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metadigital

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    Geckling Diaries

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted

    ATI Graphics Drivers: Catalyst V7.5

    ATI Driver V7.5. OpenGL performance is improved on the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX at high resolutions (1920x1200 or greater) with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. Doom 3 and Quake 4 improves as much as 13-18%, and Prey improves at least 15.6%. The ATI Radeon X1950 Pro and X1650 XT also sees improvements in Doom 3 and Quake 4 of up to 14.1% at higher resolutions with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled.

    Release Date: 01 Jun, 2007

    Filesize: 41.9 MB

    How was the next next day?

    in Way Off-Topic

    Posted

    Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but, if you chose psychology then it wouldn't have been for the cash remunerations ... so it makes sense to get out there and enjoy doing it, after all that is the trade-off ($big to do stuff you don't like versus enjoying what you do = never working a day in your life).

    Games you are looking forward to

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

    Really? Users reported hardly any difference from DX9 other than better smoke

    The review has screenshots side-by-side, and highlights the differences. I know Shader Model 4 is all about volumetric smoke effects, but it seems the CoH DirectX10 patch has done a lot of work on soft shadows and adding support for more than one light source.

     

    Incidentally, there is a comprehensive review of every video card, and even the top end (the new 8800 Ultra, @

    Factions revisited

    in Aliens RPG: Speculation & Discussion

    Posted

    My original thought was that we approached your idea in the wrong way. I thought to myself, perhaps I've been overly critical because I looked at the idea as a question of whether or not there should be factions. We'd gotten into a routine of arguing for or against factions in your thread. However, maybe the question woudl be different if we didn't have to choose one side or the other at the outset. If the question were, "how could you make it work?" then some folks who don't like the idea might warm to it as they plotted through the variouis steps necessary to create viable factions or make then work in an actual CRPG. If you ask me if there should be factions, I'm still going to say no. I don't like the idea. However, if you show me how the design team might make use of factions, maybe give me an example of what how I would see factions in the game, then I might change my view of factions. In the case of an either/or question, I'm going to look at the idea on its face and make a decision. If you involve me a discussion of how it might work - not only generally speaking, but in what way I would personally do it - then my position is not nearly as entrenched.

    Well, if you're going to be all nice about it, I can't really maintain a belligerent stance. ;)

    I guess the biggest question is what's the goal of the game. If it's a big bug hunt, then factions could be used as a direct part of gameplay. If the story is more like the first Aliens, then factions can serve as a tool to build mystery and suspense.

     

    If the game is primarily an action title, then the opportunity is greater. Anything from a three way fight between Alien factions and humans up to and including trying to get the Aliens to fight each other. An action title is going to entail a lot more fighting against Aliens in the first place. Having killed some 30 Aliens to reach level 5 will inure the characters to them anyhow. The only way to go from there is to find bigger, meaner, and more powerful Aliens. If that's the case, then I don't see what the game loses by introducing a factions idea. It's just a 1980's DnD module where the Aliens are orcs. Put in a few humanoid races and we've got elves, dwarves, and halflings. It will be Star Trek.

     

    If the game is a horror title, then factions could come into play as a way to build suspense and provide breaks in the action. I mentioned a cut-scene that helped build the suspense. Let's just say, assuming it's a horror title, that the player managed to find a place to hide just as the Aliens had him cornered. He's looking out from the grate in the air vent (hahaha) and sees the group of Aliens who were chasing him. It looks like they might root out his hidey-hole and he's thinking he's going to have to find some other place to run. Then, as the Aliens are looking around, another group of Aliens runs into the scene. The first group stops what they're doing and faces the second group. A moment passes. One of the Aliens in the first group gives one of those Alien "screams" and then the first group goes away. After a moment, the second group goes away.

    That's how I expect it to be, at least initially.

     

    An alien is almost completely beyond the powers of a human to kill (or even maim); the only threat to such a powerful creature is another one. So it makes sense to have other xenomorphs in the game allied to different goals (realistically another queen/colony).

     

    This has benefits for narrative (PC about to die, cornered by xenomorphs, until the chasers are attacked and distracted ... this would be likely because humans would be beneath the notice of xenomorphs, kinda like if two groups of soldiers from different armies chanced upon the same game animals whilst out looking for food in the New France of the eighteenth century: the elk would get away whilst the humans fought).

    That might not be a great example, but it's kind of what I was going for.

     

    Finally, I didn't mean to insult you, meta. I felt bad for completely bashing your factions idea in you thread and thought that maybe it might be nice to look at a fresh approach. I won't be offended, since there's really very little in it anyhow, if you lock or delete this thread. You could even delete some of the posts and then just merge it into yours. Hell, merge it and then edit my remarks in this post regarding the thread and it will all look like it was in your thread all along. I might have foolishly gone about this the wrong way, but I didn't intend any slight. I mean, I call you names all the time, but that's just me being goofy. :Cant's being goofy icon:

    Now that would be an abuse of moderator power and display my inability to interact in a conversation (heated or otherwise) with other members. :grin:

     

    Anyway, I wasn't upset / injured / insulted, I was just curious as to why to duplicated the subject matter. :bow:

    The year's half over...

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted

    CPUs (and other components) are "clocked", or rated for a particular cycle speed and voltage.

     

    A new batch of CPUs is baked. A sample of them are tested to see what performance they have. Some headroom is left for safety. The Core2Duo line is remarkable for its HUGE headroom ... lots of room for overclock due to a very conservative clockspeed set by Intel.

     

    Also, if a batch of high-end CPUs, say the Core2Duo Extreme Edition E6700, fails to be reliable at a given speed, they are branded at a lower speed, say the E6320.

     

    Overclocking, via the BIOS on the motherboard and all handled in software these days, allows the direct control of the voltage across the component (CPU in this case), as well as the multiplier and base frequency configurations ... all of which combine to give the final speed of the CPU.

     

    Case in point: the E6320 has two cores, both of which are clocked at 1.86GHz. In their test published in the current issue, Custom PC overvolted the CPU to 1.525V to raise the clock speed to 2.8GHz. This is faster than the stock speed of the fastest Core2Duo on the market, the E6700, which runs at 2.66GHz.

     

    Pumping more power through a CPU may cause it to lose some longevity (what do you do with your ten-year-old CPUs?), but the main side-effect is a higher power bill and more waste heat, hence the need for good cooling to overclock further. (Some people like to indulge in extreme overclocking, using liquid nitrogen and attempting to see how fast they can clock the CPU for one safe boot of Windows at a time, for example: speeds of 10GHz have been achieved.)

    Factions revisited

    in Aliens RPG: Speculation & Discussion

    Posted

    I'm struggling to understand why you created a duplicate topic to my original (still visible on the first page of the forum), only to post on the first page of it that you were flummoxed and completely bereft (see, I was kind and didn't say devoid) of innovation. In a forum specifically designed AND NAMED for speculation.

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