More Doom 3 information...

[H]ard|OCP gets some great information again.

And yes, I wanted to see what a full sentance href'd was like.

Neat.

Anywho... another good article for Doom 3 information. This time talking about how the different resolutions and texture settings in Doom 3 really work and, more importantly, look.

I'm really surprised that any game that's 640x480 can look that good. Wow.

So everyone's talking about how good Doom 3 looks now... but I havn't heard anyone talk about the next step beyond that...

...how the games using the Doom 3 engine are going to look. =)

.ungawa

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Final Nintendo DS design

Article

Okay, I like this design 100% more then the design they had running at E3.

I'm still against the overall concept. Being a lefty, I'm not looking forward trying to use the stylus to control games with my right hand.

Plus, I think trying to push the whole "you can use a stylus to play a game" is kinda silly... I thought the last 5+ years of palm pilots and CE devices kinda prove that. I mean, it works, but it's not fun.

But what do I know, neh?

.ungawa

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By True To Thyself

So Jane got a finalized mock-up of my tattoo finished. Huzzah!

Click here to see!~

I think it looks REALLY good.

I can't wait now.

.ungawa

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Home brewed games...

In this day and age of multi-million dollar games it's refreshing to see the old school garage design/programming game being produced.

The byproduct of the internet, no matter where you are you've got instantaneous communication with people all around the world.

The FPS modding community has been capitalizing on this for years. With team members for various mods located all over the place. Doesn't matter where you are anymore, just how wicked your skills are.

So I was doing some browsing earlier last week remembering that someone did some updates to King's Quest I and II. And yes... Sierra did do a VGA remake for KQ1, but it was all click based, not typing based if I remember correctly. Ah... the mouse... the death of the adventure game.

So... KQ2 was the first KQ game that I tried... but it wasn't ever my thing. I liked KQ just because it happened to be made by the same company that did Space Quest!

Being the sci-fi geek that I've always been, I instantly took a liking to SQ. Roger Wilco was a great avatar to control. I remember the first time I figured out the control sequence in SQ1 to pressurize the hanger doors and get the shuttle prepped to launch.

So on a bit of nostalgia I went out looking to see if anyone did a VGA re-make for SQ like they did with KQ (again, Sierra DID do a SQ1 VGA that I played... wasn't the same with all the clicking instead of typing).

So I came across this. Let me tell you... plays EXACTLY like an old school Space Quest game. Unfortunatly, even the annoying parts of the 1 pixel death traps.. heh. But man... I played through it this weekend and it was a hoot. All the in-jokes, all the bad humor. Ahhhh.

There's also another SQ home brewed game out there called The Lost Chapter. Set between SQ2 and SQ3, I'm going to have to give that one a try, too.

So after finding SQ0, I was looking around at some of the other home brewed games and THIS caught my eye.

Let me tell you... WOW. This game is amazing. For a home-brewed game this is simply amazing. The best thing that I did when I found out that Sierra canceled their Bab 5 game was just bitch about it. These people went and created their own game!

Let me tell you true zero-g inertial combat is interesting. It's like an elliptical dance of death around a central point... Or a better analogy would be a zero-g joust.

So... I'd recommend trying both of those games out. SQ0 if you're an old school SQ fan, and the Bab5 game if you liked that concept and can deal with "realistic" zero-g inertial combat.

.ungawa

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Rum and Diet Coke...

...Doesn't actually taste bad at all. Who woulda thunk?

.ungawa

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Doom III Benchmarks

Wow... Ati's X800 seems to have fallen prey to it's own hype.

[H]ard|OCP Doom III Benchmark article

HAHAHAHA.

Sorry... this ended up not being the full thing I wanted to say.

1) ATi's OpenGL implementation has always played 2nd fiddle to nVidia's.
2) Some schmuck at ATi leaked the Doom 3 alpha code last year, thus pissing off id.
3) In response id has, since that date, claimed that D3 was running better on nVidia hardware.
4) nVidia even went so far as to state that the 6800 series was created with Doom 3 in mind (I think the Hard OCP article mentioned this also).

So now we have some benchmarks that show the 6800 is better then the x800 in ONE game.

Unfortunatly that one game is Doom 3. Oye.

.ungawa

-Spyke

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New Music (for me at least)

So after Amber ended up sucking me into Hot Topic last night (Cougar and I were trying to stay just in EB where it is MUCH safer, trust me... we ended up having to go get her.. /sigh) I ended up picking two of the albums that they had on display.

Soundtrack to Your Escape by In Flames and Oncoming Storm by Unearth.

I must say I'm glad I've been finding good "ole' fashion" Metal lately. Obviously I haven't been looking that hard, plus there's just a lot of absolute crap out there... but there seems to be a slight resurgence in good metal lately. Or at least I'm just more attuned to finding it.. dunno.

Either way... I'm happy.

Headbangers hooooooooo!!!

.ungawa

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Something witty...

So I had something witty to say...

...or at least I thought I did....

...I could have sworn I did!

Really!

.ungawa

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Making a bet...

So I made a bet with Gary.

The bet is that in the next 10 years, we won't see a PvP Viable game that will able to hold 70k+ US subscribers for a year. PvP Viable as defined as a game like Shadowbane, but doesn't suck.

He thinks that a developer out there will embrace this niche market and spend the time and money to develope a game that the PvP community will embrace whole hog.

I disagree with his thought without any reservations. I beleive it is too niche, and unlike the Korean PvP community, the US PvP community can't even agree on what it wants.

Maybe once the MMOG community as a whole gets to the point where companies can "take a chance" on developing a niche market game. I don't think we'll see that in 10 years though.

We'll see who wins by July 17th 2014 now won't we?

EDIT: Blogger's new post creation/editing tool seems to be a might bit buggy.

EDIT EDIT: As per Joshua's comment below, clarifying that the game in question would need to be of the "RPG" type. Planetside does qualify as a PvP MMOG, but not a PvP MMORPG. Gary and I just wanted to keep the acronyms smaller where possible. =)

.ungawa

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I'm SOOOOOO looking forward to the PSP

The pictures found in this article are very nice. The PSP's display looks rock solid and crystal clear.

Without a doubt, I'm looking forward to the PSP more then the Nintendo DS.

.ungawa

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Doom III DONE! Confirmation

Confirmation on Doom III being **DONE** and August third, as of midnight, for availability.

HUZZAH!!

EDIT: Reading is fun for mentals. Okay the August 3rd date is when the stores can start picking them up. The street date isn't technically till the 5th. So we shall see when they actually show up.

I know if I was a major retail chain, I'd be burning the cash to ship these directly to my stores ASAP.

.ungawa

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Deeeead puppies!

So the Hobbit let me borrow her Dr. Demento CD.

Ahhh... the classics.

.ungawa

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Be True To Thyself

VERA SANUR TIL SJALFUR

Will get a graphic up later on what that'll look like in nordic runes.

But that's the one.

.ungawa

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Making the Wookiee smile...

So I told Stacey I was lonely and was wondering if she knew anyone that could help.

Her answer was what I needed... "Just me..."

Woot!

Only 30-40'ish days left, I hope.

.ungawa

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Writer's block...

...or designer's block I guess.

Nothing like realizing you've been staring at the same part of the word document for the last hour or so.

Mind.

Totally.

Blank.

*insert smartarse comments from people saying, "and that is different how?"*

.ungawa

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Observations and talk about tat

It's interesting seeing who notices the new hair and who doesn't. In some ways it gives good insight into how people perceive things, and if they are going to say something about it.

Random stats... So far women have noticed more then men on about a 3 to 1 ratio. This makes sense, though, since women are the ones that are always getting mad at guys for not noticing THEIR hair.

And I havn't bumped into anyone that doesn't like it yet.

For the first tat, I'm waffling between the phrases "Be True To Yourself" and "Be True To Thyself". I think I'm liking the second one better. I'm waiting on the translation of "thyself" into nordic/icelandic.

The mock up that Jane did for a first run of the tat looks awesome. Going to do it as if it's a metal anklet around my right ankle. So there will be a gap down my achiles tendon with the "metal" doesn't quite reach around to on either side. The runic letters are going to be done as if they were struck into the metal band itself.

I'll post the mock up when I get an updated one.

.ungawa

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Funny Links Part I

Kung Fu Bunnies

The miracles of photoshop

Pong will never die!

I love Legos

.ungawa

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HI THERE STACEY!!!

=P

Now you get better and stuffage.

*hugs*

.ungawa

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Spyke's spikes

Ta-daa:



Clicky for bigger.

.ungawa

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Step 1

Check.

Damn it's good to look like this again. I forgot how fun it was. Now to see what people's reactions are. Muahahahaha.

Oh, and I've totally nailed down what I want my first tat to be... and I've got an idea for the 2nd one as well (altho it will wait till many months after the 1st).

.ungawa

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Relaxation... novel concept...

Oh... some revelations from this weekend (no timeframes or specific order on these... and obviously I'm talking about non-work related things with some of these concepts... While Mythic rocks to work at, it's still an office and a corporation):

1) Going back to my original spiked haircut
2) Maybe get some color sliced into my hair
3) Getting at least one tat (have a damn good idea for one, and the germation of a 2nd one)
4) Buy a (bow/solo)flex (going to stick it downstairs in front of the fireplace
5) Buy a Harley
6) I am who I am. If people don't like it, I've got a size 12 shoe I can stick somewhere. That also means that I stop being so "nice" in situations where someone's annoying the crap out of me.
7) I am WAY to anal about too many things that are "outside" of my control. Time to loosen up some. I'm tired of planning everything for everyone all the time. I'm going to pick times/places that I want to do stuff, it's everyone else's jobs to get there.
8) If people want me to help them with something, they'll ask. Otherwise I'll nod my head and filter away whatever they are telling me for possibly blackmail later (yes, seems to go counter to the whole Mr. Fixit concept.. but... Mr. Fixit is WAY too long of a story to get into... trust me, it makes sense).
9) When people do ask me my opinion, I'm not going to hold anything back. I'm a very blunt and forthwright person... Heh.

Even odds that Mom is going to freak when she reads about 2 and 3. Probably some of the others, too. She'll have to cope. Still love her dearly.

I've been forcing myself into a box for what I was expected to be for far too long... I'm finally in a place/position/headspace where I can try to remember the way I used to think and the stuff I wanted to be back before I was stuck in a seven day, on-call, 50+ hour a week grind for so many years.

I'm not retired yet (still working on that!), but there's no reason why I can't try to relax and enjoy where I'm at now.

And I'm not being militant about things... but I've just got to stop worrying about what people think about me. If they don't like me, that's their own damn problem. Not mine.

.ungawa

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Wookiee has cold air again, offsets all the hot air he blows around...

...News at 11.

So after about 2 hours of going down the list of the various Air Conditioning repair places this morning, finally found one that was not only open today, but could send someone over... AND they were not charging it as "overtime".

Nice guy came out... ended up having the same TV that I have... so maked it easy to break the ice. Found out that the AC wasn't working (well the external compressor component to my heat pump) due to a blown capacitor. He replaced that and got everything back up and running.

I signed up for the yearly maintanence plan, as well, which pretty much paid for itself this first time.

Took a few hours, but I'm back to having a nice climate controlled house again. Ahhh... verrah nice.

If nothing else it just means that I get to actually clean up the place tomorrow. That shouldn't be a problem... strangely enough...

I'm looking forward to it.

.ungawa

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Project: Fireworks a success!

...Unfortunatly I have a broke Air Conditioner it seems. That would explain why it was so gd hot in here at the end of the night.

When the thermastat is set to 70, and it's close to 80 inside... and the AC isn't spinning... something's up.

So, I've got to get up first thing in the morning to try and call around and see if I can find someone to come out and fix it ASAP. So much for sleeping in... heh.

I'll try and have pictures up and running at some point, but going to be shutting down all the PC's I can to try and get the heat down in here.

Thank the gods I have my new shades in to help with the heat from the sun, etc.

.ungawa

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Project: Fireworks; T-Minus 1 Day

So about this time tomorrow I'll be invaded by various peoples with the intent to consume charred mammal flesh and watch me light things on fire that go BOOM.

Very exciting indeed.

While half, or so, of the invasion force is off wandering around DC today, I'm going to be getting all of the appropriate stuffs for tomorrow minus the ice.

No reason to buy the ice when it'll all just be melted by the time we need it.

Between my camera, my new cell phone (which I will make a post about at a later date), and other photographic devices that will be here tomorrow (digital or otherwise), I should be able to put up a montage of images from the festivities at some point.

As Mr. Burns would say, "Excellent, Mr. Smithers..."

.ungawa

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I'm proud of myself...

I think I handled myself quite well this evening.

There were a couple situations (one I even generated myself.. stupid wookiee) that caused some twinging... but... I held firm.

One thing of note... With the bits that Amber's managed to knock free, and what I'm able to see and notice again. I can definitly tell that he's the one for her. It's as plain as daylight... well, to me at least.

Part of me hates him for that... but luckily that's a small part. Very small. Tends to be loud at times... but... very small.

I've also made some choices that will be interesting to see if I can keep going... but... I think it's time for Ye Olde Mr. Fixit to return and fix some strands here and there.

And consequences be damned... you only live once, right?

Edit: Yup... without a doubt... I'm Jake, she's Mary.

.ungawa

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