Tabula Rasa beta test.
Posted on August 19, 2007 at 1:26 pm.
I am playing the Tabula Rasa beta.
Can't say anymore because of the NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
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People of Gen Con.
Posted on August 18, 2007 at 6:00 pm.
Here are the pictures of the costumed people I met while at Gen Con. I can only imagine the amount of effort that went into creating these costumes. Although I don't wear a costume myself, I was happy to see so many people geeking out. It's more fun that way.
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Gen Con - Day 3.
Posted on August 18, 2007 at 5:47 pm.
This is my last day of Gen Con. I will not be staying in Indianapolis for the 4th and final day.
Today Chris and I went to the Intel/Dell booth where Crysis was shown. We were looking at a guy playing and then suddenly the game froze.
One of the reps restarted the computer and we tried to run the game again. Since it started up in low resolution, we went into the graphical settings and took a peek.
And then we decided to change the resolution.
And were greeted with the following:
We totaly understand that it is not a final version and that things like that happen, and that it was running on XP, when it was supposed to have been running on Vista. However, we were surprised at the reaction on the booth people, who basically chased us away and tried to take our notepads.
Anyway, moving on. I hung out by the Witcher booth for the third day in a row, and annoyed Michal Madej to the point where he probably wanted to strangle me. Chris had to drag me away kicking and screaming. Michal was so happy to get rid of me, that he gave me a sweet leather mouse pad with the Witcher logo pressed onto it.
Then we found a place called Cardhalla. There people were building all sorts of stuff from cards. Anybody could join, not just the organizers. At the end of the show, they would have all the structures destroyed by throwing coins at them. The right to throw the coin first would be auctioned off. All the money collected would go the charity.
After that we met Danielle R. Freeland - the author of "The Silentstep Chronicles: Psychic Ranger". She and her crew were promoting her book. She is the girl in black and red on a picture below.
After that we saw a big Klingon guy who was dragging come poor girl. We followed him and turns out that people were paying him to kidnap their friends and lock them up in a Klingon Jail. Imagine that!
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Gen Con - Day 2.
Posted on August 18, 2007 at 10:39 am.
Ok, so I am on my second day of Gen Con and I am sitting down to take a break because I am pretty tired from all the walking. Chris is not with me today as he is taking care of some RWB business so no pictures of me with hot booth babes.
Anyway, back to the important stuff. I had a chance to play the new World of Warcraft expansion - Wraith of the Lich King, and it appears to be in line with the way WoW normally is. I also got to interview Lee Sparks - an associate producer from Blizzard and he had a bunch of interesting info for me.
Other than WoW, I got some hands-on time with Conan MMO and talked to Jason Stone, the game content designer from Funcom. It could potentially be a pretty awesome game, although not necessarily my cup of tea. While playing Conan on a beta server I got approached by another player who called me a noob and ugly. In retaliation Jason helped me unlock one of the GM abilities, so I unzipped my pants and pissed on that other player. He was ... surprised to say the least. =)
Eve Online is also neat, but was a little difficult for me to get into.
Tabula Rasa was another MMO I took for a test drive. The targeting system felt a bit weird, but otherwise the game seems pretty solid. It was definitely interesting and I think I will check out a beta when I get home. I got handed a beta key after I was done playing and I intend to take advantage of the opportunity.
The last game I checked out was Warhammer Online, and of all the other games this one looks the most promissing. I don't know if it's gonna be a WoW killer or not but it has the potential.
Starcraft II on the other hand failed to impress me. As far as I am concerned it is just same old Starcraft with a couple of new units and a nice graphical update.
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Gen Con - Day 1.
Posted on August 16, 2007 at 10:38 pm.
I am at Gen Con in Indianapolis!!! Today was the first day and I am nearly overwhelmed. I saw so many things and there are so many more things to see and do! I am having a great time.
Big thanks to Chris Ramseyer who offered his house for me to stay in!
Today I saw and played the Witcher and let me tell you the graphics are nice and the gameplay is sweet. The finishing moves are just fucking awesome! I also had an opportunity to talk to Michal Madej, who turned out to be a real cool guy.
I also looked at Starcraft II and the new Warcraft expansion, but didn't get to play them yet. I will tomorrow though. Also I am going to try and get an interview with Blizzard people tomorrow.
I got a look at Crysis, which I will play tomorrow, and I finally met with Sean Aikins in person.
Then I got to meet some interesting people...
... and some of them pointed swords at me ...
... and even guns ...
... but in the end I was able to overcome the obstacles with my charm and good looks and sexy smile...
... and then I made friends with some employees of the Empire ...
... and after that we all went to the local RAM brewery, which was also decorated to fit the occasion.
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An unusual request.
Posted on August 14, 2007 at 3:48 pm.
I just had an IM conversation about this blog with an acquaintance, who made a most unusual request and I quote, "call me gay in separate post".
Umm... ok Trigor, anything for you.
Trigor you are gay.
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More science, less hysteria.
Posted on August 14, 2007 at 3:42 pm.
Another article on the global warming hysteria a.k.a. global warming religion. It is mighty good to know that there are some real scientists out there and that not everyone has already succumbed to the moronic teachings of dear old Al Gore and a bunch of entertainers.
Read the article here.
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Book - Against the Tide.
Posted on August 14, 2007 at 9:57 am.
Just finished reading Against the Tide by John Ringo. Great book!
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Kitten.
Posted on August 13, 2007 at 5:31 pm.
A few hours ago Yara has found a small, six-week old kitten on the street. He was dehydrated, starved and blind from pus in his eyes. She took him home and then to a shelter. There they fed and cleaned him and he appears to be healthy. He will be held at one of the shelter employees' home for the nest two weeks. Then he would either have to be adopted or they will turn him in to animal control, which will kill him.
If you'd like to adopt him, or know anyone who would, please let me know. The kitten is a gray tabby.
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Resolutions.
Posted on August 13, 2007 at 9:25 am.
As I wrote before, a bunch of games don't support common widescreen resolutions such as 1680x1050. While it is understandable for old games, for anything that came out within the last 2-3 years it is unacceptable.
Still, it appears that one can not depend on game developers to take care of this. So instead I decided to tweak my computer, so that whenever a lower resolution is displayed, it would appear in the center of the screen surrounded by a black box. That way I would get a clear picture instead of the scaled and stretched image that I normally would.
I knew that it is technically possible to do on my nVidia hardware. However there were no settings to allow for it in the nVidia control panel. The custom resolutions tool would not allow me to do it and there was no scaling option in there although it should have been present.
Then I found this page, which talks about something else, but apparently helps with my problem as well. I had to download and run a file called EnableOverscanCompensation.exe, because apparently this overscan deal is turned off by default.
(I'd like to spit on whoever is the retard that came up with HDCP and made things this difficult for people who just want to configure their own freaking videocard.)
Anyway, after I ran the file it didn't seem to do anything. So I just went messing around with everything I could find in that damned nVidia control panel. I messed with HDTV settings and with custom resolution settings.
Eventually I got it to work just the way I wanted to.
There are only two problems. One is that my computer now displays options for resolutions much higher than my maximum 1680x1050, This is not a big deal, since I don't plan on changing resolutions manually and plus even if I do accidentally do it, it will revert back in 15 seconds anyway.
The second problem is, I don't know how exactly I did it! I do have a pretty good idea, but still not exactly a point by point guide.
I think that first I changed HDTV output from whtever ws the first option onto 720i (or something), which was the second option. Then another menu item appeared in the nVidia control panel under HDTV. It had something to do with scaling and so I selected it. And then I created a custom resolution for 1280x1024, where in the Back End menu drop-down box I selected one of the options other than Manual and Auto.
Then I saved it and that was it. For some reason any resolution below 1680x1050 is now properly displayed in a black box.
Not sure why or how but still I am glad I can play older games now without them looking like a giant pile of crap.
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"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." - Isaac Asimov
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