Wednesday, 10. June 2009, 21:52:17
hardware, old games, games
Let's go back to 1989. Let's go there now
Do you remember times of 8 bit computers or PC AT? Or rather - do you remember Prince of Persia game for DOS (or any other platform it was realeased for)? I do
20 years has passed by now (I can hardly believe it
) - today's PCs are thousand times faster (according to
Moore's Law) and we can really see it. Especially if we try to play latest Prince of Persia title with steady 60 fps in full HD resolution...
Actually I tried 1920x1200 - so slightly higher than poor 1080p
... But how does it compare then to old
mode 13h? Well... Some say you cannot divide by zero
It didn't of course take 20 years to come with another version of the game. During those years
the Prince of Persia series became video game franchise with 7 main titles and 6 spinoffs (usually for portable consoles). And still - they think they can make some more money out of it as besides launching new game titles they are planning
a movie Anyway - it got me - I spent good part of night playing latest title
The game is really good even though it falls under
casual games 
- as it is easy and you cannot die (in hard times you will be saved by irritating lady - and will be able to repeat last scene - and then - to keep repeating it forever
) And I will say - that's actually good
- as I want to have some fun while playing - not frustration... Especially that the latter can be found easily elsewhere
On the visual side I have to say - game looks really good even if at very beginning I had some doubts about graphics - as game creators didn't go for photorealism but instead they applied
cell shading to amazing Prince's world. On the sound part - enough to say music is a masterpiece...
One thing more - if you would like to try it - it really does matter how you play it... I do recommend trying
Xbox 360 Controller for Windows - I never thought it will - but it does make a difference... Really... I cannot imagine now playing without it...
Here are some more screens:
Monday, 8. June 2009, 21:52:54
riddle
I have come into that riddle recently. Usually I don't play with things like that but it said to be unsolvable by 98% of Earth's population. Yes, cheap trick
(and cheap tricks happen to work sometimes
)
Here it is:
Let us assume that there are five houses of different colors next to each other on the same road. In each house lives a man of a different nationality. Every man has his favorite drink, his favorite brand of cigarettes, and keeps pets of a particular kind.
We know also:
1. The Englishman lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is just to the left of the white one.
5. The owner of the green house drinks coffee.
6. The Pall Mall smoker keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The Blend smoker has a neighbor who keeps cats.
11. The man who smokes Blue Masters drinks bier.
12. The man who keeps horses lives next to the Dunhill smoker.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The Blend smoker has a neighbor who drinks water.
The question to be answered is: Who keeps fish?
Took me just a few minutes to solve using a sheet of paper to draw some tables. No, not Excel/Calc – computer aided riddle solving is just unfair
Unless it is
Zest.
That one is even more cool...
Sunday, 7. June 2009, 20:02:04
me
I only wanted to put my hands on Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3... I registered with Live/G4W but before my account was up and running I was asked for my birthdate. I'm too tired... I typed 2009 as my birth year...
Hooray... I cannot login anymore... I need my parents to confirm I can... And even so... Being a child is no go for FO3...
I am awaiting G4W help support response and I have to do sth else today ;-)
Saturday, 6. June 2009, 12:55:45
games
After long long resistance I have tried F.E.A.R. 2 demo. I never bought any Alma game before as demo of first version didn't really impress me - that's why I wanted to check again before doing any purchases. The outcome is - graphics is nice, special effects are really cool but you can't really say the game is s.c.a.r.y.
And to say even more the plot for me (at least as it started) was somewhat blurry and not interesting
I'm not buying... I'll wait for any of (read all
) CoD6, Bioshock2, DeusEx3 instead...
Even with above already said there was one thing there I really liked
See below...
There are not so many mech simulators nowadays
Though there are some games like 2nd Fear, Lost Planet (below) or even Chronicles of Riddick: AoDA that allow you to taste what is it to fight in the mecha-armor.
Pity all these games are closer to Heavy Gear series than to MechWarrior or EarthSiege...
It seems to me the time of real Mechs has passed away... Too bad...
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 21:12:32
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 19:07:00
Some time ago I have bought
Logitech Formula Force Ex. I didn't want to go for G25 or even Momo since I don't play racing games too much. My wife said I'm crazy but eventually we ended with whole family trying to drive with it
I had big plans for playing G.R.I.D. using this toy and have mounted wheel to my desk.
Setting everything up went smoothly apart maybe spending a little too much time on configuring wheel and GRID together - but after a while it worked nicely. Fun from driving is really great...
Unfortunately there is one thing documentation didn't mention. When I tried to play GRID in the night - after first crash my wife TOLD me to stop
The noise from force feedback is simply a little too disturbing for other family members - even if they sleep in another room...
Anyway - GRID is so good game with so good and fast graphics you may still want to play it - even if you play with keyboard while looking at nice, stylish unplugged wheel next to you...
And honestly - still images don't really show how brilliant the game looks. To really find out you need to sit in front of your PC, turn on ultra settings and feel the motion blur while breathing smoke-y particles...
Below - me playing GRID with keyboard...
Monday, 1. June 2009, 21:21:00
old games
There are some days you start thinking a little about good old times even though - you can't revive them and in ten years we all most probably will be longing for now...
I had such a nostalgic day today...
I am not sure how many people today remember time of text games. I do remember playing them on 8bit computers
I have written some too
Anyway I don't want to write about those - it's just some time ago I found two gems I am returning to from time to time. They are 'more modern <tm>
' form of text games i.e. you don't need to type commands - you have UI for that, still - graphics is very limited (read: non-existent
).
If you'll ever get caught by nostalgia for old games I really do recommend trying those...
GameBiz - The Magical Years is the first title I wanted to tell you about.
In this game you're the head of game development studio. You hire best, you produce games for machines of your choice, ranging from old NES, Spectrum, C64 through Amiga till modern PCs and consoles - all flavoured with music from old hits.
A tycoon-like game. If you want to try it - I do recommend first version as under the link above you can download version 2 as well... which is imho too complicated...
Next one is game titled
General.
It's a RISK-like game with extra bits of economy and research added. You can easily spend endless hours playing it - both against computer and in local network. Just to warn you - artificial opponents are really good. Be prepared for being beaten
...several times in a row...
Sunday, 31. May 2009, 07:12:00
technologies, tests
It was just a matter of time for proper
PhysX drivers for nVidia cards to show after
NVidia bought Ageia.
PhysX (formerly Novodex SDK) running on GPU can bring us lots of advantages (read: more FPS, better effects) without having the need for specialized hardware.
It would be nothing special about that as currently it is possible for any physics simulation engine to use
CUDA or
OpenCL to make people feel power of modern GPUs, but NVidia by buying PhysX made it possible for
lots of games to be supported 'automagically'.
One of such games is Unreal Tournament III for which NVidia/Ageia released
special PhysX mod featuring 3 extra maps.
The first and most obvious thing when you enable HW PhysX in UT3 is that game's running faster. That's nothing as I cannot really tell the difference between 100 and 120 FPS
Especially if my LCD refreshes with 75 Hz
The real difference starts when you try one of three special maps: HeatRay_PhysX, Tornado_PhysX or Lighthouse_PhysX. Then you can see what PhysX acceleration is all about... Just to mention hundreds, or rather thousands of flying around particles, hail, destructible wooden elements, brick walls (not all though
) and really awesome tornado.
Below you can see some screenshots I took today:
Apart games - there are of course some PhysX demos available as well. Here you can see screenshots from fluid demo and PhysX screensaver - both available
here.
Saturday, 30. May 2009, 14:09:04
games, me
People often ask me how do I find time to play all those games. How? Well - I think the secret is in sleeping less
as I usually play late night when my family is sleeping.
From time to time I have longer gaps when I'm not playing (these can last even months) as I'm not an addict and I set my priorities correctly.
I do enjoy playing games and I do have lots of them. Here's part of my collection:
It's less than half of boxed games I own (I have also a lot of games purchased electronically). But no - I haven't finished all of them. Even though I'm very careful when selecting new titles there are still some I get tired with quickly... And night time is to precious to spend it on poor games
Saturday, 30. May 2009, 11:23:00
old games, web pages
GOG.com is open for several months already and since it has started first as closed beta, they have added lots of Good Old Games.
After buying there
Fallout 2 (yes it's my 4th copy of it by now
) and getting for free a very cool adventure game -
Beneath a Steel Sky I found they have released a game I was playing when I was a teenager on my mighty Pentium 100
Yes, It's
Megarace 2! (Actually it's both Megarace 1 and 2 but I really don't care about the first version
as it was a poor game if you compared it to the sequel).
The game is simple - It's all about the racing:
- You don't have the car?
- We'll give you the car!
And some money so you could buy some stuff like bombs, oil and rockets as no one said that rules are fair
Graphics for the time game was released (early 1994) was astonishing and it took other racing games a few years to beat it. The trick here was you were driving "in the movie" not in the real 3D world. That way scenery looked much more interesting and had plenty of detail in VGA mode!
To make it even more interesting whole story was organized as a TV show with crazy Lance Boyle and his ...uhm.. assistant
Just have a look:
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