Of course, you're just being nice about the lag. I should know better than to take on a German in combat. Sheesh. But it was fun. I got some stuff I have to get done here at work. Someone will have to set a time ahead of time in the next few days for a deathmatch. Or teams, although I'm a back-shooter, so be careful having me on your team. LOL.

Am i in the right game?

There is all kinds of people in there.

They had a vote and kicked me at one point.

My name is YORK.

I didn't see any mean spirited conservatives in there.

It is team match play. Right.

I have to eat something right now.

Rico, you're propably not on the right server. its called "maclash 2.0" ... i'm logged in and there is nobody. so i shot a few bullets with bn.

ok i will try again.

Maybe i highlighted the wrong one.

I have a few minutes.

But I have to hit the road soon.

That is great smithz.

I have to run.

We will all have to find a common time.

I have to get used to the keyboard set up.

It sees the command key and alt key as the same key. Need to work on my set up.

I loaded it on my PC at home and it worked fine. I don't have much of a video card on this machine but it was good enough. Pings on the modem were in the very high 400's which was only slightly worse than my DSL connection at work. But it goes through a rather convoluted network. Maybe that's the reason for the slow DSL ping. When first trying to get on, I also was taken to somebody else's server. I don't know what's up with that.

I grabbed the shotgun and played with that for a bit. Love it. But I noticed too that I get some mouse lag on my PC here at home just like I sometimes do in Quake. I *think* this is because of the processor struggling with drawing the complex maps because this happens only on the Quake III maps that are more complex and thus give me a lower FPS. I figure the answer to this is simply a better video card. I do have a fairly lame Radeon 7200 32 MB.

Holy cow, very high 400 ping is close to sudden death.

All the syptoms you had are because UrbanTerror uses the same technology as Q3 (well of course open-sourced, but same tech).

It ran OK on my old G4 (867hmz) but never reached stutter-free perfection.

So, we need another game. :-) Maybe Quake2 ? It needs less cpu-power and gfx.

Darn, I must have been away from the computer when you guys tried this. I went on, and couldn't find the server. When can we try again?

My ping rates are pretty good, seems always below 100. Animation seems smooth, even full screen on the cinema display. I just seem to suck when it comes to jumping, running and being accurate firing my weapon while moving.

OK, Rico, Brother Mighty and I are the same time zone... Brad and Markle are 3 hours earlier than us. Brothers Yabor and smithz would be 5 hours LATER than us, so the maximum time difference is between the West coasters, and our Euro brothership: 8 hours. So noon for Brad would be 8pm for Europe.

Did you do a private server?

quote:

So, we need another game. :-) Maybe Quake2

Nah, nah, nah. I'd still be shot to death by a German if my ping were 0. But the thing about ping is that you constantly find yourself shooting at someone who is actually no longer there. They've moved a bit and you're just shooting at a ghost. And you find yourself dead on the ground from wounds inflicted by phantoms who have long since stomped on your grave and gone on to their next victim. But what the hell. It ain't costin' me a quarter to play. And having the "ping" excuse is always handy for blame-shifting. Yeah, it was the ping that got me, not brother Smithz' machine gun.

i'm a pacifist! :-)

LMAO. Me too, except when it comes to gibbing in video games. Then I'm like Charles Manson.

we could all go at each other with knives!

OK, forgive me while I get this off my chest:

I HATE HATE HATE HATE FUCKING STUPID FUCKING WINDOWS FUCKING VISTA!!!! HATE HATE HATE KILL KILL KILL SON OF A BITCHES! SHIT!

-um, er, OK. Whew.

This was me trying to load Unreal Tournament 2004 on my stupid PC: La la la... insert disk into CD Drive, la la la <nothing> <nothing> WTF MAN??? Then I tried loading ANY CD or DVD into it... <nothing>. My HP has two optical media disc drives, one's a DVD burner, one's a CD-ROM drive. Turns out both were rendered completely unusable by Windows Vista.

I checked the drivers... that was it. Windows couldn't load them. Error frikkin' 19. Some registry bullshit. OK. Delete the drivers, reinstall. It reinstalls the same drivers, tells me those are the latest ones for my hardware... and continues to fucking get the same error, can't load them.

By sheer butt luck I found some really arcane procedure where you have to go in to the registry with regedit, and delete some bullshit branches of some gobbledygook command-line type idiocy. Apparently what it is, is that when you UNINSTALL some software, the operating system commonly forgets to tell itself to remove its thumb from its anus or some dumb shit. And suddenly, your hardware is reduced to a friggin' toaster.

I can't tell you how irritating that is. You follow the procedure for removing software, the way Windows TELLS YOU TO... and it cuts its own nuts off, just from an uninstall. And the troubleshooting is so impossible. There must have been fifty posts I read where people were struggling with the same problem, and all these so-called Windows experts got on there, looked these poor slobs in the virtual face, and proceeded to tell them exactly the wrong stuff to try and fix it. "Download the latest firmware for the device!" No. "The driver might be corrupt, reinstall the Windows driver from the Windows CD/DVD" (that one SLAYED me, as you can't even mount a CD or a DVD... morons).

To fix this, you had to look at something like this garbage: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-
And realize that THAT'S what you had to somehow do to bring your drives back to life.

Meanwhile, after you go to the trouble of editing the Windows Registry, you hear absolutely nothing about whether that tweak is Kosher, whether it's going to impact something else down the road. It works to fix your drives, but absolutely nobody weighs in on whether it's really sanctioned by Microsoft, or a total hackjob.

My favorite thing is the very official looking procedure for fixing this, that turns out to do squat: fixing windows code 19 registry

The other thing I love, is seeing people suffer when they are using an account on their Windows computer that ISN'T an administrator account, where they try to load a registry "hive" file on a shared network resource. Oops. Those people are shit out of luck. Even the tweak I used won't work there.

OK, so here I was, thinking that UT 2004 was completely dead to me (it was because that was the only disc I tried in the drive). I remember trying to reload the game at one point and being frustrated that it wouldn't recognize the CDs. This was in OCTOBER. Holy crap, thank heavens I didn't need my PC for anything with a CD or DVD.

But now, reading our gaming thread, I remembered that I really enjoyed that game... read about people on Vista (I still say "Veesta") who play UT all the time. I figured why not me? Why shouldn't I be able to load and play this game I paid for? So I tried loading every conceivable Windows update, wasted the day poring over all this bullshit bad advice on Windows-geek boards. Finally got the game loaded.

Lo and behold, my thalo character and stats are still there (I had tried uninstalling way back when). I never did finish the single player tournament. And now of course I'm way out of practice.

But I have been playing a couple of head-to-head deathmatches with easier bots, which is fun. It's slowly coming back to me. It's this kind of gaming where a two-button mouse and scroll-wheel actually helps. I think the problem with Urban Terror on the Mac is that I have to take my hands off the mouse to switch weapons and such.

At some point I'd like to try online play with UT again.

Here's one thing I don't get about online play: how do people chat while they play? It doesn't look to me like they stop, pause, take their hands off the keyboard and type pithy comments to each other. Their character is moving and shooting, but somehow they are able to say shit to their opponents or teammates? What's up with that?

Me, I have to hit the "say" key, type something, hit return, then recover my character controls and continue. I'm a really fast typist, but still for me it's two separate things... move the character, or chat. Other guys seem to be able to comment at length after every kill.

quote:

It's slowly coming back to me. It's this kind of gaming where a two-button mouse and scroll-wheel actually helps.

I think hell just dropped several degrees.

Regarding chat, I wonder if people are binding various stock phrase to various keys. Or they're typing them with their toes on a second keyboard.

quote:

I think hell just dropped several degrees.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But only for gaming. That's what a dual-button mouse with a scroll wheel is to me, a game controller. The more game like the thing you're trying to work with, the more you need it. My normal inclination is to keep it simple... I have not--and if I can help it WILL not--ever switch to the "Mighty Mouse" for my day to day work. If I got one, it would be exclusively for playing UT 2004 and Urban Terror.

I had forgotten how much I love the gore chunks flying off in UT... lovely.

That's alright. I actually admire your sense of style…or stubbornness. Whatever it is. One man, one vote, one button, one mouse, one obsession.

And before you say I think too much, I'll already concede the point. One man, one brain, one keyboard, one obsession. But I can't help thinking that I'm like Brother Smithz. I'm a pacifist at heart. So does that mean I've turned down the gore in Quake III? No. It's all the way up. I like the blood spray when you shoot someone. I like that mist of death. I like the fact that when you blow someone up at close range your vision is obscured for a moment. You become vulnerable to being shot by anyone behind that cloud of corpuscles. But I don't kick the dog. I haven't actually killed anyone in anger in decades. And yet what do so many of us like to do for fun? Yes, that's right. We like to play war games and shoot things and see blood splatter. Does this bother me? No. I love it. It's part of our genetic heritage to be a blood thirsty warrior. And being a pixel-thirsty warrior is a nice substitute. But I do note the substitution. I do note that playing hopscotch is not what most of us guys want to do for fun. We're not all playing hopscotch simulators.

Oh my sweet mercy, the visual on the hopscotch simulator had me laughing for five straight minutes. Oh god, that's funny.

Yeah, right, why not have a game where we're tricking out our vinyl Hello Kitty handbags with various accessories? But I bet teenage girls would make it a #1 hit.

I'm totally a pacifist. I hate fighting with my fists. That being said, for some reason in this crazy life, or where I grew up, or being a smartass or whatever... I had to do a ton of it. But it didn't make me LIKE violence except in very narrow spectator-sport type ways (boxing, video games, movies). And my whole gun thing is more about protecting myself from potential violence than me wanting to go out and splash bad guys.

Still, there is something so damn satisfying about these shooters. They get the adrenaline pumping, for sure.

Try this: when you play online, add insult to injury when you kill somebody, and desecrate their fallen corpse. Either with your knife, a grenade, whatnot. Just in those few seconds until they respawn. Even something simple as doing a victory dance. These kids do NOT take kindly to that, and it's actually hysterical some of the reactions you get. First of all, they do it back to you, then some of the comments get really funny. They start taking it really seriously. It's bait-astic fun.

quote:

I had to do a ton of it. But it didn't make me LIKE violence except in very narrow spectator-sport type ways (boxing, video games, movies).

I was giving my "boxing is immoral, but I wouldn't outlaw it" speech the other day to a friend. Somehow the conversation turned to boxing. My point was that boxing was the essence of life. It is life condensed down to the basics without the fluff. There are no back-stabbing smiles between boxers in the ring. The rules and motivations are plain. I hit you. You hit me. In real life we disguise our aggression quite a bit, and it's just as well that we do. But when we get frustrated at some asshole, what's going through our minds sometimes? Yeah, something like "I'd really like to belt that guy." In boxing there is nothing (besides padded gloves and a few rules) between stimulus and response. It's raw.

Funny thing was, I was very surprised that my friend was confused and perplexed by the idea that something could be acknowledged as immoral, but that it still could be legal. I still have so much to learn about human nature. I hadn't run into that before. In fact, as soon as I told this guy that I thought boxing was immoral, he assumed that I thought it should be outlawed. But the two contradictory aspects are common. It's probably immoral for some used car salesman to sell an old lady an over-priced lemon, but in terms of "buyer beware," and with a few caveats, it shouldn't be illegal. That was probably the best part of the movie "Glengarry." It was watching people say anything in order to close a deal. Pure bullshit, but the bullshit works often enough.

quote:

Try this: when you play online, add insult to injury when you kill somebody, and desecrate their fallen corpse. Either with your knife, a grenade, whatnot. Just in those few seconds until they respawn. Even something simple as doing a victory dance. These kids do NOT take kindly to that, and it's actually hysterical some of the reactions you get. First of all, they do it back to you, then some of the comments get really funny. They start taking it really seriously. It's bait-astic fun.

LMAO. I would expect nothing less from the Master Baiter.

I think maybe barenuckle boxing is immoral. There is something way more civilized about boxing compared to other blood sports. It's not a FEW rules, it's a lot of rules. And with those huge padded gloves, nut cups, mouth guards, and at the olympic/amateur level full protective headgear... it's not really the human version of dog-or-cock fights. It's a controlled, ritualistic violence, like pro football. In the NFL there are absolutely vicious collisions, stuff that could kill if not for pads and helmets.

The number of athletes who survive a boxing career into old age are about the same as football or hockey players or Jockeys. There is wear and tear, and occupational hazards, some guys are crippled, yes. But that's pretty much all sports. If one is immoral, they all are. I think they're all flavors of the same thing.

What's that thing? I think it's the yearning in human nature for aggressive physical competition. It's that rutting, head-butting, dominance-showing stuff that gives us the "we're alive" jollies. But with our big brains, we've evolved ways to do most of that vicariously or ritualistically, without really leaving too much permanent damage.

If you've ever been to a live fight in an athletic club, it's very different than the vegas-type fight. It really is about "protect yourself at all times"... not about a street fight. If a fight degenerates INTO a street fight, a brawl... where it loses all sense of rules and protection, it always gets stopped. The referee is crucial. If he sees a fighter take so much unanswered punishment, he knows he's done and calls an end to the competition.

In a dogfight, they let the animals just kill each other. There's no ref. Boxing matches are theoretically stopped WAY before serious injury occurs. There are guys who's job it is to watch fighters for signs of injury, and stop the fight.

quote:

There is something way more civilized about boxing compared to other blood sports. It's not a FEW rules, it's a lot of rules. And with those huge padded gloves, nut cups, mouth guards, and at the olympic/amateur level full protective headgear... it's not really the human version of dog-or-cock fights.

I'll grant you that. The human version would be gladiators in the Coliseum. But the pursuit, purpose, and intent of boxing is to pummel the other's guys brains in. And over the course of a boxer's career, that's often what happens. Violence is primary in boxing, not secondary as it is in, say, basketball.

quote:

It's a controlled, ritualistic violence, like pro football. In the NFL there are absolutely vicious collisions, stuff that could kill if not for pads and helmets.

That’s it. It's controlled, ritualistic violence. That's who we are as a species. This is what we watch for entertainment. It's not all we watch, but it's a big part of it.

quote:

If one is immoral, they all are. I think they're all flavors of the same thing.

Technically speaking, God is immoral for making violence the standard operating procedure for life. This is why I don't ball up my fists, turn purple in the face, and curse those cruel and inhumane boxers for otherwise spoiling a perfect world. No, they are the world. They are a deep representation of it. We remember that basic fact from our days on the playground where no teacher or authority but your fists could save you from the bully. The less imaginative would probably think this is all a tract for violence. No. I'm just acknowledging what is. I'm actually fine that civilization has, more or less, put the extreme violence of our earlier days behind us. Thank god it is mostly ritualized.

quote:

What's that thing? I think it's the yearning in human nature for aggressive physical competition. It's that rutting, head-butting, dominance-showing stuff that gives us the "we're alive" jollies. But with our big brains, we've evolved ways to do most of that vicariously or ritualistically, without really leaving too much permanent damage.

I love watching those movies (particularly WWI movies) were the men just can't wait to get out there and face Jerry, or vice versa. There's no escaping to Canada. Everyone (or at least it is so portrayed in the movies) is hugely enthusiastic to go kill their fellow man. And then they get there and it just becomes a grind. The cold reality sets in. But, yes, I do think that perhaps nothing makes one feel more alive than the hunt…or the battle, or at least the prospect for battle. And I think we get some of that thrill vicariously from watching relatively violent sports....or playing video games.