Having recently upgraded my video card to a DirectX 10 card, I decided to give the Unreal Tournament 3 demo a try. Running the game with the max settings, it looks (and plays) a lot like UT2 to me. Hopefully the final release will look much better.
Visit the official UT3 site for more info.
The Orange Box is Valve’s new compilation of five great games including: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress. If you have not played Half-Life 2 then that alone is a reason to own it. If you have played Half-Life 2 and/or Episode 1 already (most have), consider them a bonus. Portal and Team Fortress together are worth the price of The Orange Box.
Team Fortress is a multiplayer first person shooter where each character type plays a very unique role. For instance, an engineer can build turrets to defend an area while a spy can disguise themselves as a player on the other team in order to sneak past their defenses. It took me a while to learn the basics, but is turning out to be a very solid multiplayer shooter.
Portal is a first person puzzle game where you are given a gun that shoots portals too help you get through the levels. While the story mode may only be a few (extremely entertaining) hours long, there are many more things to do once you complete it. Unless you are a genius, this game should last between 10-1,000 hours depending on how smart you are. 
The Orange Box is currently available for the PC and Xbox 360. It will be available for the PS3. To find out more about any of these games, check out The Orange Box site.
Electronic Arts is offering the original Command & Conquer as a free download. If you are interested, you will need to download and burn the cd images.
“In order to give back to the fans for over 12 years of devotion we are putting together a 12th Anniversary celebration during the month of September. However, as any Command & Conquer fan knows, the true party starts today, August 31st, which marks 12 years since the original Command & Conquer launched way back in 1995.”
The newest version of Google Earth now has a built in flight simulator. This was kind of a no-brainer for them to throw this in since the hard part (creating a 3D version of earth) was already done. I have always enjoyed flight sims but since there is no point to them, I never purchased them. Now I can enjoy flying over my girlfriend’s house and crashing into pyramids for the low price of nothing. The controls are pretty basic so it is not a flight “simulation” in the true sense, but who wants to learn how to fly a real plane anyway? Okay, many people would. That’s not the point. The point is, it’s free and it’s pretty fun. If only they would add multiplayer dog fighting, you could shoot down your neighbors and watch them crash into their own house. Awesome!
Anyway, try it out. I suggest using a gamepad; I hated the mouse and keyboard controls. I have a feeling this will turn into a full-fledged flight sim over time and will probably be the best one available. Hopefully it stays free…
Here are the full instructions
Here is the first CamShots update. For those who don’t know CamShots is an application that allows you to capture screenshots from a video capturing device in intervals from 1-60 seconds. It is based on the InterVideo Home Theater software. For more information, see Home Security System For Under $50 - Part 2
New Features:
Keep in mind you need the InterVideo Home Theater software (came free with my video capturing device) as well as the .NET framework for this to work.
Download CamShots - (freeware)
I hope to use something other than InterVideo for future updates.
I put an Xbox 360 controller board in my X-Arcade Solo stick a while back to have a proper arcade stick for Xbox Live Arcade games and fighting games. The Xbox 360 controller I have has a turbo button on it but I have been thinking about adding a faster one.
If you are interested in adding the turbo button to anything, here is the parts list (all of this can be found at Radio Shack) and the schematics:
If you attempt this, make sure you get multiple resistors between 10k Ohms and 100k Ohms (or a variable reistor) in order to find the best pulse rate for your turbo button. I used a 22k Ohm resistor, which is about 30 button presses a second. You don’t want it to be so fast that it just registers as one long button press and you don’t want it too slow.
Note: If you are interested in converting your X-Arcade stick into an Xbox 360 stick, I used an Xbox 360 MicroCon Game Pad Pro [Gameshark or Madcatz] and 30 gauge wire. The hardest part of this mod is mounting it to the board. I used two big screws going through some tubes to keep the board raised above the buttons (See pics above). This thing is a must have for any old school gamers and arcade junkies. Some games just don’t feel right on a gamepad.
I wrote a simple program called CamShots to capture images with a video capturing device. The application is very simple. As of now it just creates a folder on the desktop and starts adding snapshots. You can change the snapshot interval from 1-50 seconds and pause it. Pretty basic stuff. I’ll be updating this in the near future and will post any updates.
CamShots will work with most video capture devices. You will need the InterVideo Home Theater software as well as the .NET framework version 1.1 or higher for it to work.
See ‘CamShots Update’ for new link.
On a side note, you can use this software to capture multiple screenshots of movies, console games, tv, etc. I captured some video game screenshots to test it and made some animated .gif files with them. Here are some examples…
Being sick of people trying to steal my car, I decided to take more drastic measures. I purchased a nanny cam on Ebay for $33 and set it up in a room over the garage to look down at my car. This thing produces a picture that is much better quality than I expected. It is in color and also has audio (which I don’t need). The only bad thing about it is that it needs a lot of light to get an image but that was to be expected.
You can connect the receiver directly to your TV, VCR, DVDR, DVR, or PC if you have a video capturing device. I will be hooking it up to the PC and writing a program for the Game Bridge, a USB video capturing device for Windows. I picked this up for $10 a few months ago, I have seen them as low as $3. I bought one just to play PS2 games on my laptop but the video stutters to much to use for gaming (maybe why they are so cheap?). It is great for snapshots though. More details coming in my next post…
Scratch is a visual programming language meant to help kids learn the basics of programming. If I had had this as a kid, I wouldn’t have left the house. I remember having to copy pages of BASIC code just to get a circle on the screen, let alone a picture I drew.
After about 20 minutes of messing around, I made a pretty bad… thing, called Zombie Kill. I wouldn’t call it a game since you can’t lose. If you don’t shoot the zombie, he just goes right past you. It has horrible graphics, no sound, and no point. It is, however, infinitely better than anything I made as a young kid.
What you can do with Scratch is limited, but it has way more functionality than I expected. I’m sure that with each new release, it will have a lot more to offer. Don’t expect this to replace real programming languages. Scratch is great for kids, those new to programming, and anyone who likes to waste time. It is free and is availble for Windows and Mac operating systems.
If you’re a fan of Tron the movie or Tron the arcade game, you are going to love GLTron. It’s a 3D version of the “Light Cycles” game from the Tron arcade game. There are a ton of settings that let you change speed, difficulty, and the theme among other things. It looks great and is very addictive. As of now there is no online or LAN play, but there is four-player local multiplayer.
GLTron is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Click here to download it.
