Journals
I just played Kasperg's Idol Hunt and a nameless czech mod, Worst Holiday. What happened was that over at planetphillip, Kasperg and a hamster posing as a HL mod reviewer were having a row because the hamster wanted storytelling in the gameplay which he felt Kasperg didn't do well at in the mod. I'm not going to go into detail because I'm a gamer, not some debate mediator. Whatever.
Anyway if you want to find idol hunt on twhl, it's been deleted sadly, for reasons that I wasn't here to know of. What I do know is that the mapping in Idol hunt is really good.
That's only a taster. The detail is astounding, the rope you see in the pic actually sways back and forth a bit. I also found the fact that in the beginning, every light pole was linked to the generator was impressive. The puzzles were also pretty impressive, mostly because the architecture involved in them were very well made. But you know there were some parts where I died unfairly. Take a look at this.
Guess what's behind the door? So what happens you have to go IN the door and retrieve a paper-thin artifact so you can unlock a door. But to get the thing means you have to rush into the room and get singed, which isn't healthy. You prolly don't have enough ammo to destroy it because another one appears near the beginning too, so what can you do.
At one point in the mod I died like 10 times screaming because of a broken bridge. You had to jump across like a maniac but obviously it isn't easy to do. I hope the jumping skills you built up while on Xen are still polished.
Anyway that's Idol Hunt. On the other hand, the czech mod has you going on the worst holiday of your life. In the beginning you start in a pyramid where the door is about to close locking you in forever. Now I don't know about you but that is a horrible way to start a mod. Locked in forever. Why!?
Anyway you can go and wander the pyramid unarmed, getting attacked by zombies and scary crabs (scarabs) and having to take damage and all that. Until you happen across a big ball of teleportation. It then takes you to a snowy facility, and the words "Canada" appears on-screen.
Now Jeff who lives in Canada was complaining about how it only just started snowing, and lo and behold in this mod it's so freaking cold that I'm taking cold damage just walking outside. Not only that, I found PENGUINS in the freaking field. Penguins in Canada I have never heard of that. Oh, you mappers and your silly imagination.
So you noclip into this facility and fight American Marines for some reason or another. It some kind of combined science facility-military training camp in Canada, is all I can say.
Notice the strategic enemy placement, lol.
So in the final area there were like 10 soldiers and piles of snow on the ground. I walked into them and guess what, they were snow mines. Boom. Game over. Good mod.
Alright, stop comparing desktops, go check these out.
Anyway if you want to find idol hunt on twhl, it's been deleted sadly, for reasons that I wasn't here to know of. What I do know is that the mapping in Idol hunt is really good.
That's only a taster. The detail is astounding, the rope you see in the pic actually sways back and forth a bit. I also found the fact that in the beginning, every light pole was linked to the generator was impressive. The puzzles were also pretty impressive, mostly because the architecture involved in them were very well made. But you know there were some parts where I died unfairly. Take a look at this.
Guess what's behind the door? So what happens you have to go IN the door and retrieve a paper-thin artifact so you can unlock a door. But to get the thing means you have to rush into the room and get singed, which isn't healthy. You prolly don't have enough ammo to destroy it because another one appears near the beginning too, so what can you do.
At one point in the mod I died like 10 times screaming because of a broken bridge. You had to jump across like a maniac but obviously it isn't easy to do. I hope the jumping skills you built up while on Xen are still polished.
Anyway that's Idol Hunt. On the other hand, the czech mod has you going on the worst holiday of your life. In the beginning you start in a pyramid where the door is about to close locking you in forever. Now I don't know about you but that is a horrible way to start a mod. Locked in forever. Why!?
Anyway you can go and wander the pyramid unarmed, getting attacked by zombies and scary crabs (scarabs) and having to take damage and all that. Until you happen across a big ball of teleportation. It then takes you to a snowy facility, and the words "Canada" appears on-screen.
Now Jeff who lives in Canada was complaining about how it only just started snowing, and lo and behold in this mod it's so freaking cold that I'm taking cold damage just walking outside. Not only that, I found PENGUINS in the freaking field. Penguins in Canada I have never heard of that. Oh, you mappers and your silly imagination.
So you noclip into this facility and fight American Marines for some reason or another. It some kind of combined science facility-military training camp in Canada, is all I can say.
Notice the strategic enemy placement, lol.
So in the final area there were like 10 soldiers and piles of snow on the ground. I walked into them and guess what, they were snow mines. Boom. Game over. Good mod.
Alright, stop comparing desktops, go check these out.
So, today is the first day of snow in my area, and I have to say, if it weren't for the fact that it was raining all day beforehand (and indeed, for days before that) conditions would be perfect for a snowball fight. W00t.
Today, 1st December, is the official celebration of Romania(the union of all the 3 romanian states: Moldavia, The Romanian Country and Transylvania in 1918). Lots and lots of military parades in the country :).
Free day of school today. Yay for me!
Tomorrow I'll go to english olympics, but since my english is horrible I don't expect to go further from the local stage. I do it more out of sympathy for my teacher :\.
[EDIT] In other news, I just made a facebook account. Meh
Free day of school today. Yay for me!
Tomorrow I'll go to english olympics, but since my english is horrible I don't expect to go further from the local stage. I do it more out of sympathy for my teacher :\.
[EDIT] In other news, I just made a facebook account. Meh
Fucking serious journal is fucking serious because fucking angry Rimrook is fucking angry.
I got a letter in the mail from Sallie Mae saying my student loan payments are crazy late and I'm about to default on the loans... problem is this is the only thing I have ever gotten from them. Turns out my mom hasn't paid them in about a year. She TOLD me that the loans were in her name so I wouldn't have to worry about stuff which was a lie, they were in my name but the entire time I was in school, I was lied to. My credit was instantly ruined right before Christmas too. I applied for a credit card designed for paying off debt, plus it would have allowed me to get gifts for Christmas, especially the engagement ring for my fianc?e. I ultimately did not get the new card so I'm stuck. Also, if I don't do something soon, defaulting on my loans will garnish my wages, increase their interest, they'll take all my tax refund amounts, as well as make me ineligible for any loan of any kind from banks and credit bureaus. So I'm now $86,000 more fucked over than before. I'm hoping I can defer them long enough to figure something out. I can't believe my own mother would ruin my life like this.
I got a letter in the mail from Sallie Mae saying my student loan payments are crazy late and I'm about to default on the loans... problem is this is the only thing I have ever gotten from them. Turns out my mom hasn't paid them in about a year. She TOLD me that the loans were in her name so I wouldn't have to worry about stuff which was a lie, they were in my name but the entire time I was in school, I was lied to. My credit was instantly ruined right before Christmas too. I applied for a credit card designed for paying off debt, plus it would have allowed me to get gifts for Christmas, especially the engagement ring for my fianc?e. I ultimately did not get the new card so I'm stuck. Also, if I don't do something soon, defaulting on my loans will garnish my wages, increase their interest, they'll take all my tax refund amounts, as well as make me ineligible for any loan of any kind from banks and credit bureaus. So I'm now $86,000 more fucked over than before. I'm hoping I can defer them long enough to figure something out. I can't believe my own mother would ruin my life like this.
All that '80s synth... coming from some acoustic contraption made of PVC pipes. So long, electricity!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0pbRKfqX8Q
Links posted in journals are not clickable (which is stupid, by the way), so use [url] tags to make a link clickable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0pbRKfqX8Q
Links posted in journals are not clickable (which is stupid, by the way), so use [url] tags to make a link clickable.
Star Wars: KOTOR 1
On sale on steam for $2.50 USD
And... my new leather strap came in today!
It's a great compliment to my new guitar!
The Guitar is a PRS 513, BTW.
Hands down, THE most incredible guitar I've ever played.
Trumps even the Les Paul in my opinion.
On sale on steam for $2.50 USD
And... my new leather strap came in today!
It's a great compliment to my new guitar!
Hands down, THE most incredible guitar I've ever played.
Trumps even the Les Paul in my opinion.
Dreamhack's over and I've woken up after a day's sleep. It was fun. Besides playing I listened to a number of lectures on topics such as Internet security, game development education, Soundation, making money on the web, and Josef Fares talking about a game he's designing. I also got to sit in the driver's seat of a Stridsfordon 9040C tank and talked to some of the recruitment officers from the Swedish army. When there were 8 hours left my graphics card's fan decided to die. Don't buy Asus. I'm now using a broken Nvidia 7800 and 800x600px resolution. Dreamhack broke its own world record, with 12 754 computers on the same LAN party. I was surprised at how good vegetarian food there was.
My computer's hard drive died so any map I was previously working on is gone. These include the {TZS} official map which thankfully I still have the unfinished version I posted on the {TZS} website, the small single player map I talked about in my last journal, what I had done for the competition, I'll just have to wait for the next one and I was excited about this one too :(, and worst of all the alien grunt lab remake for HL 1997.
Maprookie.com is down. My host crapped out so its not my fault.
This also means that half of my maps are not available anymore. But don't worry your pretty little heads, I got the email about the server going offline and backed up the entire website.
R.I.P. Maprookie.com for now.
This also means that half of my maps are not available anymore. But don't worry your pretty little heads, I got the email about the server going offline and backed up the entire website.
R.I.P. Maprookie.com for now.
L4D2 is 3.5? this weekend. Bought it. Zombies beware.
Back to normal, 2 brand new 22.5" monitors, good thing I'm rich.
Okay here is the starcraft 2 journal I promised.
So my cousin who is in the primary school got this game recently and I watched him play the singleplayer campaign, in which you control terrans. I think the thing was that the expansions will allow you to play the campaigns for other races. So anyway after he successfully finished the campaign (on baby bitty Easy) I wanted to try my hand at this 70-80 dollar game also.
Unlike my cousin I played on a higher difficulty level. I also strive to make different choices from him (more on choices later) to keep things interesting. And, unfortunately for me, things definitely got WAY too interesting than how my cousin played it.
So basically, you are in control of Jim Raynor and his merry band of misfits. You all live on this really big battlecruiser containing an armoury, laboratory, bar, and control room (sounds like a map idea!). In the armoury, you can get permanent upgrades for every unit that you can build (like stimpacks for marines). It seems that Terran Academies are no longer necessary.
In the lab you can watch weird samples do weird things. Also you can do special missions and research technology like building science vessels which has already been researched since starcraft 1. Waste of technology.
You play as raynor himself. Alot of the game involves socializing with other major characters and watching CNN on television. I'm not joking. I think I spent at least 20 minutes just watching the freaking CNN. But allow me to get to the fun part of this article.
So I am going to outline the choices that my cousin made and compare them to my choices. There are three major choices that I will leave ambiguous for your sake.
My cousin's choices resulted in:
What I didn't like about the game was some lack of creativity. In particular there were some really glaring parallels between this and the first game. For example the third mission is always "defend for 20 minutes until you get picked up by dropships" and "an elderly general's battlecruiser crash lands in the middle of enemy base and he has to defend himself with bunkers". I just thought these were WAY too obvious ways to reuse old scenarios.
So after all the ranting and major characters dying, I managed to grasp my way to the final level where I had to defend an extremely weak tower from getting zerg-rushed. So I was just chilling at my base, until this DAM HUGE Juggernaut of a Zerg hovered near my base. I tried attacking it but all my thingies died. Then the dam queen of Blades showed up and I find that her stats are extremely buff, from 400 HP in starcraft 1 to ONE THOUSAND HP here. And she appears to have developed some really cheap abilities, such as shooting fiery balls and using psychokinesis. So unfair, that dam psychokinesis crap killed my battlecruisers IN ONE HIT. What the eff. And then while Queen of Imbalanced Gameplay was killing my units, that dam Juggernaut who was camping near my base, it decided to join the party. Needless to say, Raynor and major characters and every other terran there never came back home. THE END.
So my cousin who is in the primary school got this game recently and I watched him play the singleplayer campaign, in which you control terrans. I think the thing was that the expansions will allow you to play the campaigns for other races. So anyway after he successfully finished the campaign (on baby bitty Easy) I wanted to try my hand at this 70-80 dollar game also.
Unlike my cousin I played on a higher difficulty level. I also strive to make different choices from him (more on choices later) to keep things interesting. And, unfortunately for me, things definitely got WAY too interesting than how my cousin played it.
So basically, you are in control of Jim Raynor and his merry band of misfits. You all live on this really big battlecruiser containing an armoury, laboratory, bar, and control room (sounds like a map idea!). In the armoury, you can get permanent upgrades for every unit that you can build (like stimpacks for marines). It seems that Terran Academies are no longer necessary.
In the lab you can watch weird samples do weird things. Also you can do special missions and research technology like building science vessels which has already been researched since starcraft 1. Waste of technology.
You play as raynor himself. Alot of the game involves socializing with other major characters and watching CNN on television. I'm not joking. I think I spent at least 20 minutes just watching the freaking CNN. But allow me to get to the fun part of this article.
So I am going to outline the choices that my cousin made and compare them to my choices. There are three major choices that I will leave ambiguous for your sake.
My cousin's choices resulted in:
- A major character lives happily ever after
- A major character hangs out in your bar forever.
- Losing some specialists to their own nukes.
- A major character becoming a freaking zombie
- A major character gets killed
- Getting all the remaining major characters to walk around in a cave.
What I didn't like about the game was some lack of creativity. In particular there were some really glaring parallels between this and the first game. For example the third mission is always "defend for 20 minutes until you get picked up by dropships" and "an elderly general's battlecruiser crash lands in the middle of enemy base and he has to defend himself with bunkers". I just thought these were WAY too obvious ways to reuse old scenarios.
So after all the ranting and major characters dying, I managed to grasp my way to the final level where I had to defend an extremely weak tower from getting zerg-rushed. So I was just chilling at my base, until this DAM HUGE Juggernaut of a Zerg hovered near my base. I tried attacking it but all my thingies died. Then the dam queen of Blades showed up and I find that her stats are extremely buff, from 400 HP in starcraft 1 to ONE THOUSAND HP here. And she appears to have developed some really cheap abilities, such as shooting fiery balls and using psychokinesis. So unfair, that dam psychokinesis crap killed my battlecruisers IN ONE HIT. What the eff. And then while Queen of Imbalanced Gameplay was killing my units, that dam Juggernaut who was camping near my base, it decided to join the party. Needless to say, Raynor and major characters and every other terran there never came back home. THE END.
To Everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving today;
Happy Thanksgiving!
(And after playing it, AOE3 sucks. Sorry for wasting 10c for whoever bought it)
Happy Thanksgiving!
(And after playing it, AOE3 sucks. Sorry for wasting 10c for whoever bought it)
[edit] Posted on my blog about the upgrade. Info, benchmarks and some pictures:
http://sjackm.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/pc-upgrade/
I just upgraded my platform today.
I changed the CPU from an Intel Pentium D935(2007) 3,2 ghz to an Intel Pentium E6500(2009) 2,9 ghz. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P965-S3 rev 3.3. I had to upgrade the BIOS to the latest version.
Results?
-from 120w in idle my PC now consumes 83w
-from 42 seconds for 1M in SuperPI to 19,5 seconds
-temperatures are quite the same, but the cooler was greatly reduced in size (and doesn't have a copper base, like the old one used to have): about 35 in idle I think
I also changed the original cooler from my Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD4850 with an Arctic Cooling Accelero.
-from 79C in idle and 89 full load it's now 38C in idle and 61-62 in full load.
http://sjackm.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/pc-upgrade/
I just upgraded my platform today.
I changed the CPU from an Intel Pentium D935(2007) 3,2 ghz to an Intel Pentium E6500(2009) 2,9 ghz. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P965-S3 rev 3.3. I had to upgrade the BIOS to the latest version.
Results?
-from 120w in idle my PC now consumes 83w
-from 42 seconds for 1M in SuperPI to 19,5 seconds
-temperatures are quite the same, but the cooler was greatly reduced in size (and doesn't have a copper base, like the old one used to have): about 35 in idle I think
I also changed the original cooler from my Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD4850 with an Arctic Cooling Accelero.
-from 79C in idle and 89 full load it's now 38C in idle and 61-62 in full load.