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DarCowAlways Blog

Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source

Yesterday was an eventful day; I finally bought Counter-Strike: Source, and I found out it was the free weekend for Day of Defeat: Source! So these last two days has been chalk full of CSS and DoDS.

The best thing about this, you may ask? Now I'll have all the DoD: S and CS: S weapons, models, and maps in Garry's Mod! Even though the 'weekend' (17 hours counting sleep) of DoD: S is now over for me, the entire game remains on my hard-drive, so all the files are still there!

Counter-Strike: Source also shows a lot of promise, though I wish there was less "Protect the hostages! Defuse the bomb!" and more "Kill everyone else!!" :P

Although the free weekend is done, I'm almost certainly going to buy Day of Defeat: Source, since it's only $5 until the 10th.

U.S. ARMY AND COUNTER-TERRORISTS FTW!!!

Crysis Troubles, Shaders Comparison and my Keyboard is Done For

Very smooth- a big relief from the first times I played it on the 8600GT. Crysis can now be set on all Very High with the exception of Shaders, which is on High (Very high looks ugly and halves the frame rate) - for about 25FPS of very high goodness.

Assassin's Creed gives me similar results. 35-50FPS on all maximum settings with MSAA on Max. I used to get about 13FPS... not good.

So today I finished the final level in Assassin's Creed again (really good fight... kind of out of place though), and yesterday I finished Crysis again-- which brings me to something.

In the flying level, near the end of Crysis. Me playing ONE TINY PART of that was SERIOUSLY like a BLOOPER REEL. I could spend an hour on this particular part and still get no progress except some bags under my eyes. I could take a video if you like....

What happens is, you're flying this weird helicopter-like future plane. You're following these other future planes through a thickly forested valley with high walls all around you. You come across a bridge and-- immediately lose altitude and crash into the forest below. Squeezing the GO UP FREAKIN NOW button, your ship stays on the ground as if you're a butterfly trying to push it up, and continues rolling around so dramatically you'd think it was in a mine field. Hilarity insues as you crash and roll around forever until you reload your save, but it quickly turns to frustration. Reloading your save, you raise your altitude as high as you go to counter the sudden drop. You get as high as you can go and press the forward button. NOTHING. Dipping downward to gain speed, you move slowly in your intended diireeeeeeeeection until...........................................................................................................; whhhhhhhhhhhhhhoaa. My kerrrrrrboaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard is seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeriooooooooooouslyyyyyyyyyyyyyy acting up.

Well anyways (I wonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn't eedit out these weird things, just to show you how... bad my keyboard can be. Yay it's over!) you dip down at the high altitude, and wouldn't you know it, you fall STRAIGHT FREAKIN DOWN. I reloaded that save so many times. No progress. Then I finally went over to the left in apparently jjjjjust the riggggggggggggggght way and managed to clear the ground... a WIN for pilots everywhere.

Well, I've just about had it with this keyboard. Don't expect me to type anything else with it because... *SMASH*

And on that note...

UPDATE: With all my talk of how nice High looks and how ugly Very High looks in Crysis, I decided I'd show you myself. New to my images is a Crysis album with the four different shader settings on display. Low has absolutely no special lighting effects and is an eyestrain, medium has some neat lighting on objects and a much better less bland look, high has an incredible amount of detailed lighting and shadow effects - apparent with the sunrise setting, and very high goes goth and applies shadow to everything, stripping the game of many of the happy and realistic lighting effects in favor of blacking out the screen! But don't ask me-- go see for yourself!

Super Mario Marathon! LIVE!

Right now the Mario Marathon is going on--- three guys are playing through SMB, SMB2, SMB3, SMW, SM64, SM Sunshine, and SM Galaxy in this weekend only. The show is live right now.

And the coolest thing-- they read my comment LIVE :D

There are about 3,000 viewers right now and 400 people in chat.

Watch it now at http://mariomarathon.com/

UPDATE: YAY! I got my name mentioned AGAIN! (Right at the end of SMB3)

UPDATE 2: I've now had my name mentioned FIVE TIMES in a video with 3,000 viewers live. How awesome is that? :D

Better Late than Never - I got MGS 2!

So I've never played any of the Metal Gear/Solid games before. I got five dollars yesterday :P so I looked at GameStop's used games and found--guess what--Metal Gear Solid 2 there for--guess what-- five dollars. How perfect is that? I've really been meaning to play MGS, since it's apparantly such a 'must-play' series.

So after about three hours of cutscenes ;) I got to play. It looks pretty promising, but I'm playing some other games for now.

I'm not Sure what to Make of This

Ok, so, I'm having loads of fun with my new PNY 8800GT 512MB, but there's something that's come to my attention...

This is the PNY XLR8 8800GT 512MB that we've all come to know and love...

And this is what I got from the exact same box, except with the same black/blue streaks cover on the card.

Seriously now... it's obvious it's an 8800GT 512MB, in came in the same case as the above card, has the same cover... my computer recognizes it as an 8800GT... The source photo is of a 256MB version, but I also found an 512MB version with the same body that was pretty rare.

Sooo... it looks to me like it's just another frame...?!

My 8800GT Arrived AND I finished Assassin's Creed!

I FINALLY GOT MY 8800GT AND BOY DOES IT ROCK!

I used to get about 11FPS in the bureau, now I get 40-50!!

And another thing- I had no idea how HUGE it is. It's like a surf board. Really. I've seen the 8800GTX, and this really isn't much smaller! Well, it is superior to the GTS, so I guess the size makes sense for it. I heard it was long, but really...

My other bit of news is that I FINALLY finished Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 and, ahem, finished the game (no spoilers here). My friend did too, not an hour afterwards. SO afterward, my friend and I had a ton of fun killing everything in sight-- especially beggars, brutes, ladies with jars, and those with certain disabilities causing them to give Altair endless frustration.

Then of course there's old fashioned killing every being you see in your area and then having fun secret shanking the guards that come after you. You really can't beat the classics :P

Summer Vacation/My Summer Project -- Mario World Hack!

Today was the last day of school, and it was a half-day!

Now my friends and I are going to create a Super Mario World ROM hack over Summer, probably called

Super LSD World

Because of our usernames-- Lone Soldier and DarCowAlways, L-S-D. The people who download it when it's done can decide for themselves whether or not we ourselves were on drugs while creating this, but I rather think it's turning out well so far.

The only actual work we've done on it is changing the dialog box's text and one original level I created yesterday.

If you want to try the level (I'll call it Build 600 -- the level is done, the secret exits do nothing special) for yourself, below is the level (.mwl) file for use in Lunar Magic.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Requires Lunar Magic to view, and a Super Mario World ROM (download torrent file page) to play.

Oh, and don't do drugs, kids.