Sleepy Update

It’s been a while since I jotted down anything here… 68 days, in fact, and while that’s not a record, it is quite substantial. And my last post didn’t actually have anything to do with me (ahem.) So that brings the time differential to… a very excellent sounding 123 days since my last post with any real content (which might be a record… Hmm)! Let’s see… what has happened in all that time?

Long while ago

I had another motorcycle accident! Eeeentiiirely my fault this time around. Well, almost entirely my fault (is that correct?). You see, I was going through this nice round-about at Poojappura Jn. when the bike toppled over. Just ‘la ‘dat. Sure, I might have been going just a little too fast, and I might have been juuust a little too aggressive with the cornering angle, but in my defence, I’ve taken that corner at much scarier speeds and angles before – n’ more than a few times at that. Guess I stretched my luck a little too thin this time around – and of course, there’s the reason for the almost in the entirely – my bike ain’t what it used to be, it’s been in quite a lot of crashes and they’ve taken a toll on its handling.

There was another guy with me this time – first for an ‘accident’. Nothing happened to him, except for a tiny scratch on the palm. I, on the other hand, got my knee torn – which consequently had to be stitched up. I was stuck at home with a near useless leg for almost 2 weeks, during which period, the thought “have-to-go-to-the-bathroom” was exceedingly mortifying. As an aftermath, I’ve partially lost sensation on the skin around my knee, and the nerve endings seem to have been juggled around by the incompetent (?) doctor who closed the thing up. If I touch the part where the skin got torn, I get a not-so-nice tingling sensation in my numb areas. Intriguing and slightly disturbing at the same time…

Right after my leg healed (somewhat), Dishaa happened.

Let’s put it this way: I wasn’t looking forward to it. Having had an insider’s view of how things were coming along, I didn’t have much hope. I wasn’t in charge of anything, having had my fill of… umm… being in charge of things in the last iteration of the same. However, being the geek that I am, I helped out the guys with the gaming event.  After a very shaky start, it actually went pretty well. I didn’t see any of the other off-stage events, partly, because I was stuck guarding my computer at the gaming location, but mainly, because I couldn’t give less of a damn. <shrug> I was, however, there for the Cultural ‘Nite. I wanted to see (and scorn) the performance of some northie practically unheard-of guy (and his band) for whom the organizing committee had dedicated around one n’ a half lakh rupees. To my utter surprise, it turned out that the guy was actually really good! I video-d the whole thing, and its up at my YouTube page! Here’s a link to a playlist!

Sometime in-between

Holi happened. At college. Video evidence to the carnage that occurred can been viewed, once again, at my YouTube page. Here’s a convenient playlist for the lazy people.

Recently

I’ve discovered that gaming online is actually possible these days – and I don’t mean simple not-so-delay-dependant ones, I mean the real hardcore stuff! I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: Source regularly for the past month – the latter almost exclusively for the past 2 weeks, mainly because L4D has started becoming stale. L4D is a ton of fun, possibly the best online co-operative game ever created, but with only four (official) maps, you get tired of running through the same places over and over again (even with the AI Director, which mixes things up for a different experience each time). When everybodys’ networks are fine, lag is almost non-existent. ^_^

There was another get-together at school. Was kinda fun. Pics up at my picasaweb. Header image is a shot of the Indoor Stadium that is fiiinally finished (or so it seems).

Oh, and College Days are over. My S8 university exams begin in 3 days, and as usual, I’m not looking forward to it. Wish me luck.

It’s 4.50 AM right now. I think I’ll head to bed. Yes. I’ll do that.

Waking For Lunch

You’ll be pleased to hear that I finally made my first true Windows application today. Albeit, one that did nothing whatsoever other than exist, and then, exit. But at least it did those things properly. Oh, but it also turned out that it works only on my system.

Damn.

I also managed to finish Okami (Oh-kami) about a week ago, at the end of (a stunning game) which, it gleefully reported that I’d spent 56 hours at the controller, over a period of 95 days. That’s an average of a little over half hour a day. See! There’s proof that my mum’s allegations of “Oh, he’s always playing games” are totally, irrefutably baseless.

I’m also contemplating investing in a spanking new X-Fi XtremeGamer (yuk! that sounds so cheezy) sound card, to replace both my worthless onboard sound, and the 500 rupee(s) stand-in Yamaha… something… that I’d hoped would be better (it wasn’t). This particular X-Fi is the cheapest hardware accelerated X-Fi card available on the market, and at over Rs. 6000 online, it is still over 2000 bucks dearer than in the states. Ah well, that’s the price you pay for living in India. At least this way, I’ll have some justification for the 1.5k I dropped on the Zalmans… well, MM-Gear, really.

So that’s it for tonight. 3:23 seems like a nice time to sink into the pillow. See ya tomorrow for lunch.

Hellgate

I just had another one of those brilliant ideas o’ mine that never come to anything. Since I seem to have so much time on my hands every night, I thought I might as well spend it chronicling what I did that day, beginning with this one, of course. Obviously, the chronicling is not the objective; it actually has a much higher purpose – to point out just how much of a waste the day was… for my benefit, that is.

I spent quite a lot of time playing today. Hellgate – London, particularly – spent a lot of time bringing it up to date too, since the original version was so buggy (big time slowdowns once in a while). Eventually I discovered that the slowdowns were partially caused by too-high graphics settings. Ah well, it didn’t look that spectacular at max settings anyway. I also spent some time studying (!).

What the fuck! Chronicling is boring! Did you read that last para?! By the heaven’s, that was disgusting!

Told you this brilliant idea would come to nothing!

Low, lower, low-(whatever)…

Playing Outcast Again

Literally. Whoa.

Another game that I really really loved way way back is…

Outcast

You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I had to go through to get it to work on my current system (properly). Actually, I still don’t know whether all of it works properly (I do now, check end of article) since I just made sure that some of the show-stopper bugs have been eliminated (Once again, check EOA).

Anyway, as a record of what I’ve achieved today, here goes:

PC Specs: Core 2 Duo E6300 + 2Gig RAM + 950Gig HDD (total) + 17″ LCD (1280×1024)

Operating System: Windows Vista 64bit (x64) Ultimate

What I did

After a lot of research and testing, I found out that doing the following will fix a bunch of issues that Outcast faces in today’s computers.

1. Install Outcast – Duh, yeah, but you’ll most probably need Patch 1 to do that. Download it from the link.

2. Further patch it with Patch 2 (the same link as above, really), to remove some glitches.

I’m not sure about what Patch 3 does, but it seems like that one can be used to install the game too. Maybe it’s some kind of combined Patch 1 + 2 thingy. Who cares, I haven’t had to use it yet.

3. Get CPU Killer. Install it (I used CPUKiller v2.05).

Yeah, the old version listed there (or not, who knows what you’ll find when you look there). The why, later on.

4. Start CPU Killer in Administrator Mode, and set the bar to around 6%, and start.

This 6% value will, of course, depend on the kind of system you have. Experiment.

5. Open up the Windows Task Manager, set the process affinity of CPUKiller to CPU 0, or 1 (my computer’s only got two processors at the moment. ^_^) , whichever you prefer.

6. Set the compatibility mode of OC1.EXE, OC2.EXE, OC3.EXE to Windows 98 / ME (or equivalent, actually I’m not entirely sure this is needed, but bleh).

7. Fire up Outcast (use the default link) in Admin Mode. Even though I was using images of my really old and now useless Outcast CDs, mounted using Daemon Tools (Really. I’d bought the game. Seriously.), it worked just fine. I guess Patch 2 acts as a no-cd, or something.

8. Alt-Tab out once inside the game, and using the Windows Task Manager, set the affinity of OC3.EXE, the process that’s active when the game is running, to CPU 0, or 1, or N, whichever you selected earlier, that is.

9. Alt-Tab back in.

10. Play.

There you go. Outcast in 10 relatively easy steps. Now you require explanations.

Q1. Why slow down the computer with CPU Killer?

You don’t actually have to use CPU Killer. You can use any CPU slowing program you want. CPU Killer worked for me.

Q2. What I meant was, why slow down at all?!

Certain rather annoying bugs like Mr. Slade (the hero) slowing down to a CRAWL when walking through the paddy fields (in Shamazaar) or the fact that the damned Twon-Ha won’t move can be fixed by lowering CPU Speed. Seems like poor old Outcast can’t handle our super duper fast computers.

Q3. Does CPU Killer version matter?

It didn’t for me. The higher version (CPUKiller3 v1.0.5, right now) was useless since I had to use the older CPUKiller2 algorithm (selectable in configuration) to make the CPU slow down properly (with slider at 2%), so the old version of the program worked for me (albeit with the slider at 6%). In fact, performance with the older version was BETTER for me, since it allowed me to set all the settings to high (in the Outcast loader) and get decent framerates (16-24, according to FRAPS).

None of these slowing down programs work as they should, because even these programs are too old for the new hardware, and their approximation of CPU use is rubbish… which would explain the 2 and the 6% reduction.

Q4. Anything else?

Outcast is a wonderful game. Play it if you can.

See ya!

UPDATE:

1) I’ve finished the game! Everything worked fine, well, except at one point in the game.

Minor Spoiler Alert! In Okasankaar, Cutter is required to accept the assistance of a talan to push two buttons simultaneously in order to open the door to a sunken temple. I was able to bypass this requirement by pushing one button then running to the other and doing it myself. This was before I even had the quest requiring me to enter the temple. However, it worked out fine since it turned out that I didn’t have to complete the mini-quest to satisfy the main quest’s requirements.

2) I actually got a page hit from someone searching for ‘Outcast Patch 2 -jedi’. Haha! I knew there’d be some use to including all those tags! I suppose whoever it was got helped since he / she clicked the link to the download page at planet-adelpha where all the patches reside. Me happy! Oh, and I also changed the title. Duh reason. ^_^

Child’s Play

I haven’t gotten around to using my camera in so long. Sometimes I think I ought to leave all the nut cases behind and go riding on my own.

Like I’d ever do anything of that sort…

Over the past two months, I’ve put in over excess of 60 (sixty!) hours into Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve been playing it on an emulator called ePSXe (since Jacob Z stole my console), and using walkthroughs to finish absolutely everything in the game. It plays pretty much the same as on the PSX. Except of course, this is on the keyboard, and I do miss the excellent controller.

I love the game. I really do. It’s one of those games that I played as a kid that I really remember. I think that the opening animation contained the first Computer Generated people I’ve seen.

The music… oh, the music.

You probably don’t understand what I mean, and even more probably think I’m being silly in saying that I love a game. You may be right, but I don’t agree. If you want to learn more about the plot, just click.

I’ve got to go play a game. Bye!

Realistic

It pulled me into the world and made me believe that I was a part of it. That’s what I felt when I was watching ‘Children of Men‘. No, the plot cannot be called realistic… more like imaginative, but the camera work and the way in which the action scenes are put together gave me the chills.

A must watch. Really. It’s very very impressive.

I’ve been playing a game called ‘The Spirit Engine‘ quite a lot lately. Well, probably because of the fact it’s a 2D game, and that’s all that my oh-so-powerful 7900GT can manage at the moment. Throw 3D it’s way and it’ll throw back a BSOD soon enough. The memory (and perhaps the core itself) seem to have become damaged. Don’t ask me how… I didn’t mess around with anything! Really! I didn’t. About the game, it’s quite good, for a 2D game that is. It’s got a rather engaging story, which is a must as far as I’m concerned, and since it’s an RPG, it’s just the sort of thing I like to spend time on.

I’ve got my lab exams tomorrow, the electronics kind… and truth be told, I suck at it. I don’t think it’s a goner though and I’m hoping that the mysterious entity known as ‘luck’ that seems to shadow me helps out in some way. I’ll need it. Bye!