Journals

monster_urby10 years ago2013-12-27 10:04:32 UTC 5 comments
POINTLESS!

I'm at work from 9 - 5 today. On Christmas Eve I was dealing with the last couple of clients who hadn't closed on the Friday before, now everyone is closed until the new year, but I still need to be here to make sure their sites stay online...

I'd much rather be lying in my own pooling blood, with a broken leg, clutching for dear life to a rust woodcutter's axe while surrounded by bad guys with rifles on one side and the living dead on the other... or you know, playing DayZ.

The Steam Sale and Community Marketplace is keeping me entertained for now though...
monster_urby10 years ago2013-12-21 09:57:10 UTC 12 comments
DayZ is the shit!

Warning: Story
So I decided to treat myself to the alpha of DayZ standalone with my Christmas Bonus and bugger me have the last 2 hours whizzed by.

So I spawned in fairly close to a village with an army camp nearby which was handy. It didn't stop me getting savaged by zombies though so I very rapidly started to lose a lot of blood. However, thanks to the massive amount of changes that have been made to improve the inventory system over the mod, I quickly tore my shirt into rags and patched myself before limping over to the camp.

Found an M4 with a damaged sight and no magazine but managed to find an ACOG scope and a magazine with 28 rounds in shortly afterwards. Next thing I know, a random new player stumbles into the same tent as me. He's got nothing but the clothes he spawned in so I drop a pipe wrench I found which he snatches up and proceeds to follow me. I found a map so plan to head to the nearest city to deal with my blood problem. We enter the airfield area and each of us checks out 2 of the barracks. The next time my buddy appears he's kitted out with tactical gear and a shiny assault rifle. He hands me an extra magazine for my M4 and a spare sidearm he found.

We cross the airstrip to check out a couple more buildings and a control tower when I notice another 2 players in the distance, one kitted out like me and a newbie in casual wear with a shotgun. My friend doesn't spot them and vanishes into the tower. I stand upright, and sling my rifle over my shoulder and open the chat. "Friendly"

No dice. A shot whizzes past my head and cracks into the wall behind me. I bolt behind the tower and kiss the dirt, crawling until I find a breach in the wall which I crawl through. I come out behind the tower, the bad guys now moving up to find me. Got me a good flank here. Then my friend, hearing the commotion pops out of the doorway, running straight into the two players. Everyone pauses, just for a second, then it kicks off. My friend gets pinged in the arm and leg and falls to the floor.

I see my chance and peek around the corner of the tower. I pump 3 rounds into the well equipped guy, one of them smashes into his gasmask and he's gone. The newbie player doesn't let up, firing a shot into the wall near my face. I fire frantically back, not getting a kill but he's bleeding badly. He drops into the grass, out of sight.

Meanwhile, my buddy has crawled through the hole in the wall that I cam through earlier and is drifting in an out of consciousness. I tear up another ruined shirt I found and patch him up, then drop some fruit which he grabs and scarfs down. We get our bearings and search the body of the kitted out dude. Most of his gear was destroyed by my shots but we manage to salvage a helmet, some ammo and a water bottle which we quickly share because we're both totally parched.

We never found the other player but I'm fairly confident he must have crawled away to bleed out somewhere. He could have used his clothing for rags to patch himself up but without his friend to back him up he never bothered to engage us again. We did a quick sweep of the area and found a discarded empty shotgun. Whether it was his or not we don't know.

We started heading toward the city before he lost his connection and I logged out to post this. Never even knew the guys name. :(

tl:dr cool stuff happened in my first DayZ game.

Sidenote: Archie, get DayZ you fanny.

Any of you guys have it let me know too. More team mates is good. :P

Bottomnote: Dehydration is fun. Not long after spawning I found myself lying in a pond just lapping that shit up with my face.
monster_urby10 years ago2013-11-06 23:43:09 UTC 17 comments
How is it that an international corporation can charge you to high heaven to use their operating system, when it can just stop working?

I'm totally serious, I made NO changes to my system, I've been using the same AV software since I got this PC, the last time I used it I played some BF4, posted a couple of things on TWHL / Moddb and went to bed.

This evening, I get home from work, turn on my PC and find that it just wont do anything. No net connection, no security, can't even open the task manager sometimes. Spent the last hour looking for a solution on my tablet which came down to me editing my damn registry to fix something that just apparently broke because of reasons!
monster_urby10 years ago2013-10-18 11:51:08 UTC 31 comments
Merry 27th Urby Day everyone.
monster_urby10 years ago2013-09-29 21:24:19 UTC 12 comments
I'm forever coming up with stories / concepts at the moment, for potential games or mods, but I don't have the time or know-how to action them. So... I figured I'd post them here so you guys can throw in your ideas and then maybe look into them in the future if I come up with a winner. :D

Random Source Mod idea #1

Multiplayer Mod - 2 teams compete throughout a large map to control a number of territories. The score for the team with the most territories under their control gradually increases and they win when the points reach a pre-determined amount (server settings)

Certain territories also grant access weapons or player buffs.

The maps also contain NPC spawners, throwing monsters and other enemies into the fray which can help or hinder your progress. For example, a player could lead a load of small enemy npcs into enemy territory while the rest of their team pushes a different area.

Players would likely be class based, such as your regular grunts with assault weapons, snipers, engineers to build defenses to prevent points being captured so easily, saboteurs to remove said defenses more efficiently and so on.
monster_urby10 years ago2013-09-13 17:40:59 UTC 15 comments
Hey guys. I don't usually peddle things on other sites, except the Core, but this NEEDS to happen.

http://phonebloks.com/
monster_urby10 years ago2013-08-26 19:49:26 UTC 2 comments
A snippet from Urby's first game of Fallout 3

I emerged from the subway and stepped out into a ruined courtyard. In the distance I could see the Washington Monument, my destination. It's still a good distance away, but I'm definitely getting closer. As I start to move toward it I notice something move to my left. About 200 meters down the road, I see a makeshift barrier which is most likely concealing some sort of a camp. Probably raiders. I pull out my hunting rifle and crouch down, slowly approaching the camp. I'm low on health but if I can take them by surprise I might be able to take a few out before they know I'm even here. Should be a good haul of stimpacks and other meds in there too. Besides, I need to get past them anyway and there's no way I can do it without getting noticed.

Suddenly, to my right, a horrifying roar. A huge green figure steps out of the ruins and charges toward the raider camp, firing a huge honking minigun. Then his buddy joins him, barreling towards the shouting raiders with a massive sledgehammer. There's no way I can take on these guys in my condition. A creep backwards into a pile or rubble and watch.

Without warning, a fusion powered car caught in the crossfire bursts into flame and then explodes, throwing up a miniature mushroom cloud and relieving the two nearby raiders of their legs, one of which slaps wetly onto the tarmac a few feet away from me.

It's not going well for the raiders and all and it looks like the super mutants have this in the bag, then the one with the minigun stops and turns to face me. I'm still crouching down so it takes him a second to notice me but I can here the unmistakable sound of his gun winding up just as his head explodes and he slumps to the floor. His melee buddy turns around just in time to see the rocket heading towards his chest. It hits home and sends his ragdoll flying backwards, slamming hard into the concrete wall behind him and falling to the floor, dead. Three Brotherhood of Steel paladins charge forward now, out from their cover in the ruins a little further down the street. The stop at the entrance of the raider camp and unleash hell, sending all manner of rockets, bullets and indeed fire into the base. Then everything falls silent. One of the paladins approaches me, his rifle at his shoulder. "What the Hell are you doing out here? This place isn't safe."

"Hnnnng" O_O

I have the biggest stiffy right now.

A snippet from Urby's first game of Battlefield 3

I am standing behind a wall, shooting at a bunch of guys charging at me. I don't have a destination because my orders are to stop this counter attack. I shoot down 5 more guys and the commander barks my next order through my radio. Move to the position to the east and defend. I move and take cover behind another wall, shooting at all the guys that are running towards me because I was told to. Then an explosion knocks me off my feet. I'm not sure what caused it because the guys running toward me don't seem to be making any effort to take me out. There was nobody left standing to throw a grenade or fire a rocket. Huh, it's a mystery. What the hell? ...Now I'm stuck lying on my back and I can't move my head. I'm stuck staring up at the sky, just as a friendly helicopter takes a hit from a mystery rocket and crashes into a building, bringing it toppling down in front of me.

Fuck me, I am so fucking bored right now.

HOW ARE MODERN FPS GAMES STILL FUCKING THIS UP!?
monster_urby10 years ago2013-08-09 07:57:36 UTC 11 comments
Half-Life 1: November 19th, 1998 (2 years after Valve's founding in 1996)
Half-Life 2: November 14th, 2004 (5 days short of 6 years later)
HL2 Episode 1: June 1, 2006 (19 months later)
HL2 Episode 2: October 10, 2007 (16 months later)

On October 6th this year we will have passed the longest time between official Half-Life releases.

Now, some crazy speculative mathematics:

Half-Life was completed in nearly 2 years / 24 months. 24 divided by 4 equals 6. Half-Life 2 was developed in nearly 6 years / 72 months. 72 divided by 4 equals 18.
Half-Life 3 will be developed in 18 years (After 2004) so will be released in 2022.

Which means unless Valve does more episodes for HL3, we won't be seeing HL4 until 2076, and if the Fallout Series is to be believed the world will fall to nuclear devastation in 2077. I wonder how many mods will be released before the apocalypse...
monster_urby11 years ago2012-12-28 17:02:41 UTC 2 comments
So back in October I started writing a blog from the perspective of a beggar in Skyrim. A beggar who cannot actually beg due to the games limited flexibility with dialogue. The concept was quite similar to the Living in Oblivion and The Elder Strolls blogs by Christ Livingston. I posted 3 days worth back in October, then stopped for some reason.

You can check it out here

The reason I am posting about it now is because during the Steam sale I bought the Hearthfire DLC (allows you to build your own house for those not in the know) and I decided that Bob could try his hand at building his own place, all the while avoiding too much excitement and combat.

Anyway, I would appreciate if you let me know what you think and really if it is worth me spending any more time on it.

Cheers.
monster_urby11 years ago2012-12-24 09:02:36 UTC 8 comments
As usual, I'm working on Christmas eve, so as usual, I've driven for an hour to now sit in an empty office and browse the net for 8 hours before the hour drive home again.

Utterly bloody pointless.
monster_urby11 years ago2012-11-26 16:36:10 UTC 3 comments
It's in no way professional, but whenever a client calls up because they have an error on their site, it is so tempting to completely over-react over the phone:

"Oh my God! What did you do!? I have never, in all my years as a web developer, seen a site fuck up so royally! This is a disaster. We're going to have to wipe it and start from scratch! Hell, we might need a new god damn server!"

Sigh. A man can dream.
monster_urby11 years ago2012-11-23 09:44:29 UTC 5 comments
Appeared on the Dell MSN UK homepage today:

"Man dies as car trapped in floods. What's the weather like near you?"

...really?
monster_urby11 years ago2012-11-11 22:23:55 UTC 17 comments
Ok, so I had a bit of a rant in the shoutbox about horror mods and the horror genre in general. My opinion of horror over the years has been pretty much tarnished by the constant flow of poorly executed games or mods.

When F.E.A.R came out is when it really started going downhill for me. The combat sections where pretty awesome up to a point but started to get stale. The horror aspect however just bored me to the point of giving up with the game. Some years later the sequel came out and I decided to try the demo. After all, a demo should entice a player to buy the full product right?

It did not go well.

On the modding front, several mods have come out that look promising in the early days but then just fall into the same grungy, dark mess. Jump scares, dark shadowy rooms, using a flashlight all the fucking time so you only ever see 30% of whats in front of you. It's like playing the game with a fucking box on your head with a hole cut in it.

Just a couple of examples here to make my point:

HL2 EP2 Mod: Crypt
User posted image
Darkness, grunge, odd colour filter

HL2 EP2 Mod: Bleak
User posted image
Darkness again, grunge again, fog

HL2 EP2 Mod: Inquietitude
User posted image
Darkness again, fog again

HL2 EP2 Mod: Hellsound Dreams
User posted image
Darkness yet again, grunge again, snore

HL2 EP2 Mod: Lurking
User posted image
Urrrgh...

I've skipped over some of the terrible ones which popped up, but the screenshots above all have massive praise. Frankly, I can't see shit in any of them.

Does ANYONE know of a horror game which takes place in a NORMAL environment in broad daylight? Something the player can related too and actually feel uneasy about? ANYONE!!?
monster_urby11 years ago2012-11-09 15:48:00 UTC 3 comments
I posted a journal some time ago now confessing that I enjoy watching medical examination videos and find them very relaxing, wondering if it was weird.

Well, whether it's weird or not it seems that it is actually more common than I realised. The relaxing sensation is know as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) and there are several videos out there with the soul intention being to bring on this sensation. If you ever feel stressed out at any point I highly recommend looking into it.

ASMR.co.uk
monster_urby11 years ago2012-10-27 19:01:56 UTC 6 comments
I have done a thing, with actual meaning. That is I've recording myself talking, but I make valid points about how mods and games are doing the same shit as everyone else. Then I counteract all those points by stating that I will be making more videos doing the same shit as everyone else.

It's me in the car, without the crazy spinning steering wheel mount I had before