Or re-expansion, I guess.
by AC - permalink
I finally got around to buying a new monitor this afternoon. It's not a particularly good one, but it was cheap, and it was there, so no shipping charges. It's a 17-inch KDS flat-screen CRT. I've been using an old borrowed 15-inch CRT with a max res of just 1024, so even though this one can't go past 1280, it's still like being able to breath again. Now that I have the extra desktop space, I'm finally getting around to playing with Hammer and the rest of the Source SDK. There were some tempting LCDs, including a very nice widescreen 19-incher for just $250, but I need the resolution flexibility for gaming.
Case in point: I decided my next "I'm playing only this til I'm done" game is Quake IV, and I like to run that game at 1152. I think it's a slightly underrated game. It gets repetitive over the last third or so, and it's disappointing that getting Stroggified doesn't really change the gameplay in any way (other than the other marines telling you how much they'd like to kill you). But it's a solid shooter. There's a fantastic level just before the tank mission that slowly builds up the tension level as the building your guys have established as a base is taken over by the Strogg. And the actual Stroggification is pretty sweet, in a gruesome kind of way.
Oh, something about Doom 3 I forgot to mention. Pull down the console at the start of the game and type "g_PlayerShadow 1." You'll cast a shadow wherever you go, and it really adds to the immersion level. It works so well that I figure it was only disabled for performance reasons. The only downside is when it shows you "floating" up ladders. But it's worth that when exploding imp blasts you've dodged cast your shadow on your cover. For whatever reason, it doesn't work so well in Quake IV. It just tends to get in the way. But it's not a big deal, because Quake IV is less about atmosphere and more about killing.
And one last note. iTunes lost a cool point or two with how it handles randomizing playlists. On three occasions I started the same playlist with random turned on, and three times it put the tracks in the same order. That's not actually random, it's just a new playlist. That earns musikCube a free plug.
by AC - permalink
I finally got around to buying a new monitor this afternoon. It's not a particularly good one, but it was cheap, and it was there, so no shipping charges. It's a 17-inch KDS flat-screen CRT. I've been using an old borrowed 15-inch CRT with a max res of just 1024, so even though this one can't go past 1280, it's still like being able to breath again. Now that I have the extra desktop space, I'm finally getting around to playing with Hammer and the rest of the Source SDK. There were some tempting LCDs, including a very nice widescreen 19-incher for just $250, but I need the resolution flexibility for gaming.
Case in point: I decided my next "I'm playing only this til I'm done" game is Quake IV, and I like to run that game at 1152. I think it's a slightly underrated game. It gets repetitive over the last third or so, and it's disappointing that getting Stroggified doesn't really change the gameplay in any way (other than the other marines telling you how much they'd like to kill you). But it's a solid shooter. There's a fantastic level just before the tank mission that slowly builds up the tension level as the building your guys have established as a base is taken over by the Strogg. And the actual Stroggification is pretty sweet, in a gruesome kind of way.
Oh, something about Doom 3 I forgot to mention. Pull down the console at the start of the game and type "g_PlayerShadow 1." You'll cast a shadow wherever you go, and it really adds to the immersion level. It works so well that I figure it was only disabled for performance reasons. The only downside is when it shows you "floating" up ladders. But it's worth that when exploding imp blasts you've dodged cast your shadow on your cover. For whatever reason, it doesn't work so well in Quake IV. It just tends to get in the way. But it's not a big deal, because Quake IV is less about atmosphere and more about killing.
And one last note. iTunes lost a cool point or two with how it handles randomizing playlists. On three occasions I started the same playlist with random turned on, and three times it put the tracks in the same order. That's not actually random, it's just a new playlist. That earns musikCube a free plug.
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