Video Games

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:05 am

I updated the drivers, and it seems to work. Just started the Tribal stage. I made friends with pretty much every weird spore monster in the creature area.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:43 am

It's weird that Microsoft actually did the right thing for once (with SP1 and later at least) imo in terms of making a better OS, and they get bashed for it.

What the heck do you think they did right? A 64 bit operating system significantly behind the curve of the available hardware?

A cache memory tweak that you yourself point out had been done already by other better systems?

The "security fixes" you are talking about are largely actually cover language for draconian DRM measures, which are the number one "feature" of windows Vista. I mean holy fuck this thing declares dual boot systems "untrusted".

It checks if your all your hardware is there and behaving in a "trustworthy" manner thousands of times a second, we are talking dummy polygon rendering here

And it significantly slows the basic copying of fucking files.

Let me repeat that. Vista is very slow to copy files.

One more time. An operating system that is crap at copying files.

So remind me. What did microsoft do right? Because Vista is arguably the worst and also most evil product they have ever produced. And I say this remembering that they actually produced windows millenium.

PostPosted: 09 Sep 2008 05:05 am Post subject:
I updated the drivers, and it seems to work. Just started the Tribal stage. I made friends with pretty much every weird spore monster in the creature area.

Excellent.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:48 am

Technically, any machine it finds itself running on is inherently untrustworthy.

Their whole concept of trust is flawed.

The second thing they did wrong is to make the graphical advances of the shell nonrefundable. In any other system you can opt out of the fancy bells and whistles to make it run faster, but you cannot with Vista. Vista isn't doing anything you couldn't do with X (and I don't mean a Mac) ten years ago, but at least you could choose whether you wanted it to run all the shaders or not.

-Crissa

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 11:01 am

Surgo wrote:Unfortunately with synthetic benchmarks, the amazingly neat caching mechanism that Vista implements is never taken into account. I highly suspect that somewhat-used non-gaming applications will kick the crap out of XP in terms of at least startup speed after using Vista for about a week.

Assuming you're right why would I pay more money to get slight benefit on home use non-games? Since it comes with supporting DRM and giving MS the cash/market share it needs to continue being a total asshat I'll pass.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 1:38 pm

A cache memory tweak that you yourself point out had been done already by other better systems?

Actually Vista does it better afaict. It's just been done earlier by Linux.

I don't know anything about dual-boot systems being declared 'untrusted'. I'm running one and I don't know where this declaration is at all. I turned off all the security warnings; are you referring to that?

DRM is unfortunate, but I don't know anything about what's in Vista. All I know is that Windows XP refused to accept my valid license key, and Windows Vista did.

The 'copying of files' problem has long since gone away.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 3:17 pm

How would we know that it's better?

Microsoft pays large developers to develop in Windows first and only, so that sloppy code just runs slightly faster under windows in situations the average person never sees.

The fact that it's more crash prone or more easily cracked because of this never seems to come up...

-Crissa

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 8:09 pm

That what's better? I assume you're talking about the RAM cache system, because that's the only thing I really noted that's better. And, as far as I'm given to understand, it totally is. I am given to understand that Vista keeps track of what programs you're starting and running a lot, stores the information in some database somewhere, and modifies its behavior to keep those programs in its cache. And I am also given to understand that Linux doesn't really keep such a database of numbers, so it can't really tailor its caching to the specific user.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 8:20 pm

Of course, some people have been using variants of that optimizing method for dozens of years. I had it on my dad's 286. Put it on my aunt's 386. Put it on my 486, etc, etc. OSX does it by default, but not as hardcore. I've always had it on my PC, though, because window was shit at file fragmentation.

I'm not going to cheer that they made it part of Vista.

Now, the RAM optimization, it's nice they finally added it, since they took away the ability for anyone else to handle that in 3.11

-Crissa

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 1:11 am

Crissa wrote: The fact that it's more crash prone or more easily cracked because of this never seems to come up...

Dood, people are always complaining about Windows being crash-prone. Though I have this to say about my PC: I can't actually remember the last time it crashed, if ever. But people are always talking about how it's a problem, and it's usually Windows users doing the complaining there.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 8:38 am

I haven't crashed my PC, either.

But the Microsoft SDKs at my spouse's work crash quite frequently.

-Crissa

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 10:06 am

My box crashes several times a week. Hard crashes that cause a straight reboot. Since its always when I'm alt-tabbing a 3D game I'm not 100% willing to give Bill all the blame though.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 10:34 pm

Alt-tabbing is 100% an OS issue. Either it allows programs to be built incorrectly or its just plain dropping the ball on the memory handling.

-Crissa

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 1:09 am

Well, in video-game news, I've been so hard-up for something to play, I've been replaying Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

For me, this is a bad enough sign of desperation. The fact that I'm advancing three characters at once is unprecedented.

Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad game. It's just, the level of power you get is strongly related to how many times you're willing to play through the levels. See, when you finish up a dungeon/level, you get your choice of a permanent stat increase, or possibly a nifty boost, like an extra item slot or an extra heart.

On a side note, the levels are pure dead gorgeous.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 1:26 am

Spore Creatures for DS is turning out to be a lot of fun. I ended up buying it instead of Digimon World Championship - turns out the latter is less like Digimon Dusk and more like the original "Tamagotchi with violence" thing, which makes me sad. I like to either select options from menus in combat (see: most RPGs) or have direct control (see: fighting games).

Spore DS has an odd combat mechanic: you can move about to avoid getting hit, nominally, and tapping the button for any special powers you have (from attaching body parts with those powers) activates them, but mostly you use the stylus to draw a slash across an enemy to hit it. So if you can rapidly draw slashes, you can really quickly murderise your foe. I had stylus training from Poffin-cooking in Pokemon Diamond.

Oh! Speaking of which, Platinum is out in Japan: Rotom (the electric ghost that haunts TVs and sadly does not get Perish Song. That'd be awesome, it'd basically be Sadako) has several new forms now: possessed fridge (Ice type), possessed microwave (Fire type), possessed Lawnmower (Grass type), possessed fan (Flying type) and possessed washing machine (Water type).

I'm not joking there.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 9:39 am

Crissa wrote:Alt-tabbing is 100% an OS issue. Either it allows programs to be built incorrectly or its just plain dropping the ball on the memory handling.

-Crissa

Its graphics errors though so possibly drivers or card related.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 1:46 pm

I bet the rotoms all have the same horrible stat distribution too.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 3:25 pm

Someone's been playing too much Invisible War

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:11 am

Surgo wrote:I bet the rotoms all have the same horrible stat distribution too.

HP: 50, ATT: 65, DEF: 107, SP. ATT: 105, SP. DEF: 107, SPD: 86

As opposed to the original:
HP: 50, ATT: 50, DEF: 77, SP. ATT: 95, SP. DEF: 77, SPD: 91

So they're all better, except for HP (same) and Speed (worse). However there's still nothing special, so you're still better off just using nearly anything else. It's possible that the movelists will make up for it, but I seriously doubt it.

Giratina and Shaymin also have alternate forms with varying degrees of change. Just go look at Serebii for all info.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 3:28 pm

Def 107, Sp. Def 107, Sp. Att 105 is a pretty respectable distribution. Unfortunately, HP 50 really ruins it for regular team usage.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 1:57 am

Exactly. And besides, at the end of the day, if you want electric, why not try:

Zapdos, Raichu, Jolteon or Electivire

If you want a ghost, then it's clearly Giratina (Uber tier) or, in standard, Gengar with the rare possibility of Froslass or Spiritomb or something.

(That being said, I'm not sure which type changes when it changes form - the microwave could be Electric Fire and get 4x Rock weakness, or it could be Ghost Fire, or it might not even change and just gets Fire moves without STAB.)

The stats are certainly reasonable, except for the lame HP, but at the end of the day it doesn't seem to have anything going for it to really push it up to where there are other, better Pokemon for what you want to do. The limited movepool also doesn't help.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 6:38 am

Anyone play Team Fortress 2? I was playing it and its fun, but it seems much better when you have a team of friends (who are all communicating etc.).

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 10:59 am

I used to play Team Fortress 2. I don't currently have a computer system that can handle it though.

In my opinion when you have a team that communicates/works together, the game is fantastic.

My preferred classes are Spy, Demoman, and Engineer.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 4:12 am

I play it. Great game but theres not a lot of fun to be had playing with 300ms pings so you US guys essentially don't exist as far as I'm concerned.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:08 am

I've become very good at SC4. However, I need to play some people who are good at characters not named Nightmare to broaden my experience some before I can do any tournaments.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 3:23 pm

Well, I found my old Ruby version. And with the aid of my younger sister's Leaf Green, I'm restarting it and right now I'm playing a marvelous game of "Pimp My Pokemon," where I try to see what exotic Pokemon I can trade over as eggs, preferably with equally equally exotic egg moves.

Right now, my team is:

Combusken (my starter. If I'd done some thinking, I would have gotten an egg on Leaf Green and then had a Torchic with Rock Slide, one of my favorite moves).

Marshtomp (hatched from an egg. Born knowing Surf, which is very handy at the early stages of the game when all your enemies known Tackle, Tail Whip, and the like. Still, should have taken this as my starter.)

Aerodactyl (Again, from an egg. I've never used an Aerodactyl on a team before. He may only know Wing Attack, Agility, and Bite, but when he hits something with Wing Attack, it knows it. Also, its personality raises its Attack at the expense of Special Attack. Sweeeeet.)

Bagon (A mistake. I'd have to leave him as a Bagon until level 49 to get all his good moves. Currently looking for a replacement)

Punching Kadabra (This thing is damn dangerous. Confusion, Ice Punch, Thunderpunch, Fire Punch. Hits like a motherfucker. Need to trade him and then trade back so I'll have a Punching Alakazam.)

I also have a Poochyena, but I'm not a big fan of it, nor Mightyena. If I can find the Leaf Green again, I think I'll see about sending over an Eevee egg and evolving it into Umbreon. Or something. God, I miss Houndoom...

After I box the Bagon up (saves me from having to catch one later), I'll have another slot open. I'd go for some kind of Ice type, but, again, got to find the Leaf Green again so I can breed a Snorunt or a Spheal or something. Or maybe a decent Electric type.