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Wistrik
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Posts posted by Wistrik
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Making my way up the coast again. The rollermine is still with me.
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but Combine soldiers don't seem to want to shoot at it. My allies on the other hand seem only too happy to shoot my poor rollermine.
Rollermines are Combine equipment, so of course Combine soldiers won't attack them.
(They will attack in Ep2, after Alyx reprograms the rollermines.)
I played HL2 last night from the start of Point Insertion (the start of the game) to the end of Ravenholm, but stopped at the top of the mine shaft. Tonight I'll go down there and take screenshots of the spawn points for the fast headcrabs.
Been playing on Normal difficulty instead of Easy, and noticed that Metrocops will fire flares into the air to signal their buddies where the Anticitizen has been located. Interesting bit of tactics there that is never seen in Easy mode. I'm looking forward to seeing if soldiers operate differently.I dropped the helicopter hit points down from 5600+ to around 750 (using a CFG file), same as the armored car and armored troop carrier. It made no sense that I had to fire 12 rockets (give or take) to drop a lousy helicopter. Now they drop with four. It's funny how I can blow a soldier out of the helicopter and yet the helicopter continues to operate as if nothing happened.
Had a blast in the airboat, as usual. Looking forward to the scout buggy, though I don't care for the antlion spawns throughout that part of the trip. Oh, of course I get to travel the coast road during spawning season. It could be no other way! *shakes fist at Valve* This is somewhat offset by being able to control them later on, though I'd prefer a mission of stealth.
Route Kanal is properly named, it's like having a root canal, all that trash, tunneling, and manhack-infested ruins. And every so often a scanner blinds me before I have time to react. Ugh. (They drop straight down sometimes.)
Valve has a Wiki article on taking screenshots, and it pointed out how I could get 8xFSAA even though the game options wouldn't let me go past 6x. (My card supports 8xS.) Now I can play at 1280x960 with absolutely no jaggies. Very nice. I'll need to upgrade my computer to play at a higher resolution, but it looks so good now that I'm in no hurry. I would like to be able to use the Cinematic mod's hi-res textures though, and no doubt Episode 2 is going to require better hardware.
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I have always waited two or more years before I decided to 'upgrade' Windows. This allowed me to 'miss out' on Windows prior to 3.1, and Windows ME, and usually gets me into a newer version of the OS sometime after SP2 (or its equivalent) has been released. I ran 98SE until autumn of 2004 when I got a new computer, but by then I had time to compare flavors of XP so I knew what I was getting in to.
Most of the hubbub seems to be centered on commercial media, which doesn't concern me one bit. I play movies and CDs on my standalone DVD player, and use the computer for games, programming, documentation, and so on. I have a 'lousy' 32" TV with s-video hookup to the DVD player, and it produces very nice images. I don't care as much about high resolution in movies as I do in computer games, where I'm typically sitting much closer to the screen.
It will be interesting to read the reviews, blogs, etc., that are produced in the months and years to come. Perhaps I'll skip Vista too, or maybe Linux will grow up enough that I'll decide to make the switch. Mac? No, not now that they've switched to using Intel chips.
I had to chuckle at Nick White's "About" line at the bottom of the Microsoft article. Not only is he young and inexperienced, but typically arrogant as well. He describes his job and assumes the reader must be jealous. No thanks, I'll take my job over his any day.
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*sets his arms on fire*
I don't own a gun. Too many temptations to use it.
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Nah, they don't spawn. There's just a lot of them and they're spread out. I've killed them all on a couple of my dozen playthroughs.
They did the four times I played through. I just stood there and watched the fast headcrabs repeat the same pattern over and over and over. I lost count after several dozen spawned (one at a time), ran the same identical path, and died. All the others were already gone. It was silly. I'll have to play through there again and take screenshots of the spawn locations. They're as predictable as the sun rising in the morning.
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- The endlessly spawning fast headcrabs at the bottom of the Ravenholm mine shaft (on the way out) are over the top. They appear out of thin air and immediately run for me. This ruins an otherwise perfect visit to Ravenholm. After the first time playing, I now simply activate the noclip cheat and pass to the other side of the fence. No point in wasting ammo on creatures I can't kill.
Are you talking about the big open area with a few steps and ladders, and some catwalks, with the fence you have to jump across?
Because I don't remember enemies respawning there either.
Yes. I'm probably the only FPS player who likes to explore areas rather than run through them at light speed, so as usual I'm the only one to notice the trigger-controlled endless spawns. Next time you're there, stay on the floor and shoot headcrabs. Pretty soon the pattern of spawning will appear. One from the corner of a building, another from some other dark corner, etc. Until you leave the area, they keep coming.
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Most games I've played over the decades reward me for solving problems with violence more often than not. This doesn't help me in the real world, where such activities are usually cut short by law enforcement personnel or concerned citizens. This is one reason I've edged into the adventure game genre; they tend to emphasize non-violent solutions and inventive thinking, which is more rewarding when applied to the real world. Games are better than movies at influencing people because in games the person is an active participant, usually 100% of the time.
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It may be a scripted trigger that causes them to respawn until you leave the area. In my case I was on the floor/ground and no matter where I went they would respawn from two or three fixed locations and come charging at me. I even stood there and killed a hundred or more just to see if they'd stop after awhile. Nope. They finally seemed to stop spawning when I left the floor and was about to cross over the chainlink fence/boundary blocking the way to the exit.
The same thing happens with cops and soldiers in different places. They spawn like crazy until you move to a different zone, though the zone's boundaries are usually always invisible or non-obvious.
I know it's a vehicle used to give the illusion of greater numbers than would be feasible for performance reasons, but I don't like it because it's not realistic. At least the original HL had a reason for spawning repeatedly (troop ships/warping in from Xen) with accompanying events. In HL2 they just appear out of thin air.
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I both love and hate Ravenholm. I look forward to it as much as I dread it.
Good:
- Atmosphere is awesome, especially with sound up and lights off or low and I'm the only one in the house.
- Zombies all say things like "oh my god, help me!", but in reverse, and they sound like they're really in pain when I set them on fire.
- Saw blades, tanks of gas, modified engine block choppers, crushing cars, and gas fires are loads of fun.
- Father Grigori is an enjoyable character.
- I get the shotgun in this area (in an unmodded, legit game)
- The corpse being electrocuted on the fence is good stuff.
- Fast Zombies attacking from far away; haven't ever been this scared in a computer game, and reminds me of old Creature Features on Saturday afternoons.
- I just get out of Ravenholm, am greeted with a cityscape, and start a relaxing run down the railroad track. Then, out of nowhere, a final fast zombie flies at me from atop a railcar. Awesome! :joy:
Bad:
- The endlessly spawning fast headcrabs at the bottom of the Ravenholm mine shaft (on the way out) are over the top. They appear out of thin air and immediately run for me. This ruins an otherwise perfect visit to Ravenholm. After the first time playing, I now simply activate the noclip cheat and pass to the other side of the fence. No point in wasting ammo on creatures I can't kill.
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I saw a picture of him back in the days of Black Isle's forums, so yes it's a pretty good representation, albeit in different clothing.
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I came home last week to find a gift from some relatives out in British Columbia. Turns out they bought me Half Life 2 Episode 1. Unfortunately I had never played Half Life 2 itself. Just purchased a copy of Half Life 2 so I'm now about to go through both of these games for the first time.
Enjoy!
I second this wish. Though I played the original HL years ago, HL2 stands on its own, and is lots of fun. Has great atmosphere too, and many places worth stopping at to enjoy the view.
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My pig familiar and overlooking a lizardling corpse.
How did you get the camera so low? I can never get to to drop below chest level on a human character. Really annoying, especially since NWN's camera let me drop to the ground for nice scenic shots.
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You might consider downloading BG1 bug fixes from Dudleyville. They took Baldurdash's original fixes, fixed those, and added hundreds more. That would let you enjoy the game more like the developers wanted, although some fixes will be subtle, if noticed, depending on what class you play and how you play.
If you got the Original Saga version of the game, you may notice that only half of the music is being used, due to Bioware accidentally duplicating playlists. Dudleyville has a fix in the form of the original BG1's playlist (.MUS) files, which didn't have this problem. They added this fix after I pointed out the duplication.
There is a BG1 Fixpack mod being worked on which will include all of Dudleyville's fixes and add several more, with a WeiDU installer, but I don't think it's complete yet.
You may not care about bugs, but I do, and there are hundreds of little (and not so little) bugs in the original game, even with the latest official patch. (The Original Saga is fully patched right off the CDs.)
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Being a fast learner isn't the same as being adaptable. If you want to jump into modding a newer engine, you'll have to bite the bullet and be flexible enough to accept the changes in the new toolset. Once you've overcome your resistance to change, your fast-learning capability will kick in and everything will become easy again. Complaining won't cause the developer to rewrite the toolset, though they might make a few changes here and there, as has already been done with NWN2's toolset.
Otherwise, consider staying with the game you know well.
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I'm considering a AMD 64FX quad processor for my next computer. By the time I'm ready to do the upgrade there may be better options, so this isn't set in stone. I'd be getting the FX-74.
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Half-Life 2: Episode 2
What? When was that out?
...Or it is just a typo?
Typo.
Yes, typo, sorry about that. It was 1am when I posted so I was a bit loopy.
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I'm using a Samsung Syncmaster 215TW 21" LCD that got pretty good reviews last year. It was priced between $400 and $500, but as always it depends on where you buy it. At work I use its 17" cousin, which likewise has a good picture, but feels very tiny in comparison.
When I first got it, I experienced a lot of shearing in 3D games, but an updated monitor driver from Microsoft fixed 99% of the problem. It was a good reminder that monitor drivers are almost as important as video drivers nowadays.
I get great contrast, true black even in a dark room, and awesome colors. It also rotates for portrait view, which is great for PDFs and other page-oriented documents. Games look great so long as I can play them at 1024x768 or better resolution. I almost need to wear sunglasses if I have Bloom enabled in NWN2, but on my monitor the game looks better without Bloom (helps performance slightly as well.) I have the same issue with Half-Life 2: Episode 2 with HDR enabled. In a way it's kinda cool, I get blinded by bright lights just as in real life. Of course, the monitor lets you turn the contrast down a notch if it's too much, but I usually just turn off HDR/Bloom since the games are plenty bright to begin with, at least on my LCD.
Word and Excel love the extra real estate, as do my programming tools. I can compare documents side by side (or flip the screen and compare top and bottom), while keeping the documents at a very readable zoom level.
NVidia's video drivers can automatically preserve the aspect ratio for games that don't support wide-screen resolutions. Thus if I play at 1280x1024 or 1024x768 I get black vertical bands on each side of the screen image. This keeps the images in such a game from looking stretched out. With 3D games that's less of a problem. Samsung provides software that preserves the aspect ratio of such games in case your video drivers don't offer that option.
I recommend reading several tech reviews before you decide to spend your money. I did, and I don't regret my purchase. It's an 'obsolete' 60hz monitor, but the quality is high enough that I won't need to upgrade for another year or more.
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No; I just edited my post to mention that. I accidentally logged onto b.net using the PlugY shortcut and it let me into the chat channels just fine, and even let me create a game, but I got booted from the game whenever I tried dragging an item over extra inventory space or the modified stash.
" I also have to swap out DLLs to play on B.net because I've modified them to some extent; things like blocking formula, telekinesis picks up all items, classic D2 character titles, and some other stuff. The forums PlugY is hosted at also have a code editing area.Battle.net was fun when the game was new, but not so much anymore. Plus thanks to mods, the singleplayer game can eliminate the annoyances found on B.net.
Online it's hard to find a full game for maximum experience gain. Even when you do, it typically doesn't last longer than it takes to kill Baal. Offline I can enable /players 8 and have the equivalent of a 'full' game, XP-wise, for as many hours as I want, any time I want. (I don't require the presence of others in order to have a good time playing D2, nor do I require their assistance.)
Online there is lag, hackers, bots (one of the level 98 characters on the current ladder is a Baal-run bot), spammers, and lots of greedy players. None of that exists in my offline game.
Online I have to put up with a dinky stash and cramped inventory. Not so offline.
Online I have to make a 'ladder' character to gain access to all cube recipes, unique items, runewords, DClone (and Annihilus charm), and Uber Bosses (and Hellfire Torch charm). Offline I get all of that and more.
I recently did some playing on Battle.net and the lag was worse than ever, even worse than when I had 56k dialup. Consequently I returned to singleplayer and was greeted with instant responses to my mouse clicks. I see very little reason to play on closed B.net now that I can modify the singleplayer game to play the way I like.
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As I've stated before, I've been playing Diablo 2 with the PlugY frontend loader and DLL plugin.
This screenshot shows PlugY's infinite stash and my own larger character inventory modification. The stash has 2^32 pages of personal space and 2^32 pages of shared space. You can also, optionally, configure hardcore characters to share the stash with non-hardcore characters. My inventory modification adds two additional rows to the bottom of the character's 'backpack' inventory. The shared stash pages are visible now, and I've been filling the stash with goodies found by an amazon, sorceress, and (mostly) a magic-find necromancer. This mod makes 'mule' characters and muling programs (ATMA) obsolete. The mod doesn't work on Battle.net (closed) realms, but that's fine because I mostly play singleplayer. I do have a separate shortcut for my occasional foray onto B.net, though I don't play much there due to my singleplayer game being so much better (and especially lag-free).
These screenshots show the two additional pages of character info. PlugY adds left and right arrow buttons to the original character sheet so that you can navigate to these pages. Among other things, they show your total Magic Find, Hit Recovery, Magic Damage Reduction, and so on.
PlugY also lets you undo your attribute point assignments in case you want to test something or you make a mistake. You can also edit skill point assignments in similar manner. This saves having to make an additional character to try out a particular skill, for instance. If you (still) play D2 and think these options are interesting, you can visit the PlugY Forum for more information, and to download the mod.
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I've always been a subscriber of Computer Gaming World, which recently became Games for Windows. My subscription goes back about 18 years. I've always appreciated the mature level of writing, which I don't usually find in PC Gamer and most console mags.
True, I was with CGW for a couple years toward the end. The immaturity is mostly what caused me to drop PC Gamer. I was growing up, they were the same or worse; it was time to move on. By then the internet had several sites that provided what I looked for, and I was tired of magazines littering my home, so I made the switch to digital.
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None of these websites (nor the public internet) existed when I was growing up and entering the hobby of computer gaming, so instead of websites I had monthly magazine subscriptions. Among the few I tried, I subscribed to Compute!'s Gazette and PC Gamer the longest, about five or six years each.
These days I usually Google what I'm looking for, unless I know a specific site. General purpose game sites don't interest me much, though I do bookmark developer/publisher websites for the games I own copies of, and I like visiting sites dedicated to a particular game or game series, such as Ultima, Baldur's Gate, and NWN.
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Hah, the facial animations crack me up sometimes. My character often looks like he's about to doze off during a conversation. Obsidian should have hired the services of Valve's face/mouth animator.
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Start a new game, walk to the part of the path near the fighting contest (past Georg), stay on the path, zoom the camera all the way out, drop to near horizon level, rotate the camera around the party until you find the point where your performance is the worst, then tweak your settings to get a compromise between performance and quality. That should get you similar or better performance for the rest of the game. It did for me anyway, and it's a good place to start. If you get good performance in West Harbor, you'll get the same or better in Neverwinter City. The only places that might be worse are certain indoor areas, but you can avoid that by keeping the camera 45 degrees or more above the horizon.
For me the worst point in West Harbor was when the camera was between two buildings and facing north/northeast toward the fight arena. I could see the corners of the two buildings, a nearby tree branch, and everything beyond. This seemed to drag my computer down more than any other viewpoint I tried, and proved very useful for a tweak reference. Note that some changes require game restart, and you should probably restart your computer as well. I found that if I didn't do that, my performance would degrade considerably, as if the game wasn't properly cleaning up its mess while changing settings. Also this occured in version 1.03 (the final release).
I hope this info is helpful in some measure.
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Heh, this could go on for hours, but I'm not going to type a novel.
Studying for tests was easy, because I didn't have to. All the previous week's material came rushing back so that my test answers often looked like I'd copied from the source material, though I had none with me save what was in my memory.
After I've played a game the first time, I may not know everything there is to do or find in the game, but all the non-random portions I did encounter will never be forgotten.
I can remember things that happened when I was two years old, despite that being 37 years ago, and I can describe much in detail, as if I was reliving it. Of course, this is easier with things I got to spend more time with. The rush of the workplace tends to be forgotten as so much blends together from day to day, but things I do at home, in a more relaxed environment, tend to stay with me for a long time. I play games at home, so this is why I remember them so well.
Anyway, I'm getting older so my memory is less stellar than it used to be, but I can still surprise my friends on occasion, and static-content/plot games continue to be less interesting the second time around. I still ace tests on a regular basis too.
It's been a blessing and a curse, because I can remember the nightmares and bad experiences as easily as the dreams and good experiences. I have no control over it outside of what I choose to feed into my mind.
Been playing on Normal difficulty instead of Easy, and noticed that Metrocops will fire flares into the air to signal their buddies where the Anticitizen has been located. Interesting bit of tactics there that is never seen in Easy mode. I'm looking forward to seeing if soldiers operate differently.
" I also have to swap out DLLs to play on B.net because I've modified them to some extent; things like blocking formula, telekinesis picks up all items, classic D2 character titles, and some other stuff. The forums PlugY is hosted at also have a code editing area.
What are you playing now?
in Computer and Console
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Oops, didn't know you hadn't played it before. I won't say more on the matter other than you'll enjoy it.