC)

MPC plugin for Winamp, QCD Add to Winamp plugin directory

jDownload CDEX Front End



New Gaming Monster specs I want:



• Windows XP PRO

• Asus A8V Deluxe Via Socket 939 ATX Motherboard and AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Processor

• Plaster Plextor PX-712 / 12x4x16x DVD+RW / 8x4x16x DVD-RW / 48x24x48x CD-RW /

• Ultra 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory

• Trendware 56k (V.92) Internal PC

• Hitachi / 160GB / 7200 / 2MB / ATA-100 / EIDE Hard Drive

• I Data/Fax/voice Modem

• Connect3D Radeon 9200se / 128MB DDR / AGP / VGA / TV Out / Video Card

• Diablo ATX Mid-Tower Case with 450Watt Power Supply, Front Neon Lights, Front USB and Audio Ports



Final Price 950 Dollars with rebates



Low cost Gaming Machine version 2:



• Plaster Plextor PX-712 / 12x4x16x DVD+RW / 8x4x16x DVD-RW / 48x24x48x CD-RW /

• Ultra 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory

• Trendware 56k (V.92) Internal PC

• Asus K8V Deluxe Socket 754 ATX Motherboard and AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Processor

• Chaintech GeForce FX 5200 / 256MB DDR / AGP 8X / VGA / DVI / TV Out / Video Card

• Hitachi / 120GB / 7200 / 2MB / ATA-100 / EIDE Hard Drive



Final Price 650 dollars with rebates (if it goes any cheaper the hardware will be really cheap)