Spacehamster’s Blog

It’s really satisfying being able to totally upgrade your own PC - it’s great no longer being at the mercy of your local techie when it comes to upgrading your CPU or your motherboard. One of the greatest pleasures is revisiting old games and running them at high-quality without suffering any slowdowns in framerates. A really good example of that is the first Lord of the Rings RTS Battle for Middle Earth.

This game could not play at all on my old PC, even on low-low-low detail. The game is not optimised for low-spec PC’s, which probably explains why the game sank without trace a few months after its release. It’s a bit late, but I can now play the game on ultra-high detail. Essentially the game is a simplified version of Warcraft 3 - you have your creeps, your heroes that can level up, etc… What really sells this game (and where most of the effort has obviously gone) are in the unit animations. Watching your troops celebrate a victory, or quivering in fear when faced by a Nazgul, adds an illusion of reality to gameplay. Nevertheless, it’s still a Warcraft clone.

The other game I’m playing at the moment is FEAR, voted Best Action Game of 2005 by quite a few gaming magazines. After playing the first few levels, I wouldn’t go quite that far. The graphics are pretty impressive - going for realism instead of shiny high particle effects. The level design thus far is pretty average - just lots of grey corridors and shiny piping. But what really sells this game (to me) are the AI of the enemies, as well as the cinematic sequences. There’s one truly awesome moment involving a wall of flame that has to be experienced to be believed. In the end, the shiny presentation manage to paper over some average level design and an over-hyped graphic engine. But hey, it’s fun and that’s what counts.

I’m definitely going to finish Far Cry after I have a go at FEAR. I can’t wait to see the tropical island on my PCI-Express videocard!

After the frustration with Call of Duty 2, it’s an absolute pleasure to be able to return to the gaming masterpiece that is - Civilization 4. What a brilliant game this is. I didn’t think Rome: Total War could be topped, but Firaxis has accomplished a miracle and done just that.

And now the fans have taken it to another level with Sevo’s Fusion Mod. It’s a combination of the best modifications from the Civ Fanatics website, and adds some very impressive improvements to the game that even Firaxis didn’t think of. It is, quite literally, an unofficial expansion pack.

Here’s the complete list -

Lost Wonders — 8 new wonders, 3 national wonders, 3 new buildings, and a few changes to existing buildings.

Lost Units — (Partially): Aegis cruiser, trebuchet, bazooka, strike fighter, biplane, privateers, and more. Not included from this mod are the 7 unique religious units (saving space for religious mods) and the commando unit (who was a bit overpowered).

Domestic Advisor and Foreign Advisor Updates — Initially inspired by Requies and taken farther by SupremeOverlord and 12Monkeys, these screens look great.

Massively expanded unit upgrades courtesy of Zuul. A nice job of balancing the new upgrades with existing options and overall an excellent flavorful addition to the game.

UN Mod — The United Nations now allows votes on ANY civic, not just the bottom five. Make Despotism your world civic!

Actual Quotes — Willowmound has compiled authentic (or as near as possible) quotations for the diplomacy text of almost all of the leaders.

Ancient Era Music — The earliest part of the game is no longer silent! Version 2.0 beta has a much expanded selection.

Industrial Civ Changes — Industrial civs no longer get a 50% wonder bonus. It was just too easy for these civs to grab the early wonders in the game. Instead, the Industrial Civs will get a +1 hammer bonus on any plot producing 3 or more hammers. Read the planned changes below for more ideas.

Cultural Decay Mod — A balancer that lets culture decay over time when a civilization loses control of a square.

Tech Conquest — Now, capturing or destroying an enemy city will reveal some percentage of a technology to you, assuming the enemy has one you don’t.

Upgrades to fortresses to make them more useful, give better benefits to garrisoned units, etc. You may actually build a fortress from time to time, now.

Air Intercept ReInit Patch — 12Monkeys put together a neat little hack to make your aircraft go back on patrol after loading a game up. At the end of your first turn all of your planes on intercept missions will garrison and re-launch on their intercepts so you can see them flying around their cities. No more checking to see who’s on patrol–I hated the fact that they’d stop circling.

PlotList enhancement — I’m including 12Monkey’s plot list enhancer. Now you can tell at a glance who’s fortified, who’s healing, and who’s injured.

GreenMod — Specifically included is the ability to replant forest. I did not hobble the forest production yield as much as in the original mod (Chopping yields 25 Hammers), but it does take a loong time to replant. If you want to build an army of workers to plant and stip forests for production, well, go right ahead (a single worker takes 40 turns to plant a forest). I did this because I like chopping early for a kick start, but I like the idea of planting forests and keeping it green down the road. But forests take a long time to grow, hence the long build time. Jungles yield 15 hammers when chopped. I also really liked the temple resource, so included it as well.

Formations are now groups of 5 instead of 3.

Custom Changes:
— Explorers and Scouts can build forts and explore temples. They’re a little more useful now.
— Added more ancient era music, some groovy tribal stuff.
— Lots of polishing: added entries for ‘pedia where absent, etc.

Disabled intro movies — Just because. You can turn them back on if you’d like…

The downside is you have to start a new game before you can use the mod. I’ve only just started playing, but it looks pretty impressive from what I’ve seen so far. If you haven’t gotten into Civilization before, this is the best game to do it with.

Strongly recommended.

Just played Call of Duty 2, and words fail me in describing just what a terrible job Infinity Ward did when developing this game. I managed to get 2 missions into the Russian campaign before I ran into mission scripting problems that prevented the game from progressing. I switched over to the British campaign, and wasn’t able to complete the first mission because the game refused to end after I had completed all the objectives.

Both Activison and Infinity Ward should be ashamed of themselves - this is one of the most unstable first person shooters I have ever played. Stupidly enough the first game had similar problems which had to be circumvented using the cheat codes (which is ridiculous).

I will be boycotting both Infinity Ward and the Call of Duty franchise from now on. This is a terrible effort from a high-quality development team and publisher that should now better.

Forgot to mention that I went to the Gym for the first time in almost 20 years. My GP has been recommending that I get exercise on a regular basis - preferably 1 hour of continuous exercise every week. That’s been pretty hard to do, considering my sedentary lifestyle. Gyms have changed a lot over the past two decades - almost all the equipment have electronic devices for measuring distance, time, even heartbeat and calories. I used the walking machine and the exercise bike this time, as my legs are much stronger than my arms. I expected to be only able to exercise for about 15 minutes before collapsing. I actually surprised myself and went for nearly 1 full hour without stopping - I guess I’m fitter than I thought.

What really surprised me is how friendly the staff are. I always had this negative impression that only svelte and fit people go to gymnasiums. The truth is that you get a mix of all sorts of people - some of them (like me) going there to lose weight and get fit, others just to workout. I’m definitely going to the gym from now on every week. It was a lot of fun, and a great way of staying healthy.

Played the entire demo last night - it wasn’t too bad. If Warcraft 3 and RTW were an A+, then I would give this game a B-. Graphically, I don’t think the game makes as good a use of DirectX9 as AOE3 does. I wonder whetherthat was deliberate, so as to allow the game to be run on Low-Spec computers.

From the previews, it looked as though EAW was going to be a cross between Masters of Orion(sic?)/Homeworld/Command and Conquer. And that’s pretty much what we got - although I think it’s a simplified version. Space combat is pretty similar to Star Trek: Armada rather than Homeworld, as ships didn’t use the 3D-plane at all. I beat the Imperial fleet by building bucketloads of fighters. I don’t think Ground combat makes very good use of physics. When troops are hit by artillery they don’t go flying everywhere, as you would see in DOW. The ground portion is really more of a throwback to RA2 and C&C rather than DOW or WC3.

Purely from the demo, I don’t think this game is going to be remembered as a classic. There’s something missing from this game that only just prevents it from being a classic.

There were quite a few games that I couldn’t run on my previous PC due to the high graphics requirements. That’s no longer a problem on my PCI-Express upgraded PC. The first game I played on the new PC was Age of Empires 3.

My god, it looks incredible.

I’d seen screenshots on IGN and Gamespot, but seeing this game in full motion is quite another experience altogether. The framerate is unbelievably smooth - it’s like watching an animated film. It’s so easy for me to forget about the game and just admire the scenery - the way sunlight is reflected from the trees, the grass swaying in the breeze, and the beauty of the buildings.

I’m planning on playing quite a few other games that I couldn’t run on my old PC - Far Cry, Quake 4, Civilization 4 (on ultra-high detail). The list is endless. Best of all, there are plenty of games with high-quality graphics coming out this year - Morrowind: Oblivion being the most prominent example. And I’ll be able to play all of them. Bliss.

Best of all, if my PC isn’t fast enough to run them, I can buy the parts and upgrade it myself. And I’m confident that I can do a better job than the local techies.

After several weeks I ran out of patience with both Tasmanian Principal Computers and DCA. They haven’t given a straight reply to my enquiries for two whole weeks, even after I called them. So I ordered the parts I needed from AusPC Market and performed the entire upgrade myself - Power Supply, Motherboard, CPU - everything. Much to my surprise the upgrade went perfectly - the CPU and CPU Cooling Fan was straightforward to install, and the motherboard was also easy too. The only real difficulty I had was figuring out which fan cables to plug-in, and installing the IDE cables into the motherboard (it was a very tight fit).

Overall, the experience was very satisfying. I know every nut and bolt inside the PC, and I daresay that I’ve done a much more professional job than the techies at TasPC or DCA would’ve done.

I was originally going to purchase a dual-core Athlon64 X2 4400+ CPU. I “downgraded” to an Athlon64 3800+ after seeing these benchmarks at Tom’s Hardware Guide. There just isn’t enough of a difference in performance to justify such an expensive purchase. In addition, AMD is releasing the new M2 platforms this year. So it looks like my next upgrade will be the new M2 motherboards - probably next year. And best of all, I can do it myself without begging the local techies to do it for me. Bliss.

Because my PC had blown up, I needed a way to retrieve the data from my hard drives and back them up safely. To that end, I purchased a Nexstar3 HDD Enclosure. I’d heard some good reviews on the Overclockers Forums and other places, so hopefully it would fulfill the hype.

Installing the hard drive was pretty easy - just plug in the IDE ribbon and the power cable, slide the harddisk into the case and away you go. WinXP immediately detects the new drive with no trouble and you’re all set. The transfer rate is okay - it took about 20 minutes to transfer 20-30GB on a USB2.0 connection.

The only minor annoyance with this enclosure is that it’s not very robust if you intend on regularly swapping harddisks on a regular basis. The faceplate is very easily bent, and getting the screws into the faceplate can be a tedious affair.

Apart from that, I think it was a good buy. I now have a portable backup facility that I can use on a regular basis.

Its been quite a busy morning. Apart from my work, I also brought the PC case into work to see whether the Munt and the Heathen (names withheld to protect the innocent) could remove the motherboard from the PC Case. After half-an-hour of work using pliers and a screwdriver, we finally managed to remove the motherboard from the PC. Three people just to remove one stupid screw.

The CPU is a charcoal brick - you can see scorch marks on the side facing the CPU cooler. I also suspect that the motherboard is busted as well. The idiot that installed the motherboard standoffs used larger-than-usual case screws instead of the smaller screws. As a result, three of the brass standoffs are ruined.

I contacted Tas PC this morning - with one exception, their entire staff has taken the day off work. So I’ve decided to upgrade the PC myself instead of waiting for Tas PC to get back to me. I’ve just ordered all the parts from AusPCMarket. Cross fingers that the parts get here safely.

No, it’s not what you think - get your mind out of the gutter. I went to Tasmanian Principal Computers, and the quote I got from them was only a few dollars more than what I would’ve gotten from the mainland. So I’ll probably buy the parts locally.

There’s only one hiccup - I tried removing the motherboard from my PC Case. Unfortunately a larger-than-normal screw had been used on the motherboard, and I couldn’t unscrew the motherboard from the case. So I’ll probably ask TPC to remove the motherboard from the case.

I’m glad I had a look at the layout of the PC - it actually looks quite straightforward. The only difficulty would be installing the CPU and managing all the cables.