Maximius

Comcast, huh? Are you anywhere near Philadelphia perchance? Verizon DSL is finally coming down in $$$, its about 20 $ amonth for their slowest package which is still fine by me. I hope to have it up and running soon, Fortress Forever, the new HL2 mods answer to Team Fortress Classic, is coming out soon. Now thats something to woot about!

Right, I should have added anyone who has dialup and doesnt want to spend the next week downloading can have my copy. Sneaksie, are you a dial-up gimp as well? P.S. What does FFS stand for? P.P.S. I just visited the Lineage2World site, am I to understand they run FREE SERVERS?!? Im confused, I dont know much about the MMO's other than Team Fortress.

Just bought it, its fine for dial up, its looks really frigging cool. Plus it was only 10 beans, not a bad price for so much entertainment. Plus all the elven chicks are size double c cups and up in the manual. EDIT: FUCKING FUCK. I did not realize that there was a monthly fee for the goddamn game. Fuck. Ok, anybody on the Dark Mod team, in the U.S. or Canada, who wants this fucking game Lineage II for free just let me know, Ill mail it to you gratis. Think of it as a small payback for all your hard work. Fuck!

I just saw Lineage 2 at a thrift store for 10 bux. Does anyone know if you can play it online with a dial up connection or do you need Broadband?

Finally made it into the carrier, what a blast it was fighting my way in! Before I entered it I took one of those patrol boats with the rockets and the machine gun and boldly headed out to open waters to battle the attack helicopter! Forward to glorious victory! After being annihilated, I entered the ship. I found a few flaws with the AIs, for one thing they cannot seem to avoid falling of of ledges into water, at least they swim around and can still fight rather than simply drowning. I took out 2/3ds of the first level simply by waiting for them to fall into the water then hacking them up with the machete. I wish they could swim, that would be deluxe, but baby steps I guess. I noticed that the AIs dont climb ladders either, something Id like to see more of... Also, I found that I would fight in one section, then move a few doors away and find mercs playing cards and lounging as if they could not hear the gunplay two rooms over. I'd like to see something a little tighter, if Im on the boat and killing mercs they should ALL be on alert 100%. But that seems like something easy to remedy. But the fighting is a lot of fun. One memorable scene, a dude ran out of that torpedo room right as I dropped a nade into the doorway. It blew him out of the doorway in an arc about 8 feet high and he came to rest hanging across the railing. Very nice effects

One of my questions about the Mod has been answered, I had wanted to make a mostly vertical map, The Tower of Time, with a lot of climbing and balancing acts as you move up to the top. I was not sure that D3 editor would support a several story tower, I guess its not really a problem. I could make several several story towers if I was so inclined!!

Holy mother of pearl, thats a big ass map!

I myself only know FarCry. BTW has this Western "Gun" made it out for PC yet? I saw the Xbox versions at the Gamestop but nothing else.

Spar, is anyone advocating a weaker physics engine per say, or is it a question of dedicating time to one aspect of the mod over another? I agree with your point about the importance of a quality physics engine, as Domarius pointed out its the actions of little things that really help to build a more immersive experience. His bottomline test of the game was simple, did a piece of rope act like a piece of rope? You could test the game in more complex ways to be sure, but Im guessing that a good physics engine can take care of many of the little details that while unimportant by themselves taken asa whole add up to a lot.

Im playing it on the highest difficulty and it is a bitch. I also reset my video controls to the maximum and its look unbelievable but I still cant get the bugs, birds, and fishies to come out. Ill figure it all out. Hunting the mercs through the jungle is a blast though, I position myself well, snipe one or two in the head, and the rest come searching for me. I was hiding one time and a guard was standing right behind me, neither of us knew the other was there. I turned to run, boo!, we started shooting but missed each other completely and I ran off like a bat outta hell. Another time I lured about 4 mercs to cluster around the gas tank near the firing range in the first map, then took out the tank, you get the picture.

I found a quicksave command, \save_game in console, on a walkthrough site. Ill look for the environmental setting, the lack of fauna is a little disconcerting. I figured as I was buying the game that it would turn into a corridor crawl but I am desperate for some new video game action. I will have fun figuring out different ways to whack the AIs for a few weeks at least. I originally bought Ground Control II but the disk was fucked up, kept telling me its was a bootleg copy. It looked like a lot of fun and I enjoyed GC1 quite a bit. Im also a big fan of the Homeworld series, titantic space battles always get my heart thumping.

I bought FarCry the other day, boy its a beautiful game! Only a few complaints so far: Fucking save points. This really sux, I cleared half the map the other day only to lose all my work and start over. Yuck. And the save points are not even permanently placed, I tried to return to a save point to save anew but nothing happened. Argh. No animal life on a tropical island/ocean. So far all Ive seen are pigs and parrots. No fish in the water, no bugs on land despite the mercs complaining about them. They could have included simple sprites for effect. Other than that I dont have any complaints, the AI seem pretty smart so far and the firefights are a lot of fun. Ive had some success firing at one merc then moving, quickly, to another point on the island and firing from there. The AI coordination seems tight as well, one guy spots ya and the heli and buggies move in ASAP. If I actually kill all the mercs on the one map I want to see if I can take out that heli with the buggies twin machine guns.

Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Elevator! Pretty wild stuff, people getting gobbled up by the Knids.

And Microsoft blows gigantic monkey penises, too.

I guess their "carpet bombing" of America with their disks is paying off in at least one respect, the average person thinks the Net begins and ends with AOL. Well, Ive learned my lesson, Im going to have to format my HD and re-install everything. Jesus H. Christmas that is going to suck ass. I think to make myself feel better, Im going to run out tonight and buy a new game. Ive earned it after the agony of this last weeks cyber-meltdown. Plus I cant play Team Fortress. Whats life all about anyway?

I should point out too that according to a brief search of Web histories about Rikyu, the precise reason he was ordered to commit suicide is unknown. SOme say he pissed off Hideyoshi because he had a statue of himself erected which was above his station. This is mentioned in the movie, but I guess the director (an artist himself of pretty high renown) wanted to use the story of Rikyu to hi-light the struggle between personal integrity/artistic expression and political power. The character of Rikyu goes on at some length to explain his reasoning, which can be summed up fairly well by the notion that he could not face life as a compromised artist. Art wasnt something that these people did for fun, or simple amusement, especially at the level practiced by Rikyu. It was central to the political and cultural identity of Japanese elites. Rikyu may have felt that to betray his artistic integrity, he would have been betraying an ANCIENT tradition that was far bigger and more important (in their eyes) than an individual life.

I dont think he was leaving his family destitute per say but your point is still valid. But its a question of whats a stupid point. To you and I dying versus saying sorry and getting on with life is a no-brainer because there are a very few things (I suspect) that you or I would be willing to give our lives up for and rightfully so. But we are not Rikyu, we cannot know what compromising himself and his art meant to him. For some people, being forced to compromise would be a kind of death, perhaps one worse than actually dying. And remember that we view life and death much differently than someone from 16th century Japan did. I thought the girl at the end of Tiger/Dragon flew away, not fell to her death. Its been a while since I watched it though.

Philadelphia, broadband is just starting to come down in price around here.

All right, Ill leave you alone about Robin Williams. BTW, Ive started taking night classes and the course Im enrolled in is the Philosophy of Biology. The name of the one textbook is "sex and death", one of the authors is Kim Sterelny, a philospher at the Victoria University of Wellington. Its really interesting stuff, I just have to figure out how to tie the coursework in with a paper on free will. Most movies move me to anger and disgust, and usually move me to hit the power button and walk away, but a well made flick can pull heavy emotions out of me. Take that movie "Rikyu" I mentioned earlier, about the Japanese Tea ceremony master who served the Hideyoshi, the peasant shogun. The movie is about how Rikyu protested Hideyoshi's expansionist military schemes, both vocally and through his artform the Tea Ceremony. Eventually, his protests would cost him his neck. The movie is quite sparse and dry to the intial viewing. Long scenes of dialogue and little activity, some scenes convey their message with only a few movements of the actors and fewer words. But the effect is incredibly powerful. Less can definitely be more. One scene comes to mind, after Rikyu has been banished by Hideyoshi and has returned to his home. His wife and friends plead with him to write a letter to the Shogun begging forgiveness, if he does he will certainly be forgiven as the Shogun loves him dearly but if he does not, he will just as certainly be ordered to commit seppeku (ritual suicide). Rikyu refuses to write the letter, arguing that to do so would be to undermine everything he and his artwork as been about and that death is preferably to a compromised life. The movie then shows Rikyu and his wife hanging some parchment to dry in the sun, laughing and quietly talking. The only line you hear is Rikyu telling his wife "At last we are alone." I have watched this movie about four times, and I will be watching it for the rest of my life. It wasnt until the fourth viewing that the full impact of that scene hit me. He and she both know that he is doomed. They also know that Rikyu's mind is made up, he cannot face a compromised life so he has decided to face death. They are laughing, sharing some simple labor and enjoying their time, but the scene is saturated with the knowledge of his inevitable demise. I cannot fully express the poignancy of that moment, the intimacy and sweetness of them together counterposed with the knowledge that he is a dead man walking. The total scene is only a few seconds long but even as I write this is comes back to me with force. Movies like this are the obvious exception though. The majority suck for all the reasons already discussed. This is why video games are so exciting for me, not just to play but as a new artform that is full of potential.

Oh Bog forgive me, I did a stupid thing. My free dial-up ran out last week and in a moment of weakness I installed a free AOL disk. I fought off the temptation as long as I could but I succumbed after three days without Team Fortress Classic. So last night I was upgrading my Anti-Vir virus software and sweet bleeding jesus I had SIX viruses! I average about 3 viruses a year, in one week of AOL I got six. When I removed the archives the beasts were hiding in, I broke AOL so now I have no Internet at home. I reinstalled but I keep getting booted off the network whenever I try to sign up. AOL is the crack cocaine of ISP, it'll fix your jones for internet access but holy shit does it fuck you up. Fortunately it looks like Verzion has 20$ a month DSL for sale so I have to get on board with that ASAP. Just in time for the new TFC, Fortress Forever!

Its funny what a thrill it is to find Easter Eggs and stuff like that. When I start making some maps of my own, I would like to include some E.Eggs in the form of little side adventures that you wont get to enjoy unless you really look for them.

It seems to me that playing a map as you are discussing Dunedain is a good idea in terms of improving maps, besides just being a lot of fun. If I can find a way to get into a castle past 1/2 of the guards on duty, that map needs some work.

I think it was the demo of T2 where you could play a version of "Life of the Party." I ran all over the map killing and fucking around, and I thought I had killed everything, but wait, I hear the voices of Mechanist guards!?! Where could they be? They were on the rooftop level of the mechanist cathedral. To get up to them, I had to scour the map for boxes, then carefully stack them inside the chimney to hop up and lintle to the next crossbeam. It took me about 2 days to stack, climb, and save my way up. Sure enough, when I exited the chimney, there were two guards wandering around up there. It looked as if LGS had started to build the top floor as a play level and then quit for whatever reason. After killing the AIs, I used a speed potion to run/climb to the pinnacle of the cathedral and then I jumped off and fell a thousand miles to my death.

Which explains your passion for Robin Williams....

Not that I can find, here is a link from a British toon site: http://www.toonhound.com/tomthumb.htm The Bollex brothers are fantastic animators, I highly recommend any of their stuff. Very weird, very alien feeling to a lot of their stuff. One of the things I look for in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy is for the author to develop a real sense of the "alien", not only not human but actually hard to understand in human terms. Thats one of the reasons I like Lovecraft so much, his monsters werent devils seeking humans souls or even human flesh for a snack, they were alien, with alien goals and needs and little connection to the world they were invading. On a deeper level, Lovecrafts works were anti-modern, racist, bigotted, paranoid. But the real fear he felt towards the rapidly changing world of the early 20th century informs some of the best science/fantasy/horror works around. None of the modern horror kings, King, Barker, Craven, whoever, can approach him in my book. I wish to hell I had the damned thing on DVD, then I would find someone to crack it for me and Id mail you a copy. Unfortunately I found it on tape. I was lucky to find it at all for that matter, I have NEVER seen it avaiable except for very highly priced versions on the net, 30$ and up. Edit: Amazon has it for 14$ used. Get it and love it. Also, they have "The Strange Case of Senor Computer" for 15$ brand new. This is a brilliant piece of independent filmmaking. I have to get both of these on DVD. I cannot recommend these movies enough, especially for this crowd. There are plenty of social critics who have pointed out the "dumbing down" of entertainment and culture in general in the U.S. I think that the shitty quality of movies is an aspect of this trend. Movies dont even TRY to make sense, they cobble together a few whizz-bang graphics, some one-liners for the star to crack while performing some impossible feat, and damn the story line or the characterization or whatever. A few months back I watched some new horror flick about a guy who kidnaps people and then forces them to make horrible decisions to save themselves, usually killing someone else to get free. In the end, surprise!, there is a surprise ending. (every movie has a surprise ending these days, to the point where surprise endings are no longer surprising. I used to try to guess what kind of lame ass ending would come, now I try to guess what kind of lame ass surprise ending the director thinks is going to pull his crappy movie out of a tailspin) It seems the bad guy has been hiding amongst the prisoners all along! The heros thought they were safe but no! The story is not over as you all thought! Gimmicks. Movies rely on all sorts of gimmicks today, the surprise ending, the star cameos, the widely announced fact that the movie had to be edited cause it was "too shocking" or "too scandalous" or "too intense." (which helps DVD sales as you are tempted to see the deleted scenes in the extras menu) As vid. gamers, we have seen this all before in miniature with the slew of bad games that accompanies every one good game to the market. Look at Might and Magic, from what you all have said its the same game over and over again. Doom 3 was the same, great graphics, same old story line and plot twists.