Sch3lp’s Blog

Update:
Some further thoughts about Quake4, after I played some more multiplayer games.
The double-jump is indeed not available. This is a major disadvantage to the game if you ask me. You’re constantly moving pretty fast and shooting and stuff, and then when you meet a box and u want to jump it, the feel of speed stops abruptly. You’re being blocked by a stupid small box…
Imo, they should just increase the jump height a little and bring back the double-jump (from Quake2).
I seriously miss simpleitems, I just can’t recognize the guns. They all look the same, with some exceptions like the railgun. But I can’t see the difference between the rocket-launcher and the hyperblaster for example. Like, give them colors or something.
There still is a console dropdown, thank god. You have to press ctrl+alt+² (the button that is located left from the ‘1′-key). And when you have the console in front of you, type “com_allowconsole 1″. You’ll be able to leave out the ctrl+alt part then.
The in-game browser is more useful than it was in Quake3. You can now have multiple sorts. e.g. first sort on your favorites, then on gametype, then on ping.
The Tourney gametype is pretty cool. It’s a mini-tournament in fact. When you first join the game and a new tournament is about to start, you’re seeded (randomly I assume). And you play along until you’ve either lost a match or you reach the final. If there are 16 people on the server, all 16 will be able to play the first games, at the same time I might add, but in different “arenas”. When you’re out of the tournament you can spectate each duel and each player in that duel. A lot of servers are still wrongly limiting max-players to 4 though, which doesn’t really match with the Tourney gametype anymore.

Well, I got the Quake 4 DVD yesterday from a buddy of mine, and today I decided to play it a little.
First thing I had to do (after installing it), was pull out my UTP-cable so the game wouldn’t try to authenticate with the server. Next thing I did when I got in the menu, was immediately try out the multiplayer.
It had a nice surprise: a revamped “The Edge”!!
No elevators though :/ They’ve been switched with the launch pads from Quake3Arena.
Some other cool new things include grenades following the launch pads. So when you shoot a grenade at a launch-pad, the grenade follows the path a normal player would take when using a launch pad. I’m sure this will make for some really entertaining DeathMatch games.
Another really sweet feature is you can now shoot stuff _through_ portals. And by stuff, I actually mean rockets, grenades, plasmabolts and nails. I haven’t tested the lightning or the rail. But bullets (fired by shotgun, machinegun) won’t go through.

A thing that seemed weird was the respawn timer of the Megahealth (45 seconds), which was pretty short in my opinion. But maybe I’ve been “out” for too long already. The server had DM-type on by the way, maybe that had something to do with it.

I also tested Tourney and CTF game types. There’s a new “type” of CTF type by the way. It’s called “Arena CTF”, but in fact it’s nothing more that CTF with persistent power-ups. The power-ups Team Arena had: Scout (which makes you run insanely fast), “2x” (power amplifier), “Ammo regen” (inaccurate description if you ask me, because what it does is increase your firing rate), and finally “Guard” (there’s a difference with Quake2 CTF guard, this time it regens your health up to 200, and not your armor). I haven’t found a way to drop these… yet. But there isn’t a bindable action in the menu, that’s for sure.

On to the criticism for multiplayer then:

• There are no bots…
• There are _NO_ bots…
• Lack of good maps (I bet “Over The Edge” will be the most played map, possibly the only map played…ever). In total there are about a dozen different maps to be played
• There’s no double-jump on boxes? (not sure about this one, but the double-jump I knew from Quake2 doesn’t seem to work)
• I haven’t found a way to bind the console dropdown. You can access the console through the menu, but I would really like to be able to drop down the console right away

Positive feedback:

• Grenades following launch pads
• The ability to fire through portals
• Great gameplay that made Quake popular is still intact. It’s fast paced. Air control is comparable with Quake3 air control. Rockets have a decent speed. You know, stuff like that.

Overall I’m very satisfied with the entire multiplayer part, too bad they released it so late. Doom3 never should’ve seen daylight if you ask me.
Now I just look at Doom3 as an engine-testing game, a sort of required step for the completion of Quake 4.

Single player is entirely different.
As you may, or may not know, the story continues on the events of Quake 2. Not that it matters a lot though. The only thing you should know is that Stroggs are bad.
Singleplayer is pretty addictive: I started playing around 11:00 and finished it at around 22:00. So, including lunch-breaks I think it’s correct to say the game has about 9 hours of playtime.
It has all the features any singleplayer FPS has: a story-line, a bunch of enemies which may scare you when they spawn (no Doom3 scripted events here by the way, so you can safely pick up ammo clips this time), some variation on walking through levels and shooting at stuff by adding the availability of different types of vehicles and mounted weaponry, and a few bosses here and there.
What’s really noticeable though is the animations. I’m talking about the bridges specifically here. There have been quite a few times when I was really going “wow, this is pretty cool, for being a stupid bridge”.

Another thing that’s pretty amazing is the gun animations. For example, the lightning gun has these canisters sticking out of it according to the amount of ammo you have. You can have 3 canisters at max, and when you’re shooting with the gun, and go under 255 (or something) one canister will go back inside the gun.
By the way this time, I don’t think “shaft” is an appropriate term for the weapon, it just doesn’t look like it anymore.
The animation of the railgun is also pretty cool. This one is too difficult to explain, you should just see it for yourself, so go out and buy the game. I had a great time playing it, and I’m satisfied about how the single player mode turned out eventually.

I’m definitely buying this game tomorrow to check out multiplayer action. And I really really hope a community will evolve and hope it to be much like the former quake communities. I kind of miss that scene.
*Crosses his fingers*

Yesterday we went to Café d’Anvers, and I found out Jan is totally gay.
Proof can be found in the pictures.

Overall we had a good time. Music was being mixed by Marko from club La Rocca, some other guy who was horribly boring, and Prinz, resident at Café d’Anvers.
It was fun to go there once again, we had a good time and I hope to go again next week when Junior Jack & Kid Creme are playing over there.

As some of you may or may not know, Jack Thompson is the attorney at law, who has been blaming game creators for killings by teenagers in america.
There have been a lot of posts, articles, and a couple of comic strips about it.
It’s really interesting to have seen it evolve the way it did, and now it seems to have come near a conclusion.
A conclusion which is NOT in the favor of Mr. Thompson I might add.
Read this article, it’ll get you a nice round-up of everything until now.

Update:
Hilarity ensues on PvP Online.

On a side note, OpenOffice 2.0 is out.
Get it while it’s hot.

…but I did not know about spying printers.
Spying printers, you say? Yeh, spying printers. Printers…that spy…on you, the user.
Allow me to clear it out for you guys.

According to the EFF, there is a hidden “message” on paper when you print something. This message, contains information about who printed what using what sort of printer, and where it got printed. This leaves one with scary thoughts.

It comes down to this fact: almost invisible yellow dots are printed on the paper, along with your normal print, and they are placed in a certain pattern. It’s sort of scrambled, but there’s a pattern, and this means you can decode it if you can figure it out.

This article hosted on the same site tells you how to decode such a pattern. That is, if you’re able to find the yellow dots in the first place.
All of it is explained, how you can easily find them, how to decode it, and possible uses of it.

There’s also a list of printers that print these dots available on the site.

I haven’t tested it myself, because I’m short on blue leds, and I’m just too lazy.
But if you’re not, please inform me if this whole thing is true. I’d love to know.

By the way, next time you think of making a black-mail letter, don’t use your own printer. *wink*

Today I decided to wash my car.
It’s always pretty easy to do. You roll out the garden hose, prepare a bucket filled with water and pour in some car-shampoo. Hose the car down, clean car with shampoo, hose car down again, and wipe all water away.

This time, however, it wasn’t as easy because some birds decided to get rid of their faeces while I was washing my car. It happened 3 times ffs.

As it happened the third time, I was cursing at those damn birds for pooping on my car. A neighbor overheard the cursing and yelled back: “You should be happy it wasn’t an elephant that pooped on it”.

So it got me thinking. It is so true what he said. What if elephants could fly?
They’d be pooping on all different kinds of things: children’s heads, cars, houses (which would eventually succumb under the heavy weight of those gigantic turds)…
Roads wouldn’t be driveable anymore. Everymorning there’d be lots of accidents and traffic jams because of some unexpected elephant droppings.

Air traffic will probably be called to a halt as well, with all those enormous beasts flying around… However, planes won’t be needed anymore. You’d just have to tame yourself an elephant and you can fly it to work.
That would be pretty cool tho’. No more traffic jams, and when you get to work just “park” it in the stables where they’re fed grass, peanuts, or whatever elephants eat these days.

So in conclusion I learned a valuable lesson today:
“Don’t whine when something bad happens, it can always be worse.”
Alternate conclusion: “Don’t whine when some bird poops on your car, instead fantasize what it would be like if elephants could fly.

On a sidenote, the company where I work at, Ineos, has made an interesting press-release last friday.
The Chief Executive of Ineos decided to buy Innovene, previously owned by BP.
With this new acquisition, Ineos becomes the fourth largest independent petrochemical company in the world, after DOW, Dupont and BASF.
Here’s some more information if youre interested.