Damn, so the load times are still really bad even with a system that is as ridiculously fast as yours is? I have a P4 1.7 GHz w/384 MB RAM and the load times are about 30 seconds from the main menu and 3-5 seconds quickloading from the same map. Sounds like yet another motivator for me to not upgrade yet. Moore's law has definitely been slowing down. I got my computer in 2001 and it still runs everything [slowly but very playably].
Quake had discrete levels which were loaded at the beginning of each stage. Of course, back then, load times were quick enough that all that was needed was a low profile loading icon in the corner. I believe Doom had this as well. It never had any load time problems. Even on a 386, most maps loaded up in under 1 second. Even ridiculously large custom maps that were too big to even save games in (you need ZDoom, Doom Legacy, etc. to do it now) loaded in 5-10 seconds.
The original stuttering problem I was describing is probably different that what most people are getting. The kX drivers were causing popping when the framerate dropped to 30 and below. I still get stuttering with the official SBLive! drivers, but the same kind everybody else is getting - whenever there is a pause of about 70 ms or more (steady framerates below 14 fps will also cause this frame interval. Needless to say, the stuttering was constant throughout the final stages of Half-Life 2). Doom 3 never had this problem, even when the framerates got into the low 10's.
There was a stuttering problem in Quake II when it came out too. The s_mixahead command fixed it for me, though. I'm not sure what to do in this case, even after reading the list of workarounds. Messing snd_fullasync and snd_mixahead have not accomplished anything yet.
It uses the Indeo video 5 codec. I didn't have to intervene at all to get this to play. I believe it played out of the box for both Windows XP and Xine for me. If not, resort to the link above this one, of course.
He looks like he probably only got some minor cuts from the shattered glass. The rear window area got crushed so the glass probably shattered before his head went though. You can actually hear the guy utter, "shit!" at the end. He knows exactly what happened:)
Oh, well, I suppose anything is better than what happened to this guy.
It's a Drivecam video - it records the last 30 seconds or so of driver video and only saves it if an accident occurs. The guy was probably kicking himself for installing it. It probably killed whatever insurance claim he had.
that you can ditch the water skimmer and then get stuck after playing for 20min and finding a point where you need it but cant go back to get it
God damn! You, too? That pissed me off so bad. I actually got all the way to the ramp attached to the elevator with pulley cables and washing machine puzzle before I got stuck and it said, "A.I Disabled" after screwing around for a while trying to figure something out. It appeared no matter what game I loaded from there on, even if I started a new game. Backing up the savegames and reinstalling did the trick, though. After starting a new game from that chapter, I had a pretty big smack on the forehead after I saw the swamp boat RIGHT THERE! Did I actually miss that?
I was having too much fun in the beginning of the game to think about the tedium of walking the super long distances to get there. I assumed I just broke the game, because that appears to be something I do a lot. I've broken Painkiller, Star Trek: Elite Force 2, Ultima 7 (not hard to do, but I didn't do anything wrong) and Strife to a point where I can't continue in the game. Plus, I sooner assumed the helicopter and radiation sewage crap was just an obnoxious point in the game rather than needing a special tool to get past it (think really unfair games, like Contra Adventure where there's three hard bosses in a row). I had already spent a half-hour trying to play lumberjack with the blue plastic drums getting past the first radiation pool.
If you ever need a playtester, I'm your guy, as I seem to be really good at breaking software:)
As for the stuttering, I'm pissed that I had to switch back from my kX Project Drivers on my SBLive! Value back to the mediocre (but reliable) official drivers. I hope any fixes that come out will remedy it.
Chris Rock (Butters): You don't get that with my mother's phone! D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-four! D-d-d-d-d-d-five! Oops, I messed up; I have to start over. D-d-d-d-d-four!
(Ok, paraphrased - movie quote pages skip over this part of the quote)
Maybe you'd actually like to sit down and actually watch the show and you'd realize the whole joke was placing "best-guess" captions at the bottom of the screen whenever Don Vito was talking gibberish. And what did the captions read? "Tony Hawk is a Vulcan liar!" Which is probably one of his more lucid statements, as opposed to something like "whatuvaguddamdogoddit!" when he really gets flustered.
My Hungry Hungry Hippos toy broke and I need some new entertainment . I've never heard of this chess or checkers you speak of. Is that made by Milton Bradley?
There is a sort of strange duality when it comes to Japanese isolationism. One one hand, they use a whole lot of standards that match the ones North America uses (Though I'm surprised NTSC works as well as it does on 50Hz power - I've seen TVs run on single cylinder personal generators and the screen wobbles like crazy as the freqency wavers).
However, there's the whole cellphone thing, and not to mention the artificially high prices for traveling - even within the country, it's expensive as hell to ride the bullet train or even drive on the expressway.
This seems to have an effect, as they prefer to keep most of the business within the country. If you're Japanese and emigrate to another country, you have to give up your Japanese citizenship if you gain it in another country.
Don't worry, I'm sure all stories submitted between 12:00 and 12:05 have been accepted and put in a queue to be released once an hour. Now let's hope that part of the Slashcode doesn't have a bug that causes something to go wrong. (Bugs in Slashcode, noooooo)
The software will become incompatible with the OS of the future and the game servers dead long before somebody finds a way to work around Steam activation. This game is way too popular for anybody to ignore this possibility you speak of.
Doom still runs to this day because plenty of people have provided source ports that allow it to run in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. and have transformed it into a client/servel network play model to work in TCP/IP as opposed to 1994's IPX, modem and null cable connections.
You must have a Creative sound card or something. Their drivers for 2000/XP have always been terrible. If you have a SBLive! or Audigy, I recommend getting the kX Project Audio Drivers. They're third party and do a lot of the basic things better than the orginal drivers do. It has things like a fully customizable bus and surround filters so you can upmix stereo music to surround - something Creative dumped when they moved on from Windows 98. EAX is supposedly not supported, but surround seems to be working just fine for me.
Nothing. Whatever strategy Valve may have planned (speculating) seems to be working beautifully. Craploads of fake HL2 files on ed2k which are mostly porn site rips, but some which are other games disguised as HL2 - usually UT2004. The Steam crack is actually nothing but a virus and there is nothing but the beta to be seen on torrent sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, so the load times are still really bad even with a system that is as ridiculously fast as yours is? I have a P4 1.7 GHz w/384 MB RAM and the load times are about 30 seconds from the main menu and 3-5 seconds quickloading from the same map. Sounds like yet another motivator for me to not upgrade yet. Moore's law has definitely been slowing down. I got my computer in 2001 and it still runs everything [slowly but very playably].
Quake had discrete levels which were loaded at the beginning of each stage. Of course, back then, load times were quick enough that all that was needed was a low profile loading icon in the corner. I believe Doom had this as well. It never had any load time problems. Even on a 386, most maps loaded up in under 1 second. Even ridiculously large custom maps that were too big to even save games in (you need ZDoom, Doom Legacy, etc. to do it now) loaded in 5-10 seconds.
The original stuttering problem I was describing is probably different that what most people are getting. The kX drivers were causing popping when the framerate dropped to 30 and below. I still get stuttering with the official SBLive! drivers, but the same kind everybody else is getting - whenever there is a pause of about 70 ms or more (steady framerates below 14 fps will also cause this frame interval. Needless to say, the stuttering was constant throughout the final stages of Half-Life 2). Doom 3 never had this problem, even when the framerates got into the low 10's.
There was a stuttering problem in Quake II when it came out too. The s_mixahead command fixed it for me, though. I'm not sure what to do in this case, even after reading the list of workarounds. Messing snd_fullasync and snd_mixahead have not accomplished anything yet.
It uses the Indeo video 5 codec. I didn't have to intervene at all to get this to play. I believe it played out of the box for both Windows XP and Xine for me. If not, resort to the link above this one, of course.
Check out the newest releases of ZDoom. It now has pretty solid Strife support. (I've only managed to break the scripting once)
No, Don Vito didn't say anything like that at all!
He looks like he probably only got some minor cuts from the shattered glass. The rear window area got crushed so the glass probably shattered before his head went though. You can actually hear the guy utter, "shit!" at the end. He knows exactly what happened :)
Oh, well, I suppose anything is better than what happened to this guy.
It's a Drivecam video - it records the last 30 seconds or so of driver video and only saves it if an accident occurs. The guy was probably kicking himself for installing it. It probably killed whatever insurance claim he had.
that you can ditch the water skimmer and then get stuck after playing for 20min and finding a point where you need it but cant go back to get it
:)
God damn! You, too? That pissed me off so bad. I actually got all the way to the ramp attached to the elevator with pulley cables and washing machine puzzle before I got stuck and it said, "A.I Disabled" after screwing around for a while trying to figure something out. It appeared no matter what game I loaded from there on, even if I started a new game. Backing up the savegames and reinstalling did the trick, though. After starting a new game from that chapter, I had a pretty big smack on the forehead after I saw the swamp boat RIGHT THERE! Did I actually miss that?
I was having too much fun in the beginning of the game to think about the tedium of walking the super long distances to get there. I assumed I just broke the game, because that appears to be something I do a lot. I've broken Painkiller, Star Trek: Elite Force 2, Ultima 7 (not hard to do, but I didn't do anything wrong) and Strife to a point where I can't continue in the game. Plus, I sooner assumed the helicopter and radiation sewage crap was just an obnoxious point in the game rather than needing a special tool to get past it (think really unfair games, like Contra Adventure where there's three hard bosses in a row). I had already spent a half-hour trying to play lumberjack with the blue plastic drums getting past the first radiation pool.
If you ever need a playtester, I'm your guy, as I seem to be really good at breaking software
As for the stuttering, I'm pissed that I had to switch back from my kX Project Drivers on my SBLive! Value back to the mediocre (but reliable) official drivers. I hope any fixes that come out will remedy it.
Chris Rock (Butters): You don't get that with my mother's phone! D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-four! D-d-d-d-d-d-five! Oops, I messed up; I have to start over. D-d-d-d-d-four!
(Ok, paraphrased - movie quote pages skip over this part of the quote)
I think I just stumbled upon how to get all of Oklahoma using Firefox now.
Then what part of the joke do you not understand?
Maybe you'd actually like to sit down and actually watch the show and you'd realize the whole joke was placing "best-guess" captions at the bottom of the screen whenever Don Vito was talking gibberish. And what did the captions read? "Tony Hawk is a Vulcan liar!" Which is probably one of his more lucid statements, as opposed to something like "whatuvaguddamdogoddit!" when he really gets flustered.
My Hungry Hungry Hippos toy broke and I need some new entertainment . I've never heard of this chess or checkers you speak of. Is that made by Milton Bradley?
Bruce (As kid wearing Zelda hat): "In England, everybody only has one spoon!"
"*bang* You're dead!"
"But this is freeze-chess!"
"No it isn't. Just de-erasey me!"
"Dude, there's no double-erasies!"
There is a sort of strange duality when it comes to Japanese isolationism. One one hand, they use a whole lot of standards that match the ones North America uses (Though I'm surprised NTSC works as well as it does on 50Hz power - I've seen TVs run on single cylinder personal generators and the screen wobbles like crazy as the freqency wavers).
However, there's the whole cellphone thing, and not to mention the artificially high prices for traveling - even within the country, it's expensive as hell to ride the bullet train or even drive on the expressway.
This seems to have an effect, as they prefer to keep most of the business within the country. If you're Japanese and emigrate to another country, you have to give up your Japanese citizenship if you gain it in another country.
Well, it is on Amazon.com - I don't plan on getting there via pigeon datagrams.
(Yeah, just joking. I know the possibilities where this logic could go wrong)
Don't worry, I'm sure all stories submitted between 12:00 and 12:05 have been accepted and put in a queue to be released once an hour. Now let's hope that part of the Slashcode doesn't have a bug that causes something to go wrong. (Bugs in Slashcode, noooooo)
The software will become incompatible with the OS of the future and the game servers dead long before somebody finds a way to work around Steam activation. This game is way too popular for anybody to ignore this possibility you speak of.
Doom still runs to this day because plenty of people have provided source ports that allow it to run in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. and have transformed it into a client/servel network play model to work in TCP/IP as opposed to 1994's IPX, modem and null cable connections.
You must have a Creative sound card or something. Their drivers for 2000/XP have always been terrible. If you have a SBLive! or Audigy, I recommend getting the kX Project Audio Drivers. They're third party and do a lot of the basic things better than the orginal drivers do. It has things like a fully customizable bus and surround filters so you can upmix stereo music to surround - something Creative dumped when they moved on from Windows 98. EAX is supposedly not supported, but surround seems to be working just fine for me.
You must be new here. We're all closet Windows users.
Quiz: How many of you run Linux only? Now how many of you are blown away by Half-Life 2? I rest my case.
...0....-1....-2.....-3
Nothing. Whatever strategy Valve may have planned (speculating) seems to be working beautifully. Craploads of fake HL2 files on ed2k which are mostly porn site rips, but some which are other games disguised as HL2 - usually UT2004. The Steam crack is actually nothing but a virus and there is nothing but the beta to be seen on torrent sites.
Don't worry - I'm sure my brother will find a way to fall off the first tram ride without saving.
Id Software took great pride with their maps. Each black pixel was meticulously rendered by hand.
You go take vacation leave to play Half-Life 1 while the rest of us visit the abandoned plant in eastern Europe, fighting baddies with a crowbar.
At the very least, they have a love/hate relationship with their DivX player.
Here's a link explaining the joke for all the clueless mods who would rather waste mod points on ACs than understand his post.