Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~

Sorry, mate, I should have been more specific by mentioning that this is the Australian version of the game that has all of the graphic violence removed so as to make it past the censors. So you're seeing exactly what you'll get if you pick the game up at a retailer in your location, whereas the Americas and Europe have a much bloodier version.

So you're probably wondering how I got my hands on a copy of the game this early, right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SQIxi93Ylk

Next time this guy is making his rounds in your 'hood, tail him discreetly. When he leaves his truck to make a front-door delivery, secure a boom-box to the underside of his vehicle with a cassette that has about 10 minutes of silence, followed by the music that ice-cream trucks play. He'll be swarmed by children, and when they find out he has no ice-cream, they will lynch him.

I would most definitely be interested in seeing your scripts, please PM them to me if that's possible, or we can make other arrangements. In fact, I would really appreciate your help in learning how to control the camera; I think the fact that I spent a considerable amount of time customizing my controls has somehow screwed up my ability to move the camera properly, and I'd love to be able to use the camera to capture footage of some scripted events. And I appreciate your kind comments and the comments of others regarding the videos. They were fun to make, and I look forward to making more in the future.

Just the opposite for me, and I'm mirroring someone else thoughts here as well: the AI alone is too easy; having some real players (with a knowledge of tactics, no less) to go up against was great. Even though we outnumbered OPFOR in the "humans" department, I still felt like it was BLUFOR that was being hunted, and that added some real suspense and excitement to the game. Plus, you'd probably never see crazy-fun stuff like Durka jacking a bird if you only played against AI. We all have different tastes, and as I recall, the last TvT we had was fun, too. And good ol' regular TacDom has been a staple for who knows how long. I think that's one of the great things about our group: we have enough people to offer a variety of play variations, and I'm sure we'll be mixing it up again in the near future. Looking forward to the next session I can be present for!

Ok, not really, but I do live in Salt Lake City...which is very close to Park City...where Sundance is. As promised, I have put together a couple of videos that capture some of the fun from Jan 29th's TacDom. The footage was captured at 1080p, and the original footage is sharp, but it has lost something in the translation to YouTube. I'll eventually figure out the best format for uploading. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRDH93MisXs Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBiqZ5783DY

As far as my perspective regarding January 29th's TacDom is concerned, you will literally be able to see what I saw, thanks to the magic of Fraps. Tonight's fun has been compressed into twenty-minutes of video that will find its way onto YouTube sometime in the coming early morning hours. I'll make another post as soon as the footage is available for viewing (the videos are being rendered as I write this). The native footage was captured at 1080p, which YouTube now supports; hopefully their transcoding engine will do justice to our escapades.

I've been a fan of Remi for some time now. Below is one of my favorites, makes me laugh every time I watch it, especially the very last prank:

While I may not have any say in the matter, I would certainly be willing to act as the target for all of your pent-up aggression and insecurity. Anything to help your therapy!

So glad to hear that the card is working well for you. While my short experience with a 5870 didn't work out, one very positive thing I can say about it was that the temps ran extremely low with a little manipulation of the fan settings, and I'm a bit concerned that yours is running even that high. Just in case you're not already aware of this, you can manually control the fan settings in the CCC if you have it set for 'Advanced' options, and the settings are under the 'Overdrive' heading. For non-gaming, I had the fan at 26%, which kept the temp down at 29 C. When running a game (which didn't work too often), I bumped the fan speed to 50%, and the temp hovered around 39 C. Obviously the thermal conditions of the room and the case play a big part in this; I have a case with amazing airflow, so I would have been disappointed with anything less than the numbers above. Try increasing your fan speed; the trade-off is a bit more noise, but if there's no one complaining about it, why not?

You'll probably get more by selling off the child's organs one-at-a-time, as opposed to selling the entire child at once.

Wow! I wasn't aware that Arma2 modeled the spread of fire; I've never seen anything like this in-game before. Great pic!

I haven't used it, but I did some in-depth research, which included talking to a couple of members. By all accounts, it is a great service and a very detailed simulation, and I ultimately decided not to join because of the time that would be involved for participation. Our Sunday races (NFS Shift) are enough for me, along with a little Dirt 2 during the week. iRacing takes itself very seriously, which is not a bad thing at all, if that's what you're looking for. You have to qualify for races, then qualify for grid position, and during the races, rules are strictly enforced and penalties assessed (in a few rare cases, this could mean being banned from the service). So think of it as an MMO with cars, and be aware that, in addition to your subscription fees, you'll also have purchase additional vehicles and tracks that are used for various races. If you take online racing seriously and want to join a culture with like-minded individuals, iRacing would be a great investment.

Looks like this did the trick! My copy of Arma2 is from Steam, and there's no way to install the game by downloading it without it being updated to 1.04. However, when I first purchased the game, I archived the download, which was only version 1.02, so I reinstalled from the archive and that ran fine. After patching to 1.05, the game crashed after the first launch, but I rebooted my system and it seemed to run ok. I loaded up one of the Boot Camp scenarios, played around for a minute, changed video inputs to watch the football game for 15 minutes, changed back, and the game was still running. Thanks for the help, folks!

Hi folks, I was hoping to start playing Arma 2 again now that I have a new video card, but the game won't even let me select anything on the main menu before crashing. I've tried everything I can think of, including installing the game on a fresh OS install, and the only way I can keep the game from crashing is by NOT updating it to version 1.05. Of course, this means I can't play on our servers (and most other servers as well). Any suggestions?

As a ground-pounder, I missed most of what Driller is talking about, but I did capture this screenshot of him before he took flight.

My flux capacitor should arrive from NewEgg no later than Tue, Jan 26th, so we can all take advantage of this offer. Please be aware that my Delorean can only semi-comfortably seat four passengers, so we'll need to make multiple trips if more than four people are interested.

In the near future, it looks like I'll have a bit more time available for gaming, which is great, because I'm planning on purchasing AND making video reviews for many of the upcoming titles. In the next two months alone, there are several games I'm anticipating. It seemed appropriate to bump this thread to discuss what new releases we're looking forward to. Time permitting, I'll be purchasing and reviewing: * Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy (expansion) * Bioshock 2 * Aliens vs. Predator * Elemental: War of Magic (unfortunately, this might get pushed back a bit) * Battlefield: Bad Company 2 * Supreme Commander 2 * Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising (expansion) * Metro 2033 * Assassin's Creed 2 * Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter * Ghost Recon 4 * STALKER: Call of Pripyat While tentative, all of these games are scheduled to be released on or before March 31st. What will you be playing?

Personally, I've had nothing but problems with ATI cards, including a brand new 5870 which simply refuses to work in my system. I know the card is good, since I put it in the new computer I built for my mother, and although it's true I could have returned the card, I'm enjoying the irony of fact that my mom has a $400 GPU to run Bejeweled, which is the most graphically demanding game/app she runs (eventually, when I build another system that it will run on, I'll remove the card from my mom's PC and let it run with the onboard video, and she'll be none the wiser). Still, since I hope that most people don't experience these problems, I'd say the choice depends on screen real estate: if you run games at 1080p resolutions or greater, AND/OR if you're running multiple monitors, go with the 5870; by all accounts, it is a beast that actually justifies the $100 price difference. For a single monitor running at 1680x1050 or lower pixel counts, the 5950 would be perfectly adequate. As for myself, because of the aforementioned problems with ATI products, I had to downgrade to a GT 250, and I'll hold off on purchasing a high-end next-gen card until Nvidia finally releases their next line of GPUs.

Having been born and raised in Salt Lake City--home of the 2002 Winter Olympics (and the ensuing scandals associated therewith)--I would be remiss in my duties if I did not put my .02 in. Whether your daughter would find skiing or snowboarding easier is, in my opinion, all relative; for us older folks, skiing may seem easier because they're similar to the skates we used before there was such a thing as a snowboard, and if your daughter has had experience with skates/blades, it will carry over. Otherwise, she's likely to develop an affinity for whichever mode of transport you start her out with, and either way, she's likely to fall down a bit as she learns. As far as equipment is concerned, I recommend Rossignol. Yes, they are more expensive than many brands, but the premium you pay goes into their R&D that produces superior equipment. For beginners, I recommend equipment with a bit more flex in it; the degree of control that you give up is more than made up for by the additional comfort, and as you get more experienced and start doing more technical runs, you can upgrade to stiffer skis/boards for greater control.

Hey Batwing, The key bindings are under the 'Advanced' section, in the lower-left corner of the main window. You have to click on the little arrow to the right of the word 'Advanced' so that you can see the settings and change them.

Ditto! He is obviously aware of the intel required to run a proper operation. Make him a squad leader.

I forwarded the link to over half of my co-workers yesterday; they loved it! My message said, "Attention all team members: please use the following link to help keep your workstations clean."

Yep, you're good to go, because in the next 18 - 24 months, PC gaming will become obsolete and we'll all be playing on consoles, a Nintendo hand-held, or nothing at all. Cheers!

Well, I have my new Radeon 5870, but unfortunately not all is well. As I feared, ATI's drivers are never nearly as good as Nvidia's (and Nvidia has their share of problems, too.) To start with, any game that I try to run in DX10 doesn't use the full screen; instead, I get a 2-inch black border on each side and a 1-inch border on top and bottom. Running these games in DX9 fixes the problem, but I don't see the point in having a powerhouse card if I can't make use of it's features. Also, I'll have to reinstall all of my games that use PhysX; apparently, these games detect the presence of PhysX-compatible hardware during installations, and now that all of the Nvidia drivers have been wiped from the system, they no longer boot. I've tried everything I can think of; I've used Driver Sweeper to wipe all traces of Nvidia drivers from my system, and I've played around with the various Catalyst Control Center settings to try to resolve the issues with DX10 games. I've also stepped back to some older drivers to see if that solved the problem, but it hasn't. This is why I wanted to wait and see what Nvidia's next offering would be, but it's still a ways off and I needed a video card now. I'm just going to go ahead and do a clean install of EVERYTHING, which is not as big as a deal as it seems because I have my entire system backed up, games and all, so if the problems still persist I can go back to where I was and use my spare video card to run things until Nvidia's next-gen DX11 cards hit the market.