Hiya, my 10 year old nephew that lives far away in Australia has expressed interest in playing Quake, I wanted to play with him on Australian servers, even if I get 400 ping, it doesn't really bother me.

However, I've noticed that if my ping is over 250 ping, you actually can't move around in game at all. I don't remember it ever being like this in Quake 3, and a lot of the net settings in Quakelive you can't decrease anymore, is there a setting I am missing or has playing with extremely high ping just been disabled?

I read something on reddit that mentioned that Cliffy B (UT maker) hinted at working on a new fast paced FPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I1chzKLQUI

Relevant part is at 1:40:00 (roughly EXACT point is at 1:43:45)

I am not sure if many people are aware, but in South Africa we have sports team quotas to include people of colour so that our sports teams become less "white" and becomes more representative of the general South African public over time.

If you look at our Rugby and Cricket teams, you can see the majority of our players are still white, so we have rules that a certain amount of players need to be included in the team every year.

I just read this interesting article regarding transformation in E-Sports, basically saying that in our main e-sports league, that teams should have to have a certain amount of people of colour.

If you have ever watched a stream of a lan in SA or seen pictures of South African players, you have probably seen that they are 90% white. Anyway, I was wondering what the thoughts of the international player base is with regarding races other than white or asian playing games.

http://esportscommentator.blogspot.com/2013/1...aming.html

Hi, my name is tbone, and it has been 1 day since I last changed my config.

I got the Zowie FK, and I am really digging it, however the LOD is insane, I can't play with the mousefeet on. It looks after playing with the deathadder for a couple of years I got used to doing movements with just a side of the mouse touching the mousepad. With the Zowie + mousefeet if you lift ANY section of the mouse off the pad it stops tracking.

I feel a bit bad not using the mousefeet as I have 3 sets of them, but it feels pretty smooth without them, and since I am using a cloth pad it should be fine to continue using it like that?

Should I get used to playing with the mousefeet or just play without?

I use the same button (MOUSE2) for rail and zoom, since I only use zoom with rail and haven't been able to find a suitable button. The way I've been playing for the last few years is that when you select rail, it goes to rail, and if you select rail again it zooms in. So basically you double click and it goes to rail and zooms in.

However there was a bug with this, which I've only noticed once i've started playing a lot of duel on aerowalk. If I die with rail out, then the next time i select rail it zooms in automatically.

It is a very minor problem, but still off putting in a tense game. So I have changed the zoomscript to work like this.

- Select rail, it selects rail
- select rail again and hold and it zooms in
- release it zooms out

if you die with rail out now, when you select rail again it only zooms in for a few milliseconds, so far less off putting before.

// Script
// *******
alias +holddown "+zoom ; vstr w7"
alias -holddown "-zoom ; vstr w7"

set railzoom "vstr w7 ; bind MOUSE2 +holddown"
set railn "bind MOUSE2 vstr railzoom; -holddown"

// normal weapons:
bind q "vstr railn ; vstr w6"

// rail bind
bind MOUSE2 "vstr railzoom"

UPDATE:

I have been playing around with using the cg_weaponconfig commands, however there appear to be some limitations with regards to the use of vstr, and I see that it only actions the commands once the weapon has changed (I want the weapon to zoom out instantly).

HOWEVER, since it automatically switches back to MG, I could use it to fix my previous script, which I have now done. I have moved all the weapon specific commands to cg_weaponconfig, and have added -zoom onto cg_weaponconfig_mg. The vstr scripts I am still running off the button so that they action instantly (and actually work, they don't seem to work very well on the cg_weaponconfig commands)

// Script
// *******
set fovin "+zoom"
set fovout "-zoom"

set railzoom "vstr railout"
set railin "vstr fovin ; set railzoom vstr railout"
set railout "vstr fovout ; set railzoom vstr railin"
set railn "vstr fovout ; set railzoom vstr railout"

set cg_weaponConfig_mg "cg_DrawCrosshair 2 ; cg_CrosshairSize 30;cg_playerlean 1 ; -zoom"
set cg_weaponConfig_other "cg_DrawCrosshair 9 ; cg_CrosshairSize 35;cg_playerlean 1"

bind r "weapon 2 ; vstr railn"
bind c "weapon 3 ; vstr railn"
bind MOUSE2 "weapon 7 ; vstr railzoom"

And everything is working as intended! Thanks guys!

http://kotaku.com/moneysaver-co-op-top-5-gaming-mice-1165052222

I just want to scream at all of them to tell them that they are wrong.

For something a bit different, I thought we can compare what each of our hands are doing when we play quake.

Left Hand (Keyboard)
- wasd (movement)
- shift (walk)
- space (jump)
- alt (crouch)
- ctrl (zoom - all weapons)
- 3 to 5 (team binds)
- qerfzxc (weapon binds minus rail)
- v (smily - a surprise from creating my new cfg from raphas cfg!)

Right Hand (Mouse)
- mouse 1 (attack)
- thumb (zoom - never use it though)
- mouse 2 (rail, zoom when rail is selected)
- wheel down (use)
- wheel up (give weapon)

I also thought about breaking it down by finger, but maybe that's a bit excessive :)

I've been redoing my cfg since starting quake again a few months ago and having to redo my HUD with the last big quakelive update, and one of the last things I need to settle is what fov to use. I used to always play with 90 fov, but I keep constantly messing up movements or getting stuck on door ways, and also, my rockets really really suck. so here is a run down of settings I have been trying:

90 fov - rail and lg feel optimal
108 fov - rockets feel great, rail and lg suffer
103 fov - rail feels ok, lg mostly the same, rockets still feel pretty good

90 fov for rail/lg, 108 for for rockets, etc. DIFFERENT SENS
- like with zooming, logically you should scale your sens with your fov, but I feel that the different sens' put me off, making the gains not worth it.

90 fov for rail/lg, 108 for rockets etc. SAME SENS
- this feels better than using different sens, and I can play with it quite comfortably, but i worry that the fov in fov out is messing with me maybe

103 fov for all
- this is what I am leaning towards, but I'm getting old and feel like I need 90 fov for rail, but maybe I should just stick to it?

Anyway recommendations?

Out of interest I had a look at rapha's cfg, with my keys but his visual settings. I use a modified version of stermy's settings, which is basically the default lightmap graphics with picmip 7.

Rapha's settings is a brightmap style visual with picmip 4. After switching the graphics, it feels a lot smoother on rapha's graphic settings than my own.

At first I thought there was something hidden in the config that I maybe didn't have set correctly, but after lowering the picmip on my own settings, it appears that it helps get rid of jaggered visuals when turning quickly.

I have a samsung 2233rz 120hz monitor, and playing on picmip 4 (or less) gives a more CRT style feel to playing.

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed the same effect or whether it is in my head.

The other problem is that picmip 4 makes everything butt ugly, I am not sure if I will want to play with it, but the "smoothness" is quite welcome.

I've been trying to do something lately, where I am using a low fov for hitscan weapons and a high fov for close range weapons. I aim better with each weapon like this, however, changing between fovs all the time puts off my aim.

So I want to know, do you think you should change your sens when you are changing fovs, like you do when you zoom? Or keep the same sens even when you change?

Changing your sens is the logical thing, because you are aiming based on what you see on the screen, however it also puts off what happens when you turn, (i.e. you over turn)

Somehow my keyboard broke yesterday, I love it, but unfortunately it's a very old keyboard and I won't be able to buy a new one. So I need to get some other sort of keyboard.

I play quake on the numpad, but if I have to play on another keyboard then I will probably switch back to wasd. I jump on the keyboard, the the keys need to be easy to press, and I need to be able to press 4 or 5 keys at the same time.

Recommendations?

After being back in SA for the last 3 years, my bones are itching to move somewhere again. My girlfriend of the past 2 years also wants to go somewhere (She has never been out the country) so we have been discussing different places to move. My brother lives in Brisbane (AU) and has been wanting us to move there too, but the whole process of getting in there is expensive and complicated, especially when I have Italian citizenship and can live anywhere in Europe.

Some stats about me, I just turned 30 (yay.), have no debt and about $10 000 in assets. I am a native English speaker, but also speak Italian and Afrikaans (bastard dutch) and can read a bit of German.

I have about 10 years IT experience, 5 of those being programming experience, mostly specializing in: Python, Javascript, web2py/django, sql (sqlite, mysql, mssql), php, asp, vb, linux, apache, nginx, cpanel/whm setup, bash scripting etc. , git and cannot think of other relevant stuff while I am writing this out quickly.

Anyway, so we've been going through different european countries trying to figure out where we would like to go, and I would like to ask the opinions of other people. A lot of places have been eliminated due to language barriers, including Germany and Italy, because although my italian is functional, it work take me another year or so to get up to work level. I also don't really want to go to England again, but due to ease I have it as an option.

Holland:
Holland has some benefits, because everyone speaks english, and we would probably be able to learn dutch in a few months (90% of the vocabulary is the same as afrikaans), but I get the feeling it will be very crowded, and something else I'm not sure of makes we want to avoid it. Not being able to speak dutch straight away might stop us from getting work. My brother also lived there with his family for a year, and he liked it, but not to live.

England (Not London):
We are specifically looking at Bristol, as one of my girlfriend's friends lives there, and it sounds like a nice cultural, big, but not too big place. Looks like there are plenty of IT jobs, the downside being that it's England, and I've been there, and might feel crappy after living in London.

Norway:
Norway came up as an alternative to Iceland (below), but I'm not sure, because I am thinking it may be too similar to Sweden which I visited, and wouldn't really want to live there, but on paper it seems really nice, haven't really looked into it that much yet, so just want opinions.

The last 2 are our top 2 choices.

Iceland:
It's a pretty weird choice, but it looks like a really great place to live for at least a couple of years. We like the idea of living in a place that is the complete opposite of what we are used to (warm, crowded, poverty, bleh) they all speak english and it sounds like it's pretty easy to get work as a programmer.

Ireland:
Lots of benefits on paper, like same language, IT jobs, nice culture, friendly people etc. Main worry for me is the economy and whether it is too similar to england... and I am afraid I won't be able to understand what anyone says!


So yeah those are the ones we have been looking at. I have a soft spot for Eastern Europe and Germany, but the salaries/language barrier will probably be too difficult to overcome. We will probably go and check out Bristol, Ireland and Iceland on holiday next year.

TL;DR: I want your opinions of the countries in bold above.

I just got back into playing quakelive after having a terrible net connection for about a year, and my lcd's response time is very noticable. Everything looks smooth, but it feels like I'm playing with like 80 ping when it's 40.

It feels like input lag, but I played on the same monitor a year ago and it felt fine. It could just be placebo, but I just wanted to ask if there are any settings I could use to improve the response time?

The main thing that has changed is that I switched from a 4870 to SLI GTX660's. I know that SLI can add input lag, but Quakelive doesn't use SLI, so could it still affect it?

I recently purchased a second hand Mac Pro for $600, which I thought I was a good buy. The Mac came with a 8800gt which is a bit old school so I've been waiting about 2 weeks for my new graphics card to arrive, which is a EVGA GTX 660 SC card.

Since I didn't play it when it came out and it is renowned for it's graphics, I got hold of Crysis and wanted to try it out. I started playing the game, I put all the settings on max and played and it ran pretty good, performance is very playable. However when I turned on the FPS I was shocked to see it was going between 30 and 45 fps.

Considering that the Mac has 2 CPU's and 8 cores, and the GPU is very fast according to reviews, I was a bit surprised to see the PC running a 5 year old game so badly.

It appears that whether I change AA or the resolution it makes no difference to the FPS, and there is no difference in FPS between high and very high settings. The FPS for the different settings looks like this:

Low: 90fps
Medium: 60fps
High: 45fps
Very High: 45fps

Anyway, what I want to ask you smart folk is whether there is something wrong somewhere, or that performance sounds normal. I'm just bothered looking at reviews of old cards that appear to be getting similar fps.

tl;dr

Crysis fps is lower than I expected on my pc and wonder if that's normal.

Discuss.

Quake is Alive hosted by XTC Gaming, South Africa's first Quake Live Duel tournament in a very long time is planning on having all it's final games played today. There are only a few games left and they will be on stream.

Shase and Ph4ntom met up in the Winner Bracket Final and Ph4ntom managed to narrowly beat Shase. The Losers bracket final will be between Shase and Detrony.

There will be some div B games happening too, which has one of ESReality's regulars, tB0nE, waiting in the grand final for a challenger from the loser bracket.


Update: The Quake is alive tournament was completed yesterday, with ph4ntom predictably winning in the finals. See the VODs.


Links: Brackets Div. A, Brackets Div. B, xtcgaming

I would like to know peoples opinions for the following 4 phones:

iPhone 4
Samsung Galaxy S
Samsung Galaxy SII
iPhone 4s

I need a new phone pretty bad and I'm probably going to get one of these. I am wondering what would be the most worthwhile for me when it comes to bang for buck and user ability.

Price's go like this:

Samsung Galaxy > iPhone 4 8gb > Samsung Galaxy 2 > iPhone 4s 16gb

I have a macbook air and it's currently my main dev pc (plus for apple) but iTunes is not available in South Africa (minus for apple) (appstore and iCloud is available in SA)

In the deals available, the galaxy 2 gets more minutes but less data, iphone 4 gets less minutes but more data. Galaxy 1 gets minutes and data.

Don't know what the deals for the iPhone 4s as it's only being released 16th of December here and I'm waiting to hear from the stores for deals.

I asked Esreality what I should upgrade using a low budget (300 - 400 pounds) with what was my current hardware:

3.0ghz Core 2 Duo
4gb DDR2 Ram
Radeon 4870 1gb
Normal mobo and drives

I was considering getting a new 3d card (6870 most likely) but you guys correctly said that I should rather upgrade my processor.

I first waited a little, as my pc still ran most games pretty well, however I couldn't get rage to run well at all... as in over 60fps (I really can't play at such a low frame rate...) So I promptly ordered the following hardware:

Intel i5-2500 (Non K)
generic intel mobo
8gb DDR3

This came to about 300 pounds in SA (Things are more expensive here) However the performance difference has been huge.

I now run everything at max, and although I haven't really checked the frame rates they must be around 100 in most games (on a 120hz monitor). Even Rage is running so smoothly, it's like wonderful latex surfaces covered in strawberry flavoured lubricant.

So thank you for the good advice. The process of the upgrade was also quite educational, as I never knew that processors had gotten so much better in such a short space of time. It appears that even the sandy bridge celeron is faster than my old CPU. Not going to bother upgrading my 3d card now, as there is no point.

I was just looking through the MS website, checking out if they had any new mice, and came across this thing of beauty:

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/int...3#overview

I was instantly reminded of its perfect sensor.

Truth be told, although the deathadder beats it on many fronts, the sensor is not as smooth as the ms3.0 (Although it is acceptable).

I use my ms3.0 at work and the deathadder at home so I see the difference.

What I don't understand is why these companies can't get it right.

- WMO/ms3.0 sensor
- 500hz/1000hz
- no prediction
- 400/800dpi

Everything else doesn't matter, they can make millions and billions of shapes, who really cares.

It's staggeringly shocking that these modern mice aren't as smooth (well the ones without prediction). It's been 10 years!

I was actually looking for WMO's / Salmosa's in SA, as I want to frankenmouse my Abyssus. Couldn't find any :(

Hey guys, go ahead and share your ignore list! I will be interested to see what other people have!

Mine is below:

I just bought a Deathadder as the Abyssus jittering was getting to me. The shape is great, buttons are great, the sensor is working fine (possibly better than anything I've used so it feels weird) However, it's so frikking heavy!

It's even a lot more heavy than my ms3.0! Is there an extra weight inside it? Where is the weight coming from? Is there anything I can remove, or must I just get used to it?

My aim's ok, but I'm not as quick as I was with my abyssus.

Hi guys,

I am planning on building a website that will have an automated quakelive ladder, as well as different leagues, a la clanbase and the esr league held last year. I've pretty much got a scaffold site done already with some basic logic put in, which I should be able to complete pretty fast.

However, I will need some help. I am not going to bother settings up a repository, since it's really not worth the time, I don't mind doing all the dev, it's easy enough.

The sections I want help on is:

- Suggestions on how the site should work.
- Features
- What sort of leagues it should feature
- Graphics (high quality logos, images and buttons)
- suggestions of colour scheme

The current colour scheme is below, as you can see its very similar to the Quakelive website, this is because the site I was working on was going to be for the South African community, however it will be easy enough to change it to the grey and orange ESR colours.

Anyway, lets hear your suggestions, and after we have made some decisions we can get some graphics done and I can complete the logic.

I just noticed that Quake Arena has been released on Xbox Live Arcade. I'm not really interested in ever switching to playing Quake on the xbox as opposed to the PC, but I thought I would check it out.

It's a 300 meg download, which is reasonably small. Started it up and the menu looks quite a lot like the CPMA menu actually. I didn't bother looking at keys or anything and just went straight in and started up the intro game to crash. This level is a combination of the original crash level and the introduction to Quake live. Although they point out that it is very important to pick up armour. They don't highlight spawn times. They should do that.

I was unaware that you could set the difficulty so I won pretty easily 5 to 0. I played the next game and won 10 to 0. So I was thinking either console gamers are really shit or I need to make it more difficult. It wasn't pointed out, but the option was there, so I ramped it up to Nightmare. This was much much harder and found I needed to time the armours to win.

Something I didn't particularly think much of was how the bot would sit on the other side of the map and rip you apart with mg or sg while you can't do anything because it's like impossible to aim. For some unknown reason, there is absolutely no auto-aim. Which means lg and mg have been rendered unusuable. FEAR MY 8% LG!

Shotgun seemed ok, and surprisingly enough I was hitting quite a lot with plasma, but most of the time you just want to run around with rocket launcher. I think duel on this platform would be rendering into controlling rocket launcher rather than armour and MH.

Apart from sensitivity issues and me not being able to aim with the sticks, the controls are not bad. In fact it is setup in such a way that you could theoretically strafe jump, probably if you weren't a console fps noob like me. RT is fire, and LT is jump, which means you can strafe, have direction and jump at the same time. I was able to perform a couple of rocket jumps quite easily without multiple tries.

Bright skins are also included (you have to set it though) which makes it better to see the enemy and it runs very smoothly. Even though it could only be running at 60hz. It felt completely different to 60hz on pc, and was nice and smooth.

I must admit, it was quite fun, and I could see it being pretty cool playing split screen with some friends.

But there is no split screen. Ok. So I tried to go browse for a game. The trial includes 1 hour of play time, so you get to see the full "product" for one hour and then your time is up. I browsed for a game, and that was simple enough, but it was a bit upsetting that I could see a bunch of games, but not their location or my ping. I decided to join a FFA on the campgrounds.

I joined the game and it seemed responsive... until I decided to fire a weapon. My ping must have been over 500, but I don't know because I couldn't check! I think it was an american server, from the guys accents.

Well, that experience was less fun, and couldn't see myself preferring that to playing quake on PC.

My final comment would be, If you are looking for old memories and you have the cash to spare, go for it. If you play quake on PC, don't bother, it isn't worth the 1200 points.

ps. but doom is. Buy doom!

Break the cycle of addiction. Say "no", to just one more turn.

http://www.civanon.com/

I've been trying to use zoom for ages, but have never been able to, due to lack of available keys, or not getting comfortable with the keys I could use. I tried rearranging weapon keys before, but I couldn't get used to that either. Due to this I have always used 90 fov so that I didn't have to zoom, but considering that most pro's use zoom heavily, the next logical step to improving your aim is using zoom. So I have constructed the following script, which does:

- allows unique weapon settings
- allows you to zoom for mg, lg and rail (but you can support more) by pressing the weapon button once or twice (it toggles)
- the toggle for each weapon works separately, so that every time you change a weapon, it's reset to the default fov for that weapon.

I decided to only use it for rail, lg and mg as those are the only weapons I use zoom on. It automatically zooms in when I switch to rail, lg or mg, however, if I select the weapon again, it zooms out to the normal fov. You can zoom in and out at will on that weapon. If you change to another weapon such as rocket, it will zoom out to default.

You shouldn't really be running around with rail or lg which is why I have it zoom in by default, but you can run around with the normal fov by just selecting the weapon twice. Of course, you can have it work the other way round, you just need to switch "railin" / "railout" in the scripts.

I am not using different sensitivities for my low and high fov, as I came to the conclusion that your lg is higher when zoomed in when you keep the sensitivity the same as your base sensitivity. Of course, rail is better to have a lower sensitivity when zoomed, however it confuses matters, so I just decided to get used to it.

This isn't anything amazing, but I thought I would share it, just in case anyone was interested :)

weapons.cfg
****************

set w6 "weapon 6 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 2 ; cg_CrosshairSize 30"
set w5 "weapon 5 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 9 ; cg_CrosshairSize 35"
set w1 "weapon 1 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 0"
set w3 "weapon 3 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 9 ; cg_CrosshairSize 35"
set w8 "weapon 8 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 9 ; cg_CrosshairSize 35"
set w4 "weapon 4 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 6 ; cg_CrosshairSize 70"
set w2 "weapon 2 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 2 ; cg_CrosshairSize 30"
set w7 "weapon 7 ; cg_DrawCrosshair 6 ; cg_CrosshairSize 26"

set fovin "cg_fov 60"
set fovout "cg_fov 110"

set railzoom "vstr railin"
set railin "vstr fovin ; set railzoom vstr railout"
set railout "vstr fovout ; set railzoom vstr railin"

set lgzoom "vstr lgin"
set lgin "vstr fovin ; set lgzoom vstr lgout"
set lgout "vstr fovout ; set lgzoom vstr lgin"

set mgzoom "vstr mgin"
set mgin "vstr fovin ; set mgzoom vstr mgout"
set mgout "vstr fovout ; set mgzoom vstr mgin"

bind KP_HOME "vstr w6 ; vstr railout ; vstr mgout ; vstr lgzoom"
bind KP_PGUP "vstr w5 ; vstr lgout ; vstr railout ; vstr mgout"
bind KP_END "vstr w1 ; vstr lgout ; vstr railout ; vstr mgout"
bind KP_DOWNARROW "vstr w3 ; vstr lgout ; vstr railout ; vstr mgout"
bind KP_PGDN "vstr w8 ; vstr lgout ; vstr railout ; vstr mgout"
bind KP_DEL "vstr w4 ; vstr lgout ; vstr railout ; vstr mgout"
bind KP_PLUS "vstr w2 ; vstr lgout ; vstr railout ; vstr mgzoom"
bind MOUSE2 "vstr w7 ; vstr lgout ; vstr mgout ; vstr railzoom"

:(



Fail.

Look!



So sad.... :(

Not only that, my terabyte hard drive which I have been downloading to like a maniac has died on the trip back to SA.... all the data gone :(

And to make things worse, I don't have enough bandwidth or a fast enough connection to update Quakelive enough to even play a bot.

Bad times...

It just got delivered at my work (Last day) so I plugged it in. Initial impressions are:

Good
******
- Shape is cool, it's nice to touch
- Buttons feel excellent and are very responsive
- Scroll wheel is lovely (I'm used to the ms3.0)
- The 1000hz switch is very cool
- I can see the DPI switch being useful.
- 450dpi tracks flawlessly (on a very bad mousepad)

Bad
*****
- Look at the picture below, guess which DPI is what (3 dpi settings, one of the DPI settings I lowered my sens and tried again)



UPDATE: It runs much... much... better on my QCK Heavy. It's actually playable now and I can tell that my aim is going to shoot through the roof with this. HOWEVER, how the hell do I get rid of the frikking lift off? Tap over the sensor?

Hey everyone! I am travelling once again! I have now sucessfully quit my job, moved out of my place and am heading back to sunny South Africa in 2 weeks! I am going back permanently to settle and stuff, and kind of get a house and two wifes and kids and stuff etc. etc. I am a bit worried about going back to the internet stone age though... you guys have no, no idea how bad the internet is there. Otherwise I am looking forward to going home!

I've been downloading like crazy so that I have enough movies and stuff to watch for the next 2 years (I have about 1.5TB of new stuff now) and I've bought an X box and tons of games to take back with me, because stupidly it's much cheaper in the UK. (This will include Starcraft II)

Unfortunately, this will probably be the end of my Quaking, although I kinda stopped playing when I knew I was leaving again, apart from CA which just keeps getting worse and worse (Either everyone camps one room together or rocket jumps like crazy everywhere, so fucking shit and boring!) I honestly don't think that Quakelive will be sustainable and although I would love it if we continued to have tournaments forever, I think it will be over in 2 or 3 years.

In other news I am leaving for Berlin on Friday! I'm going to be having a week long holiday with a couple of German girls I met in London a few months ago. I have been learning German and I found it pretty easy. Can't really speak, can't write very well, but I can read it very easily (thanks to knowing afrikaans/dutch)

Ja so, um, I might be playing Quake tonight and tomorrow night just to experience real internet for the last time. Otherwise cheers guys!

Special shout out to ESR* guys, like Dird, hkrep, sparkie etc. I had tons of fun playing the TDM, even if we were shit. An extra special shoutout to the 1v1 guys, like Nukm, decay, blindguardian etc. etc. don't feel bad if I leave out your name, I'm writing this quick.

And to h3i, the only man I love... I will miss you.

I've been considering getting a console for awhile, mostly so that I can move my gaming and media more into the living room and use my PC for more work/creative kinda things. I have the utmost fear that I will not actually use a console once I get one, but then my friend pointed out this deal, and the urge to get one has grown:

http://www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/4-/14946882...oduct.html

Arrgghhh! What are your guys preferences? I'm planning to take it back to SA and hopefully use it for a number of years...

UPDATE: I decided not to buy one, and then my friend gave me a link to buy a 360 Elite with 2 games for £140 new "$^$£&! So I've gone ahead a bought it. It's nearly the same price that I paid for my DS...

Is there anyway we can get better hosting for ESR? It goes down really often, and I wouldn't mind donating some cash if it means getting a better server.

Since I'm at work and I'm thinking of all these creative things, maybe some people should be thinking of making a new design for ESR, maybe to fit it more into the Quakelive theme? I know BooTes made some new styles a few years ago.

Also, how hard would it be to get ESL/id/Blizzard etc. to advertise on the site, rather than gay thug dating or other rubbish?

Those of you that actually read my journal will know that I was going out with a girl from Slovakia for quite a long time, and that we broke up right after I moved to Italy. We haven't really kept in touch, but out of the blue she emailed me on New Years saying that she was sorry for not being contact and announced that she was ready to have me over for a visit. Of course I haven't seen her in 2 years and I miss her a bit, and I was meant to go to Slovakia in 2007 but it fell through. So I thought why the hell not and I'm going over for a week at the end of the month.

I am going to be in Kosice, which is not anywhere near anywhere, but that's ok sometimes getting away from big cities and stuff is needed. Like usual, if anyone has any good recommendations of what to see and do let me know, but no worries if you don't.

Apart from dodging psychotic women for the last month, life has been good. I spent Christmas in South Africa where it was stupidly hot. It was slightly disappointing to return to the UK and snow and -3 :( but I have been keeping myself occupied. Most of the time I have been catching up on my comics and graphic novels.

Recently I've read:
Preacher
Transmetropolitan
Y: The Last Man
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
The Boys
Freak Angels
X - Men (of course)

I've also gone on a spending spree and have bought a number of useless commodities, such as 10 t-shirts from the U.S. A second hand intuos2 wacom pad (large one for £30) a really crap blackberry and THE MOST AWESOME KEYBOARD IN THE WORLD.

Which is of course a Microsoft Natural Elite, which is only sold in the U.S. but I found it on ebay <3 The reason I love it so much is because it's got a fantastic numpad, which are my wasd keys.

Should receive it tomorrow *glee*.

Have you ever been happy? I mean you might not be the best, and there is some room for improvement, but you're happy. You're having fun, and everything feels good, you don't feel the need to change anything. Well except that one nagging thought. You know the one. The one right at the back. It's like a dog barking in the distance. You can live with it, it's not too bad...

But it goes on... and on... and on... Until one day you just snap and you feed it a big piece of meat with powered arsenic... Ok, maybe it's not the same thing, but you all know what I am talking about.

"If I lower it, my lg will be better"

"I need to make my sens higher so I can turn faster"

"If I can learn how to use accel it would make me a better player"

All these things are fine and sometimes, are needed. However, it can also lead you down a deep, and dark path. Sometimes, you just can't stop. You make a change, then it doesn't feel right. You make another change, but your accuracy decreases. You tell yourself "all I need to do is stick with it and things will get better" but all that reminds you of is what a poor woman with an abusive husband will tell herself.

Days pass. Weeks pass. Months pass.

At that point you can't even remember what you like anymore, you fall back to your original setting, but it's not the same anymore. Nothing is right anymore, you only start to hate, only start to feel like a lost soul on the edge of the end...

Sensitivity hell. We all know it, why do we punish ourselves?

November last year, I was playing with a fairly low sens, but my aim was GOOD and CONSISTANT. I was enjoying going on to servers, even if I was losing I still felt like I was putting some damage out, everything was good. It just really bothered me that I was getting into so many situations where people were hitting me from behind, or while moving around I kept bumping into things etc. Back in the day I used to play with a really high sens, but if I tried the same sens now, it seemed a bit archaic and there was no way I would hit the same as I could on the lower sens.

I ignored it at first... but after awhile I started getting these feelings of inadequacies, I NEEDED MORE.

About 1 week before I went back to SA and they applied the hitbox/netcode update, I changed my sens.

Up! Down! Accel!

I started changing keyboard layouts, started thinking of new mice! Nothing worked, it just seemed to pull me deeper and deeper into a world of lost confidence. Eventually 2 months later I gave up and switched back to my old sens... but it wasn't the same anymore. My accuracies were down AND I still couldn't move / turn around fast. It was a lost cause... but I carried on anyway...

I was wandering if anyone has used/uses a really low fov to play with, like Daler used to use back in the day? (cg_fov 69)

I've never really been able to use zoom effectively so I've alwayed used a low fov, so I'm playing around with lowering it. I'm not really going to be able to test it out properally until I get back to the UK and I would like to know what your own experiences were with it?

I'm tired of people trying to write my nick like "tBONe" or "Tb3ne" or "tb0n3" or etc. I did originally just use Tbone, but it proved a bit common so I needed to get creative with the spelling. I would like to keep it like that since it's kinda a nick name as well as my handle, but I need a new spelling that is stylish, original, but won't cause people to be completely unable to write it.

Or I could just use my name :9

EDIT: Loving the suggestions so far!

I bought a new monitor a few months ago, the BenQ V2400W. Although it is undoubtedly awesome for practically everything, it's a bit disappointing when it comes to Quake.

So, my work is getting rid of old equipment and they are giving me the Dell M993! Sure it's 4 years old, but it's 19" and runs at 120hz <3

I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to fit both (huge) monitors on my desk...

I thought I would play around and make some maps for Quakelive for any "future" competitions they may have and thought about converting an old map that I made for Quake 4 :D

However, GTK radient doesn't seem to be able to just open the map and I may need Quake 4 installed? Unfortunately my Quake 4 cd is back in SA, is there any way to just convert the geometry?

The map was 80% complete and I thought it was pretty good, so it would be nice to be able to use that rather than start from scratch.

Any ideas?

I have recently noticed that Quakelive movement is slightly but explicitly different to OSP, CPMA and even vq3. However, after searching some forums, I have been unable to find out what exactly the difference is. What I have noticed so far is:
- You move faster off the jump
- Regarding the above, you can sometimes jump sideways fast
- You can build speed faster (leads to over jumping a lot)
- You can strafe jump sideways ?? (Like you are strafe jumping in one direction and then turn 90 degrees and still carry on in a line.)
- It's easier to knock into corners

I kinda liked the sliding by corners in OSP, but I suppose it's better to be more precise, and it does seem a bit faster and solid. Does anyone know where I can find more information regarding this and any ADVANCED tutorials?

A comment from BlindGuardian made me think that maybe I should try help the less fortunate when it comes to aim in QuakeLive. Who am I to give aim advice? Well when I started playing Quake way back when, I wouldn't have been able to hit Liam standing a metre away from me. Admittedly, I have very poor hand eye coordination, or did anyway. When I started I was mostly celebral; I concerntrated on timing, and strategy. I did both of these quite well, but my aim was lacking. I developed a very big insecurity over this, therefore all I have been doing for the past 9 years is trying to get my aim better :) I can't time for shit anymore but I can damn well hit 60% rail when I need to!

I am going to try and outline the most simple and effective ways to improve your aim. If you practise these techniques your aim WILL improve.

This porridge is just right..."

Firstly, I would recommend watching a few demos of yourself. Be very critical about your movement and aim. You can usually tell from watching someone play whether their sensitivity is too high or too low. Of course it is important to be comfortable with your sensitivity, but there is no point in being comfortable if you can't do a 180, or your are unable to turn fast enough to kill someone who is surprising you.

At the same time, it's quite easy to see if your sensitivity is too high. The 3 areas to look for are:
- Overshooting when flicking
- Over turning when doing large turns (90 degrees, 180 degrees)
- unable to track people effectively when they are dodging your LG (movements too small for your hand movements)

You need to find a sensitivity that is comfortable, that you are still able to turn effectively, and not be overshooting.

Once you have that sensitivity, you need to STICK TO IT. The only time you should ever change your sensitivity is if you get a new mouse, or monitor, and even then you should try to keep it as close to your original settings as possible.

For beginners and people people with bad aim I would recommend not to use accel. Accel can mean a great improvement for some players, however for others it just complicates things. I think you should probably first get your aim up to standard before experimenting with accel.

Chillax

When you are at your PC you should be relaxed as possible. You should be able to sit in the same position for hours and not have it bother your aim. I am not going to go into the pro's and cons of every mouse, since there are hundreds out there and most recent mice are atleast good enough to aim accurately with. Find one that you are comfortable with, has a reasonable DPI and non-squiggly buttons.

However, the mouse surface is extremely important! I would urge you not to use your desk, as this causes tracking, transport and comfort issues. Once again find which one you are comfortable with, find out what other players with a similar preference to you use and try that out.

The Lightning Gun

This is easier than you think. No really! First, point and click. If he's standing still you should hit every bolt. Ok, not very impressive. But this does show that you can hit your initial shot. What if he's moving in a straight line? Can you track him? This also isn't very hard to do, and once again I would recommend watching your own demos to see if you are tracking too quickly or too slow. If you're too slow the solution is easy, just make your sensitivity higher until you aren't anymore. (This falls under finding the right sens) However, the problem is usually because you are too fast. In the heat of the moment, mouse movements can get erratic. This can be OK for RL and rail, but can wreck havok on any lightning gun tracking.

To make matters worse, the guy you are trying to lg is going to be shooting shit at you and moving quickly from side to side. How do you learn to deal with that! Easy with my 2(3) step solution!

1 - Lock

This is the part that we all agreed was easy to do. Point and click.

2 - Don't move your mouse

Eh... what? You heard me! Don't move your mouse! You don't know what he's going to do, so let him decide where you are going to aim. First he needs to move out of your lg stream, if you are aiming for the centre, you're still going to be hitting him even if he's moving away. Once he is away, he's going to do one of two things. He's either going to move BACK into your stream, or he's going to bolt for it. Which leads to step 3.

3 - Track

This is also not very difficult and anyone should be able to do this with a bit of practise. However, don't be over zealous. Try to move your mouse calmly over the opponent, don't end up gripping the mouse like an eagle with muscle spasms.

Of course, you are not going to be able to control your actions completely, and you are still going to try to follow the opponent subconsciously. I like to think of moving my mouse as slow as possible, while still tracking. People don't move that fast anyway, unless they are rocket jumping or strafing by, and he shouldn't be doing either of those when you have your lg out.

The Rocket Laucher (Or "I like your shoes.")

Aiming with the Rocket Launcher is very easy. The main problem that people have is that they try and predict where the guy is gonna go. You do not need to do this. You already know where the guy is. Rockets travel faster than your opponent. Shoot directly at his feet. He can't do anything, he WILL be hit. He can't jump, strafe, dance, NOTHING.

Even at a longer range, take your time, and shoot at his feet. He is either going to be forced to move, making him vunerable, or he's going to get splash damage and moved somewhere. Both of these things take the job of trying to predict where he is going to go out of your hands.

The only time you should ever go for a direct rocket is if he's in the air and you have a free shot, or if you are 90% certain you will hit him. If you are 89% certain, go for his feet rather.

When spamming and aiming around corners, don't just throw the rockets out there. That ammo is valuable! Take your time and do precise spam. Get it so the splash goes fully around that corner, make sure it explodes exactly outside that door way. The time taken is worth it.

Wait for it... The Railgun

The rail is all about waiting. Flick rails look impressive and can be very helpful sometimes, but they also get you killed. Wait until you have a clear shot. Some people (me) become completely obsessed with getting the first shot in, but what's the point if you miss? Rather get hit by his rail and then you hit yours. Over time you will win more battles than him, because you are going to be hitting more rails. He will need to be extremely lucky (or good) to hit every single rail before you have a shot. Don't go for difficult rails, wait for them to become easy rails.

Something, not exactly related to aim, but effective railgun use: When you pull it out, make sure you can pull out! There is nothing worse than being drilled by lg and you are waiting for rail the reload. And what's the first thing most people do? They fire (and miss) another rail. Of course, sometimes you don't have enough time to change to another weapon, but in every other case change to something else! I think rail punishes the most for bad positioning, don't let it happen to you!

On the topic of the railgun, Prozac once said that this was the secret of aim:

\bind MWHEELDOWN "cg_fov 60 ; sensitivity 3.13"
\bind MWHEELUP "cg_fov 90; sensitivity 4.7"

Or something similar. Although I don't agree with using zoom ALL the time, there really is no reason not to use it at long distance.

A lot of people stress over their rail acc, how it was 50% yesterday and 9% today. Remember, you don't need 50% to win, the rail gun is a tool to hit guys from far away, use it as such, and your low accuracy won't matter.

Here are the other guns, quick fire:
Gauntlet: Aim directly towards the centre of the model
Machine Gun: Same as LG
Shotgun: Same as rail, in QL, even long range!
Grenade Launcher: Learn spam routines before hand. Run around a map and learn where to shoot the grenades.
Plasma: I have no clue, want to give me some tips? :)

Remember, you don't need good aim to win, but it certainly helps :)

PS. I didn't go into graphics, but high picmip, brightskins, truelightning and thinlightning will all increase your aim too.

UPDATE 28-11-2014:

Finally learning that plasma. The 1st Key is to have decent ping. If you don't have below 40 ping, stick to using it as spam and long corridors. DO NOT USE IT CLOSE RANGE. If you get under 40 ping it's game time! Close range can be super effective, and to me it feels like really laggy LG. You basically want to shoot directly at the guy and wait until he moves, like LG, but then over compensate and predict. They will usually go side to side, so you need to see the 2 spots he is going to, and then time it correctly. If you try to play plasma only for a bit you will see what I mean.

At medium range, you will need to kinda predict where he is going. You can either start on the enemy and slowly aim in front of him until you start hitting (This gives you the range) or you can try aim in front of him from the get go and then randomly shoot before and behind him, also to get the range. Once you got the range you know what positions you need to shoot (left, center, right) according to how he is moving.

This stuff still isn't easy and requires practise, but I'm starting to consistently hit plasma balls at close to medium range, using it over LG in some instances. 20% plasma > 40% lg.

I have been considering for a while now to switch from the MS3.0 to the WMO. The WMO is a bit lighter and easier to handle, but at the same time I've been using the ms3.0 since 2002/2003 (The same one!) so I am very familiar with it. The only real reason I am considering changing is that I've heard that the MS3.0 buttons are hard to press and therefore cause a delay compared to the WMO. Either way I buying a mouse, as my MS3.0 is really old and I'm not sure how much longer it will last, so I might as well buy a replacement while they are around.

Is there any real evidence for this, is the lag amount enough to warrant a change and what would you do in my position?

Guys, guys! I AM actually going to be in Sweden tomorrow! 3rd time lucky! Ok so I haven't actually got on the plane yet, but I have the ticket and everything.

For those who don't know I had planned to go to QLAN back in 2004, and I was going to move to Sweden with a psychotic female a few months ago which I decided to cancel.

Of course, I never learn and she invited me to come for the weekend and have decided to go. She is now calling me things like sweetie. I really don't like it. Anyway, glad to be finally visiting. I'm only there until Monday, anything that I apsolutely need to see?

Most of my team that I used to work with has moved to Stockholm, so I am probably going to be hanging out with a bunch of S. Africans oddly enough.

In other news, I have been watching many gigs and have bought tickets to the following artists:
- Alec Empire and Nic Endo (they also played ATR songs!)
- The Bronx (American punk band, they did a spanish mariachi set!)
- The Mars Volta
-Sonisphere (Mastodon, NIN, Metallica, Lamb of God, Alice in Chains etc etc.

I am desperately trying to get tickets to Mastodon playing in London on the 6th of June, but the cheapest they are going for on ebay is £60 :(

Who wants to be my friend on Quake Live?

(Nickname = tB0nE)

Hi guys, could you tell me where are the best places for me to buy computer equipment online in the UK? I may have asked this before, but I can't find anything archived.

I'm planning on building a PC, and this is what I have decided on so far:
BenQ V2400W 24"
Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz
Crossfire HD4850's

I have hard drives. Suggestions where I can look and what I should buy?

Firstly, post 6000. n00bs.

Although none of you are actually interested, I would just like explain why the change of mind when it came to Sweden. There were 3 reasons why I decided to stay in London.

1.) All the english language jobs I applied to rejected me.
2.) I really like my job in London, and would like to stay there a bit longer.

And most importantly

3.) Girl, who appeared to be perfectly OK in every way while I was with her in SA, became more and more psychotic, and I had a growing fear of being stuck in any sort of accomodation with her while she had her merry way with me. When I decided to give her the bad news, she confirmed my suspicions of being certifiable and so I am quite happy with my decision.

I must look quite silly, but considering that I decided to cancel everything before making any serious arrangements, I am definitely getting better at this. (considering the past).

So instead of moving countries, I have a new dream! The place I am staying is rubbish, so I found another place to live, which is completely awesome. (I move in 2 days) In this new abode I am going to build a New PC.

The New PC
**************
Although it's probably not going to be as awe inspiring as luKrek's choice of hardware, I pretty much want to build a killer PC for about £500 to £600.

The collective is smarter than the individual (Well sometimes) so I am asking you! Faithful readers! To suggest what I should buy.

In other news I went to Edinburgh to train a client last week, beautiful city, surprised me. Tonight I am going to see Lamb of God, even though I am sick, but should still be a good show. I am also stuck in a vortex of Xenas (plural of Xena) but that is another story.

Hey anyone going to watch Lamb of God / Dimmu Borgir in London on the 14th?

I don't know anyone in London that listens to the same music as me, but I am not letting that stop me from going!

I am currently in London, it's pretty shit. I honestly preferred it the last time I was in the UK (not in London). My job is pretty cool, but other than that, the economy is failing, the exchange rate is making it rather pointless to be here (I can save more money in SA) and I haven't really made many friends here.

Soooo... yeah. I'm moving to Stockholm at the end of February. :D This will make it the third time that I will be living (and hopefully working) in another country.

Why Sweden? Why not somewhere else? Why not back to SA? Well when I went back to SA over Christmas I hooked up with this girl I used to work with before I left for Italy. We decided to keep everything casual because of course I was heading back to London. Now my old company (Poker website) is closing down their external offices, and withdrawing all the services back to their head office, in Stockholm.

They offered some people jobs in the head office from Cape Town and she applied and got it, so she asked me to go with her. Considering my past history I probably should say no... but fuckit. Because I am her "partner", they fly me there, our first 3 months accomodation is free and I think we get Swedish lessons. So why not? I have a return flight back to SA anyway.

I look forward to being there, I think it should be fun. Atleast I am going in Spring, I'm still not dealing well with the cold in Europe :D So like anyone wanna be my friend? :)

EDIT: Stockholm is cancelled! Remind me to just stay away from females, like permanently. :)

Hello there!

I'm looking for some saffas to create a team to compete in the next Q3 nations cup that's starting in a few weeks. Unfortunately I don't really know who is here and available. So far there is myself, bsk (the_basilisk) and I am currently in talks with one heavy hitter who's residing in the UK atm ;)

I want to get together a full 7+1 team, and it doesn't matter if you are not that good, it's about having some fun and maybe getting organised for some future tournaments after this.

Just imsg me and I'll get back to you, and if anyone knows how to contact nDc-stallone or VK (vulkhan) please let me know, I know they are both in the UK atm.

EDIT: Ok, we have 4 players (Me, bsk, m00p and timmah!) Although I still need more! I'm back in SA for 2 weeks in December.

It's full of poles.

EDIT: Polish women are fucking hot, I might visit again soon.... or just stay in London.

Hey guys,

I'm finally settled in the UK and I need some internets now. My ex-housemate moved out and took our connection with him so I need a new setup.

With so many different places it's quite confusing, I already have a phone line (bt i think) just no adsl. I stay in South West London zone 2, any recommendations?

I want it for gaming and surfing the net, maybe downloading some movies or tv series, and I don't want to pay too much, £20 - £30.

Discuss.

The title is just an attempt to get people to click on this post <rage> OMG what is WRONG with you people!?! Everytime some retard actually disappears from ESR a new one comes to take their place and then the folks don't know how the show works and we have these relentless showings of pointless opinions and arguments, NO ONE CARES, STOP. </rage>

Anyway, that probably didn't even make that much sense, I am actually just going to continue writing my "travel journal". I've been in Siena, Italy for 6 months, I can now understand "most" of the italian spoken around me which is ok, I still don't speak very well but I can have crappy conversations now. In all honestly I am sick of the place... I want to continue learning Italian of course and come back, but I need a bit of a break.

I am moving to London in 2 weeks to take advantage of the current exchange rate to the Rand (currency in South Africa) which is £1 to R16, and will hopefully be working there for a year or two so I can pay for my studies. Looking forward to speaking english, british girls and the summer etc.

In other news, last tuesday was my birthday, I went out with some friends and we got assaulted by some foreign cunts. They poured a beer over my friends head and when my friend turned around to ask them wtf they hit him in the head with a bottle, when I tried to help I also got hit with a bottle. I got 2 stitches on my head which I suppose isn't too bad, I got to see how the medical services work here (pretty good) unfortunately my friend needed 15 stitches which sucked.

A few days later I found out that we had made front page news! (In Siena, it's not very big) Here's the link:

link

It's in italian but use google translate you lazy bastards.

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentN...3220080319

Source: Reuters duh.

Damn, he was one of the greats.

Hello boys and girls!

As most of you now know I am located in Tuscana Italia and will be staying here for the next 5 months still. Other than my girlfriend breaking up with my one week after I arrived I am ok. However, this is not about that. If one thinks bad a few years they would remember me writing lots of journals about playing quake. I got pretty bored with it though with the lack of tournaments, and I started working etc.

However, with the announcement of the ESWC and me being in Europe it gives me the opportunity to play in a tournament again! (albeit if only a qualifier). I might not have been brilliant, but tournaments were really the only thing I enjoyed, if playing in them or watching them. So hopefully Italy has a qualifier, because I would really really like to go, but of course this leads to other problems.

First the good things:
- I have a computer, quake 3 and a usable cfg (necessary)
- I can still aim
- I have my mouse and mousepad
- I can spare an hour or two every day

The bad things:
- No internet connection
- No keyboard (have you ever tried playing on a laptop keyboard?)
- No one to play against
- The last time I played compeditively in a tournament was in 2002. (I came 7th, in SA, so nothing great, I must say though that the person that beat me was later disqualified for cheating and I was not allowed to replay my games hmmph)
- My current game is a complete mess, I can't time, I fuck up my movement often, my strategy is bananas, I lose concerntration after 2 minutes and end up randomly running around. (the last ummm 6 years I have been playing mostly drunk and being very aggressive)

Oh yeah, and is there anyway to play full screen on a letter box laptop screen where the viewpoint isn't warped?

Anyway, how the hell would one get back into reasonable shape in this situation? And apart from Stermy and booms (hopefully they don't turn up), who is good in Italy?

Anyway, yay!

All my planning and work has finally paid off, and I am leaving for Rome on tuesday. Unlike some of my previous ideas which have become failures (If anyone remembers some of them, like moving to the Czech rep. or going to QLAN in 2004) this has all worked out.

My main goal was to study in Italy due to me getting citizenship etc. Unfortunately I couldn't apply for any courses because I couldn't speak any italian. Luckily I found out about the government offerring scholarships for italian nationals abroad, which I applied for and received, so this means that for the next 6 months I am going to be intensively studying italian. I am assuming I should be able to speak farely well by then ;)

My long term plans are to enrol in a university to study engineering in 2009. In between now and then however I will be trying to save up as much cash as possible (I have a good amount right now, but no where near enough)

The bad side is that I haven't found a place to stay. I have sent emails everywhere, even some faxes, spoken to people etc. etc. I can't find anywhere. I don't suppose anyone knows someone in Siena?

But it's ok, I'm just going to arrive and see what I can do, I should be able to find something on the spot.

Other cool things is that I am going to Slovakia for christmas, and I'll probably be back in the UK again the middle of next year. Yay! Adventures!

Hey does anyone play the civilization IV game of the month over at civfanatics?

I've been playing loads recently, the game is #@$^ addictive. I keep losing (it's really tough) but it's challenging and it's enjoyable, great.

I don't suppose anyone lives in Rome on this web site? No? Does anyone know the fastest way to get from Fiumicino airport to Tiburtina bus station? I just realised that the bus ticket I bought is only like an hour and a half after my plane lands. I have directions and I should get there in time, but it will be touch and go.

Secondary objective of this journal. The Roman Empire kicked ass, it's like a huge nation that continued to grow and existed for a 1000 years, and even continued to exist in other forms nearly until the modern age. The only thing that rivals this is China. Discuss.

If any of you are into graphics you will know what a Wacom pad is. They are synonymous with graphics tablets in the design or art scene and are practically the only choice you have. At first, after reading all the magazines and online etc. I lusted after a pad, to make my drawing dreams come true.

I did eventually buy their cheaper model called the Volito2, which, although small and without tilt, was really great and perfect for what I wanted to do.

Towards the end of the year I should be moving over to Italy and I am planning on buying a macbook before I go over and concerntrate on art, drawing, modelling (and learning Italian of course). Anyway, (I'm getting to the point soon) I was recently playing around with different operating systems and one of them was mac OS X. Strangely enough, OS X, the home of art, design and all things creative, did not support my Wacom pad.

I popped in my driver CD, hmmm no drivers. I then went to the Wacom web site and checked their download page. They had mac drivers for every model they have released, except the Volito. I then began to read about the dark world of digital tablets.

They never made drivers for the Volito because they say it would cost too much to develop them. Odd, since I would think that all their other models would work in roughly the same way. Then I found out that they actually had beta drivers (not available for download anymore) Of course if you look at the wacom forums here you can see someone calling their bullshit. One of their drivers, actually allowed the tablet to work, albeit you couldn't change any of the settings. However, as soon as Wacom found this out they "updated" the driver so that it wouldn't work any more.

It turns out that if you want to use your tablet for life, or on any platform, Wacom is NOT the right tablet to buy. Everytime they "update" their hardware old models stop being supported, even though it is essentially the same things. Their old Intuos models did literally the exactly the same job as the new ones that have just come out, except that they don't run on OS X and Wacom has no plans to support them. The Intuos range costs about $500 for a tablet (depending on size of course.) and of course the entertainment industry mostly does it's work on OS X so everytime they update their PC's, which they would obviously do, they will need to upgrade their (very expensive) tablets.

They are making people spend ridiculous amounts of money for something quite simple, and then making them upgrade regularly or every few years.

How can they do this? Well they have a questionable patent on wireless drawing devices, it uses some sort of magnetic frequency so their pen's don't require any batteries. This put them years ahead of the competition in terms of accuracy and realism (because the pens are light) but now it appears that they have formed a monopoly on the tablet business.

Of course, most artists and hippie types are too blind to see through their bullshit until they've been screwed so they are getting away with it. I've decided to sell my wacom and get another brand, if only to not support the company anymore, unfortunately, there isn't much competition. I've decided on this, which looks fairly high quality and is supported on both PC and Mac (And Linux).

The problem with this is that it's nearly impossible to buy anywhere, apart from Ebay, in fact, the only store that seems to be selling it is Ebay (well their must be some asian stores probably). Anyone know where I can get this? Either shipped to SA or in Europe. (Cheaply)

In other news I bought baldurs gate (1+2 and expansions), Ice wind dale (1+2 and expansions) and neverwinternights (with expansions) for $35. My life is destroyed for the next year. Oh and things are going very well with my girlfriend who arrived a week ago and is staying with me <3

After looking through Zanno's old journal "Internet Girlfriend" I noticed some old comments from me. Some guy brought up religion which just pissed me off and made me think irrationally. Needless to say I do not get into conversations about religion anymore. Another thing that struck me was that some guy said I was irritating. Well... I probably was, but it wasn't as bad as I was in the past when I was still a teenager.

If I go back to 2002/2003 and look at my old journals or comments I just get one feeling, CRINGE.

How was I ever like that? Does anyone else look back and think "Fuck I was stupid back then"? I suppose it is the lack of dealing with people different to you, or just all round world experience. Or maybe, it's just the maturity we gain as we grow older. I could be more willing to accept I might be wrong than I used to be, or maybe I just can't be arsed to argue with a freaking idiot because I realised you just can't make them see.

Well hopefully I am less irritating than I was before, I certainly comment less. Anyway... it could just be the psycadelics.

Also brought up in Zanno's journal was the mention of my slovakian pen pal. We did meet in England (Wales actually) and decided to do the whole long distance thing. It's gone quite well and we met later again in Prague in February, and she's arriving in Cape Town on Saturday to stay for 2 months, which will be fun. (We are also both studying in Italy next year.)

Even though this has gone quite well, I don't think I will ever get involved in another long distance relationship, even with the new technologies we have on hand. You get frustrated and lose interest, you run out of things to talk about and if you talk about serious issues it can leave a very negative feeling on the relationship, even when that feeling probably wouldn't happen if you had those discussions in person. Of course, we are both quite busy, her with her studies and I'm working like a dog (Do dogs work?) so I guess in an individual way it's been very good for us. (I'm still very excited for her to arrive :) )

After 6 months of wrestling with the Italian bureaucratic machine, I've finally received a scholarship to go study in Italy for 6 months, starting in December.

I don't want to bite the hand that feeds (or worse, insult myself) but fucking hell they are unorganised! I don't even know how many emails to consulates, universities, student organisations I sent, most without a response and the rest with very late replies. The information for the scholarship was only released about 3 weeks before the deadline for applications (luckily I had prepared most of the things before hand), and my correspondent at the Italian Institute of Culture in Pretoria, although very helpful, disappeared 2 weeks before that deadline.

He had been helping me and told me to fax or scan copies of all my important certificates and documents with the application for so he could check if everything was fine. So I did so and waited. And waited. 2 weeks later (very close to the deadline) I phone them and find out that the guy is away on holiday... until AFTER the deadline, luckily someone else there was happy to help me.

Anyway, then yesterday, I get the confirmation that I have been accepted and will be rewarded the scholarship, but I also need to send them some more documents before the 21st of June. #^$^@! I ask myself why they only inform me of this on a Friday? Most of it wasn't too bad, and just requires that I go into the consulate and approve some stuff (which is only open mornings and not weekends.) But one of the things is that I need a medical check up to say that I am fine.... in Italian @$#^%! I'm just going to get it translated... but anyway, it's great that I am going to be heading back to Europe, and also maybe since I will be learning Italian and staying there I will feel more apart of the culture than I currently am even though I am a citizen.

To start off with the course I am doing just teaches Italian, which I hope will open up options to study at a university in Italy, or just an alternative career than what I am currently doing. I will be staying and studying in Siena, which is supposedly a very beautiful place, what is also nice is my long distance girlfriend is going to do her final year of studies in Italy too, albeit in a different town.

In other news I watched "Fist Full of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More" for the first time, spaghetti westerns fucking own!

Also does anyone have a demonoid torrent account and would like to invite me? There is a torrent I want to get on the site that isn't available anywhere else i.e. Chronological X-Men pack 13, I've been reading every single X-Men comic that has ever existed in the past year and have almost caught up to the comics coming out now, and it would be nice if I could start buying them again.

On updates on past journals, I have effectively quit playing Quake 3, it wasn't a conscious decision, I just got bored and have stopped playing, it's quite weird. I have been playing a little bit of Quakeworld though, seems there has been a bit of a revival in South Africa which is cool. And civilization 4 has destroyed my soul and I'm about to delete it because I can't stop playing.

On Linux and other operating systems, I still have a reasonably stable version of Ubuntu running, but since I can't run civilization 4 or Photoshop, or use my wacom pad (correctly, no pressure sensitivity), I haven't really been using it often. I installed Vista, and uninstalled it 3 days later. Mac OS works pretty nice, but the sound is screwed (running it on hardware it wasn't designed for) so that's killed that. So I put on a XP clean install, modded it a bit, and it's working like a charm.

They should make it a crime to end an episode like that!

ARGGHHHH!H!!11

Hello! I'm sure some of you are wondering why I have written Day 6 when Day 4 was in early February. The reasons are that I went to Prague for 2 weeks (more on that later) and my monitor suddenly turned yellow. It's been in and out the shop because the South African distributer Rectron are incompetent bastards. It's still in the shop (3rd time I've taken it back because they keep giving it back to me "fixed") So I eventually bought a new monitor. I decided to go modern and get an LCD. After looking on the net and doing tons of research I decided to get the LG 1960TQ 19" 4ms (more on this later) which I am now using.

I only got this monitor 2 days ago, and luckily all windows downloads have finished so I have completely moved over now. When I booted Linux again there were a ton of new updates for it (auto update woo hoo!) so I loaded that and restarted. Hmmm, no sound. After messing around a bit and not being able to figure out the issue. (Sound cards detected, speakers working correctly?) I read a bit online and still couldn't find anything. So I switched off my computer completely and switched it back on again and it was fine (???) Don't know what happened there but everything is ok again.

I promptly started work on it and started to install new things. I was happy to find that after the update the bug I was having with not being able to play videos full screen was now fixed and there were no issues with that. I've also found out that the problem where some of my maximized windows were turning black was because of the Nvidia drivers. No current fix. Great. Luckily it doesn't happen that often and all you need to do is make the window smaller. (It happens about once a day)

I've made a to-do list and have steadily been going through it with only one major problem, which I will get to.

So far I have successfully installed gmail-notifier, set up google talk in gaim, installed a linux MSN rip off that works with my webcam, smooth fonts, a winamp rip off, all plug ins needed for watching multimedia online (e.g. Youtube), google earth (It was there and there was a Linux version) and an OSX ripoff dock. The dock works, however there are some problems with the animation effects and they do not seem very smooth. Looking into fixing this.

The one issue I have had is setting up my wacom pad. There are no linux drivers for this except community made ones, but I've tried all the normal tutorials to get it to run and I haven't succeeded yet. It's being detected and the drivers have been installed, it's just refusing to work, grrrr.

Other than that it's been smooth sailing. All the applications listed above were all installed faster than can be done in Windows which was a real treat, I also feel that I am starting to get used to the process of doing things.

So my to-do list to get everything I need running is:

- Setup wine (Windows emulator) to run all required windows apps, which are:
- Photoshop CS
- Civilization 4

- Setup a Linux bittorrent app, I don't think utorrent will work as it should through wine.
- Install quake 3 ioquake3 (this should be easy)
- Install quake 4 (also pretty simple)
- setup the grub menu (bootloader) also very easy, but it's on the list, at the moment it autoboots to a new kernel which I haven't setup yet.
- Setup new kernel :)
- Setup AA for the groovy GUI
- Install the wacom pad
- see how to share my hard drives and access other computers hard drives on my home lan.

And I can't think of anything else, but that is the basic stuff. In other news, I am getting dreadlocks so I am in the process of roughing up my hair, it looks quite dreadful (no pun intended) but my first major knot has developed so it will probably look like a dread in about a month. That that point I will be going into a salon to shape them and roll them, and we shall see what happens then :) Concerning Prague and the performance of the new monitor you will need to wait until next time :) Till Then!

As you can see I have excluded a few days with Linux, this is due to me not being able to find the original torrent files of the downloads I am currently doing, so I am waiting for them to finish in Windows before I move everything over.

Ok, I ended off with loading up Ubuntu for the first time and then running off to work. I came back early in the morning (Night shift) and proceeded to do my first driver installation in Linux. Nvidia Beta Drivers.

First problem, I did not know what version of Linux I had installed (32bit, 64bit etc). No problem, I have a look around the OS.

$@#^#@%

Ten minutes later I give up and decide to just go ahead and get the 64bit version of the driver, I have a 64bit CPU so…

I go command line and try to run the .run file and gives me an error “Sorry you have the 32bit version!”

$@#^#@%

Download the new version and run it, now I am greeted by an error “You need to be logged in as root to run the driver.” Ok no problem, so I log out, and then realize I never made a root password, I log back in as myself and then find out that my normal user can change the root password (What?). I change it and log in as root. Great! I run the driver again and get told “You need to exit X Windows before you can proceed” X Windows is the GUI. No problem, makes sense for graphics drivers, I remember from the old days that the short cut for that was alt-ctrl-backspace. I press it. The screen goes black and loads up again.

$@#^#@%

I then get pissed off and go to bed, tired and confused.

In hind sight I probably shouldn’t have worked on it while I was so tired as my brain was screwed, but when I woke up I started again and read the official Ubuntu help guide and learnt all about sudo and apt-get.

Linux has always been very centered on root and having root privileges, Ubuntu has tried to do away with that and introduced the sudo command, which runs whatever you want in root mode.

Apt-get is fucking cool, you type what you want, like apt-get nvidia drivers and it goes and downloads the latest version. Sweet.

What is even cooler are the packet management systems, so instead of doing it in the command line, you run a program with a graphical interface, and every single application on the internet database is available for download. Wh00t. I also noticed that I had 200 megs of updates ready to install. (That’s what I get for ignoring all the icons on screen).

From there on it was smooth sailing. Unfortunately not everything can be done via graphical interface, however the help files on the Ubuntu website is amazing and give you line by line code to run, you even start to understand what’ going on after awhile!

At the end of day 2, the graphical side of the OS was complete, with FUCKING AWESOME 3D shite. It really blows you away to see a window burst into flames when you close it. My personal favorite is having all 4 of my desktops (Linux can have multiple desktops) put on a cube, that you can rotate with your mouse scroll wheel.

I also set up a Windows Vista theme which looked exactly like Vista, which was a laugh, but I found the “original” Ubuntu human theme better (I actually installed a 3D transparent theme for Ubuntu called “superhuman”) The GUI is extremely configurable so I have made a desktop environment that I am familiar with (looks like Windows) I have also tried to go one further and get an OS X dock, but this has turned out to be quite hard and I could only get one kinda working. I will try again when I have more time.

After that I was thinking that it was time I start continuing my downloads, so uTorrent was a must! Unfortunately uTorrent has not been released for Linux and I did not feel like using something else, so this was a perfect opportunity to try out Wine, Linux’s Windows emulator. I found the exe and ran it, and it automatically ran using Wine. It was already connected to the web and set up and I could start downloading straight away. What was also cool is that when you minimized it, it went to your tray, and you can add it to automatically start up when you log in. Note that this is a Windows program that I was running.

The other thing I did was install vlc player and watched some porn, confirming it worked correctly. \o/ After that I went back to Windows to finish my downloads which are nearly complete.

So far, I only have a few gripes. The one is that windows some times turn blank, I think this is an issue with the 3D manager, which is a beta, I will probably go to a more stable version. The other problem is that my movies just close when playing full screen, I think this also has to do with the Window manager.

The last is the dock, but I think I will eventually get that right with more time spent on it. Unfortunately any more updates you will need to wait until I get back from Prague!!!

I’m flying tomorrow through Frankfurt and then down to the city, and meeting with my girlfriend the following day. We are going to do horribly obscene things in bed.

Ignoring that, I am really really looking forward to going, it will be the first time I will be in a foreign (language) country, and I have heard Prague is beautiful and have been practicing my Slovak (I know it’s wrong language for the place but my girlfriend is Slovak and it’s close enough… I can order a beer anyway.)

If anyone has a suggestion for what I can do there from the 10th of February till the 21st, that would kick ass! Until I return in 2 weeks! Ta ta!

In thinking about Vista being released and wondering whether I should upgrade, I also felt the nagging urge to "go legal". I wanted to get an OS for the next generation, but spending so much on Vista didn't feel right. As fate would have it, while I was out reading some magazines at a store I spotted an issue of Linux User with a full copy of Ubuntu Linux 6.10 (Called Edgy Eft) which is the latest version of the OS that has taken the (Linux) world by storm. It came free with the magazine so I decided to pick it up.

I am not new to Linux, having experimented with it over the years, starting when I was 16 and installing and using (only) Linux for 3 months. What an experience. Was it good? No it was bad. Really bad. Recompiling the kernel so that your graphics card will work is very uncool. I was using Redhat 5.2, which is probably like Windows 95 in Linux terms; it was rather crappy and useless. I did eventually get Quake 1 to run, mp3's to play and... that was about it. I couldn't get any OpenGL working (It was a Voodoo Rush). I eventually formatted and went back to Windows, and stayed there for the next 7 years.

About a year ago I thought about giving it a try again after hearing good things about the newer distributions, so I downloaded SUSE 10.0. What was cool was that I installed the OS off the Internet (Like literally off the net, no download first), what was crap was that it took 2 days to do that :( When I got to run it I was pleasantly surprised by having everything already installed for me, a graphical interface that was on par with XP, and full suit of applications for music, video, and even the latest version of Firefox and OpenOffice. It was really impressive. I quickly installed Quake 3, which involved copying it from my XP drive and then downloading the executable, ran first time no problems, I was even already connected to the net so could play against some folk.

Problems did start to arise where the music program (A Media Player rip-off... in a bad way) started making my PC crash. Supposedly just reinstalling it would have fixed the problem, but it would require a bit of command line. I also had a problem where I couldn't choose switch sound card I wanted to use for which program (I like to have games on headphones and music and movies on 5.1). Apart from that it worked well though, I could manage to do everything I could do in Windows, but I lacked the drive to really improve it and make it my own.

Learning about new features like the 3D desktop (www.beryl-project.org) (think of Mac and Vista combined), and new functionality, with even more games and applications supported, I decided to give it a go again, my aim is to make it a full Windows replacement, with all software free (or relatively cheap), but still being able to do everything I can do in Windows. I also plan to make it the prettiest desktop on Earth... Why not?

I decided on Ubuntu for a few reasons, it's one of the latest releases, it's South African, it's hugely popular and my favorite bit, their tag line is "Linux for human beings", in fact their default theme is even called "human".

This is day 1, through my efforts I will let you know everything good and bad that happened, through the eyes of a "normal" computer user.

Ok here goes. I stick in the DVD and reboot. I get shown a really cool boot screen and click on "Run Ubuntu Linux or Install". From there it actually boots to Linux, without installing anything, it detects all your hardware and runs. You get greeted by a pretty, but plain view. On the desktop is an icon "Install". Double click the icon and the installation start, you only need to fill in the most simple information, first, what language you speak, and then your name and what the name of your computer is. Wow! There are only 6 steps on this installation and I am on step 5! This is frikking easy!

Oh oh, I spoke too soon. Time to make some partitions. What I planned to do is format my old Linux partition, but for some reason, once I set it to root ("\"), and click next, it says "Please choose your root drive" #%^$#!@^%#

After about 10 minutes of playing around with partitions, I realize that the actual installation is stuffed, so I try another method. I restart my pc and at the boot screen I pick "Text Installation". I must say that although it may not be as pretty as the live installation, it was in fact easier and more user friendly. In fact it is by far the easiest operating system installation I have ever done, comparing Windows 95, 98 XP, 2000, other versions of Linux etc etc.

It took about 20 minutes, and then restarted. I have it on dual boot so it asks if you want to start Windows XP or Ubuntu, I pick Ubuntu and boom; I am in my new fancy OS.

Unfortunately by then it was time to go to work so I will need to continue playing around tomorrow! Stay tuned for more adventures in a non-Microsoft world!

"tbone, when did you lose your skill?"

Is what someone asked me tonight. It's really hard to say anything redeeming to that, especially when you just lost to someone who is meant to be far below you on the quake-o-metre.

Some of you older guys that remember me talking about quake non stop in all my journals circa 2002. I talked a lot of shit, but I was also really passionate about the game, and I did actually succeed in getting somewhere, the upper bracket in the SA community, almost touching the holy grail of Ph4ntom and the gateway to the international scene.

But Quake 3 pratically died after that, also co-insiding with me getting a job and a girlfriend (ewww girls!). I also sold my pc and travelled around the UK for awhile, and then finally came back. I bought a PC around the beginning of the year, started playing Q3 again, just to get in shape for Q4, which turned out to be dismal, and after 2 weeks of thinking it was bullshit, pushed most of my effort into my job. Recently I have started playing online again, just casually, for fun.

I just realised you can't really play for fun when people are gunning for you, when they want to prove they're better than you. "He used to be good, get him!" One of my faults is that I never alias, cause I hate people that alias, but maybe I should, I would get less shit from people... but it's too late for that now, my name is already tarnished.

So when did I lose my skill? My first thoughts are, fuckit, you're older now, you don't have time to play 4 hours a day just to prove to some teenagers that you still have what it takes. I mean come on, you live in Africa, no one cares how well you perform here. And then I think... well isn't that whats inherently wrong in your quake game? You let them get the armour cause you're too scared to die? You need to run because he's got better aim?

Take them on, one more time, don't give a damn about what they think, do it for yourself.

"tbone, when did you lose your skill?"

Time to find out.

"Repeat after me... we are all individuals!"

And join me in the fight to combat the evils of vegetarianism!!! (please give the link a good read.)

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/vegetarian.html

<3

- Contrary to popular belief, cooller actually speaks english fluently, and 17 other languages, he just doesn't want to make you feel bad.

- Cooller does not time armours, they automatically spawn when he stands on the spawn point.

- Cooller times your armour, in his sleep, from 8000km's away.

- Cooller once killed himself and went to hell, challenged the devil to a game of Quake 3, and beat him 56 to -3. 36 of the frags were done by the gauntlet which Cooller decided to use "for the hell of it".

- Cooller doesn't time. He waits.

- Cooller once lagged and teleported right at MH and RA at the same time.

- It was once said Cooller's tears cure cancer, but he has never cried.

- When Cooller hit puberty he instantly grew 3 feet. You don't want to see what happened to his cock.

- Kash is actually Cooller, playing from Russia when he was bored.

- Cooller once was unable to pick up the railgun on pro-q3dm6, so instead he suicided and decided spawn on it. He then railed his opponent 50 times in one second to win the game.

- Cooller has 15 illegitimate Korean children. Each of whom's first words were "no brain no..".

- The movie, The Matrix, is in fact the story of Cooller's ability to "see" the code in Quake. Cooller is the One.

How it started:
[ 02:07:38 ]  [ +tb0nE ] CZM does not time armours, they automatically spawn when he stands on the spawn point.
[ 02:07:38 ]  [ +plut ] It's a little known fact that CZM was behind the creation and refining of the railgun from quake 2 to quake 3, in fact he became so good at it be became the slug that hit you.

Credits and Bloopers:
[ 02:24:44 ]  [ +tb0nE ] ZeRo4 quit quake because Cooller told him to.
[ 02:25:05 ]  [ +tb0nE ] ...not good?
[ 02:25:07 ]  [ +tb0nE ] ok.

[ 02:15:33 ]  [ ~Ph4ntom ] i'd rape the devil at q3
[ 02:15:37 ]  [ ~Ph4ntom ] senseless

[ 02:13:46 ]  [ +nmz ] Cooller fears no mortal.
[ 02:14:03 ]  [ +nmz ] that wasn't a fact, just imo

[ 02:12:23 ]  [ +plut ] Cooller actually invented the english language, teaching it to William Shakespeare and then got bored. He then decided to play quake and create Renglish to confuse his opponent.

Feel free to add your own!

All of you may have noticed that my flag was set to Italy for a little while, this was because I was in the process of becoming an italian citizen, unfortuanately it took longer than expected, but today I finally received an email from the consulate that I am a citizen and can now come in for my passport. \o/ It's kinda odd... being european, and I mean, like, really officially european, especially since the only european country I've been in is England. Sure most of my blood is european, but I don't really consider myself from that part of the world.

It's probably going to happen that I will emigrate over there some time in the future now, although life is sometimes good down here, I dunno, i'm interested in being some place else. My first course of action is to save up money, and hopefully by the end of the year I will be moving to England/Czech rep. with the idea of travelling around europe.

In other news I went to a trance party in a forest this weekend and got horribly horribly twisted. I mixed mushrooms and lsd and had a 26 hour trip. I saw some sights that I will remember for the rest of my life... but at the same time I think I'm going to keep away from heavy doses of anything, to preserve sanity...

After Windows XP Media Edition decided to mess with me, I was faced with 2 options, reinstall windows, or go a different route and install the oh so stable Linux. I once used linux for about 6 months back when I was about 16, and although it was rather frustrating (I was using Redhat 5.2) I succeeded in getting most things to work, including Quake and Quake 2, however, I didn't get any 3d accelation working and everything was just, hard to do!

My brother who has been using Linux for the past few years persuaded me to give it another try and said that it was much simpilar to use now. At first I was excited, finally I would be running a 64bit OS, and from what I had seen and read, it was much easier to use than in the past.

Since I quit programming in 2002 however, I've gotten incredibly rusty in most technical things, I really can't be bothered with most things. So I was hoping that once I installed and set up linux, that will be the end of most of my problems (I hate it when windows fucks up)

Anyway, so 3 days ago I searched the net to find out which distribution I was going to download and try to use. After reading up about a few I decided on Novell SUSE 10.0 which is meant to be the most n00bish good one. I downloaded the internet installation boot disk iso, and proceeded to try and install it. Not much problem there, the cd booted and I was greeted by a friendly blue and green boot screen.

And so the problems start. Freaking hell can they make a menu anymore less user friendly? And the worst thing is, that if you make the wrong selection, you cant go back, it restarts your pc for you, ho ho, THANKS! But not to worry, I found what I needed to do, I typed in the URL that I was going to be installing from (I chose to install over the net because I have bandwidth limitations because of the crap internet in my country, ie. I'm only allowed 30gb traffic per month) and then selected install. It started downloading a 60mb file. No problem, 30 minute wait isn't too bad.

The installation was in full swing now, I started choosing options and such, which was all good, and then the installation started, which was going to be downloading 2.3gb onto my pc. Just for a bit of back ground, I am in South Africa, and I have 192k ADSL, so although it's faster than dialup, it's still not that fast. I promptly go to sleep, and woke up the next morning. The installation was still going nothing wrong there, it was a bit slow but nothing too bad. So I waited around for about 5 hours, watching each download go by, until it got to one file, and just stopped.

I sat at my PC for 4 fucking hours watching the bar just sit there, so I decided that I should try and reboot and carry on the installation like that. Once I restarted, I then found out that there was apsolutely no way to repair and installation that goes wrong. The best bit was that every time I chose an option, it downloaded the 60meg install file to my pc, then after I figured out that I couldn't rescue it, when I went back it restarted the fucking pc. GREAT!

I did finally manage to do another clean install, and after about 18 hours, it was done. I excitedly restarted the PC, and linux booted up for the very first time, and then I was greeted by some fucked up screen that said half the programs on my PC were out of date and I needed to update them, a nice 300mb download. fuckit. I did it, I finally got to the desktop. I opened firefox, browser seemed to work, then I tried to play an mp3. Low and behold. I have a choice of 3 fucking mp3 players but it turns out that SUSE has no capabilities to play mp3's off a fresh install. GREAT! I then try to run a media player to watch something (my sound still has not been tested out) It has no codecs! So I think, ok no problem here I'll download vlc. Unfortuanately, in order to get vlc player to work I need to download about 50 other files and install each one individually. In the right order.

I finally found a page that gives a tutorial to do all this shit which I am attempting now, and look what it says here:

When you're done installing SUSE Linux 10.0, your desktop system is not complete. If you installed the OSS version, you still need support for Java programs, MP3 audio files, and browser plugins for Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Video. If you installed the commercial edition you might have all of those things, but still not have support for playing DVD videos on your computer. Here's how to effectively make SUSE Linux 10.0 into a desktop powerhouse.

On the plus side, I think that I will be able to get everything sorted out in a few days, I hope to get Quake 3 and Quake 4 running soon (with OpenAL because its native in linux woo hoo!) And it does look very pretty. Argggghh.

A bit about my personal life, I quit my job over a month ago, been sitting at home since then. I have gotten another job with double the pay (Online Poker website customer service thingy) but I only start in a month. I was also in a car accident a month ago where my car rolled a few times and has been written off, I was ok except one half of my face was cut up a bit, um. yeah.

If people think back to the beginning of 2004 I was speaking alot about going overseas, mainly emigrating to England to be with my beautiful girlfriend(I now hope that she dies and rots in hell for all eternity) I had also made plans to attend QLAN, which I was actually on track for until the whole emotional break down thing.

I had tried to apply for italian citizenship but unfortuanately we were missing some documents, which has taken the last 2 YEARS to get, so I finally am eligible for getting an Italian (ie. EU) passport. This obviously makes travelling to Europe extremily easy, I could even go to Sweden like Krek suggests with not much difficulty. However I haven't really factored this into my plans because I've heard that applying for an italian passport can take up to a year and I'm getting it through my great great grandfather.

Otherwise I'll be applying for a student visa for the czech republic (and then for a working visa once I'm there) Luckily, South Africa does not need to pay anything for visas to the Czech rep.

I plan to leave between march and may and have saved up £1200 so far, I've worked out I'll need about £2000 to sort out everything, unfortuanately I have 2 £100 phone bills to pay, need to repair a guys car that I crashed into, pay a speeding fine and my radiator just broke on my car. Oh and today is my last day at work, I just quit :) (I work for ASDA home shopping, DON'T SHOP WITH THEM THEY ARE CRAP!)

Regardless of all this I think the future is bright, or atleast interesting.

In other news I've been making my first Quake map since Quake 1. It's a cross between t2(playing style) and pdm6(looks) I've put in some innovative things which I hope are interesting (nothing over the top) and I should have a beta out by tonight or tomorrow. Also if anyone is interested to work with me, I desperately need someone to handle the texture/lighting/decoration side of things, because I'm not very good at it(not bad either mind you, just not world class)

Anyway, new years awaits and I'm going to TOTALLY HAVE FUN. WOO HOO! lata x

So, after I spent the past 3 months getting a pc that will be able to suit my (q4) needs for the next few years, on Sunday I finally get access to the holy grail AKA Quake 4. Put it on my PC and had a few games with one of my best friends, it's fucking cool!

I was getting really worried reading all the comments, especially about performance and some of the weird slow down problems have been getting. I mean I only have a p4 3ghz and a 6600gt, but loaded it up and hey! 63fps constant! (On Ultra Quality it only drops to 45fps sometimes - I dunno wtf is wrong with all your PC's) There was no lag on any of the weapons, I feel I can move faster in the game than q3 and with a high refresh it feels like 120fps q3. All good! Also hectic fun, making quake new again (cause I don't know everything - my n00b(sorry dim :P ) friend even beat me half the time which is quite nice really.

That was until it was time to go home and get some serious quaking done. Get home, plug everything in, switch on the pc... nothing happens...

ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

About 1 hour ago I was about to kill myself, but after taking out the entire frikkin mobo and setting it up on a static bag, it turns out it was just touching some metal somewhere, but REALLY not cool after you get Quake 4....

PS. For all you people that think "fanboi!" I do have some problems, the models are CRAP! I'm getting some modelling software and going to make some, anyone tried porting q3 models to q4 yet? The railgun is waaaayyy overpowered (and I'm a rail whore!) (grenades are also rubbish) and the maps leave just a slight bit to be desired. But pffft, those aren't really problems, they're like stuff that hasn't been made yet. Engines fine to me, think people need to tweak their machines rather than q4.

Lata!!

Bwhahahaha! Bwhahahaha! BwhAHhwahaA!

I'm bacccckkkkkkkkkk! Hello everyone! No more escape! I have the internet again! Ok, enough. What I'm really really waiting for... is for Quake 4 to be in South Africa! ArgGH!

Unfortuanately I am back on 56k when I was actually meant to be getting ADSL this month. This is due to South Africa's sole telephone company Telkom raising their already extortionist prices, for uncapped 512 ADSL you can pay around £300 a month. To find out more interesting information you can visit Hellkom , a site that lets you know the TRUTH!

This move will utterly kill the online gaming community in South Africa and set us back even more (They are changing packet shaping routines to, which is just going to slow down everything) This also means that I won't be able to play online :(( and no bots for q4 = well... I can become a really good trick jumper :((( *sigh*

Well glad to be part of the community again! Yay!

Good day my fellow pumpinickles! I have brought thus glorious news! I once again own a pc! (Let me just slip out of this horrid writing style)

Yes it is true! I own a pc! (yay!) I bought some hardware last month but it wasn't up and running yet. So far I've bought:

Intel Pentium 4 HT 64bit 3.0ghz 1028k
Gigabyte mobo (pciex +agp and other useless crap)
19" Monitor
512megs ddr400 ram
160gig SATA HDD
crappy carry case

And I'm lending a DVD ROM and a geforce4mx440(urgh) (and I'm using a 11 year old keyboard and genius netscroll ball mouse urrrgggghhhh - getting my mouse and keyboard when my ex sends the shit down from the uk)

Next month I plan to buy a DVD writer, more ram and a 3D card. What 3D card though?! Can you guys help me decide, pretend I got 240 euro/180 pound/280 dollars (I guessed currancies) Whats the way to go? Radeon or Geforce? and specifically for Quake 4 (Doom 3 performance counts I suppose?)

The month after I get ADSL and you will never be rid of me, BWHAHAHAHA. In other news my life sucks, I'm being sued and I haven't had sex in 5 months. :))

a la vi!

EDIT: Well I've been doing loads of reseach and thanks for the advice, the Geforce 6800GT certainly does sound like a king of 3D cards, unfortuanately it seems to be rather expensive here in South Africa, I also did research on the Geforce 6600 GT which actually looks like an amazing card for the money that its sold at. But I suppose we shall wait and see at the end of the month.

...

HELLO EVERYONE!

I doubt I'll be up and about and irritating anyone on the site anytime soon but I thought I'd just let everyone know what I've been up to. I'm just gonna cut and paste from a couple of emails of what i've been doing, since like... say when I left South Africa (2004).

NOTE: this is very long and can get confusing, don't complain, only read it if you wanna know what I've been up to, I just cut and paste various emails

Um, well, god, where to start! Well, this may come to you
as a shock, well firstly, you know that I came over to the
uk for lora(girlfriend), yeah, well that farewell party before I left, well, eish, it was a crap night, not the party, but what
happened.

Lora's best friend from the uk was in SA at the time, and
she came to my farewell. Near the end of the night, whilst
fucked off my face, she decides to let me know that lora
had cheated on me 5 times whilst in the UK. And then she
came onto me. I ended up sleeping with her and it all went
down hill from there. I told lora the next day what
happened, and her response wasn't good, I started getting
suicide notes and stuff from her, when I arrived in the UK,
I learnt that everything her friend said was true, and lora
got a new bf about 2 hours after I told her what happened
:)

During that time I sort of had a slight emotional
breakdown, I cut off my braids (if you remember me having
braids) piece by piece, smoked myself fucked up, and cant
really remember most of the last 2 weeks I was in SA.

Um, the uk has been pretty crap really, I went to a place
called milton keynes first, cause thats where lora was and
I didn't know where else to go, but that really sucked so
after 4 months I moved to a place called plymouth. I'm
still there now :) life is ok, but rather lonely, and girls
like to use me the pretty boi. :/

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:24:57 +0200
What have I been up to? errrmmmmm, you first! Life has been
crazeee crazy. You have no idea, it's really scary how much
I've been through. Well I've been in plymouth for 4 months,
the place is awesome! The people are cool and the nightlife
is great... (not to mention the sea and dart moor just down
the road) but.... there is one problem... no jobs! at all!
it's horrible! I am working at the moment (after being
penniless for 3 months...don't ask me how I survived
*whisper* whore *whisper*) But you don't want to know where
I'm working! it's embarrassing! *whisper* McDonalds
*whisper* But the people there are pretty cool and it's
paying the rent (sort of) but I'm desperately looking for a
new job.

London was amazing! My friend that I went with had a friend
in london thats a taxi driver and he gave me a full tour
for free! and I saw like everything, it's scary. The big
point was when I was standing in the very centre of london,
with all the theaters and big screens on the buildings and
all these big red buses going by (that I used to see in
books and on TV), and it hit me "omg, I'm in london... I'm
on the other side of the world!" ... and then at the same
moment these guys behind me burst out in afrikaans (south
african language) it was like "wtf??!?!" So far away... and
at the same time so close!

I went around camden town the most, strange amazing magick
place, really weird. But the best bit was the national art
gallery, I'm not sure if you knew I was very big into art,
but really... wow. The feeling I got from seeing some of
the paintings for real is so unexplainable... it's amazing,
I actually wanted to cry! Very humbling experiance...

You went to mexico! you gotta tell me about that! was it
hot? did you drink alot of tequila? ;) I wanna go to mexico
:(( :P

Hehehe, my house is :/// at the moment it has no electric
OR gas! my landlady sucks and my housemates are dodgy, it's
like a student house but no ones a student! YOURE not cold!
I'm freezing! I've never been this cold in my life! ArgAGG,
i've been trying to buy some clothes (you'll think my taste
is really strange :P very .alt )

I've lost weight :((( The 3 months without cash was not
kind to my stomach, but mac donalds is helping me get back
to my original form (yay!) I'm even sekzy again.

NEVER STOP THE PARTY!!! oh well, maybe... need the cash...
sort of...but beer...oooOOOooo beer... mmmmmmm.

On the female front, um... i've been used...a bit, you
know, where I come from its usually the guys that use the
girls... but i've been used so badly :((( physically!
why!!!! ....oh well, i'm just continuing my search for true
love *sniff*


Wed, 05 Jan 2005 14:13:54 +0200
Hey! I'm a bit shattered, think i'm picking up a few
allergies. Christmas has been awesome, i went to a family
get together with one of my friends, and his family
actually bought me presents and stuff! was so so surprised!
but the best bit was that it snowed! on christmas! It was
the first time I saw snow and I was really amazed, I kept
running out to play and everyone was like "...it's just
snow?" Thats something I'm going to remember for my entire
life cause I'll probably wont have another white christmas
again. SO... wow :))

Then I was sick for a bit, in bed and stuff, then new years
happened, this girl was surgically glued to my face for the
whole night, going on a date tonight. And then a couple of
nights ago I went on a blind date set up by my housemate,
was pretty cool, cause she came to my house pretty late
cause she was working, and she arrived and then it was like
"So... what you wanna do..?" "dunno...you wanna come back
to mine and have some shrooms?" "yeah ok"

:)) Well we had an awesome conversation, but
unfortuanately, she doesn't see me as anymore than a friend
*shrug* Ummm, nothing else that interesting i'm afraid.

I'm going back to south africa on the 10th of march, then
I'll probably come back here again after a month, might go
back to MK, who knows!

Well, about the whole cause of religion, if you don't
believe in ALL the beliefs of religion, then you shouldn't
be part of the religion. Being a JW is tough, because you
get extradited from everyone you know, it's like black
mail, as I said before, all my best friends at school were
JW, and when school finished I never saw them again.
Personally I don't agree with that, but a belief is a
belief. With the 1000's of christian religions out there, I
think the best is to just believe in the bible and make
your own decisions, hell thats how the jehova's started,
some guy made his own interpretation of the bible and other
people started to follow them, never mind the 1900 years
before. Personally, I've gotten to the point where I don't
want to believe in a christian god, because if he's real
he's a fucking prick, can't love someone like that. Judaism
I like a whole lot more. At the moment, I... stay away from
religion, organised it's just stupid (ie. people in groups
are STUPID) but I do believe in.. something, I call it god.
But anyway, it's all for you to decide.

well, it seems that in my last month in the UK, I have been
kidnapped by some girl, she's chained me to her bed,
although she occasionally takes me out for walks(like now),
otherwise I'm just working... and thats about that, 1 month
to go, will be great to be back (go buy some mushrooms!!)
I'm not making babies no... what do you take me for!
Anyway, I don't have much time, but lots of love, see youy
soon!

Yeah, at the moment i'm trying to see just how much
mushrooms one can take over a short period of time, i'm
starting to feel very different and act a bit weird, it's
strange, but i don't wanna be who i who you know? :P

ummm, I made loads of friends and have been having an ok
time. And then about 2 months ago I finally got fed up of
living in the UK and just wanted to go home. And, according
to horrible fate prediction which I have, I knew something
was going to happen to keep me here, and it did, met some
girl at a pub, went home with her and kinda been there for
the past month. :)))

(Flew back to South Africa)

Well, I came back. I had no money for about a month and a
half. A girl that I was staying with was meant to send over
my last pay check (200 pounds) but she's just disappeared
it seems. I was just relaxing, I didn't really go out or
anything cause no cash.

In my life, my current, um, me and my last gf broke up a month and a half ago cause it was evident that I wasn't coming back to the UK. It was hard, but also relieving in a way. She's going through a really hard time and she has to do her last year of uni over and then her masters, so she's
not going anywhere either.

My brother came down this weekend, it was the first time i
had seen him in 2 years, so we've been chatting, man he's
smart! but also... he's grown very old, and when we talk
about life experience, he doesn't say anything cause he
hasn't experianced anything. My parents are the same, my
sisters earning quite a bit, so she's got a whole
entertainment system in her bedroom. I own the old red car
that we had the accident in now, it's crap, but I can go
from A to B.

I got a job doing deliveries for a place called delivery
extreme (very similar to Mr delivery) just so I had money
while I was looking for a proper job, but It actually earns
you quite a bit, like i've earned R250 in 4 hours.

I was very sad and depressed at first, and wanted to go
back to england. because it becomes very evident of the
differences, that you don't notice. But it all got sorted
with getting some money and seeing my friends, and making
new friends! SA is still awesome.

Since I got the last job I've been going out every friday,
and they get more and more insane as time goes on. I've
actually been going out loads. I fufilled my life long
dream of going out as a girl (rather over-rated, but I
pulled it off) (Next project is a strip club - but on
friday i'm getting some boxing gloves and fighting a girl)
and then other weird missions like getting fuckloads of
coke etc.

2 weeks ago I got a new job. Really really great. It's for
the same company I worked for in the UK! (merchants in
milton keynes) the salary is R5400 a month, and I'm really
enjoying it and the people I work with.

Whats been hard is that for the past 2 weeks i've been
working 2 jobs, so it's get up at 6am and get off work at
22:30. I've met my nephew, he's really cute, and very
intelligent eyes. I've also been partying insanely from
thurs to sun lately, I just stay at friends houses in town.

Future plans, I'm moving to my own place in green
point(cape town) on the 1st of july, waiting for my tax and
then I'm gonna buy a really fucking good laptop, and then
um, save, go out etc. I'm going to start studying through
unisa (home education - english degree)

Lifes been mad, but really good, I'm going by the ethos now
to go out of my way for others, no matter how hard. It
suprisingly works really well, I haven't lost anything,
cause I always get given back, and it makes me really
happy.

Contact with the UK died quickly, it's only really my ex
and um, my other ex that I'm keeping in contact with, but
it's ok, I don't have time, and I've already got a very
busy life here again.

Something i'm really looking forward to is seeing a girl I
really like on sat that I met last sat, just came back from
america for 5 years, and she skateboards and fights and
tackles and stuff. (that probably makes very little
sense... but I like her so so what? :) )

Ummm, thats my life in a nut shell (get me out! get me
out!) My 22nd was ok, better than my 21st atleast, i can
hardly remember anything, but I suppose that means it was
good :)

Recent:
Well, I got my first paycheck at my proper job. Um, about
going back to the UK, I don't think it's gonna happen hey,
I'm hoping to get my italian passport soon but its taking
really long. My brother is moving to Holland next year
(free holiday woo hoo!)

Ummm, i was in a car accident, my cars been written off,
but I'm ok. I've moved to town now, it's hectic. My ex
(like 3 ex's after you, the really really cool one) is
thinking of doing her masters (marine bio) at UCT next
year, if she comes down that would be >>>

I just cut my hair, it was past my shoulders, i'm now
getting a stylish model cut (trying to look like trent
reznor, dying my hair pitch black tonight again - too much
blonde showing). I'm also moved up in standards, so I only
wear levi's now.... well, jeans, and black t-shirts, thats
all I wear. (cept suits to work)

You arn't allowed to talk of your body unless its available
to me. :PPP

Settling down... unfortuanately yes. Started already, need
insurance on like, everything. need Pension, need to pay
for rent, food, studies etc etc. No life partners as yet.
My standards were high while I was with you, now they are
ridiculously high, but I don't mind, I have a rather large
porn collection.

Well! thats all folks! I live!!

Love tB0nE xxx

I was getting quite upset with esr being down, I had no one to whine to :////

But all is well again and I am happy. I'm still in the UK, although I won't be for long, I'm going back to SA 10th of March and never coming back here again (yay!)

I will re-tell my entire story in time (long, long and painful) but until then... LETS CELEBRATE!!! WOO HOO!!!

A personal friend of mine has recently upgraded her drug usuage from weed to pills (ectasy, not lsd) and shrooms. Now, I personally dislike drugs alot now (I used to...do some) as I feel it's a waste of time and leads you down false paths in life, so I would like maybe a few of you to relay your experiances, whether they be good or bad, but memorable ones non the least.

Personally I lost a whole group of friends to LSD, 2 are totally insane, 1 moved on to heroin, and another 2 I have no idea what happened to them. Only one of them I am still friends with, and he's... not quite who he used to be (and smokes weed between 3 and 10 times a day, gg).

Also, does anyone know what the long term effects of shrooms is? I can't find info anywhere on it, or it's very bad info. Anyway, tata! my visa application has been sent in, so I just have to wait now, and then I can buy my plane ticket.

luv ya!

I've had possibly the most nerve wrecking and painfull 2 weeks of my life. I will not talk about my relationship in detail, just that we broke up, and we are going to give it another try when I get to the UK, although it doesn't look very hopeful. I quit my job just before we broke up so that was slightly strange.

So now it comes down to this... I have no fucking clue whats happening in my life anymore, I'm moving countries, i'm going to know no one in the UK, I'm not going to have a job, a gf, friends, a place to stay, family. I'm selling everything I own, my car and computer (which is why I have now quit Quake 3, most probably for good, since I can't go to any comps in SA or QLAN, and I'm not going to have a pc in the UK for a few months).

Basically I'm starting from scratch. Now people may say "THHEN WHYY R U GOIN TBON3!?!!?" Truth is, I'm starting to hate this place, everything is just trapping me, I need a new culture. Something my ex-gf told me was that there was actually people like us over there. What does that mean? It means that almost all the people I know in South Africa are just trying to be copies of something else, we are a recycled American / English culture, with high "values" and low moral respect for other people.

My life is fucked, you could say I have no life anymore, but hopefully whatever I find over there, is something that suits me better.

/me picks up my guitar

Time to get back to my old hobbies.

PS. Atari Teenage Riot solves everything.

PPS. MY body is looking good after doing normal exercises, and last week i started upping it, like jogging, and today I did 90 sit ups, aim is to be able to do 500 :))))

OMOMG, after 38 hours 24 minutes and 16 seconds I finally managed to hit a rail with my eyes closed!!!! OMG I am so 1337!!!! I am like, like FUCKING NEO!!! NEO IN THE MATRIX!!!

Just kidding.

Pinball you got a good heart but don't try to defend me. *Sigh* I really like talking about game, but I can't now...

30 minutes later.

I cleaned my mouse...since it's an optical it means polishing the buttons, looks pretty.

My gf has a fucking strong pelvis I have learnt and my lip has been destroyed, very fun (well I suppose...)

Waiting for her to leave... waiting for passport... waiting to get paid (A grand total of 300 euro, I love my life.)

People are reading this waiting for something interesting... WELL GUESS WHAT! YOU DON'T DESERVE IT! *Sigh* Ok fine. Something interesting for all you fps players.

The 3rd tier of being a good duelist. What I am talking about here is the something extra that makes the great great. I was having a discussion with one of my friends yesterday about Unkind. Unkind = timebot with super aim. That is unkind, his use of strat is so limited it's stupid, and not many people in the world can beat him. I will go as far as to say that the only people who would be able to beat him are people who have hit the 3rd tier (my examples, cooller and zero4)

The first thing you will ask me is "Ok, you're talking about the 3rd tier, whats the 1st and 2nd?" The 1st tier will be basic skill, movement, timing, aim. The 2nd will be stratergy and experiance. These things I shouldn't have to talk about because every Tom, Dick and Harry should know about these things, even in high detail. But the 3rd tier... this is what Thresh was rumoured to have (esp), Lakerman's highly skilled control, and lately, Coollers incredible....well everything, number 1 being his awareness.

But what is it? It's actually hidden from full view so that even a person who plays for 3 years non stop won't have seen it. Next time you watch a ZeRo4 demo, I want you to do this, whenever he sees a person at long range, look at what he does. He's dodging rails, he moves 90 degrees to the person at the fastest possible speed. You think it's easy? In theory, yes, it is easy, why doesn't everyone do it? It's like a higher collection of skills that the top players collect. One of the most interesting players I love to watch is Polosatiy. He doesn't do that well anymore, but the things he does is just so interesting, continually trying to innovate. Socrates does the same thing, but his strats have all been very well thought out, instead of just doing something "magically".

It's the little things, you're here, the enemy is there, just move into this position and the frag is yours. Maybe I do something else about this, a column or something at a later time with a bit of research done and I can list these "special skills"

Happy now? Didn't talk about myself once :PP.

MWahahaha, [100]spiterbot 0.5 pt4 90% rail, 80% mg, NO PROBLEM!!! Ok ok, I did play it quite a lot, a total of 25 games, but most of the time i was within 1 to 3 frags. I ended up beating it 14 to 12 (was 14 to 9 but I decided to run away at the end cause there was no way he could win) It's a tough bot, I think I'm going to practise with it for the next few weeks until I can start lanning. Anyway, the demo will be added onto this journal in the upcoming days, both my dial up accounts have stopped working, so i'll probably need to find a new isp.

Other than that I can't see shit out my right eye, still blood red and swollen, watched an okish movie last night bla bla bla. I wanna put up a new profile pic too. Later though.

I got a email from the painkiller group, saying that I am being considered for beta testing bla bla bla. Whats the chances of me getting in? owell.

tB0nE out*

UPDATE: 31/10/03

God I'm sick, both my eye's have pink eye now, and I think i've got the flu too. Not much coming from me till next week, here's just the stupid spiterbot demo of me 0wning his ass.

Why every Quake player should be playing CPMa.

Over the years a number of different versions of Quake (you may count Doom as well) have appeared. With every new game there have been a number of Quake players that refused to move on because their game was best. I’ve even seen arguments about how Quake is better than Quakeworld, although the difference is minimal. Everyone has had a “favorite” Quake, which is usually the one you started on. CPMa (Challenge Pro-Mode Arena) is meant to bring it all together, and in my eyes, it has achieved that, as well as adding a number of features which is REALLY useful to the community.

I have been a Quake 3 player most of competitive gaming life. I actually scoffed at CPMa players labeling as n00bies because obviously if they were any good they would be playing Quake 3. Then at the beginning of this year, I got Quakeworld and started watching some demos. The speed and level of skill was incredible. I just watched more and more, totally forgetting about any “slow” Quake 3 demos that might be released.

Then someone mentioned if I liked Quakeworld demos I should try and get CPMa demos. So I did. After I watched my first few demos I started playing the next day. I was having fun playing BOTS!?! This was about 3 weeks ago, and I am now totally convinced that CPMa is THE game.

Arguments that have arisen from new Quake games are:
- It’s too slow
- It’s too n00bie friendly
- The physics suck
- Too little skill
- Netcode sucks
- Not fun
- Boring to watch

It’s too slow
The speed decrease from Quake to Quake 2 to Quake 3 has been rectified. Thanks to a combination of Quakeworld/Quake 2 movement. You can now turn corners in mid-flight, as well as strafe jump as fast as you like. Then there is the Quake like weapon changing, which although is not instant like Quake, it is still pretty dang fast.

Some Quake 2 players may say this is bad, because it removes the strategy involved in choosing which weapon to use where. But this is not like Quake where your weapon choice revolved around rocket launcher, lightning gun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, rocket launcher. Behold! You have the weapon choice of Quake 3. Which makes weapon choice vitally important, and knowing what weapons your opponent has. So people moving around maps incredibly fast and people switching weapons really fast… It’s not slow, but…

It’s too n00bie friendly
I think the friendly game between matr0x and ZeRo4 at WCG2002 demonstrated how n00bie UNfriendly CPMa is. (People are going to say “BUT ITSS ONLY A FRIEENDLY!!! The pt4 game were z4 raped unkind was also a friendly) Hell, ZeRo4 is far from a n00b, he just didn’t know CPMa (or maybe cpm3) like matr0x did.

The Quake 3 “n00b friendly” elements have been removed. Players spawn on 100 health and the machine gun has been scaled down so you don’t get taken from 100/100 to dead after you fragged the opponent. (I play Ph4nt0m sometimes, when he takes out the mg, I usually run) So CPMa isn’t n00b friendly, still…

The physics suck
Well, this is something I can’t really argue against, you either like it or not. The physics are far closer to Quakeworld/Quake 3 than Quake 2, so Quake 2 players might have something to moan about.

But hey, it has the Quake 2 double jumping, slope jumping, well basically all the Quake 2 jumping, it just won’t feel like Quake 2. There is still the rail gun, and the Quake 2 armor system. But hey, when has id engine physics REALLY sucked, sure you might say, it’s not as good as the last, it’s still not UT2k3 :P Ok ok, so the physics are cool, but it might have…

Too little skill
Has anyone been reading what I’ve been writing? We have here, more to learn than any other Quake game. Different elements to learn from each game, if that’s too little skill then I’m Thresh (Just incase you misunderstood, I’m not :P) Yeh whatever, but the…

Netcode sucks
Quake 3 netcode definitely sucks. No going around the bush there, except that CPMa IS NOT Quake 3!!! It’s funny to think that the 2nd best online CPMa player in America lives in Europe. (rat) CPMa is perfectly playable on 120 ping, which should be a joy to any HPB. (Like me) So the netcode is great, it’s still…

Not fun
Does anyone remember me saying I was having fun playing bots? That’s after playing Quake 3 for 4 years against bots. (I live in South Africa ok, the internet sucks) Just start up CPMa on a suitable map, and jump around a bit, get used to the movement, try to figure out what you can do. Before you know it, you have just wasted 2 hours jumping around a map. Why? Because it’s FUN!

So you play some quake god online and lose 48 to -2. You had fun just admiring the opponent’s movement and control of the map. It’s not like Quake 3 where it’s “*sigh* He fragged me again, let me walk some where while he gets all the guns, all the armor and then drops down and kills me.” In CPMa it’s “WHOA, how did he do that!? That was insane! Oh god, did I just die again?”

And before you know it the games finished (All action) and somehow the score is really really high. Some people may get upset from this, and maybe I’m just crazy. But I used to just love playing Quakeworld against a good player. I think the first game I played online I lost 56 to -4. I was pretty good at Quake 3 then… but it was totally different, I just played again, trying not to lose by so much. Because it’s so fast, it’s even fun losing. Ok so it’s fun, but it’s…

Boring to watch
MVD anyone? For those of you who don’t know, that stands for Multi-View Demo. You can switch views while you watch demos!?!? Isn’t that just so COOL. You can also bring up the score sheet anytime too, which has all the accuracy stats all there for you as the game progresses. My personal favorite feature while I’m watching is the little box in the top right hand corner that shows THE OTHER PLAYERS VIEW!!! How many times have you watched a demo where you just had to know where the other player was?

If Quake is ever shown on TV, the CPMa setup for demo watching is exactly how it is going to look. And I haven’t even gotten into how exciting it is to watch. It’s fast, there is a lot of action and if you’ve ever played a Quake game it’s not confusing at all, it’s just like normal Quake 3 demos without the boring bits. I’m not even going to go into TDM or CTF. (Flag running to the extreme) Ok, so it’s not boring to watch but…

OH SHUT UP ALREADY. If you aren’t convinced by now, you never will be. Separate yourself from the next big thing in Quake, remove yourself from the community, go play Counter-Strike or UT2k3, you won’t be missed. For the rest of you…

Challenge Pro-Mode Arena
http://www.promode.org

CPMa Demos
http://www.challenge-tv.com

Anyway, I’m gonna go try to get a CPMa server up in South Africa again…
Over and out.

tB0nE

PS. I just read arQon’s interview, what a co-incidence that I decided to post this now. Think of this as the “more friendly” persuasion into CPMa :)

10 years later:
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Found this on way back when machine, first thing I contributed to ESR, hehe, thought I would share.