/dev/blog

It’s been a few years since I’ve played Team Fortress Classic, to this day very few people can say they have played the original 1.0 Half-Life mod which was released in April 1999. I did. I was also there for the big 1.5 update in June 2000, and I was there for the Steam port when teleporters were introduced in the game for the first time. For much of its early history, Team Fortress Classic was second only to Counter Strike as the most played and popular of online games. For a long time afterwards it consistently ranked between the top 5 or top 10. As of right now only 122 servers remain.

I am a veteran player of Team Fortress Classic. When I discovered the Fortress Forever project, it brought back some fond memories while at the same time reminding me of the mindless chaos that made Team Fortress Classic so enjoyable.

The Fortress Forever team is quite large (composed of abut 20+ developers), with members from the US, Canada, UK, France, Norway, and Finland. And wouldn’t you know, Valve announced the beta release of Team Fortress 2 to be on the same day. Coincidental? Or are they worried it may be shadowed by Fortress Forever?

Fortress Forever, seems to have two things going for them:

1. It’s more ’serous’ then Valve’s Team Fortress 2. Keeping in mind that both mods run on Valve’s Source engine, Fortress Forever is keeping closer to its roots whereas Team Fortress 2 has taken the ‘comical approach’.

2. It’s a free mod with an open community. Ever submit something to Valve? Most Steam reports go ignored. Unless if it effects everyone in the community, it will never happen. I believe having an open community can be one of the most important things when it comes to a project this size, and it doesn’t stop there. Think about Debian, GNUnet, and Wordpress. Drop into the IRC channel, meet with the community, chat with the core developers, resolve issues, and submit bugs.

Regardless, I’ll purchase Team Fortress 2 eventually. Hopefully Valve will bring the Black Box bundle back so I do not have to repay for content that I have already bought at full price.

The next thing on my list that I’m keep a close eye on? Sven Co-op 2.

My old mouse was a Logitech MX500, most likely one of the best mice I have ever used. Good for gaming and general desktop use, but after 4 years (~10 hours a day) I decided on getting a Razer mouse.

I received my new Razer Copperhead “Chaos Green” laser mouse in the mail today. It is *the* high precision gaming mouse I’ve been looking for. Up to 2000dpi (for comparison the Logitech MX500 was 800dpi, you can change the dots per inch on the Copperhead from 400, 800, 1600, to 2000 with the click of a side button), a 1000hz polling rate (~1ms response time), and it’s the first mouse I’ve ever bought that had 32kb of onboard memory.

The coolest part? All of the configurations are stored in the mouse, not the PC. So you could plug the mouse into another PC and still have a custom button layout. Not to mention compatibility with Linux is flawless. But to edit the default profiles you’ll need to install some software and drivers in Windows.

I started up Counter Strike Source to give the mouse a trail. My first round with the Razer Copperhead and I ended up making 7 kills and 1124 damage with 1hp remaining. Insane.

The Razer Copperhead is awesome for sniping

Defusing Bomb

At the same time I purchased a XTracPads Ripper XL cloth gaming pad. At 14″ x 17.75″ it’s huge, about four times larger then my old one. Although I’m keeping the sensitivity on my new mouse at 2000dbi, it only takes about half an inch to get to the other side of the screen. I don’t think I’ll need the extra room.

Last night I pulled out my Dreamcast from its boxed storage, wiped it down, and pluged it into my TV. I havn’t touched in five years but after playing Sonic Adventure for an hour I went on eBay and discovered some anime-themed games such as Skies of Arcadia and Bangai-O. I promptly purchased them along with Ikaruga, because everyone needs a good fast paced shoot-’em-up game in there collection.

Sorry for the slowdown in blogging, I’ve been working on two very large PHP projects… but more on that later.

I’ve played the entire Rainbow series in the past and loved it, but yesterday I finally got my hands on Rainbow Six: Lockdown for PC. To sum up the disappointments: You only get three teammates, they really did give up pre-planing all together, ladders, dumb hostages love to enter rooms first, teammates always walk in front of you when you are shooting, and did I mention ladders?

There are also in game advertisements (Screenshots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Why must they place advertising within a game that I had already paid $50 for? I bought the game, you have my money, now leave me alone. I doubt the profits made from these ads will benefit Ubisoft from the decreased sales of later games, but it just goes to show how easily they are willing to screw over there very own customers. After doing some research on Google I discovered a very simple solution: Add these four lines to your C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file, this will prevent Rainbow Six: Lockdown from connecting to the Massive servers and retrieving the advertisements:

127.0.0.1 madserver.net
127.0.0.1 ad.madserver.net
127.0.0.1 imp.madserver.net
127.0.0.1 media.madserver.net

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, upon launching the game a “StarForce Protection System” checks your CD for integrity. After immediately seeing this window for the first time I almost went back to the store and returned the game. It’s called Digital Rights Management, and for those of you who have no clue what DRM is, do some research. StarForce is designed to interfere with your ability to use your software as your rights to it are diminished to almost nothing, and it is not uncommon for StarForce to cause issues for legitimate game buyers. So let me make this very clear to programmers, the music industry, and my government:

Ubisoft has low standards, but at least it’s not as low as Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage. You have been given a vision of the future, and it’s because of shit like this I use GNU.

At around noon today someone rang my door bell, I ran down stairs to see what s/he wanted. As soon as I got to my door I saw a truck labeled “UPS” pulling away. Fearing that I was too late and being the primitive male that I am, my instinctive reaction was very predictable:

What the fuc… *sees package* It’s here! *screams like a little school girl*

Yes, I screamed like a little school girl…. much like what I do when I get a headshot in Counter Strike Source. Opening the package revealed Swat 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate, after installing it and hacking at some .ini files to get the game to run at 1680×1050x32 I started marathoning the campaign. There are only seven missions in the single player co-op so an experienced player such as myself was able to fly through it in just one day (read: a matter of hours).

Swat is a different breed of FPS’s (First Person Shooter), infact shooting is one of the last things you want to do in a mission. The expansion pack includes new weapons, new equipment, new maps, and most importantly: the ability to issue delayed orders, much like in Rainbow Six. This is useful for rooms with multiple entry points as this allows you to split your team into groups of two and have them each breach through a separate door at the same time. It is truly devastating when you go lone wolf and fallow it in with a flashbang from a third entry point.

My addiction started with Swat 3: Elite Edition back in middle school. In multiplayer I would end the game with 100 more points than the guy who came in second, and I’m not joking. The left mouse button allowed you to fire, the right mouse button would allow you to run. I would hold down both buttons and clear maps much like how I play Quake III today.

1680×1050, ~2.1MB