Daily Filter: Planetside 2, Deadlight
Weekend PC digital deals: strategy-o-rama
38 Studios, Harry Potter Kinect - Shacknews Daily: May 25, 2012
Minecraft for Xbox 360 dev working on 'Adventure' update
Demon's Souls servers extended again
First Post!
by Maarten Goldstein, Oct 28, 2005 5:30am PDTSeeing how I finished Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. and Call of Duty 2 doesn't come out until next week here, I spent this week playing..DOS games. Full games that I still had, shareware and freeware from around the net, whatever I could find that I remembered playing in the past. So I played Jill of the Jungle, Micro Machines, Hexen, Dune 2, Legend of Kyrandia 2, Flasback and a few others. And you know what, a lot of games are still a ton of fun. Ahh, youth sentiment. Looks like the secret is out on Google! Also on FileShack
- Diplomacy demo - try out the new turn-based game from Paradox Interactive.
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So me and a buddy have started up a new internet venture:
http://www.drunkdialers.com
The idea is to post drunk dial'd voicemails and make witty commentary on it...
Shack pointers?
(Yes, I know the blog format is a little restricting, we're just posting something to get the ball rolling, hopefully if this thing grows enough, we can put some full time effort into it.)
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I came home today to this:
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE1.jpg
A heavey fucking box. $13 in shipping. Ignoring immediately why the elephant is mooing, I went straight ot opening
it. In doing so I notice that when I move the box, it sounds like an hourglass with shifting sand. I took a pair
of scissors to the seemingly delicately placed ducttape and went right at opening it. Lifting the lid, I notice...
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE2.jpg
The thing is filled to the motherfucking top with shit. I went through it item by item. I won't bore you by
listing off "MS Intellimouse 4.1 drivers" and "MSI Heatsink" so I'll deliver pictures, and let you see for
yourself. But first, this item gave me a se7en-ish moment when I saw it in the box
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE3.jpg
to find out that it was, instead of a severed foot, this:
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE4.jpg
Most curiously, there were 3 items of note. First, the sound came from loose popcorn seeds, small bead balls or
something, and my 3rd item of note. Two, an awesome fucking beer bottle:
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE6.jpg
And three, random fucking pills:
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE7.jpg
And everything. Thanks to nandu666, you were funny as hell!:
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/WE5.jpg
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newest Holiday sodas for the year. With all the flavors they're putting out in a year it's a bit of an ordeal to taste them all at once, but it's worth it to have all the tastes all together. A suggested flavor is marked with a \/, and a flavor marked with an X. I purchased them all at Target, but they're available other places like World Market.
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/all of them.jpg
Thanksgiving Pack
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/holidaypack.jpg
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/holiday bottles.jpg
Turkey & Gravy - X - Same as years before. A bland taste with the turkey covered by the gravy taste
Dinner Roll - \/ - Similar to Apple Cider from the Halloween pack, but with a strong yeast flavor. It's drinkable to
the point of having the whole bottle, unlike others in the pack.
Pea Soda - X - Smelled just like Brussels sprouts from last year, which was hands down the worst soda of 2005. I
was afraid it would taste just as bad, but it was slightly better. It tasted a bit like rotting vegetables, with a
sweet taste that quickly turned bland.
Sweet Potato - X - Smelled sweet, which was promising, and tasted just like sweet potatoes. Yet, as I drank the
rest of the bottle, it quickly became unbearable, and a chore to down it all.
AntAcid - X - In taste, smell, and texture, it was the carbonated twin of Pepto Bismal. A chalky peppermint with a
cleansing aftertaste. If you often drink pepto bismal with your meals, it's highly suggested.
Desert Pack
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/desert.jpg
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/desert bottles.jpg
Apple Pie - \/ - The taste was similar to more of a candy apple, or a fake apple if possible, but it quickly became
better after each drink, unlike most other holiday sodas.
Banana Cream - X - I'm not a big fan of bananas to begin with (even though I love the phallic symbol they can
represent) so the soda didn't wow me over. It did taste just like bananas, though.
Blueberry - \/ - Tasted just like a liquid fruity pebbles. Best cereal ever.
Key Lime - \/ - The sprite of pies tasted just like its soda equivalent.
Christmas Sodas
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/christmas.jpg
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/christmas bottles.jpg
Egg Nog - \/ - A huge recommendation for this one. I love eggnog and this soda equivalent is the best soda Jones has
put out this holiday season.
Sugar Plum - \/ - A barely enjoyable drink, but far from Sweet Potato level. It resembles a carbonated wine, rather
than what I can guess a sugar plum would taste like.
Candy Cane - X - if you've had cough syrup, you've had this soda. It's the same peppermint flavor cold-medications
put in their products to make it taste good.
Overall:
Definitely pick up the Desert Pack and a pack of the egg nog sodas if that's your thing. You can weigh the pros and
cons of the Thanksgiving Pack; the cost of the pack versus how much you like your body. At $10 for the desert pack
and holiday pack, the sodas end up at about $2 a piece, but the 4 packs come out much cheaper at about $3.50. It's not cheap stuff, but the unique taste is worth it.
http://thekidd.shackspace.com/asdf/lineup.jpg
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UC2 is faster, more violent, more frenetic. It has bots (very good ones too) hilarious voice chat, good maps, powerups, cool weapons etc. I'm just now hitting my groove with respect to balancing the melee with the guns. When I first played the game, i thought it wasn't balanced, I assumed that heavy characters were too strong, but after playing a lot more vs a good Lauren user, I'd say its pretty even. Maybe light characters need a slight boost, but to me, its pretty even. I dunno, I like this game and it makes me sad that I didn't play it more.
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Quake 4 vs F.E.A.R - i like quake 4, why do I want fear to suck? They're probably both good.
WoW vs anything else - I've been on both sides of this one. I despise the design of MMORPGS to keep you grinding and playing, and the recurring costs. On the other hand, its actually really quite fun, and really quite a technical feat.
PSP vs DS - I have both, I play both, they both have good games. This one I think I'm pretty neutral on.
PC vs Console - this one is fun, if I'm talking to console people, I talk up the PC as being the best, if I'm posting around here, I usually defend consoles. I have a hard time resisting the trolls. The final result is, PCs may advance, and have better graphics and controls, but games like God of War, Ninja Gaiden, Burnout, Shadow of the Colossus, etc... are not going to come out on the PC. In the end its about the games, there is no "right" platform. If you refuse to acknowledge others, you're going to miss out.
So what was the point of this post? I have no idea. Waste of space vs not posting?
This is a place to secede that maybe you (like me) argue against things that you haven't really given much of a thought or chance, just because you like the alternative.
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http://squeegy.net/
Cause I was bored last night, I started a little project. Done in Rails with about 4 hours in it. I have some plans to make it spiffy.
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We hope everyone is enjoying Lost Coast. We've received a number of e-mails with positive feedback about the commentary system included in Lost Coast, so it's a safe bet that we'll look for ways to include commentary in future products.
We're now going to be looking toward releasing some new Counter-Strike: Source content we've been working on. The next two maps coming will be updated versions of de_nuke and de_militia, along with a number of new player models for both sides. We'll give everyone a sneak peek at Nuke and some of the new models next week.
Mmmm. new maps.
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http://www.outrager.org/files/1/CIMG0612.JPG
http://www.outrager.org/files/1/CIMG0613.JPG
http://www.outrager.org/files/1/CIMG0614.JPG
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I dont know shit about macs
Im trying to share out a folder on a 2003 server so that a mac user can access it. Does the mac user have to be logged into the domain inorder to access this folder ? I would think they should be able to access the network share then be prompted for a username/password and domain. Yes this person has a domain user account. Apple talk is installed on the server containing the file to be shared out. The person using the mac is running OS X 10.3.
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http://imdb.com/name/nm0176981/
To me, Eddie Izzard and Pablo Francisco were much better than him.
However, I realize I could be wrong.. as I only saw/heard the Comedy Central one. "THIS IS MY SHOW!!! I"M ON THE DRUM!!!"
So... what's his good stuff?
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Because id is just too damn small to make a competitive game any longer.
It used to be that 10 people in an office could produce a game that would rock the world. But we've gotten to a place where that's not just possible anymore.
Carmack is a genius. No doubt about that. He's got small, quality team of artists, modelers, etc. working with him to refine his engines into a product. But id doesn't have a team of story writers, focus groups, market research, etc. that can actually craft a coherent and motivating story.
If you look at the teams that made F.E.A.R and Half-Life2, they're huge in comparison. Additionally, these teams were not afraid to farm out some work to other companies in areas where they don't excel.
Id's "go it alone" strategy just doesn't work in an era of cinematic games, where story is now the driving factor. While Carmack's engines may be technically superior, existing engines are "good enough" to tell a good story. While everyone likes a good shoot 'em up, it's no longer sufficient to just send wave after wave of dumbass aliens/zombies at the protagonist and call it a game. Certainly not when your competition is telling compelling stories where you actually care for the characters and the outcome.
People are demanding more of games now and small, isolated teams just can't compete, no matter how many geniuses they have on the payroll.
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Free SLI motherboard with purchase of 7800.
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I just got done playing a few rounds of multiplayer... I must say, this is the first game to make me feel like I am walking around in a battle-torn town.
The detail is amazing, and everything blends together perfectly. The fog and smoke effects all fit in perfectly too, which make it feel like a believable world.
Plus the gameplay is awesome (sure, its just updated versions of the original modes, but it's still great).
Needs more shackbattle !!!
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Elderly women expecting Meals on Wheels shocked to find Nuts on Putz instead
I thought for one second it said something else!
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Last time I checked, pressing the jump button while mounted on a kodo makes it jump while a dwarven ram gets on its hind legs. I presume the night elf cats jump, but what about the other mounts?
(Very important question. Jump = bloody useful)
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This is my clan's website.. and we also have our own ranked server now. What do you all think of it?
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Crash-course in Tactics
Since we'll be playing some Attack & Defend in tomorrow's Shackbattle, I felt it'd be a good idea to go ahead and do a crash-course in relevant tactics that would be wise to employ in a player-vs-player environment (which is obviously quite a bit different than player-vs-ai).
PvP is going to be significantly different than what we've done in the past for OFP Shackbattles. There are a lot of things to take into consideration now that were never a big concern with the AI. I'm going to go ahead and list some of the important things, along with tips and such, hopefully this will help our first-ever adversarial Shackbattle be a hit.
For the record, adambugger will be leading the Finnish forces (the attackers) for our first match (which will kick off after we have enough players in the server, and after we've warmed up on coop). He's a great CO, so if you go Finnish, expect to be well-led. On the OpFor (Russians), it'll be myself and whoever else volunteers to help lead. We need three additional team leaders (you'll have four others in your squad), so if you'd like to volunteer, please do so now. I've been working on defensive plans for the last day or so, so if you plan to go Russian expect to kick some Finnish ass. :D
Anyhow, the CRASH COURSE in TACTICS is IN REPLY..]/
Kitty!
http://dslyecxi.com/images/cats/wedge_is_not_amused.JPG
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Abstract Gaming Concept Menz
So I'm in this professor's office hours, his name is Mike D'Zmura. He set some time aside to show me a video game he had programmed back in 99 or 2000'ish to test the ability of humans to navigate through four dimensional environments. The concept was really fucking bizarre to me, but apparently it's relatively trivial in mathematics. I thought maybe some shackers would be interested in the creation.
Apparently, it almost became a game. A company by the name of God Games (?) was going to take them up on the project (he and a small team of people who worked in his department, but had varied skills like level design and graphic design and such), but they were bought out by Take 2 Interactive or something of the sort.
What intrigued me most was it was one of the first ideas for a video game that actually seemed novel. Something that actually brought something new to the table besides slow-mo and bigger explosions. Sadly, abstract gaming concepts rarely surface into something palatable for the graphically demanding and attention span lacking masses, given the amount of funding required to really start up a project like that.
The guy is a genius programmer, started in like 7th grade on one of those... hole punch input dealies. Yeah. Check it out:
Link to the site:
http://www.vrlab.uci.edu/dzmura/4D/hyper/download.htm
Link to the manual:
http://www.cvr.uci.edu/dzmura/4D/hyper/hyperman.pdf
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I'm assuming that I'll need to run a consumer unit with the firewall/management features, like my current LinkSys only faster, between my network and my DSL modem, and then plug the gigabit box into that, and my wired ethernet connections into the gigabit unit. Right? I don't do this every day. Bullet list of req's in reply.
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What plain text editor for Windows would you recommend?
Another developer recommended UltraEdit-32 today and said it was the shizzle. I tried it and it looks nice, pretty fast startup and a mind-numbing number of nfeatures... this makes me wonder if there's any other Notepad replacements I may not have tried. Any recommendations?
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http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42136
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http://xboxyde.com/leech_1865_en.html
Wow... it's just amazing.
More viral marketing? Or just something else?
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The Bad:
Say your a C++ programmer (Like I was, C++ was huge in 2001) and you work for a company for 5 years make good money and then your job gets sent to India or they have layoffs or whatever. (All companies have layoffs at SOME point) Now your looking for a job with your 5 years C++ experience but guess what, now everyone uses Java and C# and ASP and you don't know jack. This is just an example that didn't happen to me, but it happend to LOTS of my friends. Working for most companies you work on a product and are not exposed to new technology and therefor become dated in a matter or 2-3 years and good luck getting a job. Any don't say well they should of kept up and learned java or .NET on their own. Trying working 9 hours a day, driving 30+ minute commute and having ANY sort of personal life and still find the time to program on the nights weekends and learn java. Its not gonna happen. Plus you can "Know" java but if its not on your resume with work experience your not going to be called in for an interview.
The salaries of software engineers are not going up, and India and china produce hundreds of thousands of CS grads each year. As you saw with the auto industry 20 years ago, people in other countries can make cars cheaper because of labor. Why can't software be developed cheaper in China/India? They are still growing and maturing the industry and its only going to get better. The internet has made it so that anyone in the world can write software from any location. The colleges and programs are only going to get better and pump out better educated grad in those countries.
Now I'm married and will be starting a family in the next 3-5 years. I need a job that can support my wife and soon to be children into my 50's. I just don't see a software job lasting that long. I worked with 2 co-workers who were in their late 40's. They both got laid off in 2002 and didn't find a job for 3 years and when they did it was 75% of the what they made before. The problem with being in technology is that it changes so fast, a good job today could not exist tomorrow. I don't want to be in my 40's and all of a sudden not be able to support my family.
That's why I'm getting out now when I'm young and can go back to school or do something else. Don't go into software unless you absolutely LOVE writing code and can be happy sitting in front of a monitor 9 hours a day. I'm just trying to warn you so maybe someone won't make the same mistake I did.
Experience in the software industry doesn't mean jack past 5-7 years. Technology changes so fast that no one cares if you programmed in Fortran for 10 year, its worthless experience. Someone with 5-7 years experience in Java is just as appealing as someone who has 5-7 years experience in java and 10 years in some old not used language... and the former can be paid way less.
I still think programming jobs will exist in the US but not like they are today. You'll still have small biz and niche type stuff but any large corporations are going to have large foreign based shops where they do all their development (Its already happening). So then your going to have all these experienced developers with fewer and fewer jobs and therefor it drives down the salaries.
So go into software if you LOVE to program and it makes you happy. If you got paid peanuts and still loved your job because you love to program then by all means go into CS you'll love it. DON'T go into CS thinking its a career you can have for the rest of your life and support a family and be financially well to do.
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sb live card
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(7800 GT, btw)
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