Journals

Valve has officially canceled Half-Life 2: The Black Box for the PC, according to a report from IGN. Originally scheduled to ship alongside the more complete Orange Box at a reduced price, it would have contained Half-Life 2 Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The company will now focus on a single SKU for the PC when it ships this fall.

Of course, those products will also be available via the company's Steam platform, meaning users won't need to buy any boxed product at all.

However, if you're attached to holding a physical product, Doug Lombardi of Valve told IGN's PC group that:

Quote:Those who purchase the PC version of The Orange Box will get three separate Steam product codes: One for the three new games, one for HL2, and one for Episode One. This way a PC Orange Box owner can give away their Half-Life 2 or Episode One unused Steam product codes if they don't need a copy of those games.

Lombardi didn't provide explanation for the decision, but I'm going to chalk it up to avoiding customer confusion. Shipping and marketing a single product across three platforms is going to make this much easier for the general public to wrap their noodles 'round. Michael McWhertor

http://halflife2.filefront.com/news/Valve_doesnt_care_about_black_boxes_HalfLife_2_Black_Box_Cancelled;33494

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5X_TdczLVg&mode=related&search=

HAHA I love seeing Scientists exploding in gibs but this is unique

Oh and I solved the CSS issue no thanks to you!

Grr I'm having trouble with image positioning in CSS. In Firefox it looks fine but IE it is way off position...Any help? :<

Yes! Finally finished my Coursework for this year All that's left is coursework and then I'm free for the Summer!

Finally finished my Graphics Technology Coursework! Hope my teachers likes it! Oh and thanks Rimrook for the present.

What's happening in Habboi's World? Not much.

I'm still at school with a few weeks left before the exams and then hopefully off to Uni to study Games Design at East London Docklands.

So at the moment I'm doing coursework still which is a little worrying since we were supposed to be finished about a month or two ago :S

So I'm just trying to finish that so I can have some time to revise.

I haven't mapped in quite a while. The last time I opened Hammer was to check Kasperg's free VMF pack which I might add is very nice. The train map should be finished. All it'd need is a scrolling skybox and a track with a city in the distance and voila.

I said I was getting a new PC well I should be getting a new Dell around summer or later once I have enough money. I already got ?1000 from my birthday so roughly half-way there. I was wondering but is it worth getting a physics card and would I really use Quad Core for anything? I mean I thought I could use it to map in Hammer, compile and then just maximise HL2 and test in seconds almost like the new editors that lets you preview your map in-editor.

I'd appreciate feedback on whether I should get a physics card and Quad Core.

As for my portfolio website I think I mentioned I was making a new one ages ago. The truth is I finished it a while ago to some extent and I bet some of you have seen it because I didn't exactly hide it. Anyway all I have to do to it is upload more media, add a open in new window box design for more info and fix some spelling mistakes.

Over Summer I'll be working on my game developing skills for the big day at Uni. So I'll be working on de_goffs and perhaps I'll work on my drawing, modelling and texturing skills. I'd love to make an SP mod for Source but my skills need fixing before I attempt that. Finishing one map is hard enough work as it is.

Also I'll be free a lot of the time then so I'll be getting a few games to play with friends. Left 4 Dead for instance and C&C3 etc.

Anyway thanks for reading.

By the way I thought I'd remind you all it is my Birthday tommorow and I don't think I'll be on the PC since my family are coming over.

http://www.tv-links.co.uk/show.do/2/911

Great Cartoon. Especially the Waffle Episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgBuIJsjpuM&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fweb%2Et%2Donline%2Ehu%2Farchee83%2Fsumotori%2F

Hahaha that has got to be the funniest thing I have ever seen.

Dial-Up users Beware! Lots of .Gif's Don't say I didn't warn you.What pray tell is this? Well I'm just reminding myself how much I loved the ZOE series. ZOE 3 is supposedly beeing made and there will be a trailer in the TGS show.

I really do hope there is online play. The fact that they pushed the PS2 to the limit with a MGS style story and fast paced action explosive mech game is really impressive.

If they had a million mech battle on the old PS2 imagine the size on a PS3 or better yet the PC.

Well my PC is back to normal...At least good enough to last until I finish my A Levels and then I'm going to get a sexy new machine.

Then I can play games without worrying about lag HL2:Ep2 should be a blast to record once I get the new machine. I was thinking of getting the Dell XPS 710 with Duel Core. (Is it worth me getting Quad core?) with Duel GFX and Physics card.

Anyway apart from that this Easter isn't going so well...I really need to finish my work and time's a flyin.

Going paintball next Thursday which should be fun cause they got Tanks down there ^_^ Oh and I'll be 18 then so yeah wish me a Happy Cyber Birthday.

Enjoy your Easter.

Urgh before you read this I am about to rant about Microsoft so if you're not interested then leave.

It seems their recent update has caused a few unlucky people problems regarding SVCHOST.exe. I was able to fix it using this fix:

http://swigartconsulting.blogs.com/tech_blender/2006/07/windows_update_.html#c23921593

But my PC started freezing and I believe a driver update somehow fixed it...Or at least I believe has fixed it.

Now this blog seems to think the update messed up System Restore:

http://daggle.com/061016-142021.html

Now I tried going back and it said it couldn't so that shows you something...

Anyway after spending 4 days updating SP2 and re-installing programs and updates I think I have fixed my PC to a functioning state. It seems my Mcafee is acting up also and I'm not the only one so I am waiting for an answer here:

http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=110922

Wish me luck >_> Thanks MS for updating my PC to Hell.

Edit Oh and feel free to laugh at me for using Dell + Mcafee...(They're good enough for me.)

Edit 2

http://www.dulux.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ColoursLandingView?storeId=10752&catalogId=10051&langId=-1

Note to self this is a great colour combination site for designing websites or choosing colours for a level.

Edit 3

I forgot to mention but I took part in the Monoply Pub Crawl:

http://www.monopolypubcrawl.org.uk/

Twas fun but I didn't finish it cause I started 2 hours late.

Oh boy...I am...well puzzled it seems...

After Microsoft released that update that screwed peoples computers with the SVCHOST.exe error I decided to fix it...Their patch didn't work so I found a fix in some guy?s blog. It seemed to fix the error but my PC started freezing in a sense that I could move the mouse and bring up 'Ctrl, Alt, and Delete? but clicking would not respond.

So I tried re-installing SP2 and it turns out by removing it, it screws up a lot of stuff such as my Internet...So I was stuck in a horrible mess until I realised I could use System Restore to bring me back and I thought I could take it back to before the Microsoft error but for some reason it couldn't do it and then after one last try but only 'one' day back it somehow worked and my PC was stable again...It complained that Mcafee was broken and needed reinstalling so I decided to do that tomorrow which is today. I log-on now to find my PC is fine and Mcafee is fine...I'm going to see if it freezes now as it happened when I went on MSN or watched a video (streamed)...

At least now I can get on with my work...

Well I gave up on playing Stalker on this PC...With the current bugs and my low spec PC I can't enjoy it...So I'm thinking of getting a new PC such as this:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsdt_710h2c?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

My current PC specs are:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
1023.0 MB RAM
RADEON 9800 SERIES (RADEON 9800 PRO AGP (0x4E48))

It doesn't even support 3.0 Shaders now...The first push was when I wanted to play Splinter Cell 5...

It's Easter Holidays now and I have quite a bit of work to do...In terms of mapping I haven't done any in a long time due to lack of motivation when I have free time and the fact I get tired after working...

I decided that I would enjoy my Summer Holidays because this is my last term at Secondary school...I'm planning on joining a 'Sword' teaching club, going to the Reading Festival (No not reeding (pronounced) but red-ing (pronounced)) (Google it) and finally use that valuable time to map my ass off

So how many maps have I got to finish or give up on?

Well my school map, Dedication 2, Horror map, architectural map and a mod map I was planning to do.

Anyway have a good week.

Hoozah my sword arrived Now I can be one of those sad Samurai copy-cats who think they are cool but they're just for show...

W00tage - Seems the new 'Virgin Media' which took over NTL is upgrading us 10MB users to 20MB...May not seem like much to you non-UK'ers but we're slowly getting faster Broadband every year

I can finally host a bigger server