woah
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Posts posted by woah
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There's an overwhelming and strong trust in big business in the American public, to the point that if one denies the supposed honesty of these corporations, it is often perceived as the equivalent of denying the honesty of government (In my experiences, anyways).
Sometimes, I really hate living in this place.
I want to get out some day.
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I didn't want to make an entirely new thread for this, and I am by no means associated with NewEgg or any other business for that matter, but (while we're on the topic of computer hardware) I just felt it would almost be greedy of me not to show my fellow forum members this amazing deal on NewEgg I stumbled upon (well, it was more or less on the front page).
I know most here are cheap when it comes to buying new computer parts (as I am, especially with graphics cards), so when I saw the following offer I was siked. They have a Geforce 7600GT 256MB 128 bit GDDR3 PCI-E card for $80 with a rebate (down from $143). I've had the same card (actually, it's the same model, but it's a different brand--specifically mine is XFX) since early summer, and it runs today's latest games quite well (Any Source based games, RoboBlitz (Unreal Engine 3), Quake 4, Battlefield 2, ... ; I've run them all many times on this machine, even though I don't own many of them). I'm not sure how well this card will stand against games like Unreal Tournament 2007 (it will probably need to be run in low quality mode) in the Fall of 2007, but there aren't too many PC games I can think of coming out with such rediculous graphical detail. I know the card won't be capable of running Crysis (but whose computer will be able to run that anyways?), though.
Just figured I'd let you guys know. The rebate only lasts until the end of this month, so if you're at all interested, you have a limited time frame. Also, note that given the fact that this card is a different brand than mine, performance may be different than what I experience. You may want to do further research (or perhaps there are even better deals available at this time...I'm not really sure. I just figured it couldn't hurt showing you all this).
Oh, and here is the link to the card (almost forgot to post it...): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814143049
(Did I just waste 5 minutes of my time to write all of this?)
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For console, Xbox players, who were not very accustomed to First Person Shooters, Halo was revolutionary. But for the PC gamers who were playing comparable FPS's many, many years before, it was nothing special.
For myself, I find it hard to be entertained by most console games, especially the first person shooters. Keyboard and mouse is areally a wonderful thing.
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I would read more books if the rustling sound of pages rubbing against one another didn't drive me insane. Once in while, though, one captivates me enough to deal with the torture.
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I acknowledge not that many (if any) like Steam here, so I'd just like to share with you the horrid news that COUNTER-STRIKE 1.6 (?!)--a game Valve has not supported for over 3 and a half years--will soon commence to implement IN GAME advertisements, on the walls, on the scoreboard, and wherever else Valve deems suitable. Counter-Strike: Source and other Steam games will not implement this, solely because they are so unpopular (whereas Counter-Strike 1.6 is immensly popular).
CSNation.net has posted an interview with Valve. Aside from all of the "mutual benefit with consumers" bullshit, Valve strangely does not reply to several key, and tough questions. Here is the interview if you're interested:
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Not going to even ponder buying it.
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In other areas of the world (other than the U.S.), is it seen as odd to have an extremely mild desire to have sex? Here in America, you are severely chastised for expressing such a feeling.
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That got a good laugh out of me (8?]=
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I'm longing for a nostalgic Thief experience again. Everything looks superb, and I've recently ventured into the screenshots section and stumbled across some alluring map screen shots. From what I can gather, they really seem to capture the mood in a perfection that I did not expect.
Out of curiousity, will The Dark Mod feature the atmospheric "entrance noise" that is played when the player enters a mission, or at least something very similar to it? Or will the map makers need to enable this themselves? It really sets the mood.
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I'm sure some sort of third party patch will eventually come out that will disable the advertising and privacy intrusion "features", but until then I'm not buying into this.
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The worst part is this is not labeled on the outside of the box. You don't know there is spyware until you've boughten it and the little slip of paper slides out.
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It seems spyware has finally penetrated PC Gaming. The newly released Battlefield 2142 (not to say that any of you are interested in it. I am surely not) contains tracking software:
From Gametab:
When you open the box, a big slip of paper falls out first, preceeding any discs or manuals. The slip of paper says, essentially, that 2142 includes monitoring software which runs while your computer is online, and records "anonymous" information like your IP address, surfing habits (probably via cookie scans), and other "computing habits" in order to report this information back to ad companies and ad servers, which generates in-game ads. -
I <3 snow
>:3
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Wow, that Australian website is actually hosting a video of his death. How disgusting.
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Hmmm, at my max of 11kB/s, this doesn't seem worth it, especially given the fact that I am usually (and unfortunately for me) a lot more critical than the average gamer.
I think I'll pass. I'm not too excited about the fact that the game will require Steam (I'm sure Valve has some sort of obligatory agreement with developers distributing via Steam that a Steam install must be included in every copy of the game. You know, so they can get their advertising in there.)
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I just stumbled across this article, and I found it interesting. I had always perceived a noticable delay with the LCDs I had used--especially in the response from an input device such as a mouse.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/632-1/l...o-crts-yes.html
The article is in English, but you can tell the writer's primary language isn't English. Even so, it's a good read.
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It seems a group of fans over at TTLG have already put together the beginnings of a development team--some of which are already beginning work--to renovate/create these missions. They seem pretty dedicated, and want to stay true to Thief 2. Mission briefings, voice acting, and accurate storyline integration are on the agenda.
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By "performance", are you referrring to the blurring/response time? I don't see any way in which a hardware operation in the monitor could affect the actual game's performance.
Whoops, not performance, but picture quality. Any other resolution different from the native res will reduce the picture quality, unlike a CRT wherein any resolution will display correctly.
As for attempting to play dark games like Thief on LCDs, turning up the gamma to make the game playable only makes things worse. Sure, now you'll be able to actually see stuff, but now, instead of having something that might look somewhat black, everything becomes washed out and gray, and regularly lit rooms can become near blinding. Perhaps I'm just too conditioned to the superior contrast ratios of CRTs, but I can't stand gaming on LCDs. I'd imagine if I forced myself to get use to it, I would, but why would one want to do that (other than having payed $600 for a decent LCD and end up being unable to return it)?
I suppose when I buy an LCD (for my eyes) I'll have to keep a spare CRT on hand for certain gaming and darker games.
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True, if his presumed primary computer usage was simple desktop applications, then I would definitely recommend an LCD (moreso if it wasn't for the rediculous prices).
But my assumption is that Arumakani is a gamer. I'll admit an LCD's colors will look prettier if there is no movement in the game, but--when there is--the CRT clearly excels. This is especially important if you play competitive FPS's. On a prior LCDs that I used (ranging from 800:1 contrast ratios, to 1200:1), I found it extremely hard to aim at adversaries in dark areas--or even areas where the wall textures were of similar color to the skin of the model. They blended in as a result of the LCD's lack of a capacity to produce colors/shades that would differentiate the model/skin from the wall texture (contrast ratio). My eyes are very good (15/15 to be exact), and I've never had this problem with a CRT. And, although my friend Jimmy didn't notice it on his newly acquired $1500 34" LCD at first, when I let him try the same game on my old 18" Dell 991 CRT from 1999, he was able to notice it right away and was actually capable of playing much better. He still prefers his 34" because it's fucking huge, though
I'm not saying you're going to be completely disappointed with an LCD, Arumakani, but you will get much better performance and results given your expectations from the form of product you are inquiring into.
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If you ever plan on playing Thief (or any other dark games for that matter), don't get an LCD. Go to a friend's and try playing The Metal Age on an LCD. You can't see anything.
Although a few games support wide screen modes, many don't. As such, your image will become all distorted and stretched in ones that don't. It looks terrible. In addition, you usually need to a very powerful (and insanely expensive) graphics card to really play any graphically intensive new games at these wide-screen resolutions.
And you may want to do some research on the response time for that monitor. Manufacturers advertise them as having 2ms response time for the pixel refresh, but this could either be black-to-black or gray-to-gray response times (always be skeptical if they don't specify). The gray-to-gray equivalent of black-to-black response time is essentially black-to-black multiplied by 2.
Being that you're a gamer, I don't really see why you would need to get an LCD. Compared to CRTs, they are twice as expensive, have very low contrast ratios (bad for any dark game), boast noticably lower response times (set a 2ms black-to-black LCD up next to any 100Hz CRT, and the difference will be terribly noticable), and have native resolutions (meaning your LCD monitor will have to perform scaling calculations to support different resolutions, which reduces performance).
The only advantages I've found with LCDs is lower eye-strain (they are much better for your eyes than CRTs are), more vibrant colors (although, note that the color reproduction is often inaccurate when compared to the print out), and less space and power consumption. Personally, when this CRT dies and I've enough money, I will buy an LCD, but ONLY for my eyes' sake. If CRTs weren't any worse for your eyes, I would definitely stick with a CRT.
Really, the whole LCD craze is a bunch of bullshit, in my opinion. There are only a few, minor areas in which LCDs top CRTs, and yet they cost twice as much. The LCD hype is a perfect example of what the ramifications of an ignorant consumer can lead to.
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For some reason, I thought the diamonds were real. The car was a dead give-a-way for me given the cobble below was much too flat in the background. Cars seem rather easy (at least compared to other things) to mimic with CG. Even many games today have cars models that appear real at first glance. 9/10
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I must correct myself. The FMV introduction I found very good, as I did with the playable sequence in which you infiltrate the house of a cult. It was the "start" of the game where you first arrive on the bus. I'm not sure why, but I felt it was a bit too slow and uninteresting.
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I'm not necessarily saying Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was one of the best games ever made (Although it was quite awesome, and I would recommend it, but don't get your expectations too high as that never helps. The game was not perfect). Rather, I'm simply saying it altered what assumptions and expectations I normally made in a PC game. In other words, they involved you in terribly hard, stressful, and frightening circumstances, even when you were left entirely weaponless. You can't really effectively play it from the mindset of other games, and you'll be in for a surprise if you do.
The areas in which Call of Cthulhu fails is in its introductory sequence, AI, and graphics (I would be fine with this, but horrible lip-syncing does not lend itself well to immersion. Everything else with the graphics acceptable). In addition, some challenges are just too hard, depending on pure luck, and thus become tedious or angering (and I have a lot of patience) after replaying them 15 times.
How Stealthy Are You
in Off-Topic
Posted
I prefer to be stealthy in Thief games, and literally never knock anyone out if I don't need to. But that's not to say that it doesn't bother me if the game enables one to go around and black jack everyone; it's simply too rediculous. Of course, Thief was like this, and that's why I avoided knocking people out. It really depressed me to walk around a castle I had cleared out by black jacking every NPC for the first time. It entirely removed me from the game's "immersiveness," and the game never felt the same again (in other words, I realized how easy the AI were. Before that, I had just assumed they were hard, and thus I kept my distance whenever I could. It was a great feeling).
But it would really be something if I could play a Thief game where in it was truly a challenge to successfuly knock out even a single enemy, more of a feat to do it without revealing your presence, and literally near impossible to clear a whole mansion of heavily armored guards.
In the Darkmod, if the enemy has taken sight of you (as in clearly taken sight of and identified you as a Thief), do they remain in "alerted mode" or at least in "on the lookout mode" indefinitely until they've found you?