AFK... back in a couple of weeks.

Will think of you all when I'm on the Ko Tao beach.

Truly.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-gi...

Ouch, my head just exploded.

This short film was made for a budget of $30 by a guy from Uruguay. He’s since been offered a contract to direct a $300m Hollywood blockbuster… if he can do this with $30 I can see why.

OK, so it’s a just big special effects sequence. Pretty cool though.

If anyone gets a subscription to APC Magazine, check the January 2010 issue on page 67. You will see a familiar (and might I say very attractive) face, and a full page article featuring me and my computer :)

I’ve won this month’s APC Master Builder competition (http://apcmag.com/masterbuilder.htm) for putting together my media center PC. I believe I win a Intel Core i5 CPU for being published, and something further for winning this round. Apparently I now get given a “special challenge” and if picked as a finalist travel to Sydney to build a PC on the spot… taking it home if I win (OK, not bloody likely, but anyhow).

Quote from the published article:

“Not one of the judges would change a thing on Luke’s system, all regarding it as a perfect example how to migrate the latest hardware into the living room.”

... I’m off to a bar with my copy of the mag to pick up chicks! This is the kind of thing that attracts chicks right?

In case you didn’t see it, a group of Victorian ET:QW people are meeting up tomorrow (Saturday) at the Hawthorn Hotel.

Any IPXer’s likely to be seen there?

http://www.gamearena.com.au/forums/quakewars/thread.php/5025126

Well, it equals this of course…

It will be an alternative rendering mode, setable in your config, in Smokin’ Guns 1.1 final release.

A beta of the 1.1 version of Smokin’ Guns is available:

http://www.smokin-guns.net/viewtopic.php?t=1935

The download is on the linked page.

To install this, you have to:

1. Copy (I said COPY) your Smokin’ Guns install to a new folder
2. Unzip the beta on top of your new copy. When prompted, allow it to overwrite files. This way you only need to dowload the 21MB of changes, rather than the whole lot.
3. Run the game and have fun

The catch: You can only connect to 1.1beta servers with the 1.1beta client. There’s one pub server running it… with a nice 400 ping for us all :)

Maybe Robag can get a second server running?

L.

Our darn-tootin’ western game favourite is undergoing major upgrades for version 1.1. There’s no release plan for this yet, and development is slow as they don’t seem to have many people on board (if any of you folks can make good Q3 models and textures, there’s a project in need of some love!).

In the meantime, I’ve cheated just a little bit by using a development binary on top of the old 1.0 game. This binary includes the new ioQuake3 engine as used by Padman. It improves a few things in your client: better sound being the number one for me, as I can now hear where my enemies are more accurately. The other most noticeable difference is some nicer lighting.

More after the break….

Big thanks to Kazashi who gifted me with a steam copy of Half-Life 2 to play with.

Because I don’t “do” Windows, I had to find a way to run this, and Wine (http://winehq.org) provided the solution. Steam runs fine, and HL2 runs in 1680×1050 with all “High” graphics settings (without HDR lighting) at high framerates.

This also meant I could try out Insurgency, which I did with a little less success. The game runs fine, but the framerates are very choppy even with low low settings. I’ll be getting a minimal config and trying that at some stage. I’ve heard that beta 3 is a bit of a performance hog on Windows, wheras beta 2 wasn’t, so possibly future updates will make this more playable. Any comments from more experienced Insurgents?

L4D is also purported to run just fine on Wine these days, so I might break down and buy a copy (when I finish HL2).

L.

Linux support is arriving along with next week’s update.

So now everyone can get pwnd in the most pointless shooter ever… I guess I’ll still end up giving it a go to see if it’s got anything Padman hasn’t.

Oh yeah, it’s coming for Mac as well, if anyone cares,