I know Fuller will be gutted about this, he’s been obsessing over the trailer for WipEout HD since he got his PS3. Sony Europe are citing a specific (but undisclosed) technical problem that is holding back the release. They’re still hoping to get it out before the end of the year.
Archive for the 'Games' Category
Continuing the theme of past computers and consoles, I found this post about the Atari Jaguar, and specifically Jeff Minter’s contribution to it: Tempest 2000, arguably the finest version of that game on any platform.
I first discovered the trippy weirdness of Jeff Minter on the Atari ST, playing Llamatron, a bizarre game starring a futuristic Llama that shoots white energy in whichever direction it is moving. I remember being horribly addicted to it in the early 90s. It was unlike any game I’d ever played, not least because of the weird array of enemies and powerups that populated the game - from Rizla papers to cutlery and burgers. Continue reading ‘Console Nostalgia: Atari and Jeff Minter’
I can’t remember when I first played with a ZX Spectrum. I know I must have come to the party relatively late since I was only 4 when it was released, unlike Chris who was old enough to have one at launch. This weekend he rescued one from his mum’s rubbish bin, complete in the polystyrene box it originally came in and with mint condition manuals. It even has the guarantee certificate, an unopened demo cassette and the 1982 Edition of the Sinclair Software Catalogue! Continue reading ‘ZX Spectrum nostalgia’
At last! With the December update to the Xbox 360 dashboard, Microsoft introduced a feature that a good number of gamers (me included) have been clamouring for.
It is now possible to change the Windows Live ID attached to your Xbox Live account. This means that I can stop using the obsolete hdurdle@hotmail.com address and move the account - and all my Gamer Points - across to my main email address. Thus laying to rest the last service that had anything attached to my old Passport account. If you’re a 360 gamer, I’m “The BOfH” - note the space and the capitalisation.
Oh yes, and Microsoft also introduced Divx/Xvid support to the in-dash media player. W00t!
In my last post, you discovered my obsession for generating statistics on my network usage and my use of MRTG to draw pretty little graphs. Writing that post got me thinking about my Counter-Strike server, and what data I could usefully graph from it. A bit of Googling led me to this page where a Dutch guy had used MRTG to graph the number of users and the network frames per second of his CS:S server - running on Ubuntu Linux.
Continue reading ‘Graphing Counter-Strike Source FPS/Users in MRTG on Windows’
![clan [cnut]](http://static.flickr.com/47/145420461_86bbe28062_t.jpg)
The clan, all together for the last time in a while, since our man ‘Slinger is returning to the US for the foreseeable future.
Richard sent me an email yesterday with a link to this article along with the message “You’ll love this one…” If you’ve followed the Windows on Mac saga recently go and read it now, if you’re anything like me and Richard you’ll have plenty to say on the subject once you’ve finished reading.
I couldn’t believe that any publication would bother to publish something like that, even as an “opinion” piece in a student paper and even only on their website. The author, who may be a veritable genius when it comes to philosophy, clearly has no idea what he (she?) is talking about when it comes to technology. They don’t seem to understand the difference between emulation, virtualisation and dual booting, and have apparently very little grasp of hardware specifics…
When a Mac starts to emulate a Windows platform completely, the computer must provide additional voltage to provide the computing power.
Ignoring the author’s misconception that the Mac is emulating Windows (it is running Windows natively on an X86 chip remember…) what’s this about additional voltage?! What?! The intel chip in my MacBook - when running XP - is pulling the same power as when it runs OS X, or the same as the identical chip that runs Windows XP in the latest HP notebook. Windows XP playing games such as UT2004 on the MacBook causes it to generate as much heat as OS X playing the Universal Binary of UT2004. It’s hot (really hot), granted, but the idea that Windows is magically making the processor run hotter than OS X will ever allow is false. It just gets as hot only quicker.
getting a Mac to run PC games will result in heartache - this I can guarantee
The author doesn’t specify exactly what heartache it will result in… My MacBook runs Half Life 2, CountStrike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Rise of Nations in some cases significantly faster/smoother than my Dell. What heartache? Heat-ache maybe, but no worse than OS X causes!
For reiteration, Macs cannot run Windows like PCs can.
Urm, yes. Yes they can. That’s rather what all the fuss was about when Apple put Intel chips inside. INTEL. x86 chips. The same instruction set that nearly every PC on the planet uses to run, oh, for example, Windows! Do you think the author understands the difference between a PPC and an Intel chip, and the reason why a Mac can now run exactly like a PC?
I can’t bring myself to refute the fifth paragraph (”My third point references to the industry.”) as it is so full of misunderstandings of the technology, the businesses involved and the computer industry’s recent history that it’s just not worth it.
Boot Camp crashes and burns? Hardly. It’s beta software. It came with a warning. Anyone who chose to ignore that warning and install it on a production machine deserves any hassle they get. That said, my installation of Boot Camp was utterly without problems and I’ve heard lots of other positive reports on various forums. I’m grateful to Apple for providing Boot Camp and the driver suite - I’d just like some of my minor niggles addressed!
The MacBook Pro is great running XP; but has several flaws which mean it probably won’t become my primary machine just yet…
- No Audio Routing
If you plug headphones into the headphone socket audio continues to come out of the speakers. This is known (and documented by Apple) but is still irritating. If I’m in the office I quite often listen to mp3s/the radio on headphones. Also, when I play games I nearly always do so with headphones on for the immersive experience… - Limited Bluetooth Support
I use my phone’s Bluetooth headset as a headset in games that support it (UT2004, CounterStrike) and for Skype calls. Either the driver in the MacBook doesn’t support the headset profile, or the hardware doesn’t support it. Either way, it’s an annoying limitation. - Heat
This is the real killer. The MacBook Pro runs hot… Even in OS X - when you push the CPU - it gets very hot. Running in XP though, without the advanced power management, it gets hot quickly. So hot in fact that the grill to the left of the keyboard becomes painful to touch. That’s no good for prolonged periods of typing! - The Trackpad
In OS X there is a tickbox for trackpad settings that “ignored unintended input” - so if you knock it with your wrist while typing it knows to disregard it. Not so for XP. Try typing for any length of time and you find the cursor jumping all over the place as you accidentally click all over your document. Grrr!
I imagine that further updates to the beta will fix some of these niggles, but for now I’m still using the Dell for day to day work and games.
One thing I did manage to do with the MacBook Pro was remap the keyboard. Now \ is in the correct place (next to left shift) as is the back tick (next to the 1 key) and I’ve given myself a right-alt key (the right command key) and a del key (next to the left cursor). So I can hit ctrl-alt-del and I have a right-alt to control MS Virtual Server properly now!
It’s a fantastic games machine; HalfLife 2, UT2004 and RoN all perform flawlessly… I just worry about the heat. I hope Apple issue a BootCamp driver update for APM.
A games session at Teech’s this Friday gave us the excuse we needed to present, for the first time, the cnut trophies. We’ve not awarded the UT2004 trophy yet, but the RoN trophy - and the BottomFeeder wooden spoon - were both up for grabs. In true award presentation style we have photos of the recipient shaking hands with the person giving the award - in this case our own Teech. Continue reading ‘The cnut Awards’
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