Topics

1

PC Gaming / A disturbing trend: Buggy Games

« on: January 01, 2009, 04:36:32 AM »

I've recently purchased Assassin's Creed Director's Cut for PC and Mass Effect for PC. I also bought and played through Gears of War for PC awhile back.

Gears of War uses the Games for Windows thingy and apparently you need at least a free silver Live account to save the single player game which is ludicrous in and of itself. Logging it in to Live was the most error-prone buggy thing I had ever seen. I had to download two patches and try it a million times. lame.

Assassin's Creed shipped with a known issue stated in the readme where sound wouldn't play because of the hardware accelaration on the on-board sound controller. I have a on-board SoundMax HD Audio controller which has to be relatively common. weak.

Mass Effect however is the worst. It's the buggiest steaming load of crap I've ever come across. It literally crashes every 3-5 minutes. Often in predictable spots. I've tried it with every combination of graphical settings I could think of. Don't these fools know anything about QA. It's been out for months and only had one patch that barely updated or fixed anything.

I heard that GTA4 is another suspect, also sporting the weak Games for Windows infrastructure and being really buggy.

And they wonder why the PC audience is dwindling. Has anyone else had these kinda problems?

2

Media / Max Payne Movie

« on: June 24, 2007, 02:04:56 PM »

http://www.destructoid.com/independent-film-max-payne-payne-and-redemption-makes-uwe-boll-blush-33291.phtml

Actually looks okayish, though the trailer doesn't actually show that much. It might suffer from a low budget though.

3

Software, Security, Programming and Internet / Linux Installers for Blizzard Products Petition

« on: May 24, 2007, 05:42:02 PM »

http://www.petitiononline.com/ibpfl/petition.html

A peititon asking for linux versions of blizzard games. These things are utterly useless except for the catharsis to be had from signing the web form. It's up to about 2500 signatures right now. Didn't know there were that many linux gamers.

4

Sony PlayStation / Keyboard & Mouse for the PS2

« on: December 27, 2006, 06:46:05 PM »

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/edgefx-lets-console-gamers-frag-away-with-a-mouse-222989.php
http://www.splitfish.com/

It certainly looks cool.

5

PC Gaming / Vista DRM to slow down gaming ?

« on: December 26, 2006, 09:03:14 PM »

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/25/vista-drm-to-slows-down-high-end-graphics/
Joystiq found an indepth analysis that investigates how the Vista Content Protection technology could possibly hamper gaming. It's really complicated and long. I somehow doubt it but the argument sounds sound.

6

Software, Security, Programming and Internet / Help convince ATI/AMD to open their drivers

« on: November 20, 2006, 11:39:26 AM »

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Help_us_convince_AMD_ATI_to_Open_Source_their_drivers

Basically another survey plea, but it's an ATI survey this time. Let ATI know what you want from their drivers whether it be open sourced or open spec'd.

7

Ole Talk / Tripped and Falling's album available for free

« on: October 26, 2006, 04:41:22 PM »

To celebrate the launch of their fancy new website (http://www.trippedandfalling.com) Tripped and Falling has released their album for free (http://www.trippedandfalling.com/download_victoria.html). I'd still get the actual album if you can afford it just for the higher quality files and to support the band.

8

Software, Security, Programming and Internet / Open Source renaming and forking craziness: Iceweasel, Beryl and Eudora

« on: October 12, 2006, 12:13:10 PM »

First off: Eudora will now be open sourced and use the Thunderbird engine and therefore basically be a skin for Thunderbird. http://www.qualcomm.com/press/releases/2006/061011_project_collaboration_mozilla.html . Huh? Eudora still around? wow, okay then. At least this way it will be truly cross-platform.

Next: Compiz fork named Beryl has emerged. A Compiz fork originally named Compiz-quinnstorm after its orginiator has spun off into a full project. Directions for setting it up can be found here: http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index.php/Install/Ubuntu/Dapper/AiGLX ; here: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/XGL-Ubuntu ; and here: http://knowledge76.com/index.php/AIGLX/Compiz_Nvidia . A vid of it in action can be found here: and there's already a liveCD distro of it here: http://www.sabayonlinux.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1613 . Compiz is the compositing part of the window manager that actually turns the xgl and aiglx X window calls into something useful and pretty. Nobody like forks, it's a huge waste of time. You can't control it and that's great but there's no satisfiable niche there to justify the duplication of effort. Why did they do this? It's stupid. At least for now Beryl is nicer than Compiz. Although I know an old lady from St. Thomas named Beryl so I just can't take this thing seriously. St. Thomas accents are awesome.

Finally, Debian and Mozilla got in a spat because the firefox logo is copyrighted and therefore not libre enough according to Debian free software guidelines. So they got vexed at each other and demanded crazy things of each other (http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/10/09/1434251), so the GNU project forked Firefox calling it... Iceweasel???!!!(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel) Whose bright idea was this? Doesn't the FSF have anything better to do than complain about nomenclature?! Guess not.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy) Debian will adopt this eventually and Ubuntu as well since its a derivative. All suggested logos of it are ugly as hell too (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IceWeaselIcon). This is a bad bad idea. It's just complicating things unecessarily. Why don't they just call it Debian Web Browser? I'd feel less dorky using that. Does this mean that Debian Linux and derivatives' users will have a different user agent and therefore wouldn't be counted as Firefox users? Probably not they all just say Mozilla as the user agent.

9

Ole Talk / Google Maps updates Trinidad

« on: October 04, 2006, 09:57:49 AM »

http://www.caribbeanfreeradio.com/blog/?p=573

Neat

10

Media / Fan made trailer for the return of Futurama

« on: October 01, 2006, 08:53:47 PM »

http://www.speedbumpstudios.com/futurama/

Short and sweet. Enjoy

11

Media / This Film is Not Yet Rated

« on: September 25, 2006, 10:10:36 AM »

I would recommend this film to anyone as it uncovers the corrupt organization that is the MPAA. It's a documentary about the MPAA ratings board and how it runs completely in secret without any form of accountability. Along the way it touches on how arbitrarily the board seems to be making decisions about people's films and by extension the country's culture. It also touches on how they're completely biased towards abhorrent violence while the face shot of a women achieveing orgasm makes them 'uncomfortable'. Doh even talk bout gay sex. It touches on MPAA's history as a front for the studios interests and how they serve them much better than independents and it touches on how they helped to legislate copyright extension so that the studios can lock down culture. In it he hires a private investigator to unveil the names of the board and he finally does so in the end. It is quite funny and I'd recommend checking it out.

12

Software, Security, Programming and Internet / Gfire: Xfire support for Gaim

« on: September 21, 2006, 03:21:53 PM »

http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1793&referer=rss

For anyone using Gaim, but has an Xfire account, the plugin gives you support for it Gaim.

13

PC Gaming / Savage 1 is now freeware

« on: September 21, 2006, 03:21:02 PM »

http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1779&referer=rss

If anyone knows about Savage, the first one is now freeware. That link is how to get the linux version working, the windows version is off the site.

14

Media / Clerks II

« on: July 31, 2006, 04:44:52 PM »

I don't want to say anything without bussing the movie but it's FRICKIN HILARIOUS! Its got far more pop culture discussions. More cussin. Plenty cameos. It's even got a boombox. It sneaks in a few themes about growing old and taking ahold of your life. It takes a little while to get good but the first racial joke just really breaks the ice. If you liked the first one, this one doesn't disappoint at all.

15

Anime / Speed Racer Lives

« on: July 20, 2006, 03:21:03 PM »

Not sure if it should be here or in Movie Towne. Don't know if this is commonplace news either. It looks very Cartoon-Networky
http://www.speedracerlives.com/

16

Ole Talk / Piece of man's skull falls off, draws crowds

« on: July 05, 2006, 07:12:00 PM »

Why does weird stuff like this always happen in the far east?
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2006-07-05T123312Z_01_DEL109974_RTRUKOC_0_US-INDIA-SKULL1.xml&pageNumber=1&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage1

17

Media / Bollywood Superhero

« on: June 20, 2006, 11:17:33 AM »

http://blog.wired.com/sterling/index.blog?entry_id=1505531

His name is Krrish.

18

Console Gaming Archive / Tekken with Actual Humans

« on: June 13, 2006, 11:16:16 AM »

Not Certain if this should be in the Rum Shop or in here. It's kinda cool

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/tekken/tekken-with-actual-humans-178609.php

19

Console Gaming Archive / A controller that matches PC FPS dexterity on the PS2

« on: May 19, 2006, 11:36:03 PM »

http://gear.ign.com/articles/708/708054p1.html

Showcased at E3. The idea seems so frickin obvious. The arguments that PC people have been going on about for PC FPS & keyboard and mice looks challenged by this.

20

News / 20 Titles planned for Revolution launch

« on: April 10, 2006, 07:00:11 PM »

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=16005

2/3 of which will be third party