Subject 17

Seriously.  They tell me to update my flash player to the latest version.  Well, I do have it updated to the latest version, and have for some time.  However, it seems that ubisoft is not aware that adobe releases new version of their products on a consistent basis every year (kind of like how ubisoft rehashes the same games over and over again every two years, and like how EA does it every year).  So, basically it continuously prompts me to download the latest version of flash, however what they really want me to do is download the previous version of flash that I have, which is a pain in the ass considering how adobe doesn’t host that anymore, meaning that if I want to use their site, I have to go to a repository of old programs and plug ins in order to use their site.  Now, I’m not about to put up with this, so I decided to contact ubisoft customer support.

Just wait for it, here comes the second problem!

Their support site is fucking broken!  Big suprise!  Their support site is basically a link to several different help pages, the only useful one being a “knowledge index” (read: forums).  Well, I searched their “knowledge index”, and didn’t get anywhere.  So, I begin to look for a ticket support styled help system.  However, following the link to this results in an “unexpected error” (the best kind of error!  Don’t you just love the pleasant suprise that you get from these spontaneous, verbose “unexpected errors”?  It’s almost as fun as “unexpected sex”!).  Hey, guess what they suggest to do about this “unexpected error”?  They want you to submit a support request!  Guess which page they link you back to?  THAT’S RIGHT, THE SUPPORT PAGE THAT YOU WERE JUST AT! Please tell me that you see the circular path that this would take you on…

There is no other form of contact, unless you want to call up their administrative offices during normal business hours to tell them about how their site is broken to shit, in which case i’m soooo suuure that they would be willing and able to help you…

I can’t even set up a javascript hack to rewrite their code so that I meet the requirements, because the second I allow javascript it redirects me to another useless page.  Seriously, I thought php redirects to a generic error info page died out with tabled layouts…

UPDATE:
http://www.bigdownload.com/games/tom-clancys-rainbow-six-vegas-2/pc/rainbow-six-vegas-2-map-pack
Thank god for the good people who repost downloadable map packs, patches, etc.

First impressions:

It takes about fifteen minutes of looking at a loading icon to get into a game. The servers in general are total shit. Nearly everyone has a mic, however most don’t get how to use it (HOLD L2!)

The audio sounds amazing while it works, however the sound bugs are rampant with the total dropping of all audio with the exception of in game music.

Slant six seems to be working on the horrid lag issues, as is evidence by the receeding amount of “initialization failed” messages during the log in.  However, it still takes upwards of 4 minutes to connect to a game in many (most) cases, and on top of that the actual in game frame rate drop is horrid, in both the menu screens to some extent and basically whenever you have enough people still living, or if you’re walking by a fire.

The gameplay, however, is very nice.  It’s not the tightest game I’ve ever played, but it is pretty damn good none the less.  The weapons are actually pretty useful as long as you don’t put a suppressor on any of the assault rifles, and the shooting mechanics are great.  Tapping is what gets you kills here, especially in the scope, where single shot is paramount for a kill.

New features

The proximity chat works great in my opinion.  The leaning and cover mechanics show great potential for the sixaxis- this is the way every shooter should handle them.  For some reason, you can’t select your preset loadouts in game, you have to load them before you join a game to use them.  You can only change weapons once you’re in game- armor, camo, and the rest can’t be switched during a game.  However, unlike in MGO, you can change anything about your character any time you wish in the main menu.  Sprinting is a very well implemented feature, and useful as well.  Knifing, on the other hand, could have been left out.  I’ve heard problems with the amount of damage it deals and the hit detection for it, and in addition to that it’s just so much easier to frag your opponent at close range instead.  Instead of just running over the bomb to pick it up, you have to confirm an action instead. I’m not a fan of the new radial menu since it freezes you in place while you use it.  Destructible objects seem to have critical points where, if shot, it either blows up immediately or drastically reduces the time until explosion.  The gay ass satchel suicide in the terrorist part of crossroads is back, the blast still traveling through walls.  The new layout of the map on regular size is in many cases better than the original, however the same can not be said for the expanded version.  Laser sights actually have meaning now other than expanding the size and changing the color of your crosshairs- they are actually drawn onto the environment in what I have to say is the most realistic representation of such in any video game, ever.

Overall, the actual game itself is very fun, it’s just that the hassle to get into one is sometimes not worth the trouble.  Bring something else to do during the load times of this game so you don’t totally bore yourself.  Either browse the internet on a laptop, do some homework, watch some tv, or play a gameboy.  Trust me, the load into the actual map takes so long it’s unfathomable.  I’ve never actually had one of the yellow loading icons not put me into a game, but often it has taken like 10 minutes to do so.  (ed: The next time after I wrote that, it finally did.  Watched two Yahtzee videos and dicked around a lot on the web, still not loaded).  Also, when you switch teams halfway through the game, the in between round screen takes longer as well.

As long as they work out the bugs, this game will be the shiznit.

Other little things:

Clan and community support is pretty good from what little I have seen, you get different weapons and camos for the commandos when you join a clan (and what exactly you get depends on which special forces unit you are a member of), you can see unranked stats (although I don’t think they are being recorded yet), the weapons are amazing, some weapons also have an SD variant which isn’t the same as just adding a suppressor.  Knifing is one hit kill from behind, two hit kill from the face.  Two people can climb a ladder at once, and if you ladder slide, you’ll kill everyone below you on the ladder.  Tapping X while moving sideways in prone will make you roll.  Killing birds is mad fun.  Every game mode puts a different variation on the map.  More to come.

I was chosen by a rand() function to be in the US home beta. I took this as a sign that I should blog about it.

After the semi-speedy download and quick install, the first thing I did was boot it up. This put me at a blank screen that lasted so long I thought that my display connection was fucking up again. However, right as I was about to inspect it, I see a splash screen appear. I acknowledge the hdd access dialog box, and then promptly accept the EULA without so much as glancing at it.
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I’m sick of all the bad rep this game gets.  Just because it has beautiful graphics, many people seem to overlook all the other aspects of this game and simply act as if the graphics are the only aspect of this game.  They then proceed to flame the fuck out of this game for “only being about the graphics”, and then subsequently push all of the other features of this game to the side as being insignificant and horrible.
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Eric and I were planning to switch hosts.  We wanted a VPS host, however they were way too expensive for my liking.  So after looking around a while, I decided to stay with hostmonster.  However, I created a new account to both make changing my old account name much easier in addition to saving a few bucks (I found a coupon that saves me two bucks a month, but I couldn’t redeem it by renewing).

From here on out, the dboyzetown.com domain name is dead, along with all previous projects associated with that domain.  Randomplay.us will be down indefinitely (should go up after Eric starts giving a fuck again).

Now that I’ve renewed my hosting plan and started things out right this time, I’m going to commit to making this site pretty, public, and semi-useful.  I’m not going to do any stellar designs or projects mind you, but I promise you it will be worth it’s weight once it’s released.

I’m using dual monitors!  Except this time, it’s permanent.  Well, except for when I want to play Crysis.  I don’t have an SLi/Crossfire setup to do that.  Anyway, basically my dad works at air products, and a while ago they bought a lot of acer monitors (ew, I know) for a huge discount.  He doesn’t have a use for it, so he lets me use it.    It doesn’t have the best contrast ratio, and it doesn’t support dvi (wtf!), but it does have a 1440×900 widescreen res, a 5ms response time, and a nice 19″ diagonal screen size (just like my other one, except that one isn’t widescreen)… I think.

Dual monitors showcasing F.E.A.R. on max settings and itunes

Sadly, this is just another thing keeping me on windows.  I had basically committed to a full linux switch, however I started playing games again (and I can’t use wine with my Pentium 4 and still expect to get an acceptable framerate in Crysis), I got a car (which I like to listen to my iPod in, and since that whole iPod breaking incident I don’t like to switch the dock connection that much, meaning I can’t use my iPod to listen to music on linux as easily anymore), and now on top of that, the dualview in windows is much better than in linux (I use two separate X servers in linux, so I can’t drag windows from one screen to another.  I can probably fix that though).  On top of that, Linux has two pretty annoying bugs in it.  The first is a delay in the drop-down menus (might just be some shitty compiz effect I have turned on doing that though), which doesn’t really mean that much to me, however the second one is a real kicker:  I can’t have two programs outputting audio at once.  If I’m listening to something in rythmbox, and I try to listen to a sound file in firefox through flash, firefox will crash.  Conversely, if I’m listening to something in firefox and then load up rythmbox, rythmbox will crash.  Pure sound files in firefox won’t play if I’m listening to something in rythmbox, and video files will play, but not with audio.  Really stupid in my opinion.

Either way though, dual monitors has drastically increased my productivity and simutaneously lessened my stress.  Yeah you heard that right, I have actually noticed a decline in my stress levels after getting a second monitor.  It’s just less cluttered, and therefore less of a strain on my head.

My new car; 1997 Chevy Cavalier

So I finally got a new car.  It’s a red 1997 Chevy Cavalier convertible.  How did I convince my mom to buy it?  Simple.  Search everywhere for a suitable car within our price range for a few months and fail at finding one that fit our requirements (good/fair value, under 100,000 miles, ≈5,000 dollars, hopefully not a total uggo), and then randomly find a car that’s cheaper, prettier, and with less mileage than every other car you’ve looked at. So far I fucking love the thing. It handles very well, the suspension makes the ride ultra smooth in comparison to the SUV I was driving, the speakers aren’t shit (although they aren’t exactly the semi-expensive ones that the Rodeo had), and it’s just overall fucking fun to drive. Cornering and acceleration are superb.

But enough teenager materialistic babbling.  I’m just happy I finally have a car.  Pics will be uploaded later on.

So one day I was watching a commercial for “Extenze”, a penis enlargement pill.  I’ve always known that these things were in some way or another a total rip off, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that I actually knew how they did it.

Basically, all the pills do is extend the length of your dick when erect by like an inch.  The pill contains hormones and whatnot that just make it “grow” a bit longer than it should naturally.  The kicker is, there is no permenant effect of this.  It’s basically just a hormone treatment, and the day you stop taking the pill, the hormones will leave your system and the effect shall be gone.  So basically, these people charge you hundreds of dollars every year for the privelage of hyper extending your cock.  Ouch.

The worst part is people actually think their dick is literally growing, as any other part of your body would.  Instead, it’s the same size (in the sense that no new flesh has been grown), but instead it just “pops” out a bit farther.  What assholes.

I had not been too fond of my old handle for virtually every website. “Dboyz-x.etown” was a very gay, confusing, and hard to spell name. As for the entomology:
“E-town” was what the locals would call my hometown. I was struggling to find a name for SOCOM II online, and I eventually decided on hometown pride as the route to go. Sadly, any domain name or large forum often has the name “Etown” or “E-town” taken. Sometimes I just used an underscore, other times a new name entierly. However, later on in my Socom II career I received a new name, which was Read the rest of this entry »

Damn. My ipod was just fine, barley any scratches, or at least relatively few, and then I go and fall while rollerblading (reoccurring theme there) and fuck up the bottom port. The iPod functions perfectly, it’s just that I can’t fit anything into the charging/data port, so essentially when the battery dies, so does the ipod along with it. Maybe I can still bend the pins back so the plug will fit again…

Well anyway, at least I got to help my dad with the house and get to go car shopping now.

peace for now.

Update:
Well, after a lot of forceful bending I got the plug to fit in the socket again, and I realigned the pins to an extent, so the data cable fits and works perfectly. Sadly i doubt this is the most stable setup, as the thing feels like it’s grinding a lot when I try to put it in. I feel like I’m crushing the copper pins on my iPod.

But hey, with a simple, non-invasive “surgery” I basically fixed my iPod. Just simply pushed the pins back down and aligned them with the gaps in the plastic. Shows a lot about the quality of manufacturing that goes into these things.