I quit my job at CPUsed. Looks like it's back to sporadic consulting contracts and student life for me for the next little while!
I built a new PC for my friend Tim a number of years ago. It was an 800MHz AMD Athlon (100MHz FSB), an All-In-Wonder ATi Rage 128 Pro video card, and a SoundBlaster Live! Platinum sound card (with the original Live!Drive) all on an ASUS motherboard (VIA KT133-based). Over the years he upgraded the CPU (to a 900MHz Athlon), memory, hard drives, and video card (GeForce FX 5600), but plugged-along with more or less the same rig. The impresive thing is that he does professional 3D design and animation (I believe he works mostly in Maya). Now, he didn't use this machine for his heavy rendering, but he did do most of his work on it. Well, it's nothing too special, but I'm giving him a free upgrade this week. I was able to build him a 2.4GHz Pentium 4B system on an SiS 651-based ASUS board at very little cost to me. We'll transfer the hard drives and video card and such, and he'll have a nice little bump in speed.
I guess he was pretty excited when he heard this because when I visited him last week, he gave me a Turbo Grafx 16 with Keith Courage and Bonk's Adventure, a SEGA Master System two games built-in and a light gun, and a World Heroes 2 MVS cartridge! Fucking sweet deal :) Tim's good like that because he collects that kind of stuff to an obscene degree (because we all need 12 SEGA Dreamcasts each, right? ;) ), and he works with a local coin-op dealer. In other news, my older brother picked-up an old SNES at a garage sale for me the other day. w00t!
Oh, and I came across what I thought was a 128MB AGP8x GeForce FX 5200 card (model no. MS-8903) the other day, so I put it in my Linux box in order to take advantage of nVidia's drivers (the 128MB Radeon 8500LE I had in there was just performing painfully slow for a card that powerful; DirectX 8.1, pixel shader 1.4 support). Well, nVidia's drivers tell me that it was actually a 64MB AGP8x GeForce4 MX440... Quite the downgrade, considering the pathetic feature set of the MX440 (DirectX 7, no pixel shader support). Either there're two cards out there with with the model number 8903, or someone's lying.
Finally, I downloaded the Java Runtime Environment version 1.5.0 Update 8 the other day on one of my Windows PCs. I went back to download it again for my Linux machine as well as my other Windows machines, and all of the downloads had been changed to Update 6. I wonder why there was a two-version downgrade... Did I miss something?
Ooh! One more thing! I finally got around to picking-up the rest of the Jak & Daxter trilogy (Jak II and Jak 3... I'm not couting the PSP or racing games); expect impressions soon!
Monday, August 28, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Mad Cheddar!
The last two parts came today, and OS installation went smoothly... And so it is with great pleasure that I present to you all, the most fantastic computer I have ever built:
On a completely unrelated note, I found myself in Oshawa, Ontario earlier in the week, and I picked-up Outcast (PC) and Wild 9 (PSOne) at a local new & used game shop. These are both games that I missed for various reasons back in their day (due to high system requirements, not having a PSOne; stuff like that), but have definitely stood the test of time as solid titles. Outcast still looks pretty good for a seven-year-old game (I blame the high prduction values as well as the innovative use of voxels), and Wild 9 is just mindless fun :)
Oh, and a quick update on my last post: ZDoom runs Strife much better, although it does conflict with certain (trivial) aspects of the standalone game, and doesn't offer the same nifty 3D-accelerated effects of some of the other front-ends. Still, it's Strife, it works, and it's great fun.
- Intel® Core™2 Duo E6700
- Asus P5W DH Deluxe (Intel 975X-based) Motherboard
- nVidia Quadro FX 3500 256MB GDDR3
- Two OCZ DDR2-1000 PC2-8000 Platinum XTC 2GB Dual Channel Kits (4GB Total)
- Two 250GB SATAII 7200RPM w/16MB Buffer WD Caviar HDDs (500GB Total)
- Pioneer DVR-111D 16x DL DVD+/-RW
- Antec TruePower 2.0 TPII-550 PSU
- Antec Titan 550 Case
- G-RAID 3-Port FireWire 800 PCI
- Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
On a completely unrelated note, I found myself in Oshawa, Ontario earlier in the week, and I picked-up Outcast (PC) and Wild 9 (PSOne) at a local new & used game shop. These are both games that I missed for various reasons back in their day (due to high system requirements, not having a PSOne; stuff like that), but have definitely stood the test of time as solid titles. Outcast still looks pretty good for a seven-year-old game (I blame the high prduction values as well as the innovative use of voxels), and Wild 9 is just mindless fun :)
Oh, and a quick update on my last post: ZDoom runs Strife much better, although it does conflict with certain (trivial) aspects of the standalone game, and doesn't offer the same nifty 3D-accelerated effects of some of the other front-ends. Still, it's Strife, it works, and it's great fun.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Muthafuckin' Strife on my muthafuckin' PC!!!
While I was out purchasing a DVD burner for a system I'm building, I happened across a fine collection of *ahem* classic PC games. Most were $9.00~$19.00, and brought back many fond memories. I decided to pick-up Lemmings Revolution ($9.00), and as I went up to the counter to pay, I noticed Strife... Sealed, in the box, perfect condition, and only $7.00!!!
You wouldn't believe how giddy I was about this. Strife is right up there with games like Clive Barker's Undying and Psychonauts as one of the most overlooked gems in gaming history. Built around the DooM engine, Strife was one of the better first-person action-RPGs I can remember playing in the '90s, and it's still great fun to play today.
It took me a while to get it running properly in Windows XP (everything was smooth except for the sound effects; they were unbearably choppy) because VDMSound just wasn't doing its thing. I ended-up having to resort to Vavoom, which is still somewhat unstable. I'm downloading ZDoom as I write this, to see if it fares any better.
You wouldn't believe how giddy I was about this. Strife is right up there with games like Clive Barker's Undying and Psychonauts as one of the most overlooked gems in gaming history. Built around the DooM engine, Strife was one of the better first-person action-RPGs I can remember playing in the '90s, and it's still great fun to play today.
It took me a while to get it running properly in Windows XP (everything was smooth except for the sound effects; they were unbearably choppy) because VDMSound just wasn't doing its thing. I ended-up having to resort to Vavoom, which is still somewhat unstable. I'm downloading ZDoom as I write this, to see if it fares any better.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Things that make you go, "Hmmm..." or "Grrr..."
I recently played through the Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic demo, and now it's definitely on my shortlist of upcoming games to keep an eye on. The Source engine (Half-Life 2, SiN Episodes) is looking fantastic, and the gameplay is like Oblivion with less freedom, but way better combat. The demo was awfully short (even with the unofficial saved game that lets you continue playing past the official end), but great fun; totally worth the download if you have the bandwidth to spare. Interestingly, this demo made me realize something about my video card: An overclocked, unlocked, AGP8x GeForce 6800 is now officially a mid-range part. I could either play the game with HDR and medium-high video settings, or without HDR at just about maximum video settings. The difference wasn't terribly pronounced (high-res smoothness vs. dynamic lighting effects), but it reminds me that an upgrade will be in order before too long. Hopefully it'll be at least another year or so before I'm forced to do anything though, since the next upgrade means a whole new platform; I've pushed Socket A and Socket 478 to their limits with my Athlon XP 3200+ and 3.6GHz Pentium 4 AGP8x rigs.
Aside from PC gaming, I've been spending some quality time with all of those console titles I keep writing about. I'd like to talk specifically about Burnout Revenge. It keeps 'crashing' on my XBOX. I am one of the apparently unfortunate souls who has been blessed with a Thomson DVD drive. From what I've heard, this particular drive is problematic for most, and often has issues reading discs. Now, I've played a lot of different titles on that XBOX without issue over the years (the only times I really noticed any problems were with Panzer Dragoon Orta and Shenmue II, but they were rare at most), but Burnout Revenge gives me the 'dirty/damaged disc' error pretty consistently. Grrr indeed.
Oh, and really quickly, I picked-up God Of War and Gran Tourismo 4 for PS2 for $19.99 CDN each (regularly $29.99 each) at Best Buy thanks to a price reduction and some coupons! Haven't touched Gran Tourismo 4 yet, but God Of War is great fun so far (I'm only at the second save point).
Finally, I got kinda bored the other day and set-up static IPs for every potential connection on my home network. That's ten IPs... And counting? :)
P.S. I'm working on a really exciting project (well, exciting for me and any hardware nerds reading this) that should be just about ready sometime early next week. Watch this space!
Aside from PC gaming, I've been spending some quality time with all of those console titles I keep writing about. I'd like to talk specifically about Burnout Revenge. It keeps 'crashing' on my XBOX. I am one of the apparently unfortunate souls who has been blessed with a Thomson DVD drive. From what I've heard, this particular drive is problematic for most, and often has issues reading discs. Now, I've played a lot of different titles on that XBOX without issue over the years (the only times I really noticed any problems were with Panzer Dragoon Orta and Shenmue II, but they were rare at most), but Burnout Revenge gives me the 'dirty/damaged disc' error pretty consistently. Grrr indeed.
Oh, and really quickly, I picked-up God Of War and Gran Tourismo 4 for PS2 for $19.99 CDN each (regularly $29.99 each) at Best Buy thanks to a price reduction and some coupons! Haven't touched Gran Tourismo 4 yet, but God Of War is great fun so far (I'm only at the second save point).
Finally, I got kinda bored the other day and set-up static IPs for every potential connection on my home network. That's ten IPs... And counting? :)
P.S. I'm working on a really exciting project (well, exciting for me and any hardware nerds reading this) that should be just about ready sometime early next week. Watch this space!
Friday, August 11, 2006
Birthday!
Sorry for the delay; been busy. I had a birthday last Friday, and there were related and unrelated festivities throughout the long weekend.
In recent news, I finished Prey. It was short. It was a hell of a lot of fun, and even a little nausea-inducing with it's blatant disregard for everyday expectations of space and gravity, but there isn't much to rant about. The graphics were slick, the presentation and voice acting were both solid, the weapons were effective (though interchangeable in most situations), and the plot was interesting enough. Most notably, the way the developers played with gravity and portals was quite effective, and the native American spiritual subtext was pretty interesting. These aspects really set Prey apart from most FPS games, which is why it's sad that they seem to have run out of time while making it. There are two very convenient events later in the game that effectively skip over what promise to be long and varied explorations of both an alien ship and a spiritual plane. *sigh*
In other news, I'm almost finished Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. The final battle, however, is proving to be quite maddeningly frustrating. I dunno, maybe I need to level-up some (my guys are both at 38). Fantastic, albeit short, game though. Definitely pick it up if you have a GBA, DS, or even get it for an emulator. You won't be disappointed, especially since it's now one of those discounted "Player's Choice" titles.
Since the end of last week, I've picked-up Guitar Hero (PS2), Burnout Revenge (XBOX), Sonic Mega Collection Plus (XBOX), Unreal II (PC), Need For Speed Most Wanted Black Edition (PC), and Peter Jackson's King Kong (PC). Guitar Hero was a birthday present from the family, and I love it so ;) Within a day or three of casual play, I'd already finished all of the regular songs on medium difficulty as well as unlocked all of the bonus songs and the Grim Ripper. I'm so happy to see "No One Knows" by Queens Of The Stone Age on there :) Burnout Revenge was marked-down to ~$20, so I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. It's very pretty and pretty fun, so it's definitely worth what I paid for it thus far. Unreal II, NFS, and Kong were impulse buys while I was out shopping for a new computer desk. Staples had them marked-down to the ridiculously cheap prices of $0.97, $9.97, and $9.97, respectively. Kong presents me with an unfortunate situation though; I now have three StarForce-protected games on my computer (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Trackmania: Sunrise, and King Kong). Fortunately, there is a free tool that removes the offending software when I'm not playing the games. Unfortunately, I have to restart my computer before and after each StarForce-protected gaming session.
You may have noticed that I skipped over that Sonic collection I mentioned in the last paragraph... Here's why: It's mostly fantastic, and deserves a paragraph all to itself. You can find it brand-new for under $20 CDN these days, and it includes four of the best reasons to own a SEGA Genesis: Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Ristar, and Comix Zone. That's right, not only does it include the Sonic games (including the "lock-on" games, Spinball and 3D Blast), but it also has some real classics in Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (a.k.a. Puyo Puyo ;) ), Flicky, The Ooze, Ristar, and Comix Zone. This "Mega Collection" also includes a spotty collection of Sonic's Game Gear adventures that strangely omits some of the better ones (Sonic 2, Triple Trouble) while including lacklustre titles like Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Drift, and the painful Sonic Blast. Unlocking the locked games in Sonic Mega Collection Plus can be mind-numbing (playing certain combinations of unlocked games 20 to 50 times each), but it's still a great value for $20; you really can't go wrong when you consider what you get. Oh, and I should mention that you can save at any point in any game. Now I just hope we see the Sonic Gems Collection (it includes nearly every Sonic game that this collection doesn't, including the venerable Sonic CD) on something other than the Game Cube here in North America.
And finally, I've just played through the demos for Call Of Juarez and Lego Star Wars 2. The former is very pretty if your computer can handle it, has some really promising gameplay dynamics, and takes absoloutely forever to load each level. The latter is just like the first one in the series, but with even more detail (building an AT-ST walker and then driving it around is great fun) and more freedom (designing your own character can get pretty funny).
Alright, that was long. I'm going to bed. 'til next time, kids, be well!
In recent news, I finished Prey. It was short. It was a hell of a lot of fun, and even a little nausea-inducing with it's blatant disregard for everyday expectations of space and gravity, but there isn't much to rant about. The graphics were slick, the presentation and voice acting were both solid, the weapons were effective (though interchangeable in most situations), and the plot was interesting enough. Most notably, the way the developers played with gravity and portals was quite effective, and the native American spiritual subtext was pretty interesting. These aspects really set Prey apart from most FPS games, which is why it's sad that they seem to have run out of time while making it. There are two very convenient events later in the game that effectively skip over what promise to be long and varied explorations of both an alien ship and a spiritual plane. *sigh*
In other news, I'm almost finished Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. The final battle, however, is proving to be quite maddeningly frustrating. I dunno, maybe I need to level-up some (my guys are both at 38). Fantastic, albeit short, game though. Definitely pick it up if you have a GBA, DS, or even get it for an emulator. You won't be disappointed, especially since it's now one of those discounted "Player's Choice" titles.
Since the end of last week, I've picked-up Guitar Hero (PS2), Burnout Revenge (XBOX), Sonic Mega Collection Plus (XBOX), Unreal II (PC), Need For Speed Most Wanted Black Edition (PC), and Peter Jackson's King Kong (PC). Guitar Hero was a birthday present from the family, and I love it so ;) Within a day or three of casual play, I'd already finished all of the regular songs on medium difficulty as well as unlocked all of the bonus songs and the Grim Ripper. I'm so happy to see "No One Knows" by Queens Of The Stone Age on there :) Burnout Revenge was marked-down to ~$20, so I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. It's very pretty and pretty fun, so it's definitely worth what I paid for it thus far. Unreal II, NFS, and Kong were impulse buys while I was out shopping for a new computer desk. Staples had them marked-down to the ridiculously cheap prices of $0.97, $9.97, and $9.97, respectively. Kong presents me with an unfortunate situation though; I now have three StarForce-protected games on my computer (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Trackmania: Sunrise, and King Kong). Fortunately, there is a free tool that removes the offending software when I'm not playing the games. Unfortunately, I have to restart my computer before and after each StarForce-protected gaming session.
You may have noticed that I skipped over that Sonic collection I mentioned in the last paragraph... Here's why: It's mostly fantastic, and deserves a paragraph all to itself. You can find it brand-new for under $20 CDN these days, and it includes four of the best reasons to own a SEGA Genesis: Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Ristar, and Comix Zone. That's right, not only does it include the Sonic games (including the "lock-on" games, Spinball and 3D Blast), but it also has some real classics in Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (a.k.a. Puyo Puyo ;) ), Flicky, The Ooze, Ristar, and Comix Zone. This "Mega Collection" also includes a spotty collection of Sonic's Game Gear adventures that strangely omits some of the better ones (Sonic 2, Triple Trouble) while including lacklustre titles like Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Drift, and the painful Sonic Blast. Unlocking the locked games in Sonic Mega Collection Plus can be mind-numbing (playing certain combinations of unlocked games 20 to 50 times each), but it's still a great value for $20; you really can't go wrong when you consider what you get. Oh, and I should mention that you can save at any point in any game. Now I just hope we see the Sonic Gems Collection (it includes nearly every Sonic game that this collection doesn't, including the venerable Sonic CD) on something other than the Game Cube here in North America.
And finally, I've just played through the demos for Call Of Juarez and Lego Star Wars 2. The former is very pretty if your computer can handle it, has some really promising gameplay dynamics, and takes absoloutely forever to load each level. The latter is just like the first one in the series, but with even more detail (building an AT-ST walker and then driving it around is great fun) and more freedom (designing your own character can get pretty funny).
Alright, that was long. I'm going to bed. 'til next time, kids, be well!
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