Friday, December 28, 2007

Kotor, My nemesis...

There is a serious issue that needs to be taken care of. Kotor! Also, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is addictive. I started playing this game, but I couldn't due to "technical issues" (9 year old processor). I downloaded the patch and I started to get addicted to this awesome game. I really like this game as it allows me to go down the dark or light path. I can force choke insolent fools or bring peace to all- the former being more fun, of course. I believe I have found a new game to play until... uh oh... look at the time. 10 hours I have played today. Get lots of rest, I must.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Sorry, Jamul!

I was going to look at the forums, so I signed in and I noticed I got an award. Yipee? I guess you can get awards when you are banned... so, I forgot to take a screenshot so I backed up and I got an amusing message:

Are you trying to cheat your way to stardom? Cheaters never win. You should be ashamed of yourself. To think I trusted you! This is like a knife in my back! You know what? I'm not even going to give you a handy link to go back to the previous page. You are a horrible person. It hurts that you would treat me like this, when I've done so much for you. I give and I give, and this is what I get? Shpadoinkle!

I am going to try to mess with Google...

Welcome to The Finger Planet, your one stop source for all your The Finger needs! We've got The Finger video games, The Finger videos, The Finger music, The Finger Computers, The Finger Books, The Finger blogging instruction video, The Finger, The Finger, The Finger, Giving your best friends the finger! Instructions on giving fingers and the process of the preceding action mentioned... above... fingerisms... of the way of the finger...

Deus Ex Machina

There is a logical explanation for my mysterious absence for 4 whole days. I was absentmindedly typing on my keyboard how I beat the awesome boss of Half-Life 2 who may or may not have been that awesome ninja robot that cut off Revolver's hand from Metal Gear Solid 1 when I heard gunshots. I quickly knocked over a table (that had all of my saved blog progress for December 23 that I was going to post) and used it for cover. Suddenly, a frag grenade fell right to my side. I quickly picked it up and hurled it over to the terrorists that were at my door, but it exploded in midair knocking me out. I woke up dangling over a pot of boiling water suspended only by a rope crudely tied around my ankles.
I remembered the shurikens I got for an early Christmas present and killed all the terrorists with it. Suddenly, an angel came out of nowhere and saved me and teleported me back to where I was at... 4 days later. Everything was as it was before. This odd time lapse was seemingly unexplainable. Then I realized there was a lesson behind all of this.


DONT HUFF SPRAYPAINT!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Arnold Schwarzenegger That Beat Up Christmas

Haha.. I just saw Arnold Schwarzenegger beat up like, 50 Santa Clauses using a candy cane and his brawn. It was hilarious... then he managed to fool a SWAT team into thinking he was an undercover agent. That was a morale booster :D He is only second (third, really) to Chuck Norris and Neo in coolness factor. I don't know why I obsess over the Matrix, really. But...


Who would win in a battle?

Freddy Kruger (Evil being from beyond the grave; scarred face)

or....

Neo (Awesome Hacker who can bend the Matrix to his will and dodge bullets and stuff; awesome sunglasses and cape, tons of guns)

Great Non-Progress!

I got past TWO WHOLE LOADING POINTS!!! ZEE OH EM GEE!! Well, 3, actually. Great progress. Especially considering each loading point is about 15 minutes of gameplay. =\
I am gonna just shoot stuff in Gmod. Not much dedication here.

Friday, December 21, 2007

;_; I will never be the same again. ;_;

Twice a headcrab zombie has jumped out of NOWHERE and scared me to HALF TO DEA- no... wait.. A THIRD TO DEATH! I am now on the highway in my little buggy and got the crossbow- the second to last weapon in the game (excluding the awesome upgrade I heard was later in the game). Sadly, there was a scripted event where a Toxic Zombie would be spawned right after getting the second to last weapon in the game. I was scared a fourth to death. It seems everything is scarier the second time around. I keep telling myself "It's just polygons" but when a fast zombie comes howling and tears me to shreds, it's hard to think.
Anyways, if you search for "Chris Da Lunatic" the Hamumu forums where I was banned from several times (see below) pops up as a first result and then this blog a few results later. About the ban, it didn't sound final. I guess I should wait it out. Maybe check back in December 2008 or something. :P

Thursday, December 20, 2007

5 days until Christmas- gotta hurry

I didn't realize how close Christmas was until I checked the date. Wow. I gotta finish Half-Life before Christmas! Otherwise, I will be bogged down with several gifts that I could possibly enjoy more for a while! I should do a review of Half Life 2 after I beat Half-Life. By the way, I decided to start a new game (to see if I improved) and set the difficulty to normal (to see if I can commit indirect suicide). I also might be slowed down by the wonders of Garry's Mod...

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

More performance reports

I already told you that I got Half-Life 2 working on my computer, but I will fill you in on the details. First of all, I don't get the pretty water reflection effects that you see in screenshots and stuff because my graphics card is a MX model of the Geforce2 and does not support pixel shading required for water reflections on Half Life 2 and Morrowind. It's okay though since it looks okay but slightly outdated (Think Ocarina of Time) without the reflectivity added by pixel shading.
Now that we got that out of the way, the textures don't look good (about PS2 quality) when I set them on low so I usually set them on medium so they look substantially nicer than with low. This has a small performance hit, but it is worth the prettiness. High textures is too far and lags a lot. Also, I don't see any difference between high shader effects and low shader effects so I just keep the shader effects on low for possible performance reasons.
As for the FPS (frames per second) I get usually 5-10 fps outside in high poly areas such as the open areas in the beginning of the game. This increased to about 8-13 in areas that have less polygons and around 15 fps in areas that are enclosed with a low amount of polys. I am just guessing the fps because I am too lazy to look up the fps counter console command, but I can estimate about how many fps an animation is because I used to feverishly check the fps counter on World of Warcraft to compare the best combinations of performance and quality.
I think I am about 2/3 of the way done with the game now, I am at the part where you fight all the enemy soldiers by setting up turrets (I can't get past it yet) and am dying alot.. on easy... but that's just because I suck at first person shooters. :P

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Headcrab Zombies *shudders*

I got Half-Life 2 to work on my computer, so I am ecstatic! Yes, my computer is as crappy as I said before, but Half-Life 2 is still playable! I was able to make it all the way past the airboat scene and save the game. I am happy that I was able to get this game to work because I really heard good things about this game and how it is a "must have". I now have confirmed what they said about this game and am glad that I got it. I cant wait until I get the gravity gun!! ^_^

Monday, December 17, 2007

Nonsense

Well, I made a powerpoint that the class liked, so I felt good. Right now I am in computer apps class and I am attempting to dodge the watchful (yet currently distracted) eye of my teacher while typing on a blog. However, due to software called "SynchronEyes" he can see real time images of my computer screen... if he is at my computer. You can easily bypass SynchronEyes by opening Word, typing nonsense, closing, when they ask if you want to save don't click anything and viola. You fought teh powar.
Anyways, now for the reason I posted here. Hilarious Japanese people trying to dodge the inevitable.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

PSU = Dead?

I booted up my computer and was greeted with a nice loud grinding sound. The sound eventually died down to barely tolerable, but I still am worried. At first I thought I had to backup everything on my hard drive and that the apocalypse was nigh, but it turns out that the fan on my power supply unit was making the obnoxious noise. This is sort of a bad time because I was about to do something crazy on my computer.
EDIT: It appears it is now harmless. My older (and much smarter) brother, Matt (who gave me this computer in the first place) says that the fan likely has sand in it and he would come out and fix it. :)
I just bought Half-Life 2. So, what's the deal? In case you couldn't tell from my previous post, the computer was all I could afford (a grand total of 0$). Here are the specs:

412MB of ram
Nvidia Geforce2 MX Graphics Card (64mb, no pixel shaders)
Like, 10gb of free space on my 80gig hard drive
450mhz Pentium III processor
Windows XP Professional SP2


As you can tell, I am probably going to get 10fps if I am lucky. I got about 20 fps on World of Warcraft, about half the graphics detail of Half Life. There are actually lots of console commands in Half Life (none in WoW for obvious reasons; cheating if you are dumb or computer challenged) that control various aspects of the game and rendering. I assume I can turn off the pixel shaders and reflectivity so that the computer at least doesn't explode. (Just sizzle a little bit and set fire to my house). My biggest concern is not the graphics but the physics. With my puny, weak-minded CPU, I cannot load too many physics objects, but I have to if I want to play half life. Now to attempt to install this game (I heard it is notorious for long, cumbersome installations). So, now all I have to do is install the game and seal the fate of teh computer forevar. Yes, it's worth it. Yes, I am partially insane.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Argh, Crippled Graphics Card...

I just realized how terrible my graphics card really was. I downloaded one of those stress tests that measure the performance of your GPU and decided to give it a spin. No pixel shading support. Low framerates on moderately complex scenes. Huge problems with reflections. Such is the track record of MX models of Nvidia GPUs. I have an Nvidia Geforce2MX and it's a sad day when I can't play Morrowind with somewhat of a decent looking graphics quality. Also, Metal Gear Solid 2 just chuuuuugs. I even had problems with Final Fantasy 8 of all games. Is my computer really slower than a PSX?
Back on the subject of Morrowind, I love that game. Morrowind is really my kind of game despite obvious technical limitations and inevitable frequent crashes caused by the very thing that makes them lest devastating: saving. I don't mind those so much so I can just enjoy Morrowind even if it crashes every 15 minutes or so. I really like the sense of exploration you get by traversing the land because I was always fond of open-ended games that allowed you to roam free and do whatever you like. Morrowind lets you do just that. You can fight monsters, do quests, or even quite literally get away with murder (if planned properly... good thing premeditation isn't a factor in this game) assuming you can evade the guards.
That's the beauty of this game though, no rules. They designed the game so that they gave you some items, a world to explore, a bunch of quests, but you are not obligated to do anything. This is a game where you can have endless hours of fun without doing anything related to the quest. Also, like I said before, you can be a criminal if you choose to. As there are no rules to this game except for the laws imposed by the government in the game (which you can break) you can realistically simulate being as crooked as you like. Inversely, you can be a heroic knight that stands up to the mighty forces of the Daedra and kills monsters. I prefer a more indirect approach to everything. I like to stop along the way to smell roses and stuff.
People may make games and claim that they are "Open ended" or "non linear" but fail to make it as such because they impose too many rules and boundaries. On Morrowind, there are more than a few ways to do things and bend the rules a little. Say for instance you needed to get through a gorge with an enemy stronghold at the bottom of it (you are at the bottom too). You could either:

A: Go through the stronghold kililing enemies along the way.
B: Cast a jumping spell on you and use your empowered jumping to scale the stronghold and cross to the other side.
C: Repeatedly use invisibility effects to cross the stronghold unseen and avoid conflict.
D: Scale the gorge and go thorough.

There are probably other ways to get across, but I've barely scratched the surface of this game. I really like the open endedness of the game because sometimes the linear games get a bit boring and you run out of new things to do. Morrowind has variety and lots of map area to explore. I personally recommend it to anyone who doesn't have the computer for Oblivion (the sequel) or just wants a fun game filled with variety.

Friday, December 14, 2007

New Blog

It's been a while since I have posted a blog. I've been occupied with various things that needed to be done such as homework and stuff. I've decided to relocate my blog from Myspace to blogger because I wanted more freedom with what I do to my blog. Anyways, just posting to make sure that my blog works.