WuphonsReach Blog

The demo for MoH:PA is out... it's "okay", but not spectacular and I think it needs a good bit of work before release. (It's a 500+MB download, try GamersHell for a copy.)The environment was pretty, and it was neat that you could shoot things and see them move (tires, the...

AquaMark3The following are with an AMD AthlonXP 2600+, DDR PC2700 (2x512MB), and a NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB AGP.NVIDIA 43.45 (stock, best quality, 128MB aperture, A7N8X-Deluxe)AquaMark Score: 22253 (CPU: 6270, GFX: 2706)NVIDIA 56.72 (stock, best quality, 128MB aperture, A7N8X-Deluxe)AquaMark Score: 19090 (CPU: 6253, GFX: 2253)NVIDIA 61.77 (stock, high performance, 128MB aperture,...

Mucking around in the CoDRadiant editor...Creating a belfry (bell tower) with stairs and wooden support beams and platforms. Multi-level parking garage:16 foot wide rowhouse (modeled on the one I live in) Spiral Tower A - Crazy, blocky, with a spiral ramp around the outside. Spiral Tower B - A bit...

Mucking around in god mode on the Stalingrad level.

Content of my "duke3d.cfg" file. Uses AWSD for movement, mouse for looking around, and rolling the mouse-wheel does crouch/jump. Left-mouse fire, right-mouse used to kick, middle-mouse used to open doors (or the 'F' key).[Screen Setup]Shadows = 1Detail = 1Tilt = 1Messages = 1ScreenMode = 1ScreenWidth = 800ScreenHeight = 600ScreenBPP =...

Dug back out my copy of Duke Nukem 3D a week or two ago. A few years ago, 3DRealms released the source code (I think for the engine), and a small community has sprung up to port the old DOS/Win95 code so that it works on newer systems. So, if...

So far I've seen the first 14 episodes (out of 26) of Silent Mobius. The first episode is good, the second one is so-so and then it's a rough run up until episodes 12 & 13. Some of the early episodes are the formulaic "character introduction" episodes where we're given...

Dawnville (Team Deathmatch)This was something to see, there were around 18 players per team on this server (talk about a lagfest). The allies are flanking in from the right side (along the train tracks) and over-running the axis positions along the wall / road on the left side. It was...

Screenshots from the single-player missions in Call of Duty.Training Camp (obstacle course) Burnville (ending speech) Pegasus Day Mission (towards the end)

Played a few hours of Call of Duty Multi-Player last night. Mostly "Behind Enemy Lines" with a little "Headquarters" towards the end. Mostly scored middle-of-the-pack, fragging as much as I got fragged. I like "BEL" play, it's sorta like "directed death match" as 75% of the players attempt to hunt...

Well, that didn't take long, because I ran into my first annoying player last night. We were playing "Behind Enemy Lines", which is an unique form of multi-player where a few people are the prey and everyone else is hunting them. The prey attempt to stay alive and hidden for...

Well, I played my first bit of multi-player last night in Call of Duty. It went about as I expected and I'm considering changing my handle to "FragMagnet".The hardest thing with Multi-Player is figuring out where to start if you don't know anyone else who plays. I don't know what...

Needed to write these down so that I can setup the multi-player controls. Anything not mentioned is "unbound".Look:Free Look: YesInvert Mouse: NoSmooth Mouse: NoMouse Sensitivity: (low, around 20%)Move:Forward: WBackpedal: SMove Left: AMove Right: DLean Left: QLean Right: EStand/Jump: [Space]Stance Down: [Wheel Up]Stance Up: [Wheel Down]Toggle Crouch: [Ctrl]Toggle Prone: [Z]Shoot:Attack: [Left...

As we enter the 2nd year of occupation of Iraq, I start to wonder whether we're going doing the Vietnam road again, or if we're going to start forging a whole new dirty road of "necessity". Unfortunately, I'm a bit clueless as to what Vietnam was all about (a few...

Picked up a copy of Syberia this week. Released back towards the end of 2002, it got a lot of good reviews but I didn't notice it until I saw it mentioned a month or two ago on Slashdot. It's a graphical adventure, similar to Grim Fandango, Monkey Isle, or...

Bleh!How's that for a review?It's the 2nd expansion pack for the original Medal of Honor: Allied Assault series. The original MoHAA was quite good and the Spearhead expansion was not too bad (although a bit short).Breakthrough... well... I have yet to find a level that's enjoyable to play. Everything is...

I'm guessing this is an "easter egg" in the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault game...When escaping from Trondheim (where you destroy the Naxos prototype and sink one of the submarine U-boats), the last section of the mission starts with you in a vent duct. Well, you're not alone up there...

Picked up the "Tom Clancy's Counter Terrorism Classics" game set today for $20. It's a 3-pack of older games in the Rainbow Six series; "Rainbow Six" (1999), "Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear" (2000), and "The Sum of All Fears" (2002). All that's inside the package is (3) CDs with no printed...

Two articles that I found interesting:Two Army Problem / Byzantine Generals ProblemImpossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process

One of the things I've stumbled across recently is Utada Hikaru's Travelling PV. Definitely one of the more original music videos that I've seen in a while, and I'll have to see if I can't track it down on DVD (as you'll see from the screen caps, I have a...

Older test results:List of benchmarking softwareOld game machine scoresScores for my RAID5 serverAsus A7N8X w/ Athlon XP 2600+ CPUSo these are the scores from last February... I should see similar scores since I'm re-running the same tests as before. (Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, 1Gb PC2700 DDR, 128Mb nVidia Ti4600 AGP,...

Just some benchmark values from the machines I've been running MemTest86 on.First box is a Pentium III 550Mhz with (I believe) PC100 memory (MemTest86 reports it as a 568Mhz CPU). L1 cache (32Kb) speed is 5567 MB/s, L2 cache (128K) speed is 2523 Mb/s, and main memory clocks in at...

Robin - one of the comics centers on a newbie's experience with EQ. (Original author seems to be Japanese.)

SC4 files pulledFYI... I pulled the SimCity4 city downloads from the site as I hit 40Gb of traffic last month.I have some other tricks up my sleeve as to where I can host them, but probably won't get around to doing that until next week.

The Wuphons Reach Region is now at 1.7 million population (largest city is 375k or so). I also made a few changes to the Wataru region that I'm working on... but don't expect to see that custom region for another week or three. Which leads me to my third item......

Just a few minor updates to the SimCity 4 section.

Screenies from my level 23 mage. Cleaning out orc nests like these are great for experience!This is a shot after cleaning out the majority of the nest. The entire area to the right of the purple mage figure was filled with all variants of orcs. (19x5 squares or 95 orcs)...

Well, I dug up UMoria v5.5.2 again out of my archives and started mucking around with playing it. UMoria is an old text-mode adventure game like Rogue / Hack / Nethack where you move your character (literally a character in the shape of '@'!) around the screen and delve into...

Another interesting web comic that's been around since Jun 2000. I just happened to stumble onto their mid-March 2003 archives and found it interesting enough that I read a few dozen days off the bat.The first strip is here and the current strip is here.

Love the shirt the guy's wearing - "I'm a Linux love god" - and this from way back in 1999. (Which isn't actually a real big deal, but I'd say that 1998/1999 is about the first time I encountered Linux and even had a system up and runing using it.)...

Ugh... seems like I'm plagued by some so-so Anime lately. First up is Ruin Explorers, which is a 4 part series-show-movie about 2 gals who are basically treasure hunters. Along the way they meet up with 4 other folks and have a showdown against a big bad wizard for the...

Screenshots from our last PoH raid where we killed the boss of the zone.Names seen:AaroniDergFabbinGadzuukzIndyarchKeezarLeominorMadsiniProtanisQueetzalRaszaSaindariSeemiaShydaraShynneSnorkleySorbusSorishSquigleSunchenToraalWinney

The 2nd SimCity 4 patch is out, looks like I'll need to go through my WR region and try and complete all of my city zones to work with the new patch changes.

(copy of what I posted on the Maxis' BBS) Well, I did some testing and it's interesting - sometimes a power plant (only tested coal-gas-oil) lasted for 70 years before hitting the 50% efficiency level, the second time I ran the series it only lasted ~45 years before hitting 50%...

Interesting, I ran the tests again.... and this time my power plants (gas, coal, oil) hit the 50% mark around +45 years instead of +70 years. Now, this time around, I fully utilized the power plants from the beginning, which may have contributed to their wear and tear values. That,...

Testing out how long power plants and water facilites last. So far power plants (coal, gas, oil) start showing 90% effectiveness around 50 years after being built (although Wind Power plants were only at 95% after 50 years) Water facilties were only down to 97% at 50 years. Waste to...

Taking a closer look at the cost of doing business with the neighboring cities (just like I did with looking at Kirkenes' neighbor deals). This time, I'm gonna do a quick survey of some sell-side deals (which bring in income to a city).North BendPower/South Bend - 6012 @ $611 ($0.102)Water/South...

From the Maxis BBS: Author: Region1 Date: Feb-11-03 10:43 AM PST Subject: Re: Just bought SC4 - no random terrain? I sure miss the days when EA was still going by EOA. Lords of Conquest! Racing Destruction Set! The games were pretty simple but they were usually *great*! :sigh: Now...

Just jotting some notes and prices down, to see if I can figure out how neighbor deals are calculated. Numbers in parents are cost per unit purchased or sold. Kirkenes has the following income deals: Bayview - Water - 1000/mo @ $30 ($0.030) Westview - Water - 165976/mo @ $5113...

Broke the 800k population mark last night in my Wuphons Reach region. Montessa was the heavy hitter last night, growing to 70k population. Demand is still through the roof, so I suspect I'll be able to grow it to 100k easily (lots of space left on the 4x4 km tile)....

Enjoy... still missing data for the Rotes Rathaus landmark (not listed here). I took the (areacovered x effectvalue) / (costpermonth) to get a score that indicates how effecient a particular building is at raising demand of the surrounding area. Anything in bold in the following list calculated out at the...

Have to dig and find out if these are valid cheat codes or not for SC4... effect barstuck watchmemove rp flora renderprop

Updates to the Wuphons Reach region section this weekend entire section, I've gotten most of the save game files linked in, even if I haven't finished documenting all of the screen shots that I took this weekend.

My region now has 700k+ population. I've only gotten (3) of the cities above 100k so far, most of the others are stuck at mid-30k (or lower). On a side note, I installed the Feb 3rd patch, and I'm really not seeing any more skyscrapers then I had before in...

Oyster Bay passed the 100k population mark today, and I had to do a good bit of tweaking to the layout in order to accomplish that. (Going around and upgrading any medium density zoning to high density, changing any undeveloped zones to one of the other two types, adding in...

space.com has a very good in-depth coverage of this event (including a very informative FAQ that is constantly being updated). The FAQ is impressive too, more so that it's being kept up to date as new events come to light. This is the way that news should be covered, IMHO,...

Woot! I finally passed the 100k mark in North Bend which is my 2nd city to pass 100k in this region. One of the bugs that has surfaced as a result of that massive demolition accident is that my fire engines can get stuck "out of station", which means that...

Well, not too difficult a task. It only took 2 hours to go from 55k pop down to 45k pop and then climbed up to 85k pop (which is more then I had at it's previous peak). The "West Point" area that fits into the river bend seems to be...

Whoops... had a bit of a disaster in my city of North Bend last night. I was using the bulldozer tool, when a fire broke out elsewhere in the city. Somehow I managed to bulldoze a very large swath, including the area downtown that I had just rezoned about 30...