Random Opinions
Damn it’s hard getting up to class at 8:30am when you were up until 6am “team building” with the other guys from the company and some crazy nurses they found. I did learn stuff that I was actually here to learn though, just it’s probably not interesting to anyone reading this blog so I won’t bore you with enterprise level Java junk.
Vegas is an interesting place. I wish Tahnia was here – I’d have a *lot* more fun!
First of all, watching the Steelers/Colts game in a pub in Vegas with 100 or so Steelers fans singing “Here we go, Steelers” was awesome. While I’m not America’s biggest football fan (I still enjoy the Rugby more than American Football), I did love to see my home team supported so heavily out here and to be part of the winning game that takes them to the AFC final. I don’t think anyone in the world could argue that being an exciting game.
So, after the game I hung out with some friends who decided to play the Blackjack tables here in Vegas and much to my surprise they did amazingly well, being up over $1000 together after a few hours. My gambling money (as usual) is severely restricted cause I just don’t have the cash to toss about and my luck is terrible as usual, playing the even odds on Roulette four times in a row and losing all four, followed by getting my only quarter jammed in a slot machine. That was the end of my gambling day – some things just obviously aren’t going to happen and I’m sure it’s all for the best.
After hooking up with the other guys from work for our official duties, we headed back to the gaming tables at around 10pm and my friend who was already significantly up for the day played another half hour to win yet another $200. Some people really do have all the luck. So, after sitting around the bar with four other guys for a few hours (and a few Jagerbombs) the lads got tired of boring scenery and decided to go to a Vegas strip club (topless only cause full nudity in NV means no serving drinks).
What surprised me most of all about the strip club was that while I found the strippers good to look at, seven years of happy marriage meant I really was totally uninterested in the other offerings the club had walking around sitting on people’s knees. Most of them were cute kids in slut costumes but talking to them really wasn’t a turn on. If I remember correctly, 4 different ones tried to hit on me with different and original lines before I figured out that sitting in certain spots was a bad idea. Once I figured out the right “not interested” signals things went much smoother.
Now, I haven’t been to a strip club since being married (not that my wife would really mind, just not been that interested) so in many ways the lack of difficulty I had in turning down the girls from their complete lack of comparison to my wife was refreshing. It’s nice to know that some temptations are just not there. I had a good time, but not the sort of good time the girls were hoping to sell me (they could drain your pockets faster than the casino tables), and got out of there with nothing more than a few hideously overpriced drinks to burn a hole in my wallet.
I’m pretty sure the fact I’m not carrying my credit cards or ATM cards with me around Vegas is helping a lot too – nothing like a half hour walk back to the hotel room to really convince you that spending more money isn’t a good idea.
Well, 6am is creeping up way too fast. Better get what sleep I can before classes start here in earnest.
Having enjoyed Morrowind, I figured I’d give Daggerfall a try. Was a nice idea, except for the fact it’s a really old DOS based game from the days long before 64 bit protected operating systems existed. So, the challenge was to get it working on my computer which currently only boots to XP-x64.
The first problem was that unlike regular XP, XP-x64 has no support for 16 bit code so trying to run a DOS program just gives you an error that the program wasn’t build for this CPU. Ok, I can deal with that. Download dosbox and try that out. Well, dosbox is a great program that happily emulates an x86 processor running DOS in a nice window that you can resize and run full screen if you want to. Unfortunately the performance isn’t great at all because it emulates the CPU entirely in software and so turned out to be too slow to run Daggerfall. This was a real shame because the support for audio and MIDI are amazing – things just work happily!
Performance issues? Maybe if I rebuild dosbox as a 64 bit application? Grab the source code from Sourceforge and open it up in Visual Studio. Create an x64 target build and fire it off. Blam – hundreds of errors trying to compile 32 bit assembly code in a 64 bit program. Not going to happen.
Ok, so next idea was to use VMWare to boot to a simple DOS system and run Daggerfall. After some fun getting DOS set up (my memory of autoexec.bat and config.sys magic is a little rusty), I installed Daggerfall and tried to run the audio setup. BOOM – lockup.
Right, look at the VMWare guest OS installation guide and find that since v5 it supports an AudioPCI and not an SB16 by default. Ok – head over to Creative Labs and grab the DOS drivers for the AudioPCI. Drop them onto the DOS box, ttp://www.kamagraoraljelly247.com/, fix autoexec.bat and config.sys again then reboot. Splat – lockup loading the drivers which apparently are turning the CPU off!
Head over to the VMWare support area. Issue found – edit the VMWare .vmx file directly with notepad and change the sound support from the AudioPCI to an SB16. Seemed reasonable – I wanted an SB16 anyway. Boot up, run the audio config program in Daggerfall again and the digital audio is absolutely flawless. Move down to the MIDI setup and VMWare crashes with a “function not supported error” in emulating the MIDI cialis pris. Arghh.
So… I decide maybe I can live without the music for the time being and fire up the game. It’s choppy – VMWare has problems writing to the hardware when there’s no guest tools installed. No guest tools are available for DOS so the game is basically unplayable.
That’s not too big of a problem – I head over to MSDN subscriber downloads and grab a copy of the latest Virtual PC. Ten minutes downloading later I have it and run the installer which politely informs me that it doesn’t run on XP-x64 and I’ll have to install a 32 bit operating system.
Sure thing – I make some room on my C: drive with Partition Magic and go hunting for some DOS drivers for my AC97 onboard sound. Oops – they don’t exist and apparently you need BIOS support to handle that sort of junk.
This problem I can deal with – installing Win98 should fix all that because it has nice drivers that will give the DOS program something to talk to. Run through the Win98 setup and it’s taking an awful long time to do anything (that scrolling bar at the bottom is sooo pretty), but that’s probably because it can’t detect any of my hardware until I get the drivers, right? Nope – splat back to text saying there’s insufficient memory to run windows. Kinda surprising given there’s 2G in my machine.
Off to MS tech support and there’s a perfect article there saying to edit my system.ini to tell Win98 that I really only have 780M of memory because apparently any more than that overloads the poor old 16 bit data structures in the 98 kernel. That’s pretty easy and I fire up the rest of the installation process. Still takes a long time so while I’m waiting I jump onto the web and search for the motherboard drivers I know I’ll need. Oh dear, nVidia doesn’t have anything for 98 (or ME) and Gigabyte tells me that the “chipset manufacturer has no Win98 compatibility”. Some Google-fu later and I see a few people asking for help finding 98 drivers for nForce4 boards and a lot more morons abusing them for trying to run 98 on an nForce4 system when there’s perfectly good reasons for wanting to do so (like running Daggerfall). Ultimately I find a few actually helpful people informing me that there will never be 98 drivers for the nForce4 platform and I’m shit outta luck. Crap, crap, crap.
So… back to VMWare and install Win98. Drop the guest tools onto it. That’s about where I’m at right now, I’ll continue this with further updates if anything happens.
(2 hours later)
Well, VMWare+Win98 was no better than VMWare+DOS. I shouldn’t be surprised by that because Win98 really is DOS anyway. It was identical right down to needing to use SB16 instead of the AudioPCI to get anything to work and then crashing VMWare with the exact same error – “function not supported” when I tried to use the MIDI.
About to give up I went over to the Elder Scrolls web site to see if there were any patches I’d missed and a quick look at the forum led me to this post, which was the absolute best advice I’d found. Using the special build of DosBox with the configuration recommended, Daggerfall runs amazingly well. I get a solid 25fps and almost no popping on the audio. I’m now happy and hopefully anyone else wanting to play Daggerfall will find that post and be happy as well!
So I took the time off over Christmas and New Year to catch up on some of the single player games I’d been neglecting the last year – namely Morrowind (I’d actually never played it right through) and Dungeon Lords. Here’s my take:
Morrowind
This is the game that all the CRPGs out there really try to emulate. The basic storyline is very new and fresh (you’re a god reincarnated, or maybe you’re not, and maybe the gods aren’t really gods at all etc.) unlike many of the “prophesied nobody saving the world from evil” games that are out there now and that Morrowind lures you into believing that it is as well – at least in the beginning. Despite being 3 or 4 years out of date, the graphics are still very fresh and can be smoothly turned all the way up on my X850 to give a very good gaming experience.
The real key to Morrowind though is the absolute absence of a linear story pushing you forward. As has been shown you can finish the full game in under 10 minutes if you really know what you are doing but in doing so you miss the entire point of the world which is very much alive and full of intricate plots and lore (though I must say the idea of avoiding Vivec altogether is appealing). Took me about 10 days of gaming but I ended up finishing Morrowind, Bloodmoon and Tribunal and have to admit that even the expansions are great. Overall I could very much recommend this game and the expansions as still excellent entertainment and you’re really missing out if you haven’t tried them.
Some Morrowind humor:
Dear Mom,
First of all, please keep this under your hat. Apparently being an orphan is one of my job requirements (I didn’t know that when I applied, honest), and I wouldn’t want to disappoint the big boss..
Anyway, I hope this finds you well. I am doing fine, although the scenery here is a bit overly dramatic – Uncle Bob (the Realtor) could sell both sides of some acres. The natives are mostly friendly, although a lot of them seem to have sore eyes. Have been practising my Alchemy furiously, but still can’t make ‘Optrex’, which would be a big seller. Maybe you can ship some in?
There are lots of opportunities here for a smart kid .. for a start, the whole Island badly needs a decent bank. Maybe we can sell the franchise to Mastercard? Would you believe that nobody here can make change for a 10k soul gem. No, really! I asked about opening an account, and the local merchant looked at me as if I was mad.
Actually there are a lot of really poor folk here – even the bandits don’t seem to have more than 7gp in their pocketses, and the enchanters are all in threadbare common pants. Of course, when you consider that they take a 200gp amulet, and 60k gp soul gem, and 16k gp in cash to turn out a measly amulet-of-open-sesame, and then claim it’s worth 60gp, you can see where they are going wrong!
The wildlife situation is pretty dire too. I think you better alert the WWF, because at the current rate there won’t be a Cliff Racer or Alit left in the place by the end of the year – half of them are diseased or blighted, and even the healthy ones attack me on sight .. the natives must be a pushover, however your trusty son is a whole different kettle of fishes.
Actually you’d hardly recognise me now – I did what Pop said, and invested in training, and now I can run the whole island from South to North without getting winded. I was going to enter a Triathlon, but apparently the Dwarves (people here call them Dwemer, by the way) never got around to inventing the bicycle. Damn shame .. then they went and died off (the Dwemer that is). Someone wanted to know why, but it’s pretty obvious that they all choked to death trying to pronounce place names like ‘Mzuleft’ and ‘Nchuzfel’ (not sure I’ve got those quite right, but you get the idea). And all their cogs rusted .. I would send one for Billy, but the postage is too much, they only made them in ‘large’ apparently. They were great engineers though – some of their steam engines are still running after hundreds of years of unattended operation.
The natives are kind of dense. I found some jewels for one lady, and she is still standing where I left her four weeks later. I went back when it was raining (no, not just to see her in a wet doublet) and she was still there. Poor thing – all those jewels, and no home to go to. But most of them are like that – they stand around in one place, or want you to escort them someplace else, or want you to deliver something for them. Nice folks, but bone idle.
I have been having a bit of trouble sleeping. Every time I nod off, these guys in black PJs pop out from behind a bush yelling ‘you are mortally wounded’ and throw themselves on my sword. I’ve got an embarrassingly large pile of black PJs and Daedric weapons now .. as I mentioned, none of the locals can afford to buy them. I’d send some back, but I don’t think it’s allowed. One of them actually assaulted me in the mages guild – did my fellow mages leap to my assistance? Did they hell .. they just stood around watching the fight and placing bets on the outcome. Any more of that and I shan’t be renewing my subs, come year end.
The other problem is these things called ‘Golden Saints’, who don’t act a bit like the Saints I was told about in church. Given the way they keep going for me for no reason, I’m really not looking forward to meeting the local ‘Golden devils’, who are presumably even worse. The last one that attacked me took nearly 15 seconds to dispatch, and I accidentally killed two Cliff Racers and a Guar while flailing around with my axe.
Ah well, must stop now, it’s time for my Acrobatics lesson. I found some interesting scrolls of Icarian flight, that let me jump high enough to almost see home, but getting back down is really hard on my knees, especially when I forget to cast ‘feather’, so I’ll just have to imagine you all instead.
Lots of love to all the family,
Your Obedient Son, Ethelbert.
So my little wood elf archer finally got around to fighting Dagoth Ur.
Talk about a disappointing encounter.
— He’s a Daedroth wearing a gold mask. I mean, this guy is at the center of the main plot, he’s the source of ultimate evil in Vvardenfell, his machinations might affect the entire Empire, and he’s a cheesy recycled 3D model. Granted, the Daedroth was a cool model, but I’ve seen hundreds of them by now.
— He sounds like a slightly drunk version of Donald Sutherland, and he keeps repeating himself.
— He can’t walk without falling into a pool of lava. I figured I would see what Dagoth Ur is made of, so I went toe-to-toe with him for awhile. I couldn’t figure out how to prevent him from falling into the lava lake under the walkway. Don’t these people have workplace safety policies, for chrissake?
Dagoth Ur: By Molag Bal’s beard, I’ve fallen into the lava again. Well, I’m an immortal and invincible god, no problem there. It sure smarts, though. Hey, Dreamers! Lower a rope and hoist me out of here!
Dreamer: In lava’s light, our lord awakes. His might shall strip the flesh from the n’wah, and bring his minions to glory.
Dagoth Ur: Look, just lower the rope, OK? I’m already regenerating my legs from charcoal here.
Dreamer: Accursed foreigners steal our fruit loops. Follow the twisted soul of the syncopated turtle. AWAKE!
Dagoth Ur: THROW ME A FRICKING ROPE FOR CHRISSAKES!
— There was no final battle! Once I pincushioned the Heart of Lorkhan (which is easy, because Dagoth Ur can’t shoot his little fire beams very well), he just collapsed! I looted his body, but I couldn’t even loot the fricking gold mask as a trophy. I couldn’t soultrap him either, so I can’t complete my set of Dagoth soul gems.
In summary: Cheesy 3D model, dumb voice, keeps hurling himself into lava for no reason, and incredibly easy to kill with no cool mask to steal.
Almalexia was a much better opponent.
Dungeon Lords
This game had promise, but it’s very obviously unfinished – even more so than a MMOG on its first day! There are virtually no incidental NPCs in the world, large buildings that were obviously meant to house thriving towns just look lonely and empty, and the town leaders or kings look rather lonely standing by themselves in a room. Unfortunately the storyline is very cliche as well – this time you are a prophecied unknown person that must save the world from evil. While it was entertaining, it’s definitely nothing to rave about and in the end, it’s an unfinished game being marketed as something fully complete.
In the gameplay, there were flashes of brilliance – some of the dungeons were well constructed and original with some rather cunning puzzles to work through but the frequency of “random encounters” where you’d clear a section of dungeon only to have it refill with random spawns that sneak up from behind. I don’t care, but it really suspends disbelief to have cleared a single room and walk around a corner to find mobs coming back from that room with no other entrances save the one you’re in.
Mildly interesting, but really not worth running out and buying.
Psychonauts was a fun diversion. I definitely enjoyed the twisted sense of humor the developers put into it, but as is usual for a PC port of what is essentially a console platform game it ignored the fact I had a controller that I was happily using and instead kept prompting me to press “F” (or some other key) to perform moves. Having to figure out all the time which controller button “F” meant wasn’t a great way to start off with the game but once I had the controls memorized and remapped to something a little more intuitive than the standard mess PC games make of controller buttons the whole thing flowed very well.
As far as platform games go, I’m not a huge fan and tend to get bored pretty quickly so this game definitely stood out of the crowd in that it kept me hooked to the end. It was easy enough to follow that I think I only got stuck at one point (how to kill the first incarnation of the butcher in the meat circus) but challenging enough that I certainly couldn’t just waltz through it without thinking about how I was going to make my way through stuff. Using the controller made life a lot easier than a keyboard/mouse would have been – most notably the ability to move the camera and run independantly with the two analog sticks.
Far Cry I bought specifically because it was the first 64 bit native game to come out – something I thought deserved supporting. Being able to play the native 64 bit version was also great, especially the increased graphic resolution and depth of view over the original 32 bit programming. It really was a visually spectacular game and one that kept me enjoying the scenery and environments right up to the very end.
I have to say I enjoyed Far Cry a lot, right up until the final missions which really got a bit silly in the number of bad guys and rockets that were headed in your direction (it just gets tedious picking them off and dodging incoming fire). The combination of stealth and frontal assault options really made the game more than a simple first person shooter and the idea of crawling through undergrowth that is thick and properlly modelled in 3d to sneak up on bad guys was a lot of fun. Definitely a good game to play if you have a 64 bit machine running the x64 version of XP.
I also have the DVD version of F.E.A.R. that I’ve yet to play, mainly because the atmosphere really didn’t go well with my wife playing Demonstone on the PC next door. With my new headphones though, I should be able to work on this when I get some spare time. Of course, now I’m a little behind in questing in EQ2 which I also have to catch up on so this one may take me a while to get through. I’ve played up to the point of the room that explodes in fire, which was a brilliant piece of game cinematography and definitely want to see more!