PC Gaming = World of Suck

[Santilli]

My only real tie to playboy was having sex with, and asking one of them to marry me.

Diane Hsu Lee, Ms. March, 1988...

She became Ms. March, because, I suggested she try it...

Stupid, MF, idiot that I was...

gs

Different person? Note: sorry in advance for asking if it's a painful topic. Don't follow the link if so (although it is at least just imdb.com).

Yes, that's Dianee.

By the way, Stephen Whayada was really not the guy for her to marry.

I did talk to her awhile back, and the divorce really tore her up. Diane came back from a photoshoot in the Carriabean to find all her stuff gone, the locks on the house changed, and, most of the money pulled out of their joint account. Apparently the guy would marry a bunny, take her money, since they earn a bunch in the first two years, and then it goes down quite a bit. H e was in a state where divorced favored such stunts, and marry a new one, and do it again.

That's her version, anyway.

GS

 

[Groltz]

My install of F.E.A.R. is running nicely. I just finished about 90 minutes of playing it. Haven't noticed anything funny with the install or anything.

Sorry, I evidently went off-topic talking about PC Gaming back there.

 

[Handruin]

:mrgrn: Sorry Groltzs. How's the overall game so far? Is it worth clunking down the $50 for her?

 

[Mercutio]

FEAR is supposed to have really evil copy protection. Hopefully the pirate crews have gotten around it by now.

I've tried a couple different "nonstandard" releases of Halflife2 now, but I haven't found one that works properly yet. Grr.

Here's a thing on setting up your own World of Warcraft Server. I hate Blizzard. I don't enjoy their games because they aren't fun to me. I hate seeing them successful in the marketplace. I hate them more for taking away bnetd, the private gaming server for some of their older products. So I hope any WoWers who read this download the private server thingy and use the hell out of it.

Oh, and UT 2007 looks amazing. And guess what? I own three legit copies of UT2005, because it doesn't have retarded online distribution or connection requirements. Epic gets it. Valve and Blizzard don't.

 

[Bozo]

"Epic gets it. Valve and Blizzard don't"

You got that right!


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

Dungeons and Dragons Online apparently has some kind of testing event this weekend.

 

[Groltz]

FEAR is supposed to have really evil copy protection. Hopefully the pirate crews have gotten around it by now.

The release that I got was bulletproof. No problems whatsoever.

 

[CougTek]

Unreal Tournament 2007, if it looks as good as the pictures posted on this site, will be awesome. I'll need to find money for a new system and a powerful graphic card.

This guy looks friendly.

 

[fb]

Flight Simulator X also looks promising. But I don't know how good the flight model is.

 

[mubs]

This guy looks friendly.

Resembles somebody we all know!

 

[Handruin]

My new online free game of choice has been Hobowars*. It's a text/web based game that becomes addicting once you fully understand it.

*disclaimer, that link gives me referal credit within the game if you signup using that URL. If you chose not to give me referal credit, then simply remove the numbers at the end of the url.

 

[Sol]

I've been hanging out for Elderscrolls 4 and trying to stop playing WoW for a while now... As Mercutio pointed out Blizzard churn out some serious crap, especially since warcraft 2 and diablo. Unfortunately WoW is still probably the best of the MMORPGs and those things are addictive... One day someone is going to make one that's actually good and thousands of lives will be lost...
But then again I guess you'd get the same sort of effect if someone made a poker-machine with a compelling plot and imersive atmophere...

I'm sure I'll get over it in a couple of weeks though.

 

[Santilli]

How is FEAR?

Quake 4?

 

[Groltz]

Both are "good".

F.E.A.R. is highly over-rated in my opinion. The endless indoor office/laboratory/etc. combat really became monotonous in a short period of time. The graphics engine and gameplay are decent, though.

Quake 4 I liked better. It has more excitement and drama than F.E.A.R.
It also has the single most gruesome and bloodcurdling scene I have ever witnessed in a video game...Joe Bob sez check it out.

 

[Santilli]

Thanks
My favorite game, and the only one I really played for any length of time,
other then The Tex Murphy series, was Quake2, and mainly, Quake 3.

I'll pick up Quake 4.

Anyone played Peter Jacksons King Kong, 007 Nightfire, Tiger woods 2004,
or MSFT Combat flight Simulater3, Battle for Europe?

All are sitting on my desk, jst debating if I should open....

GS

 

[Sol]

I found that F.E.A.R caused itself some problems for me by jusmping straight into the plot. I like to have a go at a game before I get bombarded with 15 minutes of cut scenes so as I tend to do I just skipped through all the crap at the start... The end result was that by the time I was ready to gt interested in the plot it was far too late to start...

I still finished the game though thanks to some reasonable AI and some fun weapons. I was pretty unimpressed with the scripting though. If they have to have it at least make it subtle. There is perhaps nothing worse in an fps than emptying half your amunition into some guys head only to realise that he's invunerable right now...
Also the entire first mission is 100% scripted. There is absolutely nothing you can do to affect it's outcome and there are no enemies.

I wasn't expecting too much out of Quake4 so I wasn't disapointed but it is a fun game.

I'll have to go and find out wwhich release of Half-Life 2 I have, it worked perfectly for me although I know others have had issues with it, but it's still worth a try as it's a lot easier than stuffing arround with steam either way.

 

[Santilli]

Anyone figured out how to copy the play disks, so you don't have to use the original?

Both Kong and Tiger Woods require it, and, I would much rather be playing from my hard drive, or doing something else with the DVD player at the time...

gs

 

[Sol]

It depends on the copy protection used but generally making an image of the play cd with Alcohol 120% and mounting it in Daemon tools 4 should work.

In the case of recent starforce protected games you may also need to unplug all IDE optical drives (which I guess kind of negates much of the value). nd in fact with pretty much all starforce games you will not be able to use any ide optical drives and play the game at the same time, but this may even be the case with the original disks, Starforce is a fairly invasive bit of DRM...

 

[Santilli]

How can you tell if it has Starforce protection?

Thanks

GS

 

[Handruin]

Oh, you know when it has Starforce...the damn thing tells you. Well, at least my donated copy of Bet On Soldier does. I had such a hell of a time installing it.

 

[Sol]

Ah yes Bet on Soldier, I spent ages trying to figure out what was going wrong there, I did everything right to bypass the protection and it looked like it was going to run and then Bam! it hard locked the whole system...

In the end it turned out that I was getting past the copy protection fine, the game just hard locked my system... Fortunately they released a patch...

And yeah, starforce does not attempt to hide it's presence...

 

[Groltz]

Anyone figured out how to copy the play disks, so you don't have to use the original?

Go over to Megagames.com or Gamecopyworld.com and download a NO-CD version of your game's executable. Then you can put your legally purchased :mrgrn: cd/dvd safely in a drawer.

MegaGames="Game Fixes" section
GameCopyWorld="Game Index" section

Warnings:

1) Make sure the FIRST thing you do after extracting the files from the archive you download is to manually scan for viruses. About 30% of the NO-CD exes on either site are actually viruses.

2) Make sure to match the version number of the NO-CD exe (v1.0, v1.46, etc.) with the version of your game.

3) Make sure you get a NO-CD exe for the correct country/language your game was released for.

It is definitely nice not to have an optical drive spin-up and hunt around every time you fire up a game.

 

[sechs]

Keep in mind that no-CD cracks are illegal, whether you bought the game or not.

 

[Gilbo]

Keep in mind that no-CD cracks are illegal, whether you bought the game or not.

In the U.S., Australia and other civilized countries perhaps, but Canadians still have some semblance of protected fair use rights.

 

[sechs]

Check your license. I'm sure that it says otherwise.

 

[Sol]

I think the bottom of most end user licenses state, essentially, that you should just ignore any stipulations which they are not legal entitled to make in your country.

It's a pretty cheap trick that means they can say whatever the hell they like, such as; your not allowed to modify the product in any way for any reason, even if the concept of fair use makes actually stopping people from using the product in whatever way they see fit illegal.

Of course in Australia we barely have a concept of fair use and we'll soon be seeing DMCA style laws come in, assuming we hold up our end of the US fair trade agreement, so we're pretty much screwed even without the license agreement... Of course we also have a law enforcement system which shows no sign of having any intention of going after copyright infringement let alone purely DMCA infringing activity so we're probably pretty safe...

 

[time]

The licence "agreement" (as it is so fancifully known) is a worthless piece of paper without a specific law to back it up. Under pressure from the US, such laws have already been enacted in most of "the free world". DMCA-style laws will be the icing on the cake.

 

[sechs]

I cannot speak for Australia particularly, but, in most English-speaking nations of the world, contract law is enforceable. Breaking a legal contract is breaking the law. You can ultimately be fined and thrown in jail.

 

[Santilli]

Went with Alcohol 120, but, so far, no success.

Only played with it a little.

gs

 

[sechs]

Try setting the executable to run in Windows NT compatability mode.

 

[time]

Breaking a legal contract is breaking the law. You can ultimately be fined and thrown in jail.

No, no, no! You can be fined etc for breaking copyright law, not for breaching a contract. You would have to be sued. However, laws such as the DMCA may give legal backing to certain aspects of a licence agreement.

Shrinkwrap licences are highly contentious and may be unenforceable (because the purchaser has not been able to consider the terms and conditions before acceptance). However, wacky laws have been passed here and there to turn them into contracts, or at least include them under ordinary contracts of sale.

It's a minefield that I don't want to venture into.

 

[sechs]

Seeing as I have been in court when an arrest warrant was issued for breaching a contract, I'd say that it is possible.

Once again, I can't speak for Australia, as you may have some incredibly backwards legal system. I doubt it, but it's possible.

 

[time]

You were mistaken. People can be arrested for breaching a court's (judge's) orders, or on suspicion of them committing a crime (i.e. breaking a law).

In our brave new (free) world, we also have the concept of 'detention', which is not always arrest. AFAIK, this is the sole province of governments.

Australia, the United States and goodness knows how many other countries have legal systems closely based on Britain's. There are different statutes and different common law, but much of it is the same. The devil is in the details, however.

BTW, it's a bit rich for Americans to suggest that another country may have "some incredibly backwards legal system".

 

[sechs]

I guess the judicial system of the United States has run amok, holding people to their agreements!

 

[Sol]

I was fairly sure that ignoring DMCA (which I do as a matter of course) you can't actually be arrested for copyright violations OR breaching a contract. My understanding was that both of these were civil matters and someone would have to sue you... But I'm no lawyer... I was pretty sure that that was true in Australia, America and Britain. I have no idea about elsewhere though.

The American legal system seems to be undergoing a simplification process at the moment. Give it a few years and all cases will be decided within seconds by simply comparing the net assets of both parties and finding in favor of the richer.

 

[Mercutio]

As if there weren't already enough good reasons to hate Blizzard.

For the record, the group I play City of Heroes/Villains is about 1/3 gay folks, we're known as "gay friendly", just like the group Blizzard banned in WoW.

 

[Mercutio]

Anyone who wants a free Buddy Code for Dungeons and Dragons Online, let me know.

 

[Mercutio]

Microsoft released the source code and resource flies for MechCommander 2 today.

It's a fun game. I still play it sometimes.

 

[ddrueding]

Anyone who wants a free Buddy Code for Dungeons and Dragons Online, let me know.

I'm interested, some of my friends at the game center are already working on their second level-10.



On another note, I spent an entire night the other day playing the new Lord of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth II. It's very fun, much better than the first, and quite beautiful.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not really too happy with DDO. The chat features for those of us who don't want to do voice chat are a crime against nature, and there's no way to tell where other members of your party are, unless they're on the same map, in the same instance and within about 100 feet of you.
Plus, the combat is a Diablo-style clickfest and the content is so limited that you end up doing the same four or five dungeons over and over and over and over and over to get anywhere in the game.
And you can forget about soloing. It's impossible unless you can heal yourself. That means that you must group, and forced grouping means regularly dealing with asshats.
And Hit Points and Spell Points don't recover on their own, you have to Rest. And a given Rest point only works once per character.
And there are no, zero, none random encounters. The dungeons are completely static. Everyone who has played longer than about four hours will have all the dungeons memorized, so there's no point to bring along a thief (trap-disabler).
The top level at the moment is 10, and at level 9 or so the game gives out +5 weapons and armor, which is as good as things get in Dungeons and Dragons. Makes me wonder how much further they're going to allow advancement.