Archive for the 'Entertainment' category

All lovers of role playing knew -at least- the name of Gary Gygax, co-author of Dungeons & Dragons, the game that opened the path for all RPG (Role Playnig Games). This man who influenced the imaginations of countless players and inspired many other creators, just died at 69.

No curing spell is going to bring him back.

Source: NY Times (thanks to Xtian).

This is really a pity when some of the best old games disappear just because nobody even think of leaving a way to use them. They usually call this “abandonware” (software that has been abandonned by its creators).

Their legal status is flimsy, but some companies try to give us access to them. Somehow, they grab the software and put it on sale (really don’t ask me how; I feel that it involves getting an old copy and transfering it to an Internet web archive). I found it freshening (for my old age) to see at Abandonware Games (also known as C:Dos) that they had a large choice of old games still (partly) usable on your modern PC. Like Day of the Tentacle or Worms or even Panzer General 2.

Also, they include a lot more than just the download links (reviews, screenshots and media), but the choice of games is still quite limited in the Classics category. However, if you are ready to dig in the box, you can find wondrous amounts of less well-known games in the Rare category (by Rare, you should understand that this is nearly impossible to find somebody who remembers about these games, most probably because they did not encounter the success, leaving open the options of “this was a sucker” or “this was a little gem that nobody had a chance to discover”). And there even is a forum for fans.

Hollywood! Movies! There’s no other place where:

1. If the hero starts dancing, suddenly, everybody around knows the steps and dance with them.
2. Any car hit by a bullet immediately explodes in a cloud of flames, a mere rivulet of oil turns into a fire ball.
3. An ugly girl only has to remove her glasses and untie her hair to transform herself into an iridescent beauty queen.
4. If you look languorously into the eyes of a woman, music always starts to play (even if there is no stereo in the room). Ain’t it handy?
5. In car pursuits, you only have to zip through crossroads for all others to halt in tire shrieks. No need to check the traffic lights…
6. In car pursuits, you just need to speed up to fly over wide gaping spaces (gravity seems nullified provided that you can push the pedal hard enough!)
7. The first truncheon hit systematically sends the bad guy either to sleep or flying through the room like a ball on a pool table.
8. The hero will only yield to baddies after dozens of hits by a large group of hulking champion weight-lifters.
9. All computers are fifteen years ahead of current technology and blinkingly beautiful (no dull grey boxes, but nice blinking lights or impressive 3D graphics interface).
10. Baddies are always easy to recognize in a crowd. They are ugly, dirty and grimacing (if not with a scar on the face). Why doesn’t the police use this kind of clue in movies while the same kind of profiling is used routinely in our streets?
11. When the hero enters an unknown derelict space ship, he has no difficulty finding and operating the door lock, the ship’s controls and the hyper-space radio.
12. When we see a distant explosion on screen, the sound is never late (is speed of sound as fast as speed of light in movies?).
13. Radio-activity makes objects glow in the dark (it’s useful since we wouldn’t see it - Many scientists including Pierre and Marie Curie would have wanted to know that they just had to switch off the light in their laboratories!)
14. In the void of empty space, sounds are deafening: Shrieking spaceship rockets can be heard from the other end of the galaxy despite the total lack of atmosphere to transmit it.
15. A detective cannot solve a case before he has been suspended for insubordination
16. Even when the road is straight, if you drive a car, you must continuously swing the wheel right and left
17. The wounds of the hero will not make him even wince, except when a gorgeous woman is trying to clean them

As everybody is starting to understand that Blu-Ray won the Hirez battle for the next generation DVD format, the other contender is seeing its products dumped en masse on eBay. If you (still) want to buy a HD-DVD player, it’s your lucky day. Go to eBay auction outfit and you’ll find dozens of players for unbelievable prices.

The only catch (and the main reason): Nobody in their right mind would want to get stuck with HD-DVD technology while its father (Toshiba) is expected to be ready to announce its demise.

A German vertically-challenged worker is the pilot of the mechnical doll that we name president G.W.Bush.

video link

The stars of show business and other stars are chased all around the world by paparazzis. Sometimes even catch them in X-ray photos. Here are the evidences:

Pamela Anderson

Homer Simpson

Mickey Mouse

(more…)

Call Al Gore, please.

I waited a little while before reacting and writing, but these recent last weeks we have witnessed an interesting move in the little world of graphics cards. While ATI (now AMD) has recently been relegated to the troublingly systematic position of follower or challenger in the competition for the pockets of PC graphics cards buyers, they finally reacted through two noticeable actions:

• On the one hand, in the lower-end of the range, AMD/ATI launched a new nice price solution under $100: The new HD 3400 and HD 3600 are there to grab the awards for the lowest prices and simultaneous 3D graphics (DirectX 10.1, but don’t expect them to be enough for a crusher like Crysis) and HD video capacity (1920×1080p Full-HD resolution). The HD3400-based boards could even go under $65!
• On the other hand, at the star-end of the range which was recently left to nVidia, here is a solution obviously attractive even if not elegant: HD 3870 x2. When you’re short on performance, you can always double it by grouping 2 GPU on 1 card and crash prices down to kick the hell out of your competitors. It’s not 100% perfect (some games will not be optimized for two graphics cores) but this is a (realtively) easy technical solution to setup. ATI did it and robbed the limie light from nVidia (at least for now).

Ok! This is not enough to forget the raw performance of the nVidia boards. But it is interesting to see how AMD/ATI fights with all available tricks to be able to come back a little later with some still-undisclosed new graphics cards.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, the game prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (FPS PC game we appreciated a lot last year here at Roumazeilles.net) is now available for download at the Steam video game distribution web site of Valve. More, it will only be available there (no boxed DVD on the shelves).

It seems that this is proving the success of Steam as a distribution media (Valve did not limit it to its own games) and the efficiency of the channel (for the producers, it allows near immediate correction of bugs, removal of packaging-shipping, and coordinated distribution in all parts of the world; for the customers, it simplify the process and offers immediate pleasure - on the condition that you have a broadband connection).

When will Steam be considered as monopolistic?