tetleytea

Advent is the best. I *want* Vasari to be the best, but it just isn't.

How's this for dating myself: I remember playing Eamon. That's like the predecessor of MUD, and that goes back to around 1981. All MUD was, was multiplayer Eamon. Then later Ultima saw that and figured out they could make multiplayer Ultima, too, and the result was Ultima Online. What was awesome about Eamon and MUD both was that they were completely open source, and anyone with a modicum of programming experience could dream up th

I can vouch for Halo. Halo may not have pioneered the FPS thing--Doom did. But what Halo figured out was to turn the Xbox into Xbox Live, split-screen the TV in 4 so that 4 players could play on a single console, and daisy-chain multiple Xbox's together to get 16 players on a match. That's some good stuff. We had Halo parties that ran all night. We'd often have 2 teams, so it was no problem at all having players on the same team share a TV

I7's may go down, too, when AMD releases their Bulldozers, but it would probably be like 3 weeks later; whereas AMD would probably slash their Phenom II's to coincide. What about the look is appealing? Is it the heat sink? Personally I'd rather have a CPU that didn't need a world-class heat sink. My wife worked at Dell and her opinion of Dell is not good. With their monitors, though, it may not matter. I regularly see their 19" LCD's for $99.

The Phenom II upgrade has some good bang for the buck, but the issue is the timing. AMD is right in between product releases. If you can wait till the next release, both that and the Phenom II will both be better deals then. IMO the best bang for the buck at the moment is your monitor. And maybe Wireless N (depending on your situation), and maybe a computer desk to go with your monitor(s). A Phenom II rig, already a good deal, st

Is the Economic Unfair AI one of the easier of the Unfairs to play? I'm wanting to play an AI in between Hard and Unfair; like Hard+1/2 or Hard+2/3.

[quote]I was at one time a player very much like yourself. In virtually every RTS game I have, I turtle. [/quote] This works in the campaigns in the other RTS games. It tends to be your only choice. When it's skirmish mode, though, I think it's actually normal to do an initial rush, even in most other RTS games. And then that's followed by a turtle; at least when you're playing a tough AI with lots of resource cheats. Heck, in most of the CnC

[quote]be cautious of this; Javelis LRM outrange turrets, so be sure that you can lure them into turret range or have already destroyed them[/quote] If I ever get in this situation, all I do is build another turret within range. The LRM isn't going anywhere.

I've been meaning to try that out with scrapping the cap factory, even as Advent or TEC. The problem is, when you have the problem with the logistics slots (too few planets), that means you have less of the other problem (need to rebuild it closer to the border, to reduce phase jumps). As Advent, I've been meaning to scrap the cap yard to get earlier Illums. As TEC, I've been meaning to scrap it to get earlier trade. The problem is, vs. Hard and Unfair AI

I agree, Intel i7's are the best these days, but AMD wins the price/performance, hands down. The i7's shining points have more to do with the peripherals than with the CPU cores themselves. A lot of AMD's engineer talent with the peripherals have probably been diverted to assimilating the ATI acquisition, and now as a result they leapfrogged Nvidia on their video card. I expect the next round of product announcements, AMD will leapfrog Intel again, and Nvid

Poor AoK, he's been pretty much going it alone all this time. Yet he obviously knows what he's talking about, and I tend to side with him. Go ahead and flame me all you want for saying that--I'm not playing. As for taking moderator action against him for going it alone and persisting at it--I don't think so. I've seen that done before. Someone sticks up for himself alone, 5 people don't like him, the mods don't like him, so they ta

[quote]Hehe I was 3 years old back then[/quote] Don't worry, some people on this forum still are.

Missile shooters would get in this rut where they would just stand there and miss 100% of the time even though they were within range. You had to constantly micro them and move them around, hoping eventually you would get lucky and they would start hitting what they were shooting at. Towers did it, too, and then there was nothing you could do. Made the game completely unplayable unless you used all melee units. I ran through the campaign as

Warlords Battlecry III. WL:BC2 was *awesome*, but BC3 has a really, really obvious bug with missile shooters. I can't believe they went gold with this crap. Did Ubisoft lay off the developers the same way 3DO did with Heroes IV? And then back in September 2001, there was a game Real War. Where you basically can play the part of terrorists. Can you say, "bad timing"? Doesn't matter; the game was utter crap. I think it go

I don't know how Intel does their hyperthreading, but I did read AMD's patent for how they do it. In the Phenom II and Bulldozer series, basically what they do is mirror all the registers in the CPU and multiplex them depending on which thread you're running. That basically means at 2 threads-per-CPU, you're basically incurring ZERO cost for switching between threads. It's actually pretty obvious, now that they mention it. But since AMD holds the paten

We go on and on about when the universe is created. It is all resolved very easily if we just ask the Geico cavemen. They were there. Cavemen get no respect.

15 years ago...that was 1994.... I was playing MUD. That was the first MMORPG. Text-based, open source, ridiculously fun. The only computer game that ever actually enhanced my social life, even in real life. Back then only the Computer Science majors had e-mail accounts or even internet access at all. I basically paid an internet provider $9.95 a month for 2400 baud access to a UNIX account that you would telnet to.

I didn't get any gadgets this year--I am that family member who doesn't want anything and is really hard to buy for. But I did give away an E-reader (a Nook), and a 24" monitor to someone who was using a 14" CRT for their desktop. I plan to give myself a Verizon Droid before too long.

The verdict is still out for me. The holiday break isn't over. What should I get? Dragon Age? I had one of these Christmas breaks before where I didn't particularly have any plans, so what I did was buy Ultima Online and gorge on it for 1 1/2 weeks. And then the break was over, and I chunked it (back to work). Too much player-killing.

Banned for pouring that garlic butter stuff on your pizza that stuff'll kill you.

No he didn't. He's sitting right here.

My dog says hi.

Banned because Sins:Diplomacy isn't out for real over Christmas break. I'm not bitter. Not your fault, but I don't care.

Some online gaming sites have the notion of ranked games vs. unranked games. Ranked games count. Unranked games don't. They're just for fun, socializing, and you can play around with goofy settings like unfair random maps or 2v4. If you DC a ranked game, it's always a loss. It is you who chose it to "count". If you don't like it, beat up your internet provider to give you a more reliable connection.

2-screen setup for a FPS sucks. It's like you get the same forward-only view you had before, except now it's blown up and you get this big seam right down the middle. It could still be made to work, though, if developers would dedicate one screen entirely to your frontward view and the other screen your radar, your ammo, your grenades, weapons on hand, health, etc.. But even that I would probably want some of that in my immediate view where I didn't have to