The fun of computer upgrades

Last week was apparently the time for this oh-so-annoying task. Two weekends ago I was happily settling down in my office chair at home looking forward to the quiet time ahead of me so I decided to take a McLaren Formula One car for a spin around the Nurburgring's Nordschleife. Yes, going balls-out on that track is relaxing to me. But apparently it wasn't relaxing for my computer. I had known for some time that my motherboard had certain issues but I put off its replacement as long as possible. Well this time the crash was hard enough that I got off my lazy ass and spent my afternoon tearing apart my box, putting it back together with a newer, much better quality Asus board, and reinstalling everything from scratch. Not exactly the way I wanted to start a weekend. I also discovered that CPUs don't like getting transplanted so I took to the opportunity to get a better fan along with the thermal compound I needed. By the way, the fucktard engineer who designed the "easy to install" push pins on Socket 775 CPU fans needs to be disembowelled with a rusty spoon. I was sure I was going to break my new motherboard in half before the things finally got secured in their little holes. Yeah, fun.

And as if my own computer headaches weren't enough, CCP had decided to move and upgrade the Tranquility server last week. I had invited my alliance mates to a PvP roam after the scheduled extended downtime, when someone mentioned "Are you sure TQ will be up and running?". I took this with a laugh but unfortunately that question turned out to be prophetic as Downtime turned into a nightmare for anybody who hadn't set a long skill, which is not my case I'm happy to say. CCP has annouced it will give us players a ship and a way to recover lost training. I'm not exactly fond of ORE ships but apparently I will be in possession of one soon!

Computer headaches aside, here is a short run-down of what's been happening in the various games I play. Reinstalling everything and having to download a whole lot of add-ons has the effect that you get to play a lot of different games in a very short time. Here goes.


In EVE Online

Every time I install the EVE client from scratch I feel like taking the next Icelandair flight to Reykjavik and having a friendly chat with the UI designers. To go from the client's default settings to something I am comfortable with like overview settings, window placement, UI color scheme, audio settings and container unlocking takes over an hour, sometimes two. A complete newbie who installs the client for the first time has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that his client settings are nothing short of COMPLETELY USELESS. Why CCP is not dealing with this while they try to implement new features to the game - breaking a few things that were working here and there of course - is totally beyond me. To CCP Torfi: please grab the T-shirt you were wearing at the AT8 finals and read it; now, either apply what it says or burn that T-shirt.

Apart from that, after the crazy Downtime and the client set-up business, a small Recon gang (Arazu, Pilgrim, Falcon) decided to camp Chaos Central for a couple days. The Arazu first ganked Letrange who was mining away, and the next day the other two made themselves known when Let and I tried to bait the Arazu. That's all good but the worst part was the Arazu pilot's parting shot: an evemail to me with Hall & Oates lyrics. Who the hell said Hulkageddon was bad ?!?! But the intruders have now left and peace has returned to Choas Central, and yesterday's nanoribbon haul will make my wallet happy :)


In rFactor

Next to EVE Online this is my Main Squeeze #2. This is simply the best 40$ USD you can spend on a race game, and the amount of cars and tracks you can add to it is simply mind-boggling, and here's the stuff I got since the box upgrade. The cars: Formula BMW (my 4y old is getting there), F3 Euroseries, CART 1994-1995 (featuring JV's Indy 500 winning ride), Porsche Fabcar, Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 Challenge, and FSOne's brand new 2009 season. The tracks: Nordschleife 2007, Le Mans 1976-1984, Rouen-Les Essarts, Charade, Montreal 2008, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, UK Rally (oh the LOLZ!), F1 1988 track pack featuring the awesome Spa-Francorchamps, and a fantasy track set "somewhere in Switzerland" called Vitus Parc. I still need to download the amazing Grand Prix '79 mod with its track pack, and of course there is still much much more. For the hell of it my 4y old boy Leandre tried to drive the Gallardo on the Montreal track... let's just say I was happy the Lambo is virtual :))

Two years ago I posted a video on YouTube of my Nordschleife run in 5:52.246, but the 2009 F1 cars look like they will be able to destroy that. They may not have as much top speed as the 2007 car I used in the video, but they accelerate like Top Fuel dragsters and brake on a dime leaving 0.09$ change. It will take a lot of practice to get the timing right to brake as late as possible into the trickier parts of the Green Hell. Sorry if I sound obsessed by this track but it's simply the most beautiful and crazy racing track ever created by man. I have to try the real thing before I die.


In Flight Simulator 9

Because my new motherboard doesn't have any USB port issues like the old one, I was now able to reinstall my Saitek X52 joystick/throttle properly. The fun part will be to configure the thing the way I want to because there's just no such thing as flying a sim without having to even touch the keyboard. Of course, downloading aircraft and scenery for FS9 can become a full-time job because there is so much stuff to be found. Scenery-wise the only thing I got was a basic landclass package; no custom airports or terrain meshes yet. As for the aircraft I added so far: Saab Draken (goes like stink, turns like a city bus), BAE Hawk T1, Tu-144 Concordski, MiG-31 Firefox (the one from the Clint Eastwood movie, not the real MiG-31), North American F86 and X-15, and my all-time favorite, DSB's Eurofighter Typhoon. I know I downloaded more but I don't remember which ones, and I know there are TONS I need to get still.

The thing with FS9, or the newer FSX which I need to upgrade to at some point, is that the better add-ons cost money, and believe me they are not cheap. Someone serious about flying can litterally plow thousands of dollars into software alone. But the good thing is that one can make the plain stock FS9 a lot more realistic looking without putting a single penny into it, and once in a while the companies that make the good add-ons make their older stuff free. So it's very important to look around the various flight sim sites to be up to date on what's going on in the world of sims.

***

These are the main three games I play with some seriousness. I also reinstalled Mechwarrior4:Mercs and Dungeon & Dragons Online. I'm not really sure how long I'll stay in DDO; I really like fantasy settings but I prefer darker themes along the lines of Diablo, but Diablo III is still pretty far away. I really miss the humor-filled Dungeon Runners! So to anyone on DDO's Argonessen server: do you want my stuff? After I've downloaded the MWL maps for Mechwarrior4 I will surely play more of it though. The guys at Mektek are doing an awesome job at keeping this venerable franchise alive, and blowing shit up is never boring :)

In closing, back to EVE Online a bit. A few weeks ago we had recruited semi-celebrity Crazy Kinux, and this weekend we recruited one Lucky Cuss, refered to us by Arancia Detto, formerly of Clown Punchers. Sort of like the way I was when I joined BOZO, Lucky is a 1m SP pure noob who will be receiving The Mother of All Head Crammings in the near future. The good thing is he is asking a lot of questions and he's listening to the advice we're giving him. So with two new recruits the roam I was expecting to have on the crazy Downtime day will have to be done in the very near future not only to teach them the ways of The PvP, but also to make sure none of us veterans get rusty. And that about covers the news!


Until I see you on my overview, fly dangerous

o7

Cozmik’s other games

It’s been a while since I’ve done an out-of-topic blog post, but with the recent events I’ve talked a few times about the fact that I play games that have absolutely nothing to do with EVE, so I decided to write about them.

I grew up next to a Canadian Air Force base so plane geek since Day One. I’ve been interested in video games pretty much since Pong came out (yes, I’m that old), and in 1977 a certain movie had about the same effect on me as a sledgehammer has on italian crystalware. So since then I’ve been a Sci-Fi geek. Around the same time we had a local hero tearing up tracks in F1, so I became a racing geek. Fast-forward a few years later to about 1984. I was in high school at the time and I got hit by two particular freight trains : Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings… thank you sirs Gygax and Tolkien, I’m a fantasy geek now! So over the years the games that interested me were always close to those 4 major interests. Here are the main ones I play and why I love ‘em. Enjoy!


Flight Simulator 2004


Ever since I’ve started this blog I’ve been preaching about flying dangerously, and where better to do it than in a real world setting! My love of flying doesn’t just come from proximity to an airport full of jet fighters. There’s a branch of my family that produced a few bush pilots based out of the St.Lawrence river’s North Coast region. Out of my father’s uncles and cousins to be bitten by the flying bug, one of them, Lucien, was known to be the barn-storming nutcase. On a dare, he once flew under the power lines near his home of Sept-Iles :) While I myself never took the full flying lessons, I do love the crazy stunts that are only possible on a simulator, like landing too big a plane on too small a runway, flying under bridges, and of course my favorite, flying at rock-scraping level in the Grand Canyon in nothing less than a Eurofighter Typhoon, never going below 500 knots. Yes, it’s doable. Yes, I’ve crashed a few times learning the canyon, and yes, my settings are set to full realism except for fuel; running out would just suck :) I haven’t updated to the newer FSX because at first my computer wasn’t strong enough to run it. Now I could but there’s still so much fun to be had with the older one. The amount of stuff you can download, such as aircraft, scenery, terrain, tools, etc, is just mindboggling. And if you’re really serious you could spend A LOT of money because the better downloads are not free. Examples : Ultimate Terrain, the best terrain replacement package for FS2004, is 30$ USD for Canada/Alaska, and 35$ USD for USA. Some of the more realistic aircraft are close to 100$ and are meant for those hardcore simmers who build the realistic cockpits. And from there, the sky’s the limit, litterally!

Dangerous: the only way to fly !!!

rFactor


From the skies to the pavement. This racing simulator is probably the most bang for the buck you can find in any kind of game, any genre, single-player, multi-player or MMO. All you need to do is download the full game that’s locked in demo mode, register it for 40$ USD, and from there you can install almost any track you can think of, plus some you can only dream about, and any racing series you can think of. You like F1? Almost every year is there from the 1950’s to present time (GP79 is just nuts!) is available. You prefer endurance LeMans-style racing? Covered. Not so sure about that « turning right » thing? There be stock cars. Drifting sideways on a mountain gravel road? Of course! 5y-old friendly? Karting? Lawnmower racing? Yep, all there! This game has a very active community and there are racing leagues for anyone from day-old noobs to grizzled old veterans, some of which are actually race car drivers. Yes this is another one where you could go nuts with money and build a realistic cockpit, and the better racing leagues have actual entry fees and pro purses. But even just by myself alone on a track, say the 20 mile long Nordschleife, this simulator is all fun!

Somewhere in Switzerland... in an alternate dimension

Dungeon Runners


This one I’m a little bit sad to talk about. Before last Sunday I hadn’t logged in in a few weeks but it was long enough to get a really bad news : the game will die on New Year’s Eve, This is the second RPG to give me this surprise after I come back to it; Hellgate London was the first. But let’s do what the devs did and put sadness aside a minute; see, with the final update the devs put in a huge bomb in the middle of Townston (the game’s town of course) with a timer that’s set to go off at 23:59 on December 31st! This is the kind of dark humor Dungeon Runners was known for. It takes a little bit from Diablo, a little bit from WoW, and adds just enough goofiness to make it really funny. I mean, where else could you smite thine enemies with a Gargantuesque Pizza Cutter of the Malcontent Rhinoceros? I’m making the name up but I’ve seen even better ones… the Pizza Cutter IS a usable two-handed melee weapon though! The same thing goes for the armor, the quests, the universe, and everything. I haven’t been to Pwnston, the PvP town, yet, but I will have to pay a visit before that bomb goes off. The price was really good : I wanted an RPG just for the fun of running around and beating stuff up and came across this. It’s a free-to-play game with a monthly subscription of 5$ if you want premium membership. On the website they advertise the boxed game at 20$ which gives you 6 months of membership, but last July I found this box at an EB Games store for 5$. 5$, 6 months, the price was right so I jumped in. Too bad it’s gonna end soon because this game is a riot!

Me, my Bling Gnome, and the denizens of Townston

Mechwarrior/Battletech


In 1995 I discovered the Battletech universe when I started hanging out at Montreal’s Virtual World center, and met someone you may know as Letrange. I went to his place and he showed me Mechwarrior II, and it was love at first sight… with the game of course! I’ve followed the franchise ever since, seen the ups and downs of FASA Industries and FASA Interactive, the Microsoft take-over, up to the current stuff being developped over at Mektek.com which is very promising. I have yet to re-install Mech4: Mercenaries with the Mektek 3 and Net Battletech mods since my hard drive failure last summer but this should be done fairly soon because last week’s announcement at Mektek was enough to make me yell « Seyla! » :) A few months ago Mektek took in the Assault Tech 1 devellopment team; AT1 is an effort to remake Mechwarrior II from scratch using modern-day graphics. On October 27th, the Open Beta for AT1 was released. Mektek also received the go-ahead to re-release Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries with the Mektek mod included, as a free game. And on Youtube there's a video of what would be the next Mechwarrior game, this time set in the 3025/Succession Wars timeline, and the graphics are just jaw-dropping with urban fighting, buildings collapsing, dangling wires from blown-off 'mech limbs, the works. Oh, and an Atlas :) Clearly, the Battletech universe is far from dead!


Quake Live


I couldn’t end this post without mentioning the game franchise that opened me the door to multiplayer gaming. I don’t log in very often so to say my Quaking is rusty would be the understatement of the century, but the fact that you can now play one of the best ever deathmatch games through your web browser is just amazing. Explaining this game to a neophyte couldn’t be simpler : point gun, find target to shoot. If it moves, shoot it. if it doesn’t move, shoot it some more. I don’t care how complex the newer games get, or how much prettier, there’s just nothing like pure deathmatch. Not even EVE PvP !!! Oh, did I offend someone? Wanna deathmatch? C ya on Q3DM6 >:)


Fly what you love


o7