But not for lack of trying.
I managed to actually get the full version of Farcry. It is even more magnificent than the demo. I was able to get all the patches installed and make sure all my hardware drivers were up-to-date. With that, I could run it all on Very High settings with almost no lagginess. The closeset thing too such lagginess was the occasional framerate drop when a lot of new geometry was suddenly being loaded into the RAM.
Now, let me say something about what Farcry's graphics are like on such high settings. They're absolutely beautiful. They're just like nothing I'd ever seen before in a game. I've played Doom3, F.E.A.R. demo, and HL2, but those games were beautiful in different ways. Doom3 had some spectacular lighting, but that was about it. Farcry's is almost as good. F.E.A.R.'s most amazing graphical moments relied on special graphical postproduction effects on the frame, similar to applying a Photoshop filter onto every single frame in real-time. The game also uses Parralax Normal Mapping for some spiffy effects like 3D bullet holes in walls. But the thing with that game, with all its fancy lighting and parralax mapping and effects, it ran Ssssssllllllloooooowwwwwww. Half-Life2's graphics had horrible shadows, and some mediocre level geometry. But it focussed on nearly photorealistic characters. And at times, it really succeeded in such amazing characters. Farcry is different in that it has a real color-composition to the scene, that rather than tries to make things eery, makes them pleasing to look at. Looking at a well-lit jungle with dense foliage wehre every leaf casts a shadows is breathtaking. And perhaps more breathtaking is the wayer which has some really nice reflections, but also shows the depth below the surface. The character models are decent, but look a tad too plasticky due to normal mapping. They don't look realistic even for a second. However, the shininess does look cool.
That was certainly a long paragraph.
Oh, and school today was alright I guess. In Public Speaking, Ben gave a speech that was just amazing. It was about how he decided over the summer that despite having the oppurtunity, he didn't want to switch schools. He decided Wakefield was much better for him than the exclusive and expensive alternative.
Also, Manami, a Japanese girl, gave a surprisingly excellent speech. Well, not so much the speech, but her English was suprisingly fluent. It was hard to believe she only came to America 2 weeks ago.
In English, we took a test on the thing that felt like busywork. Only two people did well on it, and I was one of them. Its kind of interesting in that the two people who did best were the quietest and the loudest about hating the assignment in which they learned the information to work with. For those who do not remember my earlier, post, I hated it the most, and was the most vocal about it.
Nothing else of much importance or bloggability happened at school today, so on to the day's gimmick.
I have two miuntes to write a poem!
Ready? Steady? GO!
Lush green pixelated leaf
God has no beauty to compare
to man's cheap imitation of his work.
How can it be?
Dots and lines form beauty
that surpasses the life it
Tries to be.
The world cannot be as good
as the fake world, but it should.
Just talking abotu Farcry's graphics there really. I'm sorry if I seem obsessive, but its on my mind. ITS A GREAT GAME. I really highly recomend it to everyone with a good computer or an Xbox. (PC version is cheaper.)
And I couldn't help but think of this quote I heard somewhere, sometime. "The revolution will not be blogged." And I think thats true, but not for lack of effort on the part of the bloggers. Chances are, there will not be a revolution. But anything that looks like one will most definitely be written about on blogs.
Man, this post feels so... stupid. Umm... wash out that crappy blog taste with some Farcry. You'll feel much better.
Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!
This is Thursday's update, written on Friday morning, so at least Thursday won't be overcast by Friday in this update.
However, I don't think much of particular interest happened on Thursday. There was the speech I gave in Public Speaking Class. It wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but the teacher liked it. He said I needed to work on "transitions." I need to figure that out.
Old Game Review time!
Today, I review the spiffy spinoff marketting tie-in, Chex Quest.
Chex Quest is basically just Doom with all the Hell replaced with alien Chex world, the demos replaced with phlegmy aliens, and your weapons replaced with various Chex-firing devices. If memory serves, I think that the health pickups and powerups were also Chex in some form or another.
Chex Quest came inside a cereal box for a while. I'd have to say that it is the best marketting tie-in ever. They licensed the Doom engine and made a new game with it. The new game is really exactly the same as the old one, but that doesn't really bother me.
Doom was a fun and actiony game, that isn't much by today's standards, but there is something tremendously fun about running around with a small 2D weapon in a 3D world shooting 2D aliens or demons. Its totally stupid, but it is definitely fun.
You can download it here:
(Note, site is usually under a lot of traffic. Might be slow.)
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=1659
Excellent gimmicks are my thing. Friday's post and gimmick will be posted later tonight, you know, after Friday's stuff has happened.
Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!
Mein Gott!
I missed an update! I can't believe this! I've had the blog for LESS THAN A WEEK AND I HAVE ALREADY MISSED AN UPDATE. I have to say taht is pathetic. I was really trying to maintain this blog...
Today was very stressful. I finally got my summer work done even though school started a while ago. At least the looming Hell of unfinished work is gone away. I have a lot of homework today.
The class uniformly exploded at the teacher because we were all very much pissed off at the nature of this assignment.
The assignment was obviously
not busywork but in all ways it felt like busywork. It was 8 pages of questions analyzing this short passage. The questions were almost ALL THE EXACT SAME THING with only the subtlest of differences. And a part of the asssignment was picking up the subtleties which I can respect, but it didn't feel like something respectable when I did the work.
All it felt like was answering the same damn question like 6 fucking times. The entire class exploded at the teacher in a fit of hatred at the short passage we were analyzing and the work we were doing. But I was pissed off before they were.
..FUCKING HATE THAT ASSIGNMENT...
...I have work I need to do, but first I need a gimmick for Wednesday and Tuesday. I need some ideas.
Wednesday shall be rant day. I have already accomplished that.
Tuesday is umm... Mini-Movie-Review Day:
Today I review the movie
Commando with Ah-nuld.
The movie is a pure cliche of action movies. Terrorists kidnapped his daughter and will only give her back if he does work for them. He must save his daughter and stop (KILL) the terrorists before their heinous plan can be acted out.
The rest of the movie once the premise is established is nothing but a bunch of stuff getting blwn up and people getting killed. I must say, the movie is just a lot of fun. It provides nothing for an intellect, but its an excellently stupid movie that is a thrillling view.
RECOMENDED! (sp?)
Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!
Coolest email I have ever recieved:
I recieved an email from a member from my favorite band today. Definitely one of the coolest things ever.
Hey,
I've noticed that you like our music (ssrs), and I've noticed, that you do animation? Well, first, thanks for saying nice things about us. We continue to make SSRS music, but as you can tell, we've taken a different approach to becoming rich and famous. But, one idea we've had is to use our recordings to do a full-length animated concert film of our music. Kind of like song remains the same, but without the sleepy interludes of John Bonham's car collection. Of course animation is expensive, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. We have some money, but not a ton. Let me know what you think, if you think about it at all. We're kind of imagining Speed Racer meets Pink Floyd at Pompeii meets cereal box. Stickshift Rocketship loves mankind. We just want to give back to the community.
Thanks again.
Ultraman (John Murray)
And also, I bought a legal copy of Photoshop. Thats all I did today.
Monday's gimmick is, umm... Gush about something I love day.
So now I shall gush about the Farcry demo I played yesterday.
MAN! FARCRY IS FUCKING AWESOME!
Its like being Arnold Schwarzennegar in Commando or Collateral Damage. It has a very spiffy spy-movie mentality, intergrating all the best elements of big-budget action movies into intensely compelling gameplay with spectacular graphics. Start out on a little boat, and run up to an island with a pistol, shoot up the place Rambo-style, and take a bigger gun. And a boat with a gun. So then you can take that boat and storm a nearby beach with a dunebuggy (that also has a gun) so you drive up and start running over people and shooting stuff. The whole experience there just feels like the movie Commando. After a trek through a jungle, you James Bond your way through a little underground complex, and then later blow up a Sattelite dish and run out of the building in a flash of pure big-budget style.
Its a wonderful mix of style and substance. The aestehtic makes you feel like a total badass and the gameplay is just intensely fun. I have no doubt that I will buy the game very soon. It is recomended!
Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!
Only Per Via Technicality is this late!
Bah! Almost late on todays update. Another couple of minutes, and its tomorrow.
Sunday's Gimmick is a drawing. This is an old one I still like. In the future, drawings will be fresh.
Today, I made marshmallows from a recipe I found on the internet. I screwed up by adding a little more salt than the recipe called for. A little goes along way when added to whipped gelatin.
Then later, I tried to install Linux on this computer. In such an attempt, I was unsuccessful, and I lament that. I'm gonna try again eventually. But I'm gonna need some expert help.
For those interested, the distro of Linux was Fedora Core 4.
Ah, all my posting finished and only 3 minutes til tomorrow. (The time at the bottom of the post is when I started writing, not when I finished.)
Until next time. Yay for Labor day!
Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!
My eye is the hurtiness...
Alright, reader, or readers as the situation may be, I'd like to start today's post with an apology. My poem from Friday was shitty. Sure it was written in 2 minutes, but my problem was that it made me sound like stupid emo bitch. I'd like to assure my reader(s) that I am in fact, not a stupid emo bitch.
With that out of the way, I'd like to recomend a movie I watched last night. Man On Fire. It was really done spectacularly. The soundscape was well-done, the lighting was excellent, and there were lots of spiffy post-production effects worked in there. If you get the oppurtunity, I highly recomend watching the movie. Because it kicks ass alot.Later, I shall add it to my Favorite movies list.
Today, I went to the Dump, and found a ton of old technology magazines. Which for me was like finding a small lump of gold in the shape of a teird. Just a lot of fun to see, and in the end, still worth something. Well at least they're worth something to me. I'd say they were an excellent find.
I also just watched 10 things I hate About You. Which started off excellently, and about 20 minutes into the movie, stopped being very funny. I guess they ran out of good jokes at that point. Worth watching though.
In case you were wondering, about the post's title, it has to do with my sister. my sister acts very nice to most people, and all of her frustraitons and anger, she takes out on me. Just me, because everyone else must think she is a wonderful and kind person or something like that.
Well back to my eye. I was watching Ten Things I hate About You, and despite my awesome soundsystem, I can't hear most movies without turning the volume up kinda loud. She was trying to sleep in the room below me which was a problem because I happen to have a subwoofer. So she turned down the volume drastically. From there, I put it up a little bit, and she kept coming back into my room turning the volume down to her setting. This repeated for a while until she tried to take my remote. I refused to give it to her, so she started trying to make me a punching bag. She pushed my arms down, utterly making them useless, seeing as she had both gravity and her strength against me. She was punching me, and in effort to defend myself, I kicked her in the neck. She got really pissed off, and started kicking me some more, eventually right in my eye. That hurt like hell. If you have the choice, opt not to get kicked in the eye. It hurts for a while. But that wasn't the end of it. Satisfied that she'd hurt me, she walked up removed the DVD from the player and took it out of my room. I don't feel like recounting the rest, but uh..
Things I wound up throwing at her:
My cat. Her name is Lizzie.
Things She wound up throwing at me:
My fan.
My desk chair.
For those worried, nothing was broken, and the cat forgave me instantly.
But I need to decide a gimmick for Saturdays.
Ah, I got an idea for Saturday's gimmick. Link to a good free song download.
This Saturday's link is to Stickshift Rocketship's spectacular song, Monkey People. Please enjoy the song.
http://www.swankcountry.com/ssrs/mp3/greatesthits/Monkey%20People.mp3
Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!
