>my feeling, and this is based on me not even getting out of city 17 (as i said i'm still in the airboat), is that the world is now overrun with aliens from Xen
Well, I'm not a whole lot farther (just made it to BM East), and I don't think this is much of a spoiler, but yeah, the Earth has been invaded and the guy with the white hair/beard that you see on the jumbotrons has somehow cut a deal with them and is apparently their puppet.
When you get to BM east and the professor invites to "have a look around", go over to the board full of news clippings and he'll start explaining what happened.
BTW, this was one of the parts I was most impressed with (yeah, the action and physics are excellent): as you walk around the lab looking at things like the photo of Alex as a child with her mother, the scripting kicks in and the professor starts talking about the object you are looking at.
Also, not all aliens are bad/enemy as there are a few instance where they are working with the underground, hanging out at checkpoints, in labs, etc -- haven't quite figured out what that's about yet.
I love that movie -- must have seen it a hundred times by now.. but strangely never the whole movie in one sitting. I think I may have gone to see it when it was out in the theaters, but I seem to remember missing the beginning. Then later, renting it but missing large parts of it due to a horny girlfriend. Any time it has been on TV, I seem to only catch part of it.
Someday I must make it a point to watch it again from start to finish.
> becasue of the mature intelligent discussion that takes place on slashdot.
ahahaha, haaa haaa ehhhaha *wipes tears out of eyes*
I expect intelligent and thought provoking replies on this page....
no, stop, seriously
*sigh*
you are kind of right, though -- slash does have its moments when people actually have had similar experiences and are willing to thoughtfully share their knowledge. sometimes
No, it was before they tried jacking up the car and putting it in reverse that he flipped out and fell into the pool. He went into shock on the drive back. It was only after he fell off the diving board and they pulled him out of the pool that he snapped out of it and they tried to dial back the odometer.
anyone else have trouble with a strange "reverb" effect?
I had problems right off the bat in the opening sequence -- the g-man dialog was so echoey and garbled I couldn't even understand. Really annoying.
One of the work-arounds I read was to move the soundcard (sb live) to the highest PCI slot possible. I did this and re-installed the drivers but it didn't seem to really help.
In the end I found the best workaround was to disable the 5.1 sound in creative's contol app and then tell HL2 to use 2 speakers. It works, but now I only get plain stereo out of my 5.1 system.
Anyone else run into this?
Re:Personally I only drink from a MiG-25
on
Hacking Vodka
·
· Score: 1
Heh, I wondered if anyone was going to bring that up. That was one of my fav stories from the wings series.
Yep, you're right -- I changed it a bit as I think "tour map" makes more sense then "treasure map". (treasure map connotes one single thing that you end up finding vs tour map where you see one attraction after the next).
Now, for the bonus round: what was the name of the bone-eating alien that Zahaan and John were reacting to?
Well, no soap. It copies ok (no apparent problems in duplication anyway), but cannot be used to play. Steam starts up and says it is "verifying game files" for a few minutes, then says preparing to start half life 2 but nothing ever happens (kind of like when we tried this with WC3).
I put the original CD back in the drive and the game started right up.
>Wow - that would be totally crappy.
Yep -- on top of all that with creating a user, entering the cd key, downloading and unlocking content files, it still insists on having the original CD in the drive.
Hmmm, I could swear it says "connecting to steam" now each time I play (yes, single player)
This isn't a major inconvenience, just I see it apparently waiting a few seconds before it actually launches the game and I assume it is waiting to talk to the server first?
No, I haven't, have you? I only just got the idea from reading the grandparent a few minutes ago. I'm going to try it, hope that it works.
If it does copy perfectly and can be used in place of the original, then what point would there be to requiring it to be in the drive once the initial registration is completed (create a steam account with a unique email address, supply the CD key, have it spend 20 minutes unlocking the content)?
Seems like with all that, they wouldn't need to ask for the CD each time you play. It's obviously not to get content during play, so I assume it is doing something to validate a legit original disk?
Heh, you describe exactly the guy I saw on one of the boards Tuesday.
Every 5 minutes he posted the same thing "this suks, I can't create an account to play the game I paid for, I'll never buy another valve game again, those guys are all greedy fat faggots!"
and then he finaly got it to unlock and played - he posted once that the game was great, and was not heard from again.
>Though given I guess a backup of the CD will work as good as the original
Just this would make me happier.
My installation, initial play experience was not very happy. I had pre-ordered the physical game some time ago (gamespot sold both d3 & hl2 w/ free shipping pre-release) before I caught on to this whole concept of getting it through steam. I kind of feel like a boob for not buying it through steam in the first place.
I'm a little shaky on putting the original CD in the drive _and_ having to wait (even just 20-30 seconds) for steam to connect and validate me even just to play single player.
If I could copy the original and put it away in a case and just have to worry about scratching/losing a CDR copy, I'd feel better about the whole thing. Somehow, I'm guessing this isn't the case, though.
Heh, I was just watching my son play and he found in one of the apartments there are cinder blocks holding up the wall and he picked one up and dropped it on the guy sitting at the kitchen table. It wobbled a minute and then balanced on his head. He spent the next few minutes picking up bottles and empty chinese food cartons and throwing them trying to knock the cinder block off. When it came down he took it and threw it out the window at a cop on the street.
I had a similar, frustraing experience. I had pre-ordered from gamestop -- they sold D3 & HL2 with free shipping when you pre-ordered both titles.
Anyway - I got an email at work yesterday confirming that the game had shipped, FedEX tracking told me it was on a van in my town out to be delivered, and my son called excitedly around 3 to tell me it was delivered.
I had to work a little later than usual so it was probably around 6:30 that I got around to installing and activating. When steam wnet to create my account, it told me there was an error and I would have to try again. I waited a little while and tried again, but it told me there was an account with the same email address.
I tried to log on to the account using the pw I had supplied, but it sat there a good 10 minutes before deciding that user/password was no good. I should have known better, but I went ahead and tried sumbitting a request to change the pw. I did eventually get an email with a confirmation # to use to reset, but somehow I did end up getting in with the original user/pw (obviously things were just slow and I was not being patient enough).
So then I actually start unlocking, which takes over an hour on a (supposed) 3mbit cable line. *it is at this point I go back downstairs and prepare the first of many double jack and cokes.
By about 11 I was playing. I was so tired and cranky that I didn't get much farther than the train station & security office. The experience of being pushed around and beaten by the cops somehow was more than I needed at that point.
One thing I did like was picking up garbage and whipping it at the police. I think I spent a good 20 minutes seeing what I could pick up and hurl at a cop and then see how fast I could run away and at what point the cop gave up and went back to his spot.
I got one of the Sony units early on and, after paying for the first couple months, got an offer on a lifetime sub that seemed like a really good deal at the time*. I think I paid like $200 (limited time offer, recommend a friend and if they sign up get a $100 off lifetime subscription -- my sister was ready to buy one).
*and it was, I've already passed what I would have paid for monthly sub @12.95 x 24 months -- I think I'm well into the third year now.
>If you don't like the terms, cancel your service.
Sure, fine -- except I bought a "lifetime" subscription.
I started out paying month to month, but once I realized what a major convenience TiVo was (letting me save time by skipping commercials and making it easier for me to record and watch what I wanted in the little time I do have), I paid out a lifetime subscription.
Now, I don't think I'll have a problem with banners poping up as I forward through commercials (or 30-sec skip?) as long as it doesn't interfere with what I'm trying to watch. I don't mind the spots that it downloads now (I either ignore them or, like the Corvette & GMC ads, watch them).
If it does interfere, I don't really have any recourse. I've bought (and modded) the machine and pre-paid for the service. I've invested and taken the risk that TiVo service is going to be around. If they go under, well that's part of the risk I took. If they change their service where it becomes irritating to have to see popup ads, I guess that's also part of the risk. If it becomes unusable because of intrusive ads*, that's something I never anticipated.:(
*I don't think it will:
...TiVo has done its homework and knows its customer, Kent says. The new ads intrigue viewers instead of annoy them. They pop up and disappear in a matter of seconds if the viewer isn't interested. "You'll never see TiVo roll out any kind of intrusive advertising," Kent says. "It's very core to our mission."
I suppose you could argue that, but stuff like lion king, beauty & beast, hunchback, little mermaid and aladin look like towering masterpeices compared to the sclock they are producing now
lady & tramp 2 101 dalmations 2 hunchback 2 pochahontas 2 (see a trend?)
Seems like all their creative talent either died out or moved to other studios. Yes, they seem to be focused on squeezing as much out of existing franchises as possible rather than producing anything new of any quality.
Pixar, frankly, has done well to put their back to disney.
political elite have no need of TV watching (or grocery shopping**, doing laundry, renting movies, paying bills, surfing the internet) or any of the day to day activities "normal/average people" might engage in. How then, can we expect them to understand the wants and desires of the average taxpayer?
*with apologies/attribution to Bill Watterson **I seem to remember a story about Pres Bush (sr) not knowing about checkout scanners, having not set foot in a grocery store since before WWII
Slashdot Mirror
like this?
1 23/i/r2807937167.jpg
http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20041
>my feeling, and this is based on me not even getting out of city 17 (as i said i'm still in the airboat), is that the world is now overrun with aliens from Xen
Well, I'm not a whole lot farther (just made it to BM East), and I don't think this is much of a spoiler, but yeah, the Earth has been invaded and the guy with the white hair/beard that you see on the jumbotrons has somehow cut a deal with them and is apparently their puppet.
When you get to BM east and the professor invites to "have a look around", go over to the board full of news clippings and he'll start explaining what happened.
BTW, this was one of the parts I was most impressed with (yeah, the action and physics are excellent): as you walk around the lab looking at things like the photo of Alex as a child with her mother, the scripting kicks in and the professor starts talking about the object you are looking at.
Also, not all aliens are bad/enemy as there are a few instance where they are working with the underground, hanging out at checkpoints, in labs, etc -- haven't quite figured out what that's about yet.
oddly enough.. right after I finished this post and went into the kitchen to start making breakfast and flipped on the tv...
comedy central is airing Ferris Bueller's Day Off as I post this!
Bueller, Bueller, Bueller...
.. but strangely never the whole movie in one sitting. I think I may have gone to see it when it was out in the theaters, but I seem to remember missing the beginning. Then later, renting it but missing large parts of it due to a horny girlfriend. Any time it has been on TV, I seem to only catch part of it.
anyone, anyone?
I love that movie -- must have seen it a hundred times by now
Someday I must make it a point to watch it again from start to finish.
> becasue of the mature intelligent discussion that takes place on slashdot.
ahahaha, haaa haaa ehhhaha *wipes tears out of eyes*
I expect intelligent and thought provoking replies on this page....
no, stop, seriously
*sigh*
you are kind of right, though -- slash does have its moments when people actually have had similar experiences and are willing to thoughtfully share their knowledge. sometimes
No, it was before they tried jacking up the car and putting it in reverse that he flipped out and fell into the pool. He went into shock on the drive back. It was only after he fell off the diving board and they pulled him out of the pool that he snapped out of it and they tried to dial back the odometer.
ok - DOH, that _is_ one of the problems ( I read skipping and crashing as a video/gameplay problem, not sound).
:-(
go ahead and mod me down
anyone else have trouble with a strange "reverb" effect?
I had problems right off the bat in the opening sequence -- the g-man dialog was so echoey and garbled I couldn't even understand. Really annoying.
One of the work-arounds I read was to move the soundcard (sb live) to the highest PCI slot possible. I did this and re-installed the drivers but it didn't seem to really help.
In the end I found the best workaround was to disable the 5.1 sound in creative's contol app and then tell HL2 to use 2 speakers. It works, but now I only get plain stereo out of my 5.1 system.
Anyone else run into this?
Heh, I wondered if anyone was going to bring that up. That was one of my fav stories from the wings series.
Heh, cookie for you!
Yep, you're right -- I changed it a bit as I think "tour map" makes more sense then "treasure map". (treasure map connotes one single thing that you end up finding vs tour map where you see one attraction after the next).
Now, for the bonus round: what was the name of the bone-eating alien that Zahaan and John were reacting to?
>It should copy perfectly.
it should. it doesn't allow me to play with the copy I just made.
>If you get a chance test making a burn of it.
Well, no soap. It copies ok (no apparent problems in duplication anyway), but cannot be used to play. Steam starts up and says it is "verifying game files" for a few minutes, then says preparing to start half life 2 but nothing ever happens (kind of like when we tried this with WC3).
I put the original CD back in the drive and the game started right up.
>Wow - that would be totally crappy.
Yep -- on top of all that with creating a user, entering the cd key, downloading and unlocking content files, it still insists on having the original CD in the drive.
ah, ok - thanks
Hmmm, I could swear it says "connecting to steam" now each time I play (yes, single player)
This isn't a major inconvenience, just I see it apparently waiting a few seconds before it actually launches the game and I assume it is waiting to talk to the server first?
No, I haven't, have you? I only just got the idea from reading the grandparent a few minutes ago. I'm going to try it, hope that it works.
If it does copy perfectly and can be used in place of the original, then what point would there be to requiring it to be in the drive once the initial registration is completed (create a steam account with a unique email address, supply the CD key, have it spend 20 minutes unlocking the content)?
Seems like with all that, they wouldn't need to ask for the CD each time you play. It's obviously not to get content during play, so I assume it is doing something to validate a legit original disk?
Heh, you describe exactly the guy I saw on one of the boards Tuesday.
Every 5 minutes he posted the same thing "this suks, I can't create an account to play the game I paid for, I'll never buy another valve game again, those guys are all greedy fat faggots!"
and then he finaly got it to unlock and played - he posted once that the game was great, and was not heard from again.
>Though given I guess a backup of the CD will work as good as the original
Just this would make me happier.
My installation, initial play experience was not very happy. I had pre-ordered the physical game some time ago (gamespot sold both d3 & hl2 w/ free shipping pre-release) before I caught on to this whole concept of getting it through steam. I kind of feel like a boob for not buying it through steam in the first place.
I'm a little shaky on putting the original CD in the drive _and_ having to wait (even just 20-30 seconds) for steam to connect and validate me even just to play single player.
If I could copy the original and put it away in a case and just have to worry about scratching/losing a CDR copy, I'd feel better about the whole thing. Somehow, I'm guessing this isn't the case, though.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-11 -17
Heh, I was just watching my son play and he found in one of the apartments there are cinder blocks holding up the wall and he picked one up and dropped it on the guy sitting at the kitchen table. It wobbled a minute and then balanced on his head. He spent the next few minutes picking up bottles and empty chinese food cartons and throwing them trying to knock the cinder block off. When it came down he took it and threw it out the window at a cop on the street.
I had a similar, frustraing experience. I had pre-ordered from gamestop -- they sold D3 & HL2 with free shipping when you pre-ordered both titles.
Anyway - I got an email at work yesterday confirming that the game had shipped, FedEX tracking told me it was on a van in my town out to be delivered, and my son called excitedly around 3 to tell me it was delivered.
I had to work a little later than usual so it was probably around 6:30 that I got around to installing and activating. When steam wnet to create my account, it told me there was an error and I would have to try again. I waited a little while and tried again, but it told me there was an account with the same email address.
I tried to log on to the account using the pw I had supplied, but it sat there a good 10 minutes before deciding that user/password was no good. I should have known better, but I went ahead and tried sumbitting a request to change the pw. I did eventually get an email with a confirmation # to use to reset, but somehow I did end up getting in with the original user/pw (obviously things were just slow and I was not being patient enough).
So then I actually start unlocking, which takes over an hour on a (supposed) 3mbit cable line. *it is at this point I go back downstairs and prepare the first of many double jack and cokes.
By about 11 I was playing. I was so tired and cranky that I didn't get much farther than the train station & security office. The experience of being pushed around and beaten by the cops somehow was more than I needed at that point.
One thing I did like was picking up garbage and whipping it at the police. I think I spent a good 20 minutes seeing what I could pick up and hurl at a cop and then see how fast I could run away and at what point the cop gave up and went back to his spot.
I just had a flash of that movie he was in with Peter Falk in the '70s (murder by death with Truman Capote, Peter Sellers, etc)
I say, old chap, what in blazes are you on about?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000057/
Yup $299:
http://www.tivo.com/1.2.asp
I got one of the Sony units early on and, after paying for the first couple months, got an offer on a lifetime sub that seemed like a really good deal at the time*. I think I paid like $200 (limited time offer, recommend a friend and if they sign up get a $100 off lifetime subscription -- my sister was ready to buy one).
*and it was, I've already passed what I would have paid for monthly sub @12.95 x 24 months -- I think I'm well into the third year now.
Sure, fine -- except I bought a "lifetime" subscription.
I started out paying month to month, but once I realized what a major convenience TiVo was (letting me save time by skipping commercials and making it easier for me to record and watch what I wanted in the little time I do have), I paid out a lifetime subscription.
Now, I don't think I'll have a problem with banners poping up as I forward through commercials (or 30-sec skip?) as long as it doesn't interfere with what I'm trying to watch. I don't mind the spots that it downloads now (I either ignore them or, like the Corvette & GMC ads, watch them).
If it does interfere, I don't really have any recourse. I've bought (and modded) the machine and pre-paid for the service. I've invested and taken the risk that TiVo service is going to be around. If they go under, well that's part of the risk I took. If they change their service where it becomes irritating to have to see popup ads, I guess that's also part of the risk. If it becomes unusable because of intrusive ads*, that's something I never anticipated.
*I don't think it will:
I sure hope that's the case.
I suppose you could argue that, but stuff like lion king, beauty & beast, hunchback, little mermaid and aladin look like towering masterpeices compared to the sclock they are producing now
lady & tramp 2
101 dalmations 2
hunchback 2
pochahontas 2 (see a trend?)
Seems like all their creative talent either died out or moved to other studios. Yes, they seem to be focused on squeezing as much out of existing franchises as possible rather than producing anything new of any quality.
Pixar, frankly, has done well to put their back to disney.
political elite have no need of TV watching (or grocery shopping**, doing laundry, renting movies, paying bills, surfing the internet) or any of the day to day activities "normal/average people" might engage in. How then, can we expect them to understand the wants and desires of the average taxpayer?
*with apologies/attribution to Bill Watterson
**I seem to remember a story about Pres Bush (sr) not knowing about checkout scanners, having not set foot in a grocery store since before WWII