S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Frightens Me

Yes it does indeed... but it's not the idea of the creepy oppressive atmosphere that I so loved in the first three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.
"Wait, three? aren't you talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 here?"
Yes I am, I know it makes no real sense, just bare with me here.

No... what really scares me about this is that they announce that this new game will be programmed over a new in-house programmed multi-platform engine.
"Why's that so bad? Doesn't that just mean they'll be able to make the game work on game consoles too, and not just the PC?"
Exactly, and that's precisely what they're going to do. No company wastes money and time developing a game engine that works for multiple platforms without using it, that would just be silly.

"So... isn't this a good thing?"
No... no it isn't.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games have so far been some of the most complex and detailed first person shooter games I've even heard of. And all the really great community made modifications for the games have made them even more complex and more detailed.
This is one of the reasons these games have gained such a solid fan-base on the PC platform. No console controller could ever hope to let you wield the same amount of commands over a game as a keyboard and mouse.

Another thing that has made the first 3 games in the series so popular is the aforementioned atmosphere. You really feel like you are in a world of strange scientific anomalies and alien dangers. The immersion factor of these games is through the roof.
If they change the control scheme to cater to the twelve button+two joystick console controllers, they will have to change the entire feel of the game as well and it will become yet another "invincible-regenerating-gun-toting-space-marine-shooter" a la Gears of War, Killzone and Halo... and we really don't need more of those.

I really don't have anything against consoles or the games they can play, but I don't want every successful PC game series to be consolified.
They did it to Modern Warfare 2, they're doing it to Crysis and now they'll probably do it to my favorite ever PC game series S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Sofrigginhyperrightnow!

Gah! I just drank two liters of Red Bull in as many hours, which apparently puts me in some sort of quantum state between hyper awake and some sort of buzzy dreamy state... everyone I talk to seems to be talking in slow motion, so to keep myself from getting bored I'll just start updating my blog... seems like this might be a good time for it.
I got back from a weekend foray in Helsinor where I lived with my grandparents while I was supposed to teach an older lady how to use her brand new computer. Regrettably, she had fallen and hit her head the day before the first lessons was to be, so she had a nasty headache that prevented her from concentrating all weekend and thus cancelled the lessons... at least she did come by and hand me a check for my troubles getting back and forth between there and my home town in public transportation in the blizzards we've been having lately.
I just recently got my hands on X3: Terran Conflict and am trying to figure out all the little changes that have been implemented since X3: Reunion. So far the biggest changes I've found are the new factories, ships and the apparent lack of a bulletin board system on the stations.
After a bit of looking around I found out that there is no more bulletin boards because they've been replaced by the ability to do jobs for people via the comms system in stead. This does make me a little sad since I really liked the bulletin boards for all the fluff info about the universe that was in it. I thorougly enjoyed writing references from newsarticles on bulletin boards into my character's journal entries back when I played X3: Reunion.
Anyways... I think I'm coming back down from my taurine and caffeine high, since everything stopped being in slow motion a bit ago.

Friis out...

It's D'n'DEEEEEEE! Fightin' with the legend o' yore!

Hi all!
I've finally started up a D&D 3.5 campaign where I game master for my best friend, his little brother his little sister and her boyfriend. They're all completely new to pen and paper roleplaying games, aside from that one time I tried to get a New World of Darkness game going with mostly the same group (which sadly failed, mostly because of me being new to GM'ing).
I started them off with a simple and short dungeon crawl module called "A Dark and Stormy Knight", just to get them a little used to throwing dice, and knowing wich dice to throw in which situations.
The game went pretty well and all players had a good time killing and looting hobgoblins, rats and a spider... even if that last one almost killed off the party's Bard.
The Bard is played by my best friend's sister while my friend himself plays a Sorcerer. His little brother is playing a Dwarven Barbarian while the sister's boyfriend plays a Human Fighter.
What was funny about this session was that by far the most hit point damage and kills came from the Sorcerer's Hawk familiar and the Barbarian's guard dog animal companion.
I'm also teaching each player a prayer to their character's god for good fortune, during which they will kneel before the gaming group's mascot (a Big Daddy figurine), place their dice in front of the mascot and repeat their individual prayers after me. Besides that bit of crazyness we also already have our first in-joke about falling down a shaft when rolling a one every once in a while... fear the shaft... fear the shaft indeed.

Next up I'll have them play through a strongly modified version of the module called "The Ettin's Riddle". I want the next couple of games to be more skill oriented than combat oriented, so I'll let the players have their characters set up shop with the loot they got in the first adventure in the small town that the adventure will happen in. I'll have a festival going on in the town soon after the characters arrive to help flesh out the world and it's backstory and give the party's Bard and Sorcerer a chance to shine and help the party's reputation in the town they'll be using as their home base. I'll be working on the general feel of the town as well as some interesting NPC's, to help the players grow attached to the town. And by the end of the festival, when the players have found a place to stay, I'll spring the main adventure on them.

I almost can't wait for the next game session.
Friis out...

Windows 7 Shenanigans

Hi everyone, I’ve been considering starting a blog like this one for quite a while. And now I find myself with a bit of time that I otherwise don’t know what to do with.

Yesterday I decided to take the plunge and try out the Windows 7 Release Candidate. It’s not that I was in any way unhappy with Vista, in fact I’m one of the apparently few who think it works pretty well. I still remember the amount of problems I had with Windows XP, and the problems I’ve had with Vista so far are paling in comparison. Nevertheless, I wanted to see if I could get a smoother framerate out of my CoD4 with Windows 7.

So I started by going to Microsoft’s website to try and download the Release Candidate. My endeavors were adequately rewarded with the needed activation key, but that seemed to be where my luck ran out. After acquiring the Activation Key I attempted to download the actual .iso file I was supposed to burn to a DVD, but to no avail. Apparently the servers that were supposed to handle these files just couldn’t handle the preassure, so I laid course towards the great Google hunting fields and started looking for another place to download the files from.

The first 12-15 links I found led my directly back to Microsoft’s website that I had already established wouldn’t get me anywhere. but finally after what seemed like hours of searching I found a place where I could download Windows 7 Build 7100… and so I did.

The file was soon fully on my hard drive and I reached out for my last DVD-R cassette and opened it… it was empty. “Alright, no matter… I’ll just do the upgrade instead of the clean install”, I thought to myself. And so I did.

Smooth sailing all the way. everything seemed to work perfectly and after deleting all of the Windows.old files left on the machine from my Vista install I saw more free space on my System partition than I’d ever seen before. And after cleaning up my Data partition I was ready to install some games and test some framerates.

At least I thought I was… after installing Fallout three and arranging all the DLC files in the right places, I clicked “PLAY” and was promptly told that my graphics card wasn’t up to scratch as it apparently couldn’t do 3d animation. So I went straight to where I thought I’d be able to check up on my GeForce 8600M GT. Alas, it had apparently dissolved into nothingness while I was installing Windows 7. It just wasn’t there, not even in the Device Manager… I downloaded and ran CPU-z just to be absolutely sure it wasn’t just hiding somewhere, but no… it was gone.

So once again I took a trip to the great google hunting fields for a clue about what was going on and found some advice about updating the drivers (of course). So I downloaded the appropriate drivers for my graphics card from the Nvidia website and proceeded to install them. Except they kept telling me that I didn’t have the right hardware for the drivers.

After a bunch of failed attempts I decided to just shit on it all and go back to Vista. So now I’m sitting here at 4:30 am installing all my programs again. To make matters worse, I had tried to synch my iPod in Windows 7 with no apparent result, but when I got back to Vista it became apparent that my iPod which doubled as my back-up drive for music and podcasts had been royally f****d up. So while I’m installing all my programs again I’m working on rebuilding a respectable music library on a second computer which I can transfer to my own when it’s done.

Long story short, I’m definitely going to wait for the final version of Windows 7 to come out before I try that again.