Fixed the Hitch in My Giddyup
20.Aug.08
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Earlier today I decided it was time to re-subscribe to my old weakness, EverQuest, once again. I have upgraded my system since my last time around and was pretty excited to see how this new rig would fair against the stress that EQ can bring to bear.
Here’s the current Vista Experience thingy (click for full size):
It has gone up a bit since the first time I ran it due to a recent upgrade to the GeForce 8600GS that a co-worker gifted me. That little upgrade raised the graphics score from a 4.3 to 4.9 and Gaming Graphics from a 4.8 to a 5.3.
It didn’t take long to patch and then I eagerly logged into experience EQ with the best PC I’ve had in the (omg) eight years that I’ve been playing.
Boy was I disappointed.
I had this horrible “lurch” or pause about every 5 seconds. Also, about every other mouse-click was ignored. I was seriously about ready to format and switch to XP but I decided to be a bit more methodical first…
After each change, I’d start up EQ and test.
- Current video drivers? Check.
- Turn off Aero. No diff.
- Configure Antivirus to not do real-time scanning on the EQ directories. No change
- Turn off Windows Sidebar. Nope.
I already had browsers and such shut down, but then I happened to glance at the tray and noticed my old/new pal Digsby running. “Oh ho!” thinks I as I kill Digsby and restart EQ.
Yup. That was it. Now she runs like buttah.
I’m not sure what the issue is as Digsby doesn’t seem to burn excess CPU cycles. But there’s definitely a conflict of some sort. Easily fixed though – I just need to remember to exit it before playing. Oh, and I must be fair and point out that my Digsby version is a beta.
As for Everquest? Boy, I dunno… I got pretty gung-ho into it this past Spring and spent days buying and selling gear in the bazaar to raise many hundreds of thousands of plats. I then spent those many hundreds of thousands of plats on buying the latest/greatest gear for my characters.
Well, that gear is now poopie and it looks like I can replace it with the latest buyable gear for under a hundred K. *sigh* The folks who call it “Ever-treadmill” might have the right idea. 
Diablo III
28.Jun.08
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Words fail me as I try to phrase how excited I am to see the Diablo III page up at Blizzard. I loved the original Diablo and enjoyed Diablo II. To see D3 coming just makes me downright giddy.
Toying with Abandonware
15.Jun.08
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I spent some time this morning dabbling with some old computer games – stuff from the 80’s and 90’s that is now classified as “abandonware.” The neat thing about abandonware is that, if you can find it, it’s pretty much free.
The downside to abandonware is that technology has changed a lot over the last 20 (or more) years so getting some of these to run can be a challenge.
Here are two useful links if you fondly remember games from the “olden days” like I do:
- Abandonia.com – I just found this site this weekend and it triggered some new game downloading.
- DOSBox – it makes playing the old games so much easier.
Now if I could just remember more of the games I spent so much time with way back then… here’s what I got so far:
- Eight Ball Deluxe – My favorite pinball machine both at the bar and on the PC.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – I was so hooked on this game when it first came out. I caught just a bit of the movie on TV the other day and that triggered my searching for the game.
- Supaplex – a quirky puzzle/strategy game that used to keep me entertained for hours at a time.
- The Incredible Machine – Speaking of quirky puzzle games, this one is a great way to keep the mind nimble in a Rube Goldberg-esque sort of way.
- Battle Chess – I’m not sure how it will hold up (haven’t played it yet) but I fondly recall all the funny animations and decent chess play.
- Ringworld — Revenge of the Patriarch and Return to Ringworld — As a huge Larry Niven fan, I was so excited to find these games back in the 90’s. I can’t recall if I ever finished either of ‘em though… I lent them to someone with my early edition copy of Ringworld never to be seen again. *sigh*
- Wing Commander — Everyone I knew had this game. Don’t recall anyone finishing it… I might give it another go though.
I’d love to find the old D&D “gold box” games. Who published those? SSI? I guess they’re not considered abandoned yet (?). I’d also love to find the Leisure Suit Larry series some day, those were pretty fun. What else am I missing? What are some of the classic computer games from days gone by?
Everquest Opens the Doors
17.Apr.08
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Long time readers will recall that I’m rather fickle with my gaming. I tend to cycle through World of Warcraft, Everquest 1 and Everquest 2. I like all three and I have friends playing all three — the trick is just finding the time and staying entertained. I tend to be gung-ho for a month or so and then start the cycle of “time to move on”.
Anyways, the latest is Everquest (the original). Some of my old EQ friends and I all started back a month or so ago and have been having quite a lot of fun lately. So much fun that I find myself logging in almost every night and staying up way too late 
Looks like I last tried EQ almost two years ago. I reckon I was due. Boy, things have changed a lot — especially gear. I can buy gear in the bazaar for a few thousand K that is far superior to stuff we used to raid for way back in the day.
Today is patch day. So, even though I have the morning off from work, no EQ for me. However, if you ever played EQ in the past, you might find this bit of the patch message interesting:
Many keyed zones from the Ruins of Kunark, Scars of Velious, Shadows of Luclin, Planes of Power, Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Depths of Darkhollow, and Prophecy of Ro have had their key/flag requirements modified. All players that have obtained the key/flag will still be allowed entry into the zones, as will players that have met minimum level requirements for the zones. The zones and minimum level requirements are as follows:
Holy cow! That’s huge. Way back in the olden days, when I was a little raider and Time was the zone to get to I was just one flag away. But I never quite managed to get that final flag. Now I can finally see Time!
Here’s the rest of the scoop:
- Required Level 46 -
The Howling Stones
Old Sebilis
Skyshrine to Cobalt Scar- Required Level 55 -
Sleeper’s Tomb
Veeshan’s Peak
Vex Thal
Locked areas of the Temple of Ssraeshza- Required level 57 -
Bastion of Thunder
Halls of Honor
The Temple of Marr
Tower of Solusek Ro
Drunder, The Fortress of Zek- Required Level 60 -
Plane of Water
Plane of Air
Plane of Fire
Plane of Earth
Ikkinz
Uqua
Yxtta
Kodtaz- Required Level 62 -
Plane of Time
Inktuta
Qvic- Required Level 65 -
Txevu
Tacvi- Required Level 68 -
Anquish- Required Level 70 -
Dreadspire
Demiplane of Blood- Required Level 72 -
Theater of Blood
Deathknell
Nifty. I’ve been wanting to do alt-flagging quests with some of the guildies to get them into some of those zone with me to farm and grind experience. As of today, that won’t be necessary. Plane of Earth grind, anyone? 
New (AGP) Video Card
11.Dec.07
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I bought a new video card last week. An AGP video card. For those wondering why I mention AGP: that’s a lot like buying a new VCR for the home entertainment system. AGP is the old standard, largely replaced by PCI-E. However, I’m not ready (nor have the need) to build a new PC quite yet… so there you go. I’m still running old school.
It has been a long time since I last bought a brand new video card! Many years, actually. I think the last one I bought new was a GeForce 4200ti. Those things were stout little cards, weren’t they? I used a series of those for most of this decade, in fact.
The card that replaced it was an ATI 9600 (pro or XT? can’t recall now) card that some EverQuest friends had outgrown and donated. I got a lot of mileage out of it until the next donation card came my way a few years later– a GeForce 6800 GT. That one was strong and well above what I’d consider paying for a card, but flawed. As mentioned in several posts from last year, it had dire heating issues. Sure, I’d been warned by the prior owners, but most of the time it worked fine — I wasn’t gaming much anymore.
I’m gaming again now, though (still having fun with EverQuest 2). The 6800 now constantly over-heats. The loaner FX 5200 sucked, so I sucked it up and bought a new card. For just under $100 (shipped) I now have a GeForce 7600 GS.
I like it. It doesn’t heat up the office like the 6800 did, so that’s a big plus right off the bat. I wish I could’ve compared it a bit to the 6800, but for my purposes it seems pretty similar.
At first I wasn’t overly excited about some of the graphic quality in game though. Tonight it finally hit me that I couldn’t remember the last time I updated video drivers! Oops. The last 3 cards have all been GeForce flavors, so I wasn’t really worrying about that and was just swapping the hardware around.
After the driver upgrade, I was poking around in the NVIDIA control panel and found that it seems to have some presets for a bunch of games, including EQ2. Not sure if it is those presets or just the much newer drivers, but things are much better in game — smoother and I could crank out the distance plane a bit more.
So yeah, I kinda feel like I just bought a new 8-track player for the car stereo… but I don’t care — I can play!
