What two posts in one day from the original recluse himself. Yeah but this one is important.

No matter what do NOT download Stubbs the Zombie from Valve's Steam service.

See I bolded, italicized, and underlined; so you know I mean business. But seriously, this game is broken. I downloaded it because, hey it was like five bucks, and seemed like an amusing concept. But every time I try to load it up the game all I see is flattened out mess. The width seems proper but the height is restricted the mid quarter of my monitor. Flatter than a sandwich that was sat on by a fat man. Can't even hit the windows key to exit out, fortunately game developers have a habit of putting the "Quit Game" option at the bottom of the game menu, so through blind guessing I was able to escape that horror. I've tried deleting and re-downloading the local files, updating my drivers (they were already up to date), and trying all manner of options in compatibility mode. Nothing.

The most promising results I've had was when I checked the "run in 640x480 resolution" option in compatibility mode. And it worked, menus were suddenly manageable. Granted large portions of the screen were cut off due to 800x600 being the lowest resolution supported, so blind menu navigation was still necessary in some spots. But I figured if I could change the resolution in the options menu it would work out. WRONG, after setting the option to my desired resolution the game says that it must restart the game for the changes to take place; annoying but fairly normal. Restarting the game only seems to reset the options menu to default settings.

I was a little hot at that point. So I sent a complaint to Aspyr's support staff.Their response: your graphics card and OS may not be compatible. Try running the game in Windows 98/ME compatibility mode and updating your drivers. But remember compatibility with a GeForce 8600 GT is not 100% guaranteed.

Here are a few outside facts for the sake of perspective:

The GeForce 7800 is listed among compatible cards. An 8600 is but one generation removed from the 7800. I can understand them saying screw you five-ten years down the road, but come on; if a game can't make it through the next generation of GPUa then it has some serious problems. The brings me to my next fact.

I downloaded the ID Super Pack from Steam. Freaking Ultimate Doom, a DOS game, runs better through an emulator than Stubbs ever has.

So yeah, I'm totally buying the whole XP SP3 is too modern and an 8600 GT too obscure argument.

I suppose I could try writing a script or something to force the resolution of Stubbs to something usable. But according to the Steam forums I'd only have more problems to look forward to. So it's likely not worth the effort. I'd rather the developer clean up their own mess.

For your own good stay away.

-Chet_Jones

Hello internet people... I've not faded into the darkness quite yet, though some days I'm damn close to it. What with all the economic madness, politics, expensive gas, kidney stones, death in the family, and my professors all but saying that they will break me. But enough about that... Onto business.

Last episode I showed off screen shots from the project I was working on for my Game Design course and I think it prudent of me to tell you, my precious few readers, how that turned out. I'd say it was a success; the professor was wowed by my brilliance and I made out with an easy A for the course. Good thing too because Assembly Language was rough...

Now onto this semester. Outside of a couple of math courses I've been putting off there really isn't all that much that would be interesting to the layman. I am taking an Artificial Intelligence course, but the teacher is a little batty, and the book is just horrible. But there's only one teacher for the course and therefore I have to tough it out. Another issue is that she, the professor is a woman, has taken an interest in me. Nothing illicit mind you dirty, dirty internet people, but rather I've suddenly found myself as her goto guy. Whenever she wants a response from the class and doesn't get one, which is always because at any given time roughly 60% of the class is asleep, she'll hover over to where I'm standing and ask me point blank. I guess she finds it amusing when I liken class inheritance to Taco Bell menu items. Yeah I'm weird... even by computer science standards; at least I can still interact with normal humans.

Another big turning point at school is that I've finally decided upon a minor: Information Assurance. Granted for a Computer Science degree they recommend a minor in math, but this complements my skills and interests better, and doesn't look too weird when paired against my major. Besides, course like cryptography and computer forensics are just too cool to pass up.

My current interests:

Music:

Psychostick

Scars on Broadway

Probot

TV:

Fringe

My Name is Earl

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Burn Notice

Anime/Manga:

Love Junkies- not for youngin's

My Balls- also not for youngin's

Darker than Black- not for youngin's

Allumage- a one-shot from the writer of Elfen Lied

Saikano- anime is okay, manga is better, not for youngin's

And lastly, RIP Toonami.

-Chet_Jones, Comeback King

Meh, haven't been around much as of late. But I won't give alx the satisfaction of using "I'm going to go lie down now" as yet another epitaph. Kind of hard finding time for internet escapism when school kicks in, what with courses like assembly language and data structures eating up large portions of my brain. For once I don't have a lot to say. So as a happy consolation I'll entertain the whole three of you that will read this with screen shots from the game I'm working on for school:

Answers to questions that I know will be asked:

Did you really make this, and if so are you on your own on this one?

It's a group project, and I've been designated level design guy, so it was me that crafted the map. And for once I actually ended up with a relatively talented group of lads. I only have to threaten swift death on a bi-weekly basis.

Why are you the level designer?

Because as a group we're a little weak in the graphics department and I agreed to fill in for whatever was necessary. I'm new to this sort of thing and as such it's far from perfect. On the plus side it's the digital equivalent of playing in a sandbox and as such is very good for my ego. (I've found myself screaming at my computer "Bow to my will electronic slave" every time something looks just right.)

Why does everything look like it belongs in Tribes?

Because we're using the same game engine. I'll admit it, I paid for a license for the Torque Game Engine. It's what the ****is being taught to and it's well-coded and stable, which is nice because I've had to deal with some weird stuff while dealing with open source engines. Also they included the source code for the engine. The engine is written in C++, the language I'm most familiar with, and as such I am quite capable of altering it to suit my needs. Which as part of the license I'm allowed to do. Though, for now I'll let things more or less be. I'm actually getting graded for what I produce and accordingly I need it to be running smoothly. On the other hand that's why the Computer Gods gave us DVD burners, so we'll see.

What can you tell us about this game?

At present it's some sort of nameless RPG set on an island, (I'm lazy and don't feel like building up an entire planet of material, besides I only have fifteen weeks to work on this). It's your basic sword and sorcery fare. I know, highly original, but a game such as this has some merits. For one we don't have to be as thorough with collision detection as we would in an action game; ala DMC, pallete swaps for enemies and equipment are pretty standard, even among the industry and pretty much anyone can figure it out. Basically RPGs allow for some shortcuts, not that I'm wanting to put out anything half-assed, it's just that realistically (even with Google Groups) getting together and exchanging our work is difficult. It was more important for us to a complete game at the end of the semester rather than a gimmicky one. That and at the onset of this project we sat down and talked about the kinds of games we all like, to get ideas, and RPG was something we all agreed on.

What's up with the blue guy in all the shots?

He's a place-holder for the player controlled character. I like to include him in screenshots because it provides a sense of scale. And while I'm at it, the red lines near the mountain area marks the edge of the world.

What sort of software are you using?

Torque comes with it's own editors so I'm using those for the landscape stuff. But for interior stuff and environmental objects; trees, bushes, severed hands... I'm using Blender, its an open source alternative to 3DS Max. It's a little intimidating at first but with a little experimentation it isn't insurmountable. And besides, it's well documented online. If you're interested at all in 3D graphics you should give it a Google.

...and to think I said that I didn't have a lot to say. Whatever, I'll post more updates when and if I feel like it. Until then, take care my faceless internet phantasms.

-Chet

By done I of course mean with school... this semester anyway. I was swamped the whole time, especially the last month. Though a fair amount of it was self inflicted. I opted out of a few of my semester finals, choosing to do projects instead. In my opinion it was the better choice. In case you didn't know, I'm a computer science major, *cough* programmer *cough*. Anyway, projects are the better option because the only real way to learn this stuff is to use it. That and the compliler will find most of your errors, and fortunately mine are mostly syntax.

Play with it, crash your computer a few times, and scream at the compiler for not compiling because you're too stupid to notice that you confused the insertion operator with the extraction operator and the compiler didn't explicitly tell you that was what's wrong. Ah, such is the life of a novice programmer. But I think I've finally found my niche/happy place. For anal retentive, egomaniacal, nerd-boys such as myself it's good stuff.

Also something... unpleasant happend this semester. I actually had a professor up and disappear a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving (Nov. 22 for non-Americans). Gone, no warning, only rumors left in his wake. He was a pretty good guy too. Anyway, they brought in a new guy. This "new" professor was one of those old-school programmer types, we're talking FORTRAN. Spent the whole time talking about literals vs. variables, strings vs. character arrays, and logical vs. bitwise operators. His eyes... so cold, his voice was like white noise, and he smelled of death... that and he was one of those guys who turned out the lights and used Power Point in his lectures. I hate teachers like that. So dull. That wasn't even the worst of it. The new guy had thrown out all the work we had done previously and gave us like a million projects to do. Basically the class went from easy A to tedious in no time flat. I've come to despise Javascript

School wasn't all bad however. Of interest to the majority of you I'm considering the Video Game option of my degree. Basically a Comp/Sci degree with a minor in graphic arts. But it looks hella fun. I'll have to shell out $180 for a liscense to the game engine we're using, it sounds like a lot, but I honestly spent more on my books for calculus.

Things seem to have been busy around here as well. The CGU is still active and what's this!?! Alx is leaving the Soldiers of Wii! Scandalous. I'd throw my name in the hat for leadership save for three personal caveats: I'm busy, haven't posted there for ages, and I don't own a Wii. Anyway, expect to see more of me until the next semester begins.