lost_soul

At my mom's house, there sits a PC I purchased in 2002. It has a 2.53 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM. They use it as a backup machine for browsing the web. The power supply had been acting strangely for a few months now, and it appears to finally have died. Now, since this system is an OEM machine made by one of the worst manufacturers on planet earth, the power supply is a proprietary size. It is about an inch shorter than your traditional ATX power supply, and even a PSU from a Sony VAIO is too wide to fit. Is it worth fixing? Maybe I should just give them my old laptop which only has half a gig and load Linux on it, so it would still browse the web just fine. No way you could run XP AND a modern malware protection suite on half a gig though.

XIII was released recently on gog.com. It was a pretty good FPS with a unique art style. I must have completed it seven-ish years ago. I recall one of the bad guys singing "You can fly!!" while sneaking around and it really made me laugh. Still, I'll NEVER buy another Ubisoft product again.

I remember that the vocals in the original Thief games were recorded with at least a bit of reverb in the background. I wonder why they did that? Could it be to provide a believable environment when the player is in stone areas, even if he/she doesn't have an EAX sound card?

I feel sorry for any newbies who had their heads bitten off when they went on TTLG to talk about how much they loved TDS. I think if I had never played T1, I would have really loved TDS too. Thus I would avoid giving any new users flack if they say TDS is/was a great game: it was still better than a lot of mainstream games. If only LGS had released the source code to the Dark Engine before they closed... In 2001, it was already outdated thanks to the Quake 3 and Unreal engine which were far more portable and flexible.

I personally wouldn't stop posting there. Yes, some folks seem to ignore the mod, but we've been seeing more newbies around here as of late. That is a good thing. A wile back, somebody asked for a mission similar to Bonehord. I steered him in the direction of Flakebridge Monastery and he thoroughly enjoyed it, writing a review of the mod and all. I still believe TDM will go through the balloon effect, where the more assets and missions are available for it, the more attention it will get. The more bugs that are fixed and the more performance tweaks will draw people in too. Also, account registration dates cannot be used to determine how long someone has been a fan of/known about Thief. I didn't register until 2008, but I desperately tried to get Thief 1 to work smoothly on a Pentium 166 with 32 megs of RAM, Win95, and a 2 MB video card. I wonder too about TDM... perhaps a lot of people on TTLG just don't have the hardware to play it well? It would be cool if there was a survey of what machines Thief players use. Given the trend away from PC gaming, I'll bet a lot of people don't bother to upgrade the computer as long as it does the necessary things (web browsing, paper writing, music playing, and of course Thief!).

How about Redneck Rampage? I still remember when I went out and purchased the sequel at a store thirteen years ago. These old games were not only fun to play, but funny too. We used to play deathmatches on one level with air boats and motorcycles in a cylindrical creak. It had crossing pathways and some ramps. It was hours of fun. That one level just never got old.

Xerxes - Inferno I like the sound of this tune, but it is a bit short. Very relaxing.

I was recently given an older Treo 650. Apparently you can get it to run Linux from an SD card, but it only has 32 megs of RAM. What I would really like to do is use it as an alarm clock and have it play some music in the morning. I couldn't care less to have a cell phone. The thing that really sucks though is most of the programs are shareware/payware. I can't even find a decent media player to do this simple job that isn't shareware. This is why I personally wouldn't shell out for one of these mobile devices unless it has a thriving supply of free/open source software. I'm used to PCs, where I can always get free tools to do just about any job I want... and yes, I consider playing an Ogg Vorbis file at 7:30 A.M basic functionality.

If you've got a Linux install, give Undying a try there under Wine. It worked just fine for me last time I tried it. I never did complete the game though. I got to that place in the mountains after you take the small boat. The atmosphere is quite good, I must agree. It is one of those shooters with very little character interaction, making the player feel alone and isolated. In many cases, this is a good thing. It is nice to play games where someone isn't shouting objectives in my ear constantly.

is a pretty cool game. It had great atmosphere and sound effects, with water dripping in pipes, rain hitting windows (and then coming into the room if you break them). I used to play it on a Pentium 100. Also, Return To Castle Wolfenstein still looks fantastic. I guess it is just because of the artwork, but when standing on top of the castle in the first level, it really draws me in. The music is good too, especially the menu theme.

At topic creator: I couldn't agree with you more when it comes to modern games. I too noticed the decline in game quality, but it started a wile earlier than you think. Just look at Unreal 2 DXIW, and TDS. The last game that I didn't feel ripped off after buying was Doom 3. Well I also enjoyed the heck out of the Penumbra games, but they "came out of nowhere". I wasn't expecting them and I had no knowledge of them during development, so Penumbra had no expectations to live up to. Thing is, while ranting about concepts in modern games sucking is fun, it has just gotten boring for me. When I read something about DNF having a two-weapon limit or health regeneration, I can't even bother to get angry anymore. I just shrug my shoulders and roll my eyes. If you want a Deus Ex sequel done right, check out The Nameless Mod. I absolutely loved the mod! It builds upon concepts that made the original game great, like character interaction, usable computers, branching plots, rewarding unnecessary exploration, and it has lots of replayability. While playing TNM, I would lose all track of time, which is something that used to happen to me while playing Deus Ex. "Oh look, it is six hours later now!" haha

I just spent over twenty minutes trying to make my laptop's sound system behave correctly. Some time ago, some random guy decided it would be a good idea to have the toggle between headphones and internal speakers in modern machines controlled via software instead of hardware. As you would guess, this leads to yet more problems. When I connect a pair of headphones, the internal speakers would keep playing. This is obviously undesirable if I'm in a public place. I tried every single audio control but whatever I turned down, it would turn down the headphones too. I'm not an engineer, but I know how these jacks used to work. There was a tiny switch inside the jack that would physically disable the internal speakers on a device when headphones were connected. It used to be plain and simple. After all, why would you want to listen to tiny internal speakers if you've got nice headphones connected? I got it working, but in closing I would like to say this. Do not make things more complex than they need to be. It frequently only causes more problems. This last line applies to the guys who think all sound mixing and routing should be taken care of in software.

Thanks for re-releasing/optimizing this great mission. I just have one simple problem though. I couldn't for the life of me fit in the manhole near the start. I tried jumping up and down on it like an idiot, crouching, pacing back and fourth, you name it.

If you sometimes get poor FPS when starting a mission, try quicksaving and then quickloading again. This has been an issue for quite a wile now, and I still see it happen on occasion in 1.04. This is on a system that should be able to tear through any Doom 3 mod. (Phenom x6 1075t, 8 GB DDR3 and OC'd GTX460 1 GB)

At the risk of being told to "go **** myself", I would like to say the following to the topic creator. Please, just chill out and RELAX. These are Internet forums. People occasionally make snide remarks about other users (either indirectly or directly). You should not take these things so personal. Don't let it ruin your day. If you need to take a break, then take one. If you need to go outside and walk/get some fresh air, then go for it.

It also has to be said...

I like to replay missions which I really enjoyed the first time. This goes for T1 and T2 missions too. I usually end up missing something on my first run through, so replaying is the key.

At Springheel: and I still really enjoyed the mission.

Very nice FM. I especially liked the My only suggestion would have been to have more places in the town be enterable.

When you're the dretch, stealth is a great tactic. They're the size of a headcrab, but they only get 25 HP. I personally find it better to attack targets while they're unaware in this scenario. Also, I see tyrants creeping sometimes to avoid giving away to incoming enemies that "yes, they're a tyrant with 400 HP, and not a dretch with 25". When humans have evolved, they can buy radars that make the stealth much harder though. I personally have always hated any kind of target-identifying radar in FPP games.

I think the coolest thing is that bases don't HAVE to be in any one location. All of the components that make up a base can be freely destroyed and moved to a new part of a map. It isn't uncommon to see desperate bases set up in air ducts, hallways, stairwells, etc. The developers should have exploited this more by having a mode where when the game starts, no one can attack anyone else. The first two minutes could be dedicated to building up the bases.

This is a multiplayer game based on the open-source Quake 3 engine, where there are two teams: the aliens and the humans. The goal isn't just to kill the players on the other team: both sides have a base that they must protect and/or rebuild. Your objective is to fight your way into the enemy base and destroy their spawn points. Yesterday I was having fun as a "dretch" (the tiny alien). I was hanging out on the top of a bunker and when I would hear human footsteps run by, I would silently drop down behind them and bite them. Thief may be fun, but it is even better when you sneak up on targets that are based on real intelligence, not some AI code. You can't just keep using the same trick over and over again or attacking in the same manor when playing against real players. As the dretch, you make no noise unless you jump, and you can run around on walls or stick to the ceiling! This game rewards thinking and strategy more than games like Quake 3. After playing Tremulous, Q3 just feels boring and stale. Since it is open-source, there is no account creation required, and it is as simple as unzipping and starting the game.

This sounds pretty cool, but I wish people would use a better engine. The UDK is not available for Linux and I doubt it will ever be. It would be cool if they used something like Unigine instead. We all know Doom 3 isn't a strong multi-player engine, what with Coop games featuring over 4 players becoming extremely laggy. What if these folks used the OGRE engine?

I was thinking you could just have all AIs go to combat mode if ... happens. In terms of realism, the guards would know about where I'm talking about and they would run there to find out what is going on. This is where the player would currently be too, so the guards would thus attack the player unless he moved quickly to a safe location. I know Sotha isn't planning on changin this, but it is just an idea. Even if there is no stim for AI, can't you just set them all (within a certain range) to attack mode?

It generally works very well for me now as long as I follow the rules. Aim for the head. Don't try it if the guard is in full-alert or attacking. Don't try and "run up" to AIs and blackjack them. This always bothered me in Thief because it was SOOO unrealistic. Don't try it on guards with full head-gear.