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!
More on the EQ II Trial
27.Nov.07
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A long holiday weekend followed by two vacation days find me still experimenting with EverQuest II. In fact, I’m starting to feel a bit hooked. Some random thoughts and impressions follow.
I’m pleasantly surprised at how much fun I’m having dinking around with harvesting and Trade Skills. I’m only a level 12 trade-skiller, but I can already make some useful stuff. For instance, making my spell upgrades has also helped me pay more attention to the spells that I currently have. I think I’m finally getting the hang of which ones to use.
The quests are still enjoyable. I like that I can pop on for 20 or 40 minutes and actually accomplish something before logging off.
Playing on a server where I don’t know anyone is interesting. No handouts. No help. I think I’m doing ok though and I’ve met a handful of nice folks. For the kind of monsters and quests that I’m facing, the gear that I’ve found or made seems to work just fine. (that’s probably not helping me in PVP though… more on that below)
Most of what I’ve done has been solo (by choice). I did have to ask for help on one quest though, I just didn’t have the gear and skills to pull it off alone. A nice druid type came along to keep me healed and helped make it a breeze to finish. He must’ve peeked at my gear as he offered me a couple of armor upgrades before we left… I’m not too proud — I took ‘em! Pity schmitty.
My server, Venekor, is a role-playing and PVP (player vs. player) server. I’ve seen just a bit of role-play and have now had about a dozen PVP encounters– most went poorly… I tend to feel like I am starring in a 70’s prison movie by the time they’re done. I think the back of my Sarnak has a “Gank Me” bumper sticker… After some encounters I might want to get upset but hey, I signed up for PVP. Can’t cry about it!
Grouping up to go hunting for “Q’s” (the goodies from Qeynos) is an interesting way to pass time though.
By watching some of the chat channels, I can see that PVP will get much more interesting as I level up and learn how to play my character better. Frankly, I don’t have a clue how best to be a PVP’ing Shadowknight. But I will… It all seems to start with the element of surprise. In most cases, I am taking damage before I have even seen the guy(s) I’m allegedly fighting. Getting better gear will probably help too.
EverQuest 2 punishes the PC. My desktop’s GeForce 6800 GT almost instantly overheats (an ongoing issue for this particular card). In fact, I’ve had to pull it and retire it. All I have for a spare is a GeForce FX 5200. It ain’t pretty… pretty ugly, really. When not overheating, the 6800 GT was doing a great job. Bummer.
Because of that, I’ve been spoiled by playing on my laptop at 1600 x 1200 (GeForce 7900 GS) and darn near max on most of the pretties. The 5200 can’t even begin to approach that. I have to disable darned near everything (aka “Extreme Performance” mode) and it still chugs. I’m not ready to build a new PC, but I’d like to use my desktop for gaming (better ergonomics) so I guess I have one last AGP video card to buy… I might try and go cheap with a 7600 GS.
If curious, you can check out Pliska; my main character. The info on the profile seems to lag behind a day or so, but you’ll get an idea of what I’m up to.
This little badge is amusing as well. Hopefully my one win in PVP will show up eventually…
Checking Out EverQuest II (Again)
21.Nov.07
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Somewhere along the way, my name was added to the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) distribution list for press releases. I get ‘em. I look at ‘em. But I rarely do anything about them.
Earlier this month, however, I received one announcing the latest expansions for both the original EverQuest and EverQuest II. (I should mention that I was an EQ addict for several years…) The EQ 2 expansion is titled “Rise of Kunark” and that caught my attention right away. The chance to play a Sarnak? The addition of the Kunark area zones to the game? Sign me up!
I contacted SOE and they sent me a reviewer’s kit — All expansions and software for both EQ and EQ 2 and 30 day license for each. Sweet! (are you curious too? there’s a 14 day free trial offer…)
I had played EQ 2 shortly after it was released. At that point I found it fun, but perhaps a bit… tedious. Lots of details to keep track of and it seemed like I was spending an awfully large amount of time “researching” stuff outside of the game. I lasted a month or two but ultimately moved on to World of Warcraft (which I can only do in one or two month increments…).
Since I left, it seems like a lot has changed.
Game play, in general, now seems a lot like WoW (and that’s not a bad thing). I don’t get a lot of time to sit and game, so I like that I can pop on, run a few quests and log off 30 minutes later and feel like I accomplished something.
The Sarnak newbie zone in Timorous Deep is quite fun — so far, at any rate. I’m only level 8 so I haven’t seen a whole lot of territory yet. But the quests make sense and aren’t all of the “go kill 7 bats” type so there’s some variety as well. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of the other Kunark zones if I can level up a bit. I always liked the Kunark era stuff in the first EQ.
I’m on a low population PVP and RP (players can fight each other and Role Playing) server. I’ve already met some nice and helpful folks, but since I’m still in the newbie areas I haven’t had a chance to see a lot of role playing or PVP’ing.
Here’s the challenge: I only have a 30 day license. Hard to review a new expansion (that includes a raised level cap!) as a newbie! Perhaps I’ll extend that license a bit… as things are right now, I’d sure like to experience more.
Anyone else playing EQ 2? If you wander by the Venekor server, look up Pliska or Gnomarcy and say howdy. If you’re on a different server, drop me a comment — I’ll come visit 
Toyota-Craft
14.Oct.07
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While watching the Patriots Dallas game, I just saw this commercial:
I almost covered my TV in Mountain Dew. Brilliant!
Frets On Fire
09.Jun.07
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I recently discovered Frets on Fire, an open source game very similar to the Guitar Hero games. Guitar Hero is one of those games I’ve never owned, but always looked longingly at — I’m just not ready to commit to a gaming console. But oooh, I want to play!
Frets on Fire appears to solve that problem. I think.
I’ve played for about 15 minutes (even did the tutorial). Need more songs! I downloaded a few from one of the forums but exactly none of them worked (I must be doing something seriously dumb). I then realized that it could import from the Guitar Hero games, so I decided to import songs from the PS2 Guitar Hero 2 DVD that was laying around. (don’t ask)
That led me to realize today was the day to finally install the DVD-ROM drive I’ve had sitting on my desk for over a month.
That helped me discover that I’m out of power leads in my case.
That caused me to rethink drives and fans since I couldn’t find a 5V splitter (I blush).
So, 2 hours later… the drive is in, the import of GH2 songs has begun. Some back of the napkin calculations tell me that this will take over 24 hours! Man, someday I really need to upgrade my computer. This is a bit silly…
I want the songs though, so I’m just going to let it trundle along and work from other computers for a bit. I did take the precaution of aiming some extra desk fans at the case as I’m a bit nervous of over 24 hours of 100% CPU heat.
Any tips on where to get songs or perhaps what I was doing wrong initially?
I’ll conclude with a features list from the About page:
- Unique inverted keyboard gameplay style
- Support for guitar controllers and generic joysticks
- Includes a song editor for making your own tunes
- Compete with others on the World Charts
- Hundreds of songs composed by the community
- Supports importing Guitar Hero™ I and Guitar Hero™ II songs
- Multiplatform; runs on Windows™, Linux®, Mac OS X™ and FreeBSD®
- Open source, full Python source code available
