Funny War Rock Promotional Video

Do you crave for action?



So reads the sign in this funny video clip. Lol! I forgot about this one until I dug it up from my old site.

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How to Disable Auto Updates in AVG Free

A friend of mine asked me how to disable the auto updater of AVG Free. It's pretty simple; all you have to do is go to the AVG control panel, find "Scheduler" (self-explanatory; it paints itself with a bullseye with a note that says "Check here! Check here!" hehe!) and go to "Scheduled Tasks". There you will find the entries that you need to fiddle with. Click on them and uncheck the boxes that have anything to do with "Automatic Updates".

Why do this? Well it's pretty annoying when you some resource-intensive activity (games, Photoshop, CADs, etc) and your PC suddenly decides to update --- and then goes turtle. Better to manually update. ;)

There are lots of forums and sites that urge you to do this but I first learned this from Tweakguides.com.

AVG free is one the best freeware I have ever stumbled on. It's recommended by numerous PC users and even by two books.

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Best Free Anti-virus Anti-spyware I Use

From my other blog, dated 110507

They can't set up us the bomb

Here's a list of anti-malware products I use: (thanks to Speedguide.net for the information; I first learned of Spyware Blaster from them)

Avast! 4 Home Edition

A-Squared Free

Spybot Search and Destroy

Spyware Blaster

The last is pre-emptive software; it doesn't clean spyware, it prevents them from infecting your PC. If it's your first time using them, I suggest you update the above, scan consecutively with all four, and then install the last one.

As with nearly all software (if not all) I suggest you disable their automatic updates and do updates manually every two days or every week. (I check for updates for AVG and A-squared everyday, Spyware Blaster every three weeks, the rest every week.) Automatic updates slow down your computer.

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War Rock April Goodies: Promos, and a New PX Item

A whole cache of goodies for the end of the month of April

There's a new PX item that increases your Stamina Points by 10%. Hmm, useful but I'd prioritize guns and other more useful PX items than this one.

What the---?! Knives?! A promo with knives? What about when the promo ends? These are going to become premium items too methinks. Not so useful for me; I so rarely find opportunities to use my fists --- at the end of the day, guns and vehicles win deathmatches, not melee weapons.

Knife, its like a knife... (Bleeargh! '80s song!)

Dundee should be envious of this!

Last but not the least:

A sale! Yay!

That's right, trooper, everything must go:

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ISP Not Cooperating with my Romp Through War Rock Maps

Grrrrrr!


And "grrrrr!" is indeed fitting for this situation in more ways than one. Well only two, not three. Or five. Or a hundred. Rambling. Anyway, as I was saying, no dice these past few days running and stalking around War Rock maps carrying War Rock premium weapons as my ISP is in lousy mode again. Tsk.

I browsed through YouTube and found this REALLY funny collection of animal clips that was uploaded by someone named "NsXDeath." Enjoy!

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Halo (the First-Person Shooter) Silent Cartographer Level Speed Run

...in 3 minutes 54 seconds.



I saw this speed run on Halo's Silent Cartographer level. It's amazing. It's a fairly huge, convoluted level yet this guy, Geyuri, made it in under four minutes! This also an opportunity for some of my friends who have never seen Halo, a futuristic first-person shooter game for the PC, in action before (Albeit this video shows little firefights as it's a speed run --- the player took every measure to avoid protracted gun battles.).

Beep! Beep!

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Where to Place Map Files to View Warcraft III: Frozen Throne Replays

NGL One: Source for Professional Warcraft III Maps


It just shows how new I am to this whole competitive Warcraft III: Frozen Throne scene. (Not that I'm planning to being one of the best lol; I have a day job AND a family --- two factors not conducive for practicing everyday. For the record, it's been two weeks since I last Mana Burned someone. Sad.) I tried watching a Moon replay and the game won't start complaining about some missing maps. I asked about in the forums and a member named Worpex directed me to the NGL One download page. (Thanks man!)

It's a site about professional gaming. Interesting. I'll browse around when I have the time...

Here's the page where you can get the WC3 Map Pack Season 2008.

Here's an error message one may see if he doesn't have the map necessary for viewing replays.

Take note of what the error message says. Once you have downloaded the necessary map, put it in the location stated by the message. The above says Maps > Download so I put the map (in this case it's "NGL-S08-TS.w3x") in the download folder. However, some replays strangely look for their maps in unusual locations. In the picture above, I had to create the path "Maps > Download > NGL > NGL > NGL > SEASON08" as the game was looking for maps in that location.

I finally got the replay to run. I notice immediately that the loading page had been altered. Soccer and Reign --- two names I frequently see in good replays.

A personalized banner! Cool. How do you make one?

It's amazing watching these pros play. Here, the Night Elf player was outnumbered but he beat back his Undead opponent in this early game skirmish.

>>>See more Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne resources (where to place NGL One professional map files to view Warcraft III: Frozen Throne replays, micromanagement resources, gameplay videos, links to important strategy articles, etc) HERE. (Scroll down to see more.)

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First Time in a 50-foot Swimming Pool...

... in over 5 years.


And then I swam --- I swam, AT THE VERY LEAST, seven laps. That's 350 feet, NOT counting the underwater short bursts I did. (I miss snorkeling in reefs hehe!) Also I didn't count the laps I didn't finish. All in all, I am dead sure I swam more than 500 last Saturday in our company's sportsfest.

(The dude in charge of the pool said 50 meters but I just thought about it and WTH?! I am sure it's much shorter than 50 meters!!)

Now I feel like I've been through a major campaign involving Mad Doks, Mek Boyz, and several Warbosses with rokkit launchas.

I. am. in. pain.

But the feeling's good; I feel like a million bucks. All crumpled, but a million bucks nevertheless.

"I feel the warp overtaking me... it is a good pain!" --- common quote; Chaos infantry; the video game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

I even feel like I can take on Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka myself HAHA!

There will be a post tomorrow ---- this time about Warcraft Pro map packs. Meanwhile enjoy these quotes from the video game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War --- brings back a lot of good ol' memories from the early months of the company.

If you think I am primarily a Warcraft III: Frozen Throne nut, you are wrong. I like this game even more. It. Rocks. No one here supplies the blasted game though. Tsk. Here's a screenshot I took back in the days when Netrix cafe was still alive. I got amused by the fragile hit-and-run guys with their "We cannot fail, we are the last of our kind" thing.

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An Article on How to Build a $500 Budget Gaming PC

Pleased.


I got tickled with a Tomshardware article about how to build a sub-$500 gaming personal computer. It has some of the components I mentioned in my "Budget Gaming PC Build" article, (motherboard and CPU) though there's no dice about a match in the video card department, especially since I made that article for my friends who kept asking me questions about "what's the best gaming desktop PC for us?" These are friends who stubbornly refuse to go beyond the 400-dollar mark, saying that "we're content with 1024 resolution and an average of 50 or so frames per second."

Heh.

They never actually said that but I got the message. No Crysis at stratosphere-high settings. No will to become the next F@t@l1ty. They just want to game without being a hardware geek.

Then there's the mark-up in prices here in my country; everybody has got to make a living so unless prices are going to drop drastically within the month, no all-shiny, drool-over-it GeForce 8800GS is going to find its way in my article at the moment.

Here's the link:

Tomshardware.com - $500 Gaming PC: Day 1, Component Selection

Here's the continuation:

Tomshardware.com - $500 Gaming PC: Day 2, Testing and Analysis

And to think I made my article last February 17.

Really pleased indeed.

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Warhammer 40K Space Marine Dreadnought

Thirteen seconds of pure awe.


After chuckling over some amusing --- and cool! --- Warhammer 40,000 stop-animation video clips in YouTube, I browsed the site for more of them and came across a 13-second video showing the animation and 3D modeling skills of a certain Grayson Chalmers. It shows a Terran Space Marine Dreadnought firing its weapons systems. It's impressive to watch.

Protoss Dragoons eat your hearts out!

More images of the dreadnought can be found here.

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

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Men of Valor

It was a Sunday and it was Tet and it was raining.



Last Sunday I was hyped up to play the last eight hours or so of my leased equipment in War Rock Philippines.

Unfortunately, it rained like it was June.

Imagine my chagrin when I first laid anti-personnel mines and immediately noticed it took about three seconds for the animation to show up on screen! Sighing, I rounded a corner, saw a fellow engineer and filled his chest with 5.56s. Problem is, he was still up --- and then 5 --- FIVE!!! --- seconds later, his death registered on the screen as text. The lag was so great I never did see his body crumple to the ground as I was running away before I learned of his death.

And then things got ugly for me. I kept dying. First-person shooter hell I tell you. Doomed.

"@#%$ wifi!"I cursed. I exited from the game, dug up one of my old games and inserted its CD in my PC.

Men of Valor is a game set in the Vietnam War. As with any other first-person shooter PC game, it does have its pros and cons. To summarize:

Pros:

• This game offers REALLY intense gameplay! Uphill combat, fighting from foxholes, and river ambushes offer nearly unparalleled firefights.
  
• Combat chatter. I know it has the phrase emblazoned all over its box but the gimmick really immerses you in the game. Viet Cong soldiers also sound like Viet Cong soldiers (even though I do not know what they mean haha!)
  
• Jungle fighting!
  
• Varied gameplay --- gun down Charlie from choppers, crawl in tunnels, man emplacements, and fight in foxholes.
  
• Good effects. Concussion blur, fire, explosions, debris --- the game can run all these decently.
  
• Squad-based combat. You'll rarely fight alone.
  
• Old weapons! If you like realistic, decades-old rifles, you'll dig this.
  

Cons:

• Some combat chatter are reused time and again.
• Some audio effects are not so convincing. The ingame M16 doesn't have the same sound as the real M16 I fired years back.
• In long-range firefights, I noticed some VC reinforcements make a beeline for locations where other Charlies that preceded them got shot down. (They WILL engage and gun you down if you get in the way however.)
  
• This is the most annoying --- you have to hear "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Shepard" everytime you die. You have to push ALT to skip the letter and the succeeding screen to go back to the game each time you die. Either I missed it, or there is no mention of how to do quick loads in the instruction manual. Major bummer.
• Relatively speaking, the game is heavy on the PC resources; I can run Doom 3 with higher settings than this one. I suppose it must be the sheer amount of vegetation.
  
• Team AI --- you'll rarely fight alone that's true, but man, the "options" in Gradius fire way faster than these guys. They don't get stuck but they're slow on the trigger and their detection's a bit shabby. Nothing serious though but annoying in protracted firefights nevertheless.
  
• Old weapons! If you don't like realistic, decades-old rifles, you'll dig a grave for this.

Well, what do you know?! It's alive! I went online for a bit and found no less than six players duking it out! I quickly quit though; my connection was killing me in War Rock to begin with. (I killed two but I don't know what's with that "34" --- even if there's no respawn invincibility, getting killed 34 times in one minute nineteen seconds is well nigh impossible in a medium-sized map with nooks and crannies.)

Quiet night. Too quiet.

This swamp's tranquility is shattered by mortar rounds. I find it odd my weapon didn't blur. Programmer oversight?

Defending a hill from a Viet Cong attack. This reminds me about that movie about Firebase Gloria.

The water effects are none too shabby. The game is not as optimized as I would have liked it though; I had to lower several eye candies before this game could run decently for me.

Start of the Tet offensive. Here US marines scramble to battle stations as a full-fledged NVA assault begins. Fun.

City fighting the morning after the Tet offensive.

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Nexuiz 2.4 Screenshots

Bloom, Anistotropic Filtering, HDR, Bump Mapping, Quake first-person shooter action, the whole nine yards...


... for free.

I gave Nexuiz 2.4 a go and played with it a bit offline. I turned on bloom and HDR as I'm really curious what the devs in Alientrap have come up with their latest version of their freeware first-person shooter. Even ignoring the fact that this game is freeware, this game definitely does not disappoint:

Two bots duking it out. Notice the blood and gore spatters on the ground.

Notice the bump mapping on the grenade launcher.

Frenetic first-person shooter gameplay is the rule of the day. A bot takes a plasma hit and splash damage from rocket fire and literally disintegrates.

This is one of my favorite shots. It shows a grenade arcing towards a target bathed in the light from plasma fire.

This, catching a plasma bolt full on, this... this is messy.


Another picture with stark contrasts.

An AI adversary misses while a health power-up respawns behind it. I'm holding the Wand of Shotgun Pellets as I jokingly call it. The weapon looks awesome when viewed from the front though.

Gotta love HDR. Too bad it puts me at a disadvantage when playing in multiplayer.


Yep, in multiplayer, you need all the frames you can get. This could happen to you.

You can download Nexuiz 2.4 HERE though 2.4.1 is fast coming up.




Kudos to my wife for taking the screenshots using FRAPS. Thanks for putting up with the Ethan McManus and the Tycho Erasmus Brahe in me. (Grin. Grin.) I am a lucky man.

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Fallout 3 Preview

Do I need to explain what Fallout is? No. It's your divine responsibility as a gamer to know if you do not.

Here's Gamespot's first impressions of the second sequel to the series.

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New Map and Weapon!

Well the jet's there but the governor is strangely missing...

No, it won't fly, the Governator has the keys.


The TAR 21 >> Accuracy: 40. Recoil 81. Tsk. It's another CQC weapon. One mean looking badass though.

A CQC weapon for a CQC map. Fitting. However, here's a caveat: with a recoil of 81, good luck using it in large maps. Pumps out 5.56x45mm NATO rounds faster than anything though. Paaain. Ful.

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Tainted Sun's List of Articles Made by the Staff of WCReplays

2UU Enchantment. 2UU: Draw a card.



Here's a thread in the WCReplays forums entitled "WCR Staff Articles" made by the writer/WC3 player Tainted Sun. It contains links to nearly, if not all articles made by the pros and staff of WCReplays.

Never underestimate the power of knowledge. Dig in!

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Nexuiz 2.4.1 Soon to be Released

One of the developers of the freeware downloadable game Nexuiz has told me that v2.4.1 is in the works and will likely be released within this week or the next.

Nexuiz is a FREE online first-person shooter that offers Quake III action with expansive maps. See my article about it and Alien Arena 2008, another freeware game.

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Believe it or Not

Ironic


I now have a video card but still have not played even one complete game of War Rock. That will be remedied this Sunday. Newbies, prepare for hell. Pros, you will be presented with a walking bull's eye.

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Rickrolled.

Been had.

I just belatedly realized it but I have just been had. I got Rickrolled. And I'm not the only one. Here's AceDotCom's experience:

Seen it? Got it? Good. Now watch this video by Linguica:

The BFG owned hard.

And there's going to be a company-wide sportsfest this Saturday. I chatted with my supervisor, said: "Li, can I just jog? Cos I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about badminton, basketball and volleyball. If I join those events, my dreams of becoming a stand-up comic will instantaneously be granted."

Shazbot persuasion skill: 0

Image from ICanHasCheezBurger.com

Put me in a reef with water depths up to 10-20 feet with only a snorkel and I'd be happy. In sports, swimming is all I've ever been interested in. In fact, one of my wildest dreams is to get coiled by a giant moray eel, squeeze it to death, and get to brag about the inevitable scars that would be engraved on my forearms and legs. For several summers I've been deliberately reef snorkeling alone. No dice though. Fishermen ate them all, including those cute, tiny lobster-like things that scatter from their holes when you swim by. Tsk. As it is I am ---

Doomed. I am doomed. My only consolation is that Soren, the Erotic Gretchin is too.

Speaking of RTS's, here's my close brush with death in a matchup against Spirit_moon in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne.

Enjoy.

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How to Install an AGP Palit Nvidia "7300GT Super" DDR2 512Mb 128-bit Graphics Card

Ensuring that others won't suffer the same perplexity that I went through


It's either the manual got lost in shipping or Palit really didn't include an instruction manual on how to install their video card. A paltry thing for veteran PC builders, a Phyrexian Colossus for novice PC owners stuck with wires in the middle of the night. Checking Palit's website is futile; the 7300GT Super isn't listed there.

See my article entitled "Reunion." It contains an illustration on how to install the videocard. Thanks goes to DASQ of Tech PC.

I hope this proves useful.

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Reunion

These are the faces I wanted to see for a loooooong time:

Yeah baby! Darryl's back!

My 7300 GT 512Mb just arrived. I'm back in the game.

Definitely. Back in the game. Yes. Honey, bring out that P90.

And well shyeeeet, as if on cue, Amped brought out presents for me! Yep, that's right freeware fans! That's bloom alright. Some of the shaders in War Rock have already been implemented. I've been gone a few weeks and look what happened to the house.

Another bonus leapt out at my face as I unpacked the card in the dead of the night too: the thing didn't come with an installation manual! I thought the thing didn't require external power and there I was standing stupefied over what I found: mismatching connectors!

A newbie challenge fit for a PC newbie!

The card has a black rectangle in its upper right corner and a thingamajig that was bundled with it that looks similar to THIS. What mystified me was the mismatching pins; my PSU has 4-female pin molex connectors and the thingamajig has only two, THREE-male pin connectors. In contrast, my old card, a 6600GT, came with a 4-male pin connector on its right edge ---- it was a simple matter to connect one of the 4-female pin connectors from the PSU to it as per the instructions on its box.

It's frightening what a man crazed with two weeks of FPS withdrawal can do. I researched till dawn.

I found a YouTube video about a similar card with superior DDR3 VRAM and half of the memory, but to my wife's impish delight the said video didn't even go into detailing how to install the darn thing. Finally, I turned to the Tech PC forums and explained my predicament --- it was my first time handling a video card with this kind of connections and I was at a total loss on what to do.

A veteran member named DASQ finally told me that it's okay to plug the 3-male pin connector that came with my video card into the 4-female pin molex connector of the PSU, which I did.

Works.

Thanks goes out to the helpful people of Tech PC, especially Lone Wolf, Hux, and DASQ, who have helped me several times already.

And again, hugs to these people:

Man, integrated graphics don't show pictures of them. They ARE long-lost relatives.

Now what am I doing with this MP5? HONEEEEEY....

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