First off: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... Stupid Rune. :)

Tried the Mechwarrior 4 demo yesterday just for giggles and joy. My hopes were naturally crushed upon running it and getting the error "DirectX Media not installed." Anyone else getting this one, or is it just poor little me. Naturally everything else and it's various siblings runs on my machine.. It's just that particular alpha.. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Intel is apparently getting a good bitch slapping in the market these days. (GO AMD!) Skeez (A fount of useful wisdom lately!) send me THIS link. Ouchies. Sucks to be them. :)

My fav clip from the article has to be this stunning statment:

"Wireless phones and handheld computers are offering more services all the time, but they can't yet compete for ease of use when it comes to Internet access, game-playing or staple applications such as spreadsheets or word processing, say analysts."

Well no shit, moron. While the Quake III framerate on my Palm 3 is pretty stunning, and Tribes plays really well on my GeFORCE 2 equiped Cellar Phone, somehow it's just not the same experiance. Yesh. I'm surrounded by idiots. :))

Still looking forward to my copy of Crimson Skies, since everyone is busy ranting about it, and it does look pretty sweet. Speaking of which, they've just patched the game. Get it HERE.

Due to a dearth of new games recently (Something I compare to being trapped in the large, very hot desert, with a small fountain of water on a skateboard always just ahead of your staggering. You know, a place like Siberia or something.......Oh never mind. You all get the point I'm sure.) I've started downloading demos. Man. Hitman is hard as hell! I've gotten killed about 50x. I'll get those Gangster bastards sooner or later tho. GRAB the demo and give it a try. Kinda like theif with guns and car bombs. :) Amusingly I was standing next to the gang's car with a car bomb in my hand and they seemed to think nothing of it, meerly inquiring as to why I was so interested in their car. :) Heh. I love AIs.

Anyhows, back to contract killing. More news later.

Look! Marauder got the date right today! ;-)

Pappy over at Planet Quake got a heads-up from our good buddy Skeezix about an article at the Globe and Mail that talks about the business side of Professional Gaming. Check it out! The article features Dy-Syng who as you may or may not know managed to kick just about everyone's collective ass in all things Quake at Fragtopia 2000 (the big-ass LAN party we held back in May). He also walked away with a heap o' prizes. Interestingly enough Pappy was also at Fragtopia 2000 (as well as the Canadian Cyber Championships that they mention in the article).... hmm maybe there's a connection here... I smell a conspiracy! Also take a gander at the demos page for a few gameplay demos (including Dy-Syng's) from Fragtopia 2000.

The new Mechwarrior multiplayer test demo looks like sweet yummy mech goodness... Can you say "Killllll frenzy!!!!!!" ? (oops wrong game...) Kind of makes me feel like being 'sick' for work tomorrow..... Hey if Microsoft is developing this maybe it's just a kind of simulator for them working on the real thing...I can just picture them sending an army of Mechs down to the Dept of Justice building.... Appeal this!

As I posted yesterday in my angst and sadness, weeping huge bitter tears on my keyboard and oh so sexy Intellimouse as I typed, life is not worth living anymore. (But uh, if you do decide to go kill yourself, blame microsoft or something OK? I'd feel guilty for a few seconds if you blamed me, and I just don't need that stress right now. Thanks in advance!)

The reason for such grief in my life? Well, if you don't know already you must be living in a box somewhere with Elvis. Tribes 2 is delayed. Du'oh.

Yoinked this quote from our buddy Flagg over @ Tribes Universe

"In order to maintain the quality that Tribes fans expect and deserve, Sierra and Dynamix have made the decision to delay shipping Tribes 2 so that we can put the finishing touches on this ambitious project. (We will still hit the scheduled beta date. We just want a longer post-beta period to hone the game.)

Because Tribes 2 is a "triple- A" title, we decided it would be best to extend the beta test and appropriately finesse the game so it meets the highest standards. This means we will be able to ensure the greater compatibility testing and play balancing that a game of this scale requires. While we realize this is disappointing for many gamers, we hope you will agree this is the best decision, as our community deserves no less than our best effort. So, stay tuned for the beta. We will be announcing a new ship date soon and guarantee it will be worth the wait!

Sincerely, Dave Georgeson Senior Producer/Director, Dynamix"

More from Voodoo Extreme

ARGH!! ARGH I say.

On the other hand, while I am disapointed, since I was SO cranked, so very worked up at the thought of playing Tribes 2 in just a month or so........I have to admit that I'd much rather see them delay the game a little bit to make sure it's done right. And Dynamix seems to be the sorts of guys that tend to get things right.. I mean, just look at Tribes 1. Virtual online perfection. I just desperately praying to whatever gods gaze down upon forlorn gamers that they don't keep delaying it. I have faith in the dev team, they can do no wrong. And if they do, I will curse their little, hatefull souls unto eternity.

Hmmm. Anyone else find it a little odd there's no mention of the delay on the actual Tribes 2 site?

*CLANG*

AH! The anvil of forgetfullness just hit me. Forgot to post a few things.

A) Interview with the afore mentioned "Dave G" from "Tribes 2" Sweet candy. Delayed candy , but still sweet.

B) I finally recieved my brand new Roundtuit (tm) in the mail, so here's that New rant I've posted about being teased by Game Publishers. (AKA. Satan)

C) Hehe. Check THIS out. ZDnet was apparently getting suggestions a few years ago on what Apple could do to save themselves from a well deserved eternity in hell. Did Apple follow them? HELL NO! Instead they were saved by fruity colors... er, pardon me! I meant, FLAVORS! Sad really when you think about it. Not saved by features, inovation or anything good at all... Just by color.... Yeach.

My appologies to everyone who got kicked from the FRAGtopia Just 4 Fun Tribes server yesterday. Apparently, a video driver gremlin on the server (Grrrrrrrrrrrr) prevented it from rebooting properly. So I had to drag my ass down to the site last night and physically beat it into submission. Now it works. :) Njoy!

That's about it for today.

And remember............ We care!

Huh. Apparently I'm date impaired and having a long, long week. Yesterday was actually TUESDAY, not MON as I posted just below. Damn. Well, I'm far too lazy to change the graphic now, so confusion will ensue. Whahahhaha!

Hey! speaking of evil doers and Satanic powers of confusion (SPOC for short), Check out Sinfest. It's not gaming, but damn it, it's really funny. And it does kinda feel like a gaming cartoon. I feel like THIS when I end up playing against a pile of newbie on Tribes. :) And when God calls Satan a "Punk-Ass Bitch" you just know this guys been on a Quake III server somewhere. They even have the meaning of life and man's existance. Hehe. Customer on left, Kingpin with his new P900 on right. Take a look. You may find it offensive, but then again... well... um.... something.

Tribes 2 has been delayed? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN WHY?!?! WHYYYYY!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?

In other evil news, I'm working on a rant about being teased mercilessly by gaming companies........ It'll be up in a few days, when I get a roundtuit.

Here's a quick SCREENSHOT of what my desktop looks like now. Very buff, no slow down that I've noticed. Window Blinds good! :)

HAH! Gamers Against Morons. Get YOUR bumper sticker now!

Interesting. Apparently if you have Windoze9x+a large hard drive+ATA100+Really fast machine you may be at risk of losing data on shutdown. Thanks to Dopper for THIS link. It's quite interesting that the Evil Empire says "It's not our OS causing the issue.... but here's a patch to our OS that fixes it." WTF is up with that?

Sigh and sigh again. We still seem to be getting completely shitty pings to the US.. On the other hand, the FRAGtopia Tribes server is experiancing nearly full player loads for the first time in a long time. It's one of the only servers us Canuks actually ping well to! And when you play like I do (Ex. Sniping.. Camping etc) you need that low ping goodness to keep your game on.

I started playing with a cool little utility called "Window Blinds" that allows you to skin your Windows 9x much the same way you skin Winamp. But this is WAY cooler. You can even make your PC look like a Mac! (We'll hunt you down and shove hot coals up your nose if you do mind you... But go ahead.....) It's pretty trippy. Check IT out. Really spices up that old Windows interface that's starting to get boring after all these years.

Thanks to Praetorian for forwarding me THIS link. These Lethal Doses guys really appeal to me, and this cartoon is just another reason to love them. I feel Soup's pain, and live with his grief burried deep within my soul.

Thanks to Mr. E Mahn for the great title bar subject. :) Pretty much says it all!

Damn it. How time flies. No news updates make Homer go something something................

Anyhows! Thanks to everyone who attended this month's FRAGtopia Lite LAN party. As usual, I was too busy helping people get set up, and then killing them dead, to take the photos. (Du'oh!) Fun was had by all, around 15 people showed. The usual suspects attended (Dopper, Red Leader, Kingpin, etc etc.) As well as some new people: Dragon, Protocal-X, Herc, Special and a few others. Dozer dropped by to visit, as did the Mikemeister. Had a really good time guys, thanks for coming.

Congrats to Herc on his new found Quake III skillz. :)

Rune is right btw: If you have a GeFORCE and playing UT, get that hack going on! Wow! While UT already looks amazing, it's simply stunning with the high-res textures.

Oh NO! Just when you thought it was safe to start picking up hookers again, THESE come along. Prostitution will never be the same! This GUY has some great pages. Check out the Star Wars LIQUOR store as well! Ahh the humor you accidentally find while surfing the Interweb. :)

Oh my god.... Some guy hacked support for S3TC compression under Windows OpenGL into Unreal Tournament! He supposedly did this from looking at the open source files for the Loki version for Linux... I've just tried this with UT under Windows2K with a PIII 550, 192 meg Ram and a GeForce DDR. I see a few flashing/missing textures but the high-rez textures are breath taking... Finally, a use for all of those sweet, sweet high-rez textures on the second CD. It's like night and day and visually it's a whole new game. Oh and it runs twice as fast under OpenGL with S3TC enabled. I'm averaging 80 fps in UT in 1024x768 now. The only real downside is that you have to revert to the patch version 402 because that was the only version of the code that this guy had. Also you have to have a card that supports S3TC in OpenGL. Currently the only cards that I know of that can do this (other than S3 cards) are the Nvidia GeForce cards but other new cards like the ATI Radeon may or may not have support for it. S3 owns the rights for S3TC compression under OpenGL so they usually charge quite a hefty fee for other companies to license it for use with their cards under OpenGL. Fortunately for Nvidia they have a cross-licensing agreement with S3 so they've had support for it since their Detonator 5 drivers came out (back in April). Apparently people on the Planet Unreal forum have gotten access to the version 428 code and they've contacted this guy.

Cool eh? Check it out and follow the instructions here.

Oh and if you'd like to download the 402 patch to try this we'll post it locally for you. Click here. Also these pics (taken on an S3 board) show the difference that compressed textures can make in UT. Download 'em here. Very impressive...

Update:

Planet Unreal reports that Daniel Vogel, a programmer for Loki Games (the Linux developers for UT) has released another OpenGL Renderer for Windows that supports S3TC texture compression. I've confirmed that this version works with the latest version of UT (the other one could only be used with version 402 of UT). Check it out HERE. The installation procedure is the same as for the other OpenGL Renderer.

My good buddy Hormone just send me THIS. A small guide on how to buy a computer. I like the way these guys write, reminds me of myself when I was younger. Heh. :) Thanks for the link bud.

Speaking of LAN parties, don't forget we'll be having our monthly FRAGtopia Light this Sunday 9am to 9pm. Game Genius has declared that he has been "practicing."

He's so fucking dead. :)) Cyah Sunday Faran.

Allrighty, it's time to steal a link from Tycho over at Penny-Arcade. Champu over at Counter-Crap is funny as hell. Check out HIS animations from.. Well, duh.. Counter Strike!

Praetorian has turned me onto Lethal Doses by Someguyor Another. This guy's wit is as dry as a thousand year old dead sea wine. Man. :) And it's funny, cause it's TRUE. Oh man. And I think they just won the MAC insult contest as well.

Hah. Gnomes. :)

LAN Parties. :) (The guy on the far right is Wienerboy Dave, Rune's on the left, Marauder's in the middle, that's Kingpin in the back. :))

And even a SENSITIVE side for the kiddies. :)

As you may guess I find these guys highly amusing. Read them now or die.

Heh. Red Leader (as you recall, Dopper and I crushed his soul (tm) Friday of last week) was wondering why he was getting emails with all the same "Hah! 23fps?" subject on them. Told him to go read the news. All I hear from across the room is a muffled "FUCK! I HATE YOU!" Heh. :) Just made my day, too damned funny.

Oh speaking of which! Mac has finally one upped our friends at Microsoft for sheer shitheadedness! They're inviting the public to try out the new MacOSX (Which from everything I hear totally sucks ass.. but then again.. it IS for a Mac after all.) Follow THIS link to BUY THE BETA!!!!!!!! That's right folks! For $29.95 US, you too can have the HONOR (Perhaps the N should be replaced with a R?) of BETA TESTING FOR APPLE. Yes. And the Mac users, like the nice little sheep they are are (are are?) most likely streaming to the web site, grunting and sweating to get their hot little hands on BETA SOFTWARE for a PRICE. I'm sorry. I'm beta testing, I'll be naked in an Iranian prision bar before I pay for the software. ARGH! Mac people make me so, so very angry. &*(60986y823ro8sd6f78d6sf897odsf...... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.................. And they're so damned smug about it too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGHARGHARHGARHG!

HAH! Skeezix just sent me THIS photo. I'd hate to meet this badass mofo on a UT server! And finally, here's proof of something I've been telling people for ages. The damned flak cannon shells DO have smileys on them. Feeling a little flaky? Apple just released their latest addon for UT. Check it OUT! Thanks for the cool links Skeez!

More news a little later. :) (Oh and the date banner as well.)

Hmmmmmmmmm... Kind of a boring day today. I can't really think of anyone to make fun of or to pick on.... Man. That's rough. :)) Well, off to play some Tribes I guess.

I have a question for you all. I'm starting a thread in the forums. What do your parents think of gaming? I know mine really don't like computer gaming and consider it to be just short of actually going out and cutting Aunt Edna's thoat with a Roto-rooter. How do you folks feel when they see you running around in Quake III railing the crap outta other guys, or mine disking biatches in Tribes?? Catch Flack?

:) Told you it was slow today.

So slow in fact I finally got around to posting all the news Pappy-R posted on Planet Quake regarding FRAGtopia 2000. It's in the News Archives section. :) Njoy.

News from August at last got moved to the News Archives as well. Didn't realise how much we've written over the last month. God we're geeks. :)

I'll likely be hanging out on the FRAGtopia Just 4 Fun server for the day today, playing some Tribes. What the hell, it's just 4 fun. :)) I've had car problems, and don't really wanna go anywhere. The Mrs. is at her parent's place.. SO it's gaming time!

SO! Think you're a mad overclocking mofo? Think you can reach nearly 1200 mhz with your Celeron 2 566mhz? Check out this NUTCASE's little experiment into O'Cing! Starting to sound like the new Copperons might be worth a look. Thanks to GI Jim for the cool link. :)

Yesterday was a very good day. Gather round my children and listen to Red Leader's secret shame.

There's something seriously wrong in his Celery 450 system. He's getting around 23 FPS at 800x600 in Half Life. Let us all say a prayer for Red. We're with you bro.

Naturally Dopper and I decided to do a FPS test on my machine just after it was done on Red's, just for comparison, and not at all for the reason of crushing his bitter little soul beneath our heels like a discarded beer can lying in the back alleys of Gamingville.

175 fps@1280x960. WOOFUCKINGHOO!! WOOT!!!!

While Red Leader was smashing his head against the nearby handy brick wall, we did the same to Dopper's machine and got 145 fps@1024x768. WOOT! WOOT!

Suck it down Red. :) EMAIL him your condolances.

HELP!

We need talented folks to do news, reviews, comments and rants! It doesn't pay anything, and it's lots and lots of extra work for your poor overburdened self. (Oh. it may also crush your will to live, and possibly cause mental instability.)

On the other hand it's lots of fun, and a number of other wierd people will stop by here every day to see what you're babbeling about today. (Interest, or just plain pitty... We're still not sure which it is.) Up for it? Email Marauder about for all the gruesome details.

......I'll iMac envy you, you sonofabitch. :) iMac envy indeed. That's like saying Stalin had capitalist envy. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..... Rune appears to have a problem dealing the sheer power my Thunderbird 800 has unleashed on an unsuspecting world and so, in poorly concealed reaction to his feelings of inferiority has attacked both my case and my manhood. I'm deeply hurt, and so will now outframe rate his ass in every game known to mankind. Take that, biatch! :)

And speaking of framerates!!! Well.... Actually this has nothing to do with framerates, but I just like that word. I'll just throw it around alot to make the site (and myself!) sound like we're important, and know what the hell we're talking about. Hey! It's worked for other people. :)) (ATi for example!)

Anyhows: The transparent case is pretty much complete. Just needs some finishing touches which may never occur. Pretty freaky being able to see everything inside your case. :)) I was very careful not to scuff up the case door too much, so it's completely clear and looks wicked. I'll be posting some pics and stuff in a day or so, when I get around to doing it.

More rumors circulating to the effect that we may never see Halo on the PC, due to our fiends..er.. Friends over at Microsoft wanting it for an Xbox exclusive release. Personally as I mentioned the day Bungie was devoured by the Evil Empire, I wouldn't be suprised... Even if it doesn't really seem like a console type game to me... And how the hell would you control it with a stupid little gamepad anyhows? Ahhh well.. We'll just have to wait and see. Of course if one just read their site you'll see this:

"Halo for the Mac (and PC!) [7/19]

We've moved to Redmond, and our web and gaming servers are back online. Hot on the heels of this good news comes a second announcement: early this morning Steve Jobs and Alexander Seropian announced plans to bring Halo to the Mac! We'll have more details on this announcement after the conclusion of the MacWorld Expo. For now, rejoice, and if you're going to be in New York this Friday be sure to stop by Freewill's FanFest, which we'll be attending. See ya there!"

:) Guess no one else ever goes to Bungie's site either.

Miss the Tribes 2 Beta? Ready to kill yourself in despair? I know I was untill Dr. Dopper forwarded me THIS. Gamespy is giving away the last few spots on the Beta team. I've already studied it and ruled out a frontal assault to take the beta spots by force, so don't even ask. You'll just have to go grovel like I did. Thanks Dop. :)

Best submission so far for the Mac insult contest is still Rune with this one:

Q: Why did the Mac cross the road?

A: The PC user threw it there.

Heh. :) The rest of the submissions just contained the words "Mac" and various other four letter words strung together. While they were very amusing, they lacked completely in imagination and so were not accepted. I guess we keep ME locked up for the moment.

Speaking of which, ME got released yesterday. Yay. I've not been so excited since I watched Para paint win the "Paint drying speed on an outside wall during the winter" olympics. Woohoo. Actually, I have to scan the ME poster. It's pretty retarded. I am however happy they choose "ME" as the name. I mean, think of the jokes. You could call the upgrade version "Mini-ME" just for laughs. :))

Oy. Long day, I'm off to work. Peace out, and uh... other hip sounding things like that. (Note to self, look up "peace out" later.)

Holy crap.... take a look at this! Is it just me or does Red Faction get the ol' juices flowing? This game looks like a cross between Unreal Tournament and Descent: Freespace but with a military theme. It seems like an RPG at first glance but I've been assured that it is indeed a first-person shooter. Here's the best part: deformable terrain. This means we can Blow Shit Up Real Good! (tm)... Just imagine a Counter-Strike type mod where everything really does blow up when you plant the bomb. Check out screenshots of this little baby here because you know that you want this game!

Marauder's new transparent case is looking pretty sweet so far. Wow! Now you'll actually be able to see all that dust swirling around inside his case. Maybe Marauder does indeed have iMac envy. :-)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh.. New posts on the Tribal War forums from the Dev team about the vehicles for Tribes 2. Looking very, very shiny....... /me drools.

Sorry I've not been posting alot of gaming news lately. I've been working on that project with Kingpin, going crazy at work trying to get everything done. ARGH!!!

I've been talking with a few other guys from Canada. Quebec to be exact. (Heya TFC.. I think it was TFC. :) Apparently they're pings to the USA have been complete crap for the last few weeks as well. I know Toronto to us has been. It's just not fair! Do you have any idea how many Base servers there are in Canada? As near as I can tell, ours damn it, and that's about it. 250+ pings to everywhere else. GRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. Being a campy, snipey little bastard sucks HPB. :)

<=====- Added a servers listing the the side bar. Any time we have a server up and running, it'll be listed here. All of us Canuks should ping well to it. US guys.. Ehhhh. Not so well. :)

Got another Clan for the hosted sites area. HiFi! (Highly Inteligent Fighting Idiots) Check em out, their page is pretty damned good, and funny as hell. I especially liked Red Leader's pic of himself. :) (It's funny, cause it's true.)

Well I was at least right about one thing. Yesterday just sucked ass. To top off the entire day, the bloody web server did something odd last night and is now down. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!! I could just scream.

I did get a little more work done on the plexi case, which is starting to actually look half decent. Hardly a production model, but you know what? We're working with the wrong tools and alot of guess work anyhows, so who cares. :) Just getting the drive bays mounted and glued down. Next, roughing it all out. I'll likely get more done tonight. Just need to get the Dremel from Kingpin.

I think it's time to start killing spammers. (By this I mean Email, not mortar spammers... The mortar guys you can already kill) I'm getting a little sick of getting 5-10 emails a days with "This message is never sent unsolicited. To be added to our list of things you don't and never have given a damn about, you must have emailed us about your sick Albanian goat herder problem at some time in the past."

Bullshit.

I'm seriously begining to think that anyone who sends out annoying ICQ or Email mass messages should be executed at dawn by being forced to sit around and stare at iMacs untill they go insane and tear their own, still beating hearts out of their chests. (Or go out and buy a Volkswagen Beetle. One or the other.)

I got one the other day that I just LOOOOOVED. "To be removed from our list you must fax us long distance in California."

Time to die, bitches.

Marauder out.

Heh. I had an average of 10 people sucking up bandwidth yesterday all day watching me work on the new case Kingpin and I came up with. Have you people no lives? :) Always nice to know someone reads the news tho! Thanks for the interest guys, we appreciate it!

For those of you who missed the show, I've posted a PICTURE of the case in progress.... It's getting there. Hopefully we'll be into final assembly by the weekend. Naturally, to make my job harder I went and sheared off one of the screws on the power supply. Normally I wouldn't really care, but that's a NFG PS I've got in there. So now I have to drill the damned screw out to finish the rear plate. Damned computers. :)

I have found a few drawbacks to working on Plexi. It looks wicked.. BUT!

A) Scratches/chips really easily

B) VERY expensive & Time consuming to work with

C) Messy. Little flakes of this crap get everywhere.

D) If my good friend Dman gets frustrated with this machine, and decides to take a hammer to it. Ouch. The thing'll shatter in a far too satisfying manner.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.......... Maybe some rubber padding on the exterior.......

Well, it's 7:15 and I'm going to work on a few things. The day is already dragging and I've only been awake for a few minutes. Going to be one of those decades. Oh, and my pings have gone to hell over the last few weeks for some reason...... Pretty hard to snipe @ 250+ ping.. Which seems my average to any US server these days. Stupid cable. Stupid Internet. Stupid world. :) AHhh welll.

As my good bud Red Leader puts it "Peace out"

Well it looks like Epic Games has been busy beefing up the UT engine! Today they revealed that they're working on new tech for UT such as a new large scale terrain engine, skeletal animation and a higher polygon count for their models, as well as improved level-of-detail techniques. The higher polygon counts and the terrain engine really look amazing! Apparently Epic is now making heavy use of hardware T&L in their newest versions of the Unreal engine.

New screenshots and a movie of the new additions have been released on both Daily Radar (!) as well as Voodooextreme. Bluesnews has all of the screenshots in a large unaltered format (hello new wallpaper!) right here. The servers with the movie are being worked over harder than Marauder with a new Amiga machine so we've posted a mirror of it here.

I haven't seen anything quite as funny as the Game Developer Trading Cards over at Something Awful in a long time. As expected the John Carmack card is incredibly powerful. :-)

Allrighty lads and lasses. The Zappy cometh, as promised. Check it out, and know that I am truly mad.. MAD I TELL YOU!!!!!!!!!!! MMMMMMMMWWWWAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!

Pic1 Pic2 Pic3 Pic4 Zappy: The Movie (Too big right now @ 327 megs. :) Will post Real Player movie later tonight.

Zappy's specs: Celeron 533, 64 meg RAM, 3.2 gig hard drive, PC100 ("shit") motherboard w. Intel i810 sound & video, Dlink 538 10/100 NIC, 250 watt ATX power supply, 52x LG CD-ROM, Panasonic 1.44 Floppy, 2000 round ZAP paintball box. Whole lotta woopass. This bad boy clocks just over 1000 3D marks @ 640x480, 800 in 1024x768. Sweet, eh? :)) Watch out world! Marauder's on the loose with too much spare time.

Hah! GQman was browsing the book bin in the store today and he came across THIS. I can't believe that someone would actually put something like this out. :) I almost died laughing. This is almost as good as the Moron's guide to Morons, or maybe the Complete Fucking Idiot's Guide to Macs. (I thought that one was rather redundant, but you know, thats just me!)

Speaking of Mac's, I've found new reason to love the guys over at Hard OCP. Kyle's found a good use for a Mac Cube. Follow him my children. He has seen the way.

Got any good Max jokes? I've got 2 copies of Windows ME to give away, and I've decided they go out to the guys who can come up with the best Mac comedy. Email me. This may be the world's easiest contest. I mean, just LOOK a Mac and something nasty comes to mind.

I was blessed the other day by Dman when he sent me over a copy of the VIP2 graphics/sound demo. This thing almost blew my mind. I'd say it's easily the best demo I've seen in the last year or so. Be warned! This thing will not run right on a Voodoo card. (Heh. Suckers. :) Grab it. It's worth the download. I've watched it about 20x so far. :)

Sorry for the lack of news, I've been really busy (again) with life (TM) and work (R). More tomorrow.

Back to school day, and it's grim and grey outside. Lots of my younger friends sent me ICQ's bitching about today.... You know what guys? Wait a few years, when you don't get 8 weeks a year offa work. Then EVERYDAY is back to school day. Bitch then.

Anyhows, finally got my little F.A.K.K. 2 REVIEW done. Go buy it and play it. It's a damned good game, and I like Ritual. They have a good attitude, and unlike most of the gaming industry don't seem to take themselves too seriously. Which is good. I remember a time when making a game was not only about the allmighty dollar, but also about having fun with it, and doing a job right. Ritual and Dynamix appear to have the right attitude. :) Thanks guys.

Speaking of FAKK2. The movie should be coming out soon. Trixter has some cool clips for you to look at. And some sweet snapshots. :) Not sure if they're still publishing the comic book Heavy Metal, but if you like Adult/Dark cartoons, it's a crazy magazine. Check it out.

Julie Strand (The scantily clad female protaginist) also has her own provocative and expensive site. It's HERE.

Is anyone else getting sick of listening to John Romero bitch and complain? Every single interview or comment I've seen from the guy lately seems to end or start with "And I'm sick of the negative attitude in the gaming industry today.. yadda yadda yadda.. I'm so picked upon and sad.... etc etc." Humph. It seems to me that if a person were to... oh... I dunno. NOT RELEASE SHIT GAMES one might not get that negative attitude. But that's just me. I I mean, sure... Everyone picks on Daikatana and John... But it's because the game is the single biggest joke in the gaming industry ever.

It's finally happened. I don't feel like playing Tribes nearly as much as I used to. It's still a great game, and still has it's moments.. But after 2 years the novelty has finally started to wear out. Sigh. Getting old and jaded I guess.

Sigh. Off to work I go.

Ever wonder who does that sweet, sweet video game music? I think I've posted about Dr. Awesome (a.k.a. Bjorn Lynne, a.k.a. Divinorum) before. I've been listening to this guy's music since the Amiga days... 1988+. He just keeps getting better and better. As a matter of fact, he did the tunes for Worms. :) One of my fav games. Check out his pages, and download some great tracks.

http://www.lynnemusic.com/

http://www.divinorum.com/

Game Music Downloads! Woohoo!

Purchase his albums.

Well, after 6 hours of driving in one day, and a lot of fun we're back safely. I just barely survived the horors of exposure to direct sunlight and "fresh air" but hey. You gotta make some sacrifices! Actually the party was fun. Got to meet some nice new people. (Most of whom seem to play games using something called "pay-pur", "dye-ice" and "pencyles." I'll get back to you once I decipher exactly what language they were speaking in.) A good time had by all I think. Anyhows! On with the news... rants.. raves.. Marauder's babbeling. It's all the same in the end really, isn't it?

From Dalurker comes THIS rather amusing picture from Windrivers. A man we all pity, but at least he knows that the truth is out there... Somewhere.....

Microsoft is actually admiting that their OS has issues. Perhaps they are finally learning a little from the Linux community. Perhaps one day their heads will actually emerge from their asses into daylight... Ah yes... Someday. (Hehe. If you looked at the pic you'll know I'm lying. :)

Shiny has opened the Beta testing signups for Sacrifice! Sign up HERE NOW!!!!!!!!!

My total goal today is to sit on my ass and do nothing but play games with any of my online buddies I can round up. And so, as the wise old man once said "No more news will I post today, biatches." :)

Looks like Marauder and the Mrs. are going out to that big place with fresh air and that big glowing gas ball thingie up in the sky. This leaves yours truly to do the news. :)

Now that Iceman's joined the ranks of the righteous with his shiny new GeForce card I'm sure that he'll be happy to hear that Epic Games and Nvidia have announced a strategic partnership! Apparently Epic will jump on the bandwagon and all of their future games will be designed with full support for the features on Nvidia cards! Epic has also been busy working on a UT Game of the year edition that includes all of the bonus packs and the Tactical Ops, Rocket Arena and Chaos UT mods. Check out of the new pics of it here! (thanks to Voodooextreme!).

While you're consoling yourself over probably not making the Tribes 2 beta team you might want to have a look at the Developer Chat log that the guys over at Tribal War had with Dave Georgeson, the Senior Producer on Tribes 2. Definitely an interesting read as Dave answers questions involving everything from game physics to the best computer specs for running the final game.

Anybody try out that No One Lives Forever tech demo that was released a couple days ago? Pretty sweet stuff... It reminds me of an Austin Powers and James Bond kind of thing. The framerate's still a little jerky in some places but I guess that's to be expected in an early tech demo. The graphics are pretty sweet and they have some really nice textures... it really feels like you're in the '60s! Take my advice on this one....don't kill the monkey! If you don't have this big-ass 107 MB demo yet grab it here!

Well, I'm apparently off to a pool party in Belleville with my significant other. Naturally I'm perfectly happy to be sitting in front of my machines, expanding my horizons with my studies of Ballistics (Rogue Spear), Aerodynamix (Tribes), Music Appreciation (MP3s), and of course Art & Drama (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and violent DivX movies.) But no!

Apparently this isn't good enough. And so I am forced to venture into the place known only as..... <looks both ways> "Outdoors" I still think there are bears out there and she's trying to get me killed. But only time will tell. If I survive this experiance we'll be back tomorrow night sometime I think. Say a prayer for me.

In other news, Iceman has apparently commented that "The GeFORCE card is nice." This is sort of like the President of Syria commenting that perhaps the Americans and Israelis "Aren't such a bad bunch of guys." Coming next week: World peace and disarmament.

Looking for someone to vote for? Not sure who really DESEVES that hard earned vote? Vote DUKE! I like this guy's attitude. I want him for Prime Minister.

Got GeFORCE? Check THIS out! My god. One of the most impressive tech demos I've seen so far. A) Gotta watch Mr. Demo. B) Must have Mr. Game! Gah!

Something totally unrelated to the above mentioned trip to Belleville, since Marauder told me I can't respond, but on a totally different, but gaming-related topic, I think Marauder finds himself in a bit of a difficulty.

You see, about a couple months ago, I decided that I wanted to tinker around in, and kinda play, TRIBES. Yes, the wife was gettin' involved in the whole Tribes thing, and since then, I've found it most enjoyable. Call me brainwashed, but after hearing Marauder go, "Tribes, kill that biatch," and "I've got the flag, cover me!" in his sleep for a couple months, it kinda does something to you.

But back to the difficulty at hand.... In the car last night, Marauder revealed that he is finding it difficult to grasp that women (*GASP*) want to play games like TRIBES, Quake, TA and others. Granted, he thinks that it's a great idea, and high time for it, but there's that weeeeeeee problem with the name-calling that comes with playing the above-mentioned games. For example, Marauder revealed, in Tribes, if someone shoots your a$$ down, you go, "God-damn you, you biatch!". Perfectly acceptable for one guy to call another guy a biatch. But if you go to the female player and say the same thing, she gets offensive (and rightly so). Likewise, the word, slut, has similar implications.

The only solution that I offered to Marauder, since I am not only the wife, but also a female player in Tribes, is to NOT call the other players these offensive-to-the-other-sex names. Marauder nodded to me in the car, and then we changed topics.

So if you see him, ask him if he's solved his quandry. Better yet, why don't you email him?

Mrs.Marauder out.

HAHHAHAHAH! I'm back! Prepare to suck it down biatches! The Thunderbird is alive and well. Turned out that as I figured it was indeed the motherboard, not the damned power supply as ASUS claimed it was. Hah! So! I now get benchmarks like THIS! I'm so damned happy. The new mobo (ASUS A7V) seems more stable than the old setup, so I may even try running Windoze 2000 again. Maybe it won't blow my machine up this time.

Rune found his new Counter Strike gun. Check out THIS bad boy! Rune wasn't sure what it was, just that it was big. :) For those of you who care, it's a Lahti WWI/II 20mm Antitank rifle. A guy just up the road from here has one in his collection. :) Booyah gun control!

Off to play more games at stupid frame rates. :) Cyah!