>I just downloaded the largest demo ever: 2.9 gigs, and it turns out that’s because it also has the full game in it. When you go to install it you are presented with 2 buttons: Install Trial or Install Full Game, naturally I chose Install Full Game where it presented me with a spot to put in a registration code from EA. I didn’t have one but I did see that it’s $39 at the EA store so you can download the demo and turn it into the full game. I thought game companies did away with this sort of…
Computer Land
So I’ve spent the weekend… well, I guess that could be extended to the past month, doing computer stuff. I placed the hardware order on December 31st (so I could include it in the business costs for 2008) and received them on the 7th or so. From there on it’s been computers, computers, computers. I upgrade my own to free up a power supply and memory for my new Media PC for the living room. I took all the old stuff I had and got a brand new media pc case for it all. It’s about the size (amazingly close…
>End of Fallout 3
>I beat Fallout 3 today – tried it ever which way to survive. Unfortunately the ending comes out almost the same, with a few changes here and there. I did it right the first time and then reloaded and went back to it. I reached level 20 and Max XP well before I got involved in the last battles of the game. All told it was great, story got even better and though it was slightly more linear towards the end I still really enjoyed it. I just heard the latest on the DLC which is coming out for both…
>Video: 1st Rockstar Social Club Video Submission
>So this shows a few issues with Rockstar’s “video editor” in GTA IV for PC.You’ll notice you don’t see any fire after the first clip or two yet some vehicles tend to blow up for no reason. I’m a little disssapointed considering it took me over 40 minutes to encode this “web quality” video. Other options are 720p and 1080p. Last time I tried 1080p I crashed. Go fig. Anyhow, take a look at my GTA ‘fire storm’ video here.
GTA IV Performance
Here’s the same progression in GTA benchmarks. I didn’t have to do much work for this because GTA writes each benchmark to a separate txt file automatically. I pasted into Google Docs and made a graph of it all. The details are here but this is the graph:
It’s the Final Benchmark!
Ok, so after the dust has settled I’ve completed the Hard Drive externalization (technical prototype) and here are the past couple benchmarks: 2 x New Graphics Card + CPU New Graphics Card + CPU New Graphics Card New Motherboard Original Read em and weep.
New Benchmarks
Latest Benchmark 3DMark06 – 11059 2.0 PCI Ex Motherboard 3DMark06 – 10879 1.0 PCI Ex Motherboard w/ 2 8800 GTX 3DMark06 – 10674 *** authors note 07 07 2012 *** TABLES! Ahhhh! So not HTML 4.0…
>GTA IV in all it’s glory and then some
>Ya know… sometimes I hate PC gaming and then other times. I looooove it:[ 1st Try, beloved MMA10 ERROR ][ GTAIV 01 ][ GTAIV 02 ][ GTAIV 03 ] *[ GTAIV 04 ][ GTAIV 05 ] * = driver upgrade mmmm hmmm
>Rockstar fails to see the forrest…
>Rockstar apparently wanted their little foot in the online pool. GTA IV for PC may be exclusive to XBOX Live (Windows) but since they have it all centralized via their Rockstar Social Club – it all depends on their servers having the stones to support everyone logging in at once. I guess they didn’t expect such a rush. I called support:Wait, you called before?No… I don’t think so.Yeah, for PS3 – not showing 1080p.Oh yeah, yeah I did.So why’d you buy it for the PC too? I had it for PS3, I wasn’t going to go buy it for PC…
>Grand Theft Auto IV
>Yeah… I got it. I couldn’t help myself. I looked at the screenshots, I pondered, and after finding there was no demo to quench my thirst, I ventured to go get it before the stores closed. It’s installing now, and I’m enjoying the extra items in the box. I’ve got plenty of time to read it all – the game is 18g over 2 DVDs. I wonder if they’re dual layer. I guess they’d have to be, even compressed it would be at least 12 to 16g and that’s more then 2 4g DVDs could handle. The new social club…
Michael Crichton Died Today
I was surprised to hear that Michael Crichton died today.He’s probably my favorite author, followed closely by Douglas Adams who died just a few years ago. I think I need some new authors, but I’m afraid they might die on me. At the very least there are a still of Michael Crichton’s books that I have not read and remain on my bookshelf. There’s just so much I loved about how he created a picture with his words that my mind just ran off with. I was able to picture them much more vivid then any movie could convey, and…
>Fallout 3
>Hummina humina – Fallout 3 is fabulous. It’s everything I wanted it to be. It plays similarly to Oblivion with all the awesomeness of Oblivion & Fallout combined. The combat system is your run of the mill point and shoot… until you activate VATS which stops the action and allows you to choose which body part of which target you want to shoot, with a very RPG % likeliness of hitting each body part. You can shoot the gun out of their hand – or blow the arm off completely – and to accompany these shots is an awesome (VERY…
>GOG.com (Good Old Games) Beta Goes Live!
>GOG.com has gone live, you can purchase Good Old Games for 5.99 or 9.99 depending.Descent 1 & 2 (or 3 & Expansion), Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics, Kingpin, Messiah, and Redneck Rampage – remember that one? I also found this little gem: Castles 2 No more trying to get Win95/Win98 working with your new hardware, or break out the old Pentium II in order to play these old gems – they’re all certified to play on XP and Vista (including x64!). Awesome.
>Google phone – G1 Review – First Glance
>Nicole got her G1 yesterday – the first and foremost “Google phone”It runs android – the open source phone OS developed by Google. At first glance it’s about the side of an iPhone (and that’s the exact demographic this phone is going for) though no where near as sleek. The screen swings out from the base and pops into place when going into landscape mode. The home screen has a clock widget with 4 basic icons at the bottom. It appears you can fill up the whole screen with up to 16 icons, if you didn’t have the clock there.…
>Video Game Movies
>I’ve been loving 2560 x 1600 for all games lately with the latest version of nVidia drivers and now I took some video. First one is 25fps, other 2 are 60 fps but I belive Windows Movie Maker does 15fps for WMV 720p. They were originally recorded at 2560 x 1600 but the compression doesn’t really do it justice. In any case, have fun viewing:
>PhysX Fun
>nVidia has finally gotten around to upgrading their cards with PhysX. They bought Agea a while ago, and it’s been a long time coming. Any nVidia card that is an 8 series or above is able to be upgraded, which means no separate PhysX process is required, the firmware update uses the GPU to do all the cachunking of the (previously) dedicated physics chip. This means towers that can be taken down, realistic wall destroying, and many other items only possible with a physics engine. Just like GPUs advanced the graphics, Physics processing will advance the gameplay and realworld feeling…
Past Performance
I went back today and found some previous 3DMark06 Scores since I was finally able to get my 3DMark06 up and running. I still had my old VISTA x64 install on my extra HD (haven’t needed to reformat it for space yet) so I installed everything (didn’t work) and then copied over all the OpenAL32.dll to both system32 and syswow64 directories. I removed 3DMark06 and reinstalled from my Crosshair driver CD (w/ professsional SN) but when I went to submit it said a newer version was available. The patch wouldn’t install (said 3DMark06 wasn’t installed???) so I just copied the…
>New SLi Comparison
>I picked up another card to do SLi this weekend. I wanted more, I wanted 2560×1600. I priced out what it would cost me to get a 9800GX2 including the trade-in from EVGA and it was going to be like $350+, so I instead spent $170 for another 8800 GTS – which were getting scarce so I moved on it. I tested using 3D Mark Vantage (for VISTA) as my existing 3D Mark 2006 is not working in VISTAx64 because it says OpenAL32.dll is not present (which it is).I’d rather use 3DMark 06 as it’s a more accurate guage given…
>First Look at FarCry2
>If you thought Crysis was cool:Video: First look at FarCry2 They did it even better with FarCry 2, without aliens. Top 100 Best Tech Products – top 10 are right on… minus a few (like Facebook, XP?!!). I had never heard of the SD card that turns your camera into a wifi device.
Interestings
So I’m working from home today, collected a few tidbits durring my hours upon hours of meetings:There is still no concrete info on the Wii pole dance gameEA PR is spinning, Tech is confirming they suckEver wonder if your local sewage treatment is up to snuff? Holyoke’s isn’t.Kind of a dramatic image of an old Iraqi woman not quite the caliber of the Afghanistan girl from Time, but still powerful. *update* gotta hand it to MSN, they find some cool stuff, particularly Jott – a free service where you can dictate text messages.
2 Weeks of Josh
After a long time of being unable to find a chance to hang with anyone the past 2 weeks have been great. I think I can finally hunker down and maybe do some work. After seeing what Justin has been able to do with his free time, I’m inspired. It started two weeks ago when I was able to finally get together with Josh & Katie, of course Nicole had a previous engagement she realized after we made the plans but that was fine, still time to go grab something to eat first. Note to self:: the Eastside Grill in…
>GTAIV (GTA 4) for PS3 Not Using 1080p
>I picked up GTA IV this morning, and by some odd cooincidence also had today off. I popped it in, it did a file copy to the HD (about 5 to 10 minutes) which is like 3+ Gig. I got in it and it looked blurry… I checked the box, 720p, 1080i, 1080p… and then I checked the TV – 720p. There were no settings in the game (guess I’m too used to PC games) so I went out to the main PS3 menu. There are normally settings when hitting /_\ but not in this case – nothing relevant other…
>BitComet
>It’s been a long time since I needed to download something I couldn’t find on a web page, and I guess that’s why I’ve stayed away from Torrents. I am digging through my pile of older games now and after trying Gothic 3 again (yes, it did the same stuttering crap – guess it’s not compatible with the 7950GX2) I tried Aliens VS Predator 2.I had the CD along with the insert that has the serial key. Apparently there is also a disk 2, as I was prompted for it when I got about halfway through the install. I checked…
>GTA IV
>GTA IV (as ususal) looks AMAZING Change the number at the end of the url to see other random pics:http://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_53.htmlhttp://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_17.htmlhttp://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_21.htmlhttp://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_45.html
Clarissa Explains It All – Drinking Game
*** here is the original article ported over *** Nicole and I couldn’t find a Clarissa Explains It All drinking game so we made up our own: Keep in Mind:~ Both the DVD and the real show (should you see it somewhere with commercials) still have commercial bumpers.~ you shouldn’t try level 2 unless a) you’re only watching 1 episode b) you’re so super hard core, there’s no need to pull punches c) glrealjrlj …. get nakked! blrgl.. *hic* auuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhh… Level 1 – Lets Watch the Whole Disk! / Marithon Update/Report (Clarissa Report, Clarissa Financial Report, Clarissa Update, etc) –…