Ooh, ooh: what is this? Why should I care?
I expect I'll be too busy to play for the next couple of weeks. Damn it.
I'll be offline for a little while. I can run the server this evening if there's interest, after 6:30pm PST or so. Or whenever.
Excellent. If it is endorsed by Unfogged, does that mean my gf won't kill me if I buy it?
Did anyone here ever play Team Fortress Classic back in the day? Or is that too geeky even for this place?
Nothing will ever, ever beat the original Quake CTF.
Ever.
How much horsepower does this thing require? Is my standard HP desktop bought this summer gonna run it OK, or do I need a video card upgrade?
Depends on the video card, I imagine. But you can tweak the video settings quite a bit (I had to) so I think it'll run on most things.
OP: I'm interested in your newsletter server. Can I drag a bunch of my coworkers to it as well?
6: Oh yeah I played TFC.
7: Except Quake2 CTF.
8: What sort of video card do you have, Chopper? The Valve/Source/TF2 engine is fairly scalable -- you can turn off certain video options for better performance -- but if you only have an integrated-on-the-motherboard graphics chip, you probably won't be happy.
Here's the system specs.
I'd definitely be up for this on a night when we're not killing Illidan. And I played TF a decent amount back in the day, mostly LAN style with dormies.
I was much better at these games before they had mouse support.
Has anyone ever downloaded a game using the Steam Engine? I've wanted to play TF2 since it came out but I've already got HF2 and I'm not interested int he add-ons. The only option is to download it as a standalone off Steam (which is cheaper too), but I've never trusted the whole pay-n-download idea.
15: Yes, I bought and downloaded Orange Box without getting a physical copy. The awesome part is that Steam knows what you've bought, so you can go to any computer anywhere and sign in and it'll download your games to that computer -- I play at home on two machines and at work on one without having to carry around a disc.
Also, quit whining about what you already have and what you don't want, and just buy Orange Box. Portal + TF2 is easily worth it, plus you get all that other jazz.
I've downloaded HL2 and the Orange Box via Steam and not been angered or disappointed.
Also, Counterstrike is what men with hair on their chests play. Right, bros and dudes? Right? Yeah!
I downloaded TF2 a couple of days ago from Steam; no problems (although it took a damn long time to download).
14: But dude, mace.
15: I have, yeah. Basically everything they've put out since the original Half Life. It's fine, although without a fast connection it can be pretty painful.
17: It depends on which CS you mean. Source is for jerks.
Yeah I bought the whole thing via steam, too. Works great. Reactivated my addiction without leaving the house.
17: It's true, although I've been playing Counterstrike's gungame mod of late, which is a little less macho.
20: I've been playing CS since the Clinton Administration. I like Source. The feel of the weapons has improved.
15: Alright fine. I'm leaving right now to buy The Orange Box. I hope the kickbacks you get from Valve are enough to pay for your place in hell HLC.
22 What's wrong with CS:S?
25: The joke's on Valve! I was already hellbound.
In the interests of full disclosure, I do work in the game industry (though not for Valve) so I might not be entirely unbiased in these matters.
I'm assuming this is the PC version, not the Xbox 360 version? Cuz I'm an Xbox man. Sigh.
28: Do you work for Blizzard? Because I'd like a couple of my friends back, if you're through with them.
Silly rabbit! Shooters are for PCs. Take your 360, your driving games, your platformers and your beat-em-ups and begone.
Admittedly, I haven't played Source in a while, but my reaction was the opposite: it all felt a lot more random. And, obviously, hitboxes. To be fair, one of the guys on my WoW 5v5s is a pretty serious/competitive player, and he basically regards Source as being Of The Devil (and will go on about this at length in Vent), so I've probably absorbed some of his prejudices in that regard. Worth giving it another shot?
30: For reasons you cannot possibly understand, that was possibly the funniest comment ever made on this blog.
30: In the near future I will be part of the hybrid monstrosity to be known as Activision Blizzard but I do now and for all time disavow any responsibility for WoW.
31: Ahem. Allow me to introduce you to Halo 3.
32: Interesting. I'm a casual enthusiast rather than a competitive player, but have never noticed a decline in hitbox reliability or similar game behavior. The one thing that has increased over the old days, sometimes to the point of logging off, is the collective douchebaggery: racist chat, spam, truly disgusting sprays (including several of various mass murderers).
34: Hush. If you guys get company store discounts on WoW account fees, I'm going to be so jealous. :/
(I already told Mike that I'm perfectly willing to kill and skin him for his SC2 beta key, if he only gets one.)
CS:S has eliminated my need for Viagra, but your mileage may vary. It's all about the headshots, though -- if you get lazy and sloppy and start shooting for the center of mass, you will die constantly. Since GunGame forces you to use all the weapons in the game, I've gotten pretty used to the strengths and weaknesses of them.
Weep. I only have the XBox 360 version. My bad old PC won't handle it, I don't think. I would very much enjoy making gibbets with Unfogged.
Nothing has ever come close to old-school qtest1-style free-for-alls in my estimation. Those maps were great.
Holy shite! Activision and Blizzard are merging? WoW and The Sims together under one roof? Has the world gone mad?
32: Hmm. Do they still have the occasional weird bullet stutter/delay? That was really the biggest issue for me, back when I tried it, but then again that was basically right after release. The douchebaggery, unfortunately, I've mostly developed a kind of grit-toothed numbness to. It just makes the fragging/pwning/counter-ganking more grimly satisfying.
36: There are a fair number of servers that are pretty good about kicking/banning people for racist and other douchebaggery. Harder to find one where the kiddies are discouraged from using "gay" as an all-purpose insult, but I get some mileage out of saying "Enough with the 'gay' crap, I've [had my dick sucked by/sucked the dick of] better men than you."
I can't quite figure out how to get incensed about sprays of mass murderers given that it's a game where you're trying to kill people repeatedly.
36 s/b 32
41: WoW and The Sims endless derivative licensed-property franchise games together under one roof?
The Sims is EA.
32: Interesting. I'm a casual enthusiast rather than a competitive player, but have never noticed a decline in hitbox reliability or similar game behavior. The one thing that has increased over the old days, sometimes to the point of logging off, is the collective douchebaggery: racist chat, spam, truly disgusting sprays (including several of various mass murderers).
Hence the private server.
43: There's some heinousness in the netcode that makes a single player with lousy ping screw up the play for everyone -- I believe Valve still doesn't acknowledge the problem, but it's definitely there, and most servers I've seen autokick anyone with a consistent 150+ ping.
There's also a well-known thing with both the HL1 and the source netcode where the server will retroactively kill you if it judges that a high-ping weenie shot you half a second ago, which can be disconcerting; the high-ping autokick mentioned above helps with that as well.
44: I love you so much, dude. I try to do the same, but being female basically means that any kiddies take anything I say as a come-on, and I usually don't have the patience to deal with that shit.
I think with XBox Live the thing that wears a bit on the quick-play random servers is just the staggering number of stoners and drunks trying to talk to you during a TF2 match.
48. So adopt a gay male persona. Or go ahead and flirt, playing Fetish Chicken until the obnoxious kiddies are agreeing to let you sodomize them with a barbed rusty strap-on. You've got the wit and imagination to horrify 85% of them into silence, and awaken the perv in the remainder who need it.
50: I usually just pretend to be Korean, in order that they should know fear.
What, fear that you're going to refuse to stop playing to pee until you rupture something?
Now, a gay male Korean pervert with a rusty strap-on -- that's scary.
Well, it'd definitely make the phrase "100+ APM" even more terrifying.
Back during the pre-1.0 CS days, some punk accused me of being "all ping" after a 4-kill round, but I don't see as much lag now.
45: Thanks for the correction. Doesn't seem so bad now. I can live with a company that published Mechwarrior and CoD besmirching my beloved Blizzard.
So I am now in possession of one Orange Box. Happy now HLC? You evil bastard.
56: Now I'm wondering what else I can influence you to do.
A/S/L?
So I am now in possession of one Orange Box. Happy now HLC? You evil bastard.
Yay. Server ETA is 20 mins from now or so.
Tea and table tennis, eh Father?
Hell with A/S/L. Juicy, Class/Faction/Server?
You soon-to-be-blog-killing motherfuckers I just know that game won't run on my mac.
Is it PPC or Intel, Sifu? I can play WoW, all the FPSes, and basically everything else on my MacBook Pro under Windows.
58: I wanna cry. I'm still at work. I hate you all.
If it were Intel I'd probably already be downloading that shit.
I'll definitely log in a little later. Probably around 7-7:30 Pacific time. Do others have the login?
64: Get a real computer.
(I don't know why I'm being so mean lately.)
I would like the login information. Unless I'm too mean for you to let me in. Which I'd totally understand.
64: Get a real computer.
Dude, I'll be playing this on my Macbook Pro.
66: I'm 16 hours ahead of you bastards. And I was so hoping to give HLC some rocket-to-the-face action.
OK, I can launch the server if anyone wants to play.
Look for 'Unfragged' on your list of available servers. The password is 'banned.'
67: you mean one that isn't totally ancient? I feel that. But then I'd play video games all the time.
But then I'd play video games all the time.
I don't see the problem here.
I replaced the hard drive in my laptop today! I feel mighty.
I don't see "Unfragged" anywhere. IP address?
It's on the list, though. Maybe you have a filter set? (Like not to see passworded servers?)
Well, Gonerill and Ogged have killed this blog for real.
I propose we take up a collection to send the pair of them to a boot camp in Korea. A toughlove strategy, admittedly, but it's for their own good.
I haven't played a first person shooter since Quake 2. I'm gonna get totally owned, huh.
81: if only we could harness them for gold farming.
Well, Gonerill and Ogged have killed this blog for real.
The women could probably keep it going. I wonder what they're doing up there on the surface?
Not that anyone cares, but it has been brought to my attention that replacing a hard drive on a PC laptop is as nothing. I* replaced a hard drive this way, battling a severely stripped screw and a failure of the instructions at a critical moment. I am frankly amazed that it worked.
*Snark was a very helpful assistant.
85: Haha, rfts -- we have the same laptop. It is wee.
I'm impressed, rfts. I've been terrified of trying a similar procedure with my dead iBook -- think I'll just sell it as is on Ebay instead.
First-person shooter games give me severe motion sickness; I think this has effectively added several years to my life.
85: that is indeed more than zero hassle.
87: because nobody's shooting at you, you mean?
First-person shooter games give me severe motion sickness
Me too! Not that this keeps me from playing.
89: ogged! Fragged? Aggro buggers.
There are only two people in the game now? I'll be on in a bit.
Don't do it, man. It's a trick. They're laying an ambush.
I'm a lurker, but can I still play? In real life, I'm a grad student who is too self-conscious to post here. But I'm not too shy to blow you up with rockets. My email is below.
I used not to let the motion sickness keep me from playing, but it turns out Pavlov was really on to something. I essentially put myself through aversion therapy for gaming.
XY, all the info you need is at comment 73. Jump in.
Any word yet on what people's class preferences, if any, are? Or what the general mix is?
Whatever e.e. marine recruiter I can't play your goddamn game.
98: I'm not a big fan of poor people.
It's really tempting to just AFK through all the trash, damnit. Except I hate people who do that.
Goddamit.
I'm making another mix called "Video Games are Ruining My Good Time".
Ogged, you gotta upgrade those sentry guns...
That was the first sentry gun I'd ever built, thank you very much. How do you upgrade it?
WHOA
I had no idea that I had ZZ Top's "Woke Up With Wood" in my iTunes library.
That woke me up. And not in a good way. The Zincs had just made me nice and calm.
98: Pyro and engineer are my best classes, I can do soldier and heavy as well. I occasionally play medic when the team needs it but I'm not all that good.
Night all!
Thanks hamilton.
The server is still there, ogged. Were you having trouble?
111: Pick up more metal (from cabinet in the spawn, or dead folks' weapons) and hit it with the wrench (weapon 3) for 200 points of metal. It starts as a level 1 popgun, upgrades once to level 2 dual minigun, upgrades again to level 3 dual minigun with rockets.
Huh, I can't see it. Let me try a full refresh. I got kicked.
You upgrade the gun by accumulating enough metal and then banging it with the wrench.
I should probably read the instructions.
I should probably read the instructions.
Story of my life.
121: md 20/400 is the prophet! His life tellls the story of how we all must live!
What map is the server running atm?
123: "At The Mineshaft" is a map? Maybe this game is perfect for unfogged!
Be careful when drinking md 20/20. It can ruin your vision.
85. Good Lord. I just looked at those instructions. That is a project. I was amused by the final step:
You have successfully removed the Hard Drive. To reassemble your laptop, simply follow the directions in reverse order. Simply!
Congratulations: you've gotten me about as close to regretting owning a Mac as I ever have been.
If you guys turn this into a regular thing I'll get BootCamp installed, though. I used to be pretty good at Quake 3.
Why can't I find you fuckers? I don't have any filters set.
Chopper, I found it in the in-game server browser, but not the Steam server browser. I'm not sure why.
127: I hear you Tom.
I think I'm gonna start WoW guild in protest. I'll call it "Teh Mineshaft Suxzors Noobs".
I found it. Then I realized I have no idea how to play. Off to find a manual.
Clearly I need to play around a bit and figure out the correct video settings. The CTF map we've been playing trashes the performance on my machine.
I need to go, but that was fun. Maybe tomorrow night I can figure out how to do things besides wander around like an idiot and get fragged.
Yeah, this thing's bogging my machine sufficiently that it's just not a whole lot of fun at the moment, and I'm starting to lose patience with it. Tomorrow, though...
Thanks, all! That was fun. Thanks, Gonerill, for setting up the server.
Congratulations: you've gotten me about as close to regretting owning a Mac as I ever have been.
Llike I said above, I am playing on a mac.
Server's off now. Thanks to those who showed up! (Including Mr Mystery Lurker.) A few more people and it'd be even better.
Video settings are here.
And now I'm motion sick.
Figures ogged'd spend most of his time playing as the tall, skinny character.
Thanks for setting up the server, Gonerill!
I looked at the screen shots and it seemed to be that you could play any member of the Village People as a mass murderer. This is clearly a great advance on Wolfenstein.
Uh oh. Gamers invade. As if Unfogged wasnt geeky enough.
140: Gamers invade.
I hate to break it to all you late '90s/early '00s Christophers Columbus of the Internet but we were already here.
I am terrible at FPSes and especially terrible at PvP and thus pay basically zero attention to the FPS offerings at hand when I'm at the store or reading Gamespot. Does TF2 have a single-player mode? If I were to do this I would feel it incumbent upon me to do a little practicing off-line first.
Same here. Not good at FPS. End up walking into walls a lot.
I played unreal tournament for a while. It helped that there were only like three big rooms in the whole game, plus a staircase.
UT had that gun, with the razor wheel thingy that shot out of it and bounced, and you can kill yourself bouncing it off a wall and into you.
End up walking into walls a lot.
In my case, running into walls continuously while crying bitter tears.
Cry, cry, flamethrower, cry.
Are we doing this again today?
145: Or running around going 'where the fuck is everyone?' shivbunny's tried to get me into one of the Star Wars games for the PS2, and I'm just not good enough with the controller to have any fun at it. ("You know how you feel with the controller? That's how I feel when you hotkey everything and wipe out half the map.")
("You know how you feel with the controller? That's how I feel when you hotkey everything and wipe out half the map.")
I can't figure out what this means.
has anyone had success downloading the orange box for the mac?
While we're asking for tech support, has anyone gotten the game to work with Norton AV running? Steam says that there are a bunch of known issues running it and TF2 at the same time, and I'm wondering if that was part of my problem last night.
ah, looks like steam is windows-only.
147: Play the Star Wars Lego games on PS2. They are awesome, and since Lego minifigs don't actually talk, Jar Jar becomes far less annoying.
ah, looks like steam is windows-only.
Yeah. Windows-on-your-mac runs it just fine. But no native mac version.