Penny Arcade

It’s hard to know what to think about Microsoft buying Rare, but there are a variety of responses.

I mean, to me, it’s sort of a Moral Victory for MS, but it doesn’t really affect shit from where I’m standing.  I had expected to play more Rare games over at Gabe’s on his Cube, and now I’ll just play them here on my Xbox.  It hardly bears mentioning.  If Microsoft was going to buy them and then set them on fire or shoot them into Space that would be something different.  But as it stands, we’re supposed to get five games out of them in two years - and that’s more Rare than we’ve had in a while.  And Nintendo, if they’d wanted to buy them back in the day I’m under the impression they would have done so.  With support coming from developers like Capcom and Square, I mean *cough* Game Designer’s Studio, I think they’re probably doing alright.

I’ve been screwing around with my computer for a week or so trying to increase that Goddamn 3dmark score, and once at the apex of ecstasy I went a bridge too far and necessitated a reformat.  I do not blame Microsoft for doing anything other than making their Registry a delicious playground, this is all my fault - but I should have just come to you to begin with and asked for advice.  So, here I am.  The main reason I want to make it work better is that I have the most anomalous crap going on in Battlefield 1942, a game I would play a lot more of it worked right for me.  I played the demo and the beta virtually every night, and they played great.  Now for whatever reason, under anything but the most light duty in game it gets really choppy and goes completely to hell.  Performance is bad, everybody skips around, and the lag in the control caused by whatever performance stuff is going on makes me boot UT2K3 instead.  It can’t be my specs, Gabe might see a need to own every console but I don’t, and when I have money to invest in this machine I do it.  So, what the hell?  I’ve learned my lesson, I’m not going to get up to my ass in this configuration until I get some feedback from somebody who knows what the hell is going on.  If you do drop some hints my way, please include “Battlefield” in the subject line so I can find it amidst the Klez and bestiality that makes my Inbox such a great place to be.   

Also:  It’s September, and that means that I am prepared to open the invitation to the Supreme Commander Tournament.  A 2v2, single elimination Moonbase Commander showdown, these are the things I’ll need from you should you wish to do battle under its auspices:

Your team name.
Your handles and e-mail addies.
That’s it.

This phase will end Sunday, so please treat my requirements with the proper gravity.  Send the information to me with the word “Moonbase” in the subject so that it goes into the proper folder.  Any supposed victories will need to be verified by your replays of course, also be sent to me, and certain lofty tiers of this conflict will be made available for viewers here on the site.  Of course, you needn’t concern yourself overmuch with victory.  My probability algorithm, made with science, calculates your chances of victory to be very, very near Zero.

(CW)TB out.

i know i could always be good

Perhaps a more accurate way of putting it would be “You Had It, And Then Gave It To Me.”

It was the sound.

Oh sure, I’ve done lots of other things that gave me incremental performance gains.  The 30.82 Detonators seem to like Battlefield just fine, for example.  Setting my pagefile to two gigs didn’t hurt nothing, neither.  But it was the sound.

It’s funny, too, because people gave me exactly conflicting advice sometimes.  I don’t think this is because they are naturally silly people, I think it is because there’s just something fundamentally not right with the way sound is handled or interpreted by the driver.  Some people said to activate Hardware Accelerated sound in the second panel of the audio configuration, some said to deactivate it.  Obviously, being a gamer of sound mind I had already activated this, because acceleration has always been very good to me in the past.  Gaze ye upon 3D acceleration, for example.  Good stuff right there.  In this case, for me at least, it’s not.  It wasn’t enough to just take the hardware acceleration check out of the box in the game.  I had to execute Dxdiag from the run prompt, go to the sound panel, and turn acceleration completely off.  Please don’t rush out and do it.  I have no idea how it affects other games, or your computer, or whatever.  You should, as people have suggested to me, experiment deeply with the sound options in game - trying different combinations of audio and sample quality until you magically stumble upon the right one.  I’m just telling you what worked for me.  And boy, does it ever.  It’s like seeing the game all over again. 

(CW)TB  

I was also sent a link to Ready Room‘s XP/2K tweak guide for gamers, and it’s been pretty interesting so far.  Caveat emptor, of course.  The Ready Room is an information site for strategy-action hybrid Natural Selection, which I can’t seem to stop talking about for some reason.

(CW)TB

Those of you interested in the import gaming scene might want to hit VGD. Street Fighter Zero 3 for the GBA dropped this week. I had the opportunity to play this game at E3 this year and it’s fucking incredible. It is an amazing conversion with a ton of animation and great art. The other cool thing is that you can play import games on a US GBA. No need for any special adaptors or Mods, just plug it in and go. Also coming out this week is the latest Neo-Geo release, Rage of the Dragons. I honestly have not had a chance to play this one yet so I can’t say much about it. It’s a 2D fighter based on the Double Dragon Universe and from what I hear it’s pretty solid.

In other Neo-Geo related news, Kiko and I have combined our powers Wonder Twins style and created a T-shirt design for the Neo-Geo.com T-shirt contest. You can see our entry here. There is no word yet on when or how a winner will be picked but we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Thank you to everyone who sent in your suggestions for future Club PA gifts. It seems like lots of you are just looking for an opportunity to play some games with Tycho and myself. Well we are working on getting that set up right now. Once we have the server information available we will be posting the details in the member’s only forum. All you need to do to get access to that forum is send me an e-mail with your forum nickname and proof of your donation. I’ll take care of the rest.  The other big Club PA gift that it seems people are hungry for is Penny Arcade’s Over-Easy. Well I have talked to Tycho about it and we are going to try and do it. Our plan is to do one page a month for Club PA members. Over-Easy has been in the works now for over three years. I have folders full of reference material and concept art just waiting to be used. For those of you unfamiliar with the project, Over-Easy is a full blown comic book that pays homage to classic Hong-Kong action movies like Hard-Boiled.  We are talking car chases, helicopters, all kinds of shit exploding, plenty of gun fu, and lots and lots of blood. The plan is to have the first page ready for Club PA members in October. I’ll let you know more next month.

50% through Starfox, it just keeps getting better.

-Gabe out.