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Evening Reading

by Steve Gibson, Sep 18, 2005 7:27pm PDT
Related Topics – Wack News

Doin a quick trip to Chicago for the weekend... it's great that the hookers up here do price matching. Who woulda guessed that?

- Another way for your car to get hacked - The new Bond? - The Emmy winners - Bloogle for the blogosphere! (barf)
Lastly, Wells Fargo enters gaming market?


Read all the News


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  • #1733
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    By: Hemtroll x
    Reply
    HELLO FROM THE FUTURE DON'T MIND ME I'M JUST TESTING MY POST LENGTH

    There are two things that I almost always find are portrayed poorly in videogames: big cities and forests. If a linear videogame takes you into a supposedly big city (Dragon Age, The Witcher, NWN etc etc) you're always shown a big map of the city and then immediately constricted to a tiny district to keep the action and story focused. Eventually, hopefully right before you start getting bored with that one section, you finish up all the side quests and complete the next step in the main storyline that moves you to the next tiny district. The illusion of freedom: you can go wherever you want in this huge city as long as you want to go to the Market District!

    If, on the other hand, a game is a sandbox game with a big open world it either has several tiny groups of houses surrounded by city walls that couldn't possibly be worth the cost just to protect such a tiny village (Elder Scrolls, Mount & Blade) or they have a big open world of static cookie cutter houses where the only interaction is killing citizens or blowing up selected sections of the map (GTA, Mercenaries, Just Cause) Forests are usually just very thin and bland even though they're supposed to give you the impression that you're in a massive bunch of trees.

    I got bored with Just Cause 2 very fast because the chaos and destruction they promised was limited to bright red explodey things and rickety guard towers. Mercenaries did a much better job with destruction but there the cities were small and spread out so even a hydrogen bomb would only level 4 buildings or some shit because that was the entire local community. Oblivion and Fallout have interesting cities with interactive people but they feel so small that I don't want to kill a single shopkeeper or person who might eventually give me a quest because then I'd be decimating 10% of the entire "city".

    Forests are a different story in that you don't necessarily have to make it interactive and filled with interesting events as long as you make it feel right. Usually it's the standard linear RPG where you're shuffling down narrow paths cleared of trees (except the ones that fell over to keep you from wandering off the path) and, if you're lucky, it'll actually feel like you have forest to the sides and not just tree models in a straight line instead of invisible walls. An example would be the forest in Dragon Age where you're really just walking on a thin path with bland greens and browns to both sides, it's so obvious where the path goes because all the trees are off to the sides.

    It can really break the immersion and sometimes I wish there was a singleplayer RPG that just focused on one big interactive city you could explore instead of spreading out these little villages or restricting you to HARBOR DISTRICT with a handy dandy quarantine to keep that pesky plague out/in. When you go to Illium or the Citadel in Mass Effect it at least looks like you're in a huge city but again you're moving around in tiny sections. Have there been any games that did big, interesting and somewhat interactive cities?

    OK THANKS
    Jan 11, 2011 6:12pm PST
  • #1717
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    By: Drewus x
    Reply
    Need Hardware Help!!

    Ok i have a problem here that is really pissing me off, so i'll talk you through the entire process just to make it easier.

    On the weekend i built up a new PC for my father in order to atleast allow him to play some upcoming simulations he is interested in.

    So I managed to score an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, an Athlon 2800 and two sticks of 512 PC3200 memory, all being pre-used for no longer than 6 months. My dad was willing to pay for a new 6600 GT, so all was well in the video department.

    Anyway, i install the CPU and it fitted on fine, however the heatsink is definately a little askew as i can slightly see the edges of the foam pads on the CPU surround. But of course it can only fit on according to how it clips onto the socket, so there is no way for me to correct this slight misalignment.

    So i now have the CPU on the motherboard, i install both DIMM's in dual channel mode, put the mobo into the case (Antec Sonata with a 400W PSU) and then add in the video card. After that i connected up all of the cables and fired her up.
    I set the multiplier in the BIOS to 10.5 and the FSB to 200mhz, therefore making the CPU run at 2100 and making the memory run at the appropriate rating. I also have the memory timings set to Optimal, as i really have no clue when it comes to these settings.

    I then install windows onto the main drive, install SP1 (not 2), install the newest nforce drivers, install DirectX 9.0c, install the newest nvidia drivers for the video card.

    Once this is all done everything seems to be running fine, no probs at all. I then copied my dad's old documents and settings over so that he can retain his emails from Outlook Express on his old PC. This of course brings along a pile of unwanted shortcuts which no longer have targets, i therefore delete them and once doing so realise that copying the docs and settings over may have fucked with the registry but i continue anyway.

    I then set up the internet connection and decide to test half life 2 to see how she runs. It's installed, i'm playing it, and no more than 10 minutes into the game the computer locks up.
    I reboot and try again and get the same deal, lockup about 15 minutes into it.
    I then install another game (GT Legends Demo) and give it a whirl. 10 minutes in it locks up.
    I then installed GTR and give it a go. Lockup after about 20 minutes.

    So i spend the next few hours uninstalling nvidia drivers (yes i used driver cleaner) and installing older ones, uninstalling nforce drivers and using old ones, switching DIMMS around (they worked flawlessly in another PC so i scratched those off the list), switching video cards. And still the thing locks up.

    I started to think it could be temperature related, however the video card seemed to be running at around 40C (104F), and the only way i could look at the CPU temp was in the bios which also reported around 40C.

    So guys, i'm completely stumped, and i even reinstalled windows and tested it out with a game directly after i'd installed the necessary drivers in order to see if it still locked up, and it did. I'm wondering if the fact that the heatsink isn't 100% over the cusion pads has anything to do with it, but from what i can see it is definately making flush contact with the chip.

    So if you guys have ANY ideas then please let me know. Keep in mind that this only ever happens in games, and graphically intensive ones at that. I'm really hoping that the hardware isn't shitted, as i really cannot be bothered going through that ordeal.

    Thanks in advance for any help.
    Sep 19, 2005 6:17am PDT

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 5 replies.

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