This is one of those incredibly heart touching things. We don’t get those much in gaming, so its nice to see it once in a while.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/19/a-heart-wrenching-tale-about-animal-crossing/#c8778791
OMGWTFBBQ!?! I’m updating???
Yeah, I’ll be putting another update up in a week or so too. The first parts of a neat hack I’m doing just came in. Many of you know that I am an enormous geek and a huge flight sim nut. I love flight simulators and I have ever since I was a little kid. I have one really fond memory of my parents allowing me to play around on the computer Christmas Eve and I sat and just took off and landed at Meigs Airfield in whatever the default plane was for Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0. I probably played more hours of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe than any other game when I was a kid (even Doom) and my Father would probably attest to that. Like every flight sim geek, I’ve got to have good equipment. I’m still currently saving for a new set of pedals, but I’ve already got the Joystick and soon I’ll have the head tracker too.
Yes, I said head tracker, but no, its not a TrackIR. I honestly couldn’t pay the pricetag on a TrackIR and live with myself. Yes, it looks awesome, and it certainly must help out when you’re playing games such as IL2, but I can’t justify spending $200 on something thats so simply made. Instead, I’m making one myself with a Microsoft VX-1000 camera, a couple IR LEDs, resistors, an old floppy disk, a 9V battery and a baseball cap, and FreeTrack, the software that will power it all. Cool huh?
TrackIR is actually a very simple machine, made up of an Infrared Camera with an Infrared emitter and a special clip with reflective tape on your baseball cap. FreeTrack works essentially the same, except that the Infrared emitters are on your head; 1, 3, or 4 IR LEDs attached to a baseball cap or a headset. You have to have a little electronics know how to get it running, but with a few calculations I ordered my parts off of JDR’s website and I’ll be getting to work soon. The first step, and possibly the hardest, will be the camera. Most modern digital cameras come with some kind of an IR filter, either built in or through software. I chose the VX-1000 because its apparently one of the easier cameras to break into and remove the IR filter. I’ll be removing the IR filter and instead replacing it with an IR passthrough filter. Now this is where it gets cool; apparently floppy disks make damn good IR passthrough filters so now I’m not spending 90 bucks for a “real” IR passthrough filter just so I can cut a little 5mm x 5mm square. Once I do that, I’m going to use it to see if how well I can do IR stuff; it’d be cool if it worked something like a FLIR camera does however I’m doubting it. I’ll post the photos I take here.
The second part will be constructing my the point device. I’m going to use an old baseball cap (no Dad, not the Yankee’s one you gave me) and some velcro for a quick way to attach the LEDs to the cap. I need three spaced fairly well, so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll be taking pictures all the way through (no, not with the VX-1000, they wouldn’t come out well) to show a step by step of the process. After I’m done I’ll report back here and maybe show a Fraps video of how it works. See you guys in a few weeks.
In a recent blog posting I mentioned that I’ve been playing Call of Duty 4 in my free time. Having just recently beaten the game on single player, I’ve been playing a lot more multiplayer and its been incredibly fun, but the state of the community is extremely disturbing. Most of the people who play before the hour of 10:00 or 11:00 in the evening act incredibly immature, most likely because they are. I’ve seen more people say “lolfag” in the past few days of playing Call of Duty 4 online than I’ve seen “lolfag” in almost all of Cyanide & Happiness‘ comics. Its incredibly disturbing, and I understand where its coming from. There will always be adults acting very immature, most likely because of the phenomenon known as John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but as with Call of Duty 4, and almost any of the Halo games, most of the people acting like this are usually children. So I’m writing this as sort of an open letter to parents, to give them a few helpful tips on parenting a child who plays video games. I’m not a parent, yet, but I’ve been a gamer since I was 4 and my parents had an absolutely spectacular handle on my playing video games when I was younger. I hated it, but looking back now, I’m thankful for it, and I think in the long run your children would be to. These are also things that I’ve already decided that as a parent, I will most definitely do. (more…)
Right now is a huge time for PC gamers, as a ton of big name titles are coming out this year before Christmas. Hellgate London, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, Crysis, Empire Earth 3, and so many more are hitting the shelves both last week and this week, and more are to come before the end of the month. Of course, no modern game release would be complete without a demo coming out a few days before the game hits the shelves. The demo version is supposed to give gamers who are waiting a little taste, sort of like an appetizer, and attract new gamers as well. With the current state of many of the demo’s out there, why the hell are developers even bothering though? (more…)
A few weeks ago I decided to take the Opera Web Browser for another spin. I used to be a very avid Opera fan before I tried Mozilla Firefox, shortly after it became Firefox rather than Firebird. I remembered back to the days of deciding to switch to Firefox, mostly because Firefox was exceptionally faster, and remembering that I immediately installed several extensions to make it seem much more like Opera. These extensions included Tab Browser Extensions and Mouse Gestures, two of my favorite features of Opera. Plus, Tab Browser Extensions had even more fun features than Opera’s tabs did. Since I switched, I’ve been exceptionally pleased with almost every release of Firefox except for the 1.5 series, which were exceptionally buggy and slow. (more…)
Ok, so this is one of my dorkier traits showing, but I blame the fact that I’m still in school and flying being incredibly expensive right now. I’ve got bragging rights in the virtual world though, since I just managed to land at Potts Field in Flight Simulator X. Potts Field (0WN5) is, according to Microsoft, the smallest runway in the world. Yes, they sort of forgot about Newcastle Westpac Base (YXFV), but the Australian airfield is more or less a helicopter runway. I figured I’d geek off about some of the details of my flight.
I took off at Batten (KRAC) at 14:32 virtual time in my Maule Orion heading westbound. Potts Field was only a few miles away, so I knew I wouldn’t have too long. My initial intent was to use dead reckoning, but after a failed earlier attempt at locating the airfield that way, I chose to use my GPS to try and find Potts. Admittedly, it took me 4 passes before I realized that it was literally a square field that looked scarily like a farm field. Worse, the wind had picked up to about 10 knots. I did the best I could to get in a pattern with the wind, then I lined up, and touched down, with plenty of runway left.
I decided after touching down that I’d go and head back to Batten. Taking off was kind of scary as I nearly hit a tree, but I manged to clear it and headed back east to finally land in Batten. The wind was still nasty but I put her down in Batten and called it a night.
So yeah, I’m a geek, I accept it and embrace it. Check out the screenshots.
Many of us have heard by now about Halo developer Bungie and Microsoft’s divorce. Its been hot news since its started and there have been a lot of rumors going around about what happened. The most convincing of all of these rumors, that Bungie left because Microsoft doesn’t want them to produce other games than Halo, has gotten a bit more weight. Already we’re very aware that Bungie wants to create other games, and they’re still going to work on Halo a little, but why wouldn’t Microsoft want Bungie to only produce Halo games? I mean, its a cash cow, and just how dependant Microsoft’s gaming division is has gotten a bit more light. Ars Technica has a great article on how the Halo 3 launch has given Microsoft their first profit in several quarters.
Well now… looks like Microsoft needs to really work on their gaming division, Halo is, practically gone for them now. I mean, they produced Shadowrun, which was certainly a blockbuster; bawhahahhahaa, yeah, I crack me up too. Seriously Microsoft, we love DirectX, we withstand having to use Windows, your Xbox Development Kits are pretty sweet too… but get the hell out of the game design market. You’re absolutely shitty at it.
Last week, the first expansion for Company of Heroes was released, titled Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (CoHOF). I have had the liberty of playing the game for only a few games, and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed with how the game has turned out. Gameplay wise, the British seem to be a great addition to the allied side, while the Panzer Lehr seem to be a great addition to the Axis side, although from what I’ve witnessed they’re not as reliable as the British. The PzL faction seems like it could easily get overrun if you manage to disrupt their economy. My only major gameplay gripe is that the AI, while definitely doing better than it was, ends up spamming either Jeeps or the SdKfz 234 Armored Cars. I’ve only rarely seen anything bigger than that in the games I’ve recently played. The AI shouldn’t be an issue though, because with CoHOF came a patch for everyone that improves the multiplayer capabilities of the game.
School… Work… Life…
But I’ve found time for Medal of Honor Airborne. Finally 5 starred all the bronze. Note to self…. more kills means more stars. I was frigging flying through Market Garden because it was so frigging easy and not getting nearly enough kills to earn 5 stars. Fixed that problem…
Bigger update sometime in the near future.
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