The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

OMG! I think im in love guys. I love this game A LOT!!! Left 4 Dead that is. I wore the headphones this time, and O-M-G!!! MUCH better! Im going for another round now LOL! I noticed new things with the headphones that the speakers didn't quite do for me. For instance, the child crying, signified that a witch was near. VERY valuable info.

I seem to be getting much better now. I imagine that you guys are In a buddy lobby or something. I dont think im ready for people to count on me yet LOL! Soon hopefully, SOON! The reason I dont think im ready, is because, I get paranoid, and i'll whip around and shoot my teammate LOL! NO...thats not funny LOL! I am close to not doing that though. Ive almost gotten myself trained...lol

 

Haha - Sam, the Hidden, the CSS mod. I'll tell you - I downloaded it, installed it and played the tutorial - both characters. The screen said "scale the wall of the lift" but I was able to go only about 5 feet up one wall - the others were of a type where pounce didn't work. Anyway, I actually jumped on a server and played it for a few minutes - I could tell the damn thing was near me because there was the red glow of pain because he was knifing me, so I blasted my P90 in the corner, and there was a bit of blood. Then he killed me totally. But I decided it's not really my cup of tea - I have a hard enough time playing games where I can see the thing I'm supposed to shoot at, much less when it's invisible, lol.

So Shaff's brother's name is spelled pretty much how it sounds then, "Shoaib." I thought he spelled it out differently for me. Anyway, it was good having him on the team, even just for that one campaign.

Kevin, it sounds like you're getting into it - Left 4 Dead. I play with headphones as well. Yes, friendly fire is a very real problem in these games, as in real life. I have to work on that also - in the heat of the zombie horde attack, you often find yourself hitting your teammates - I accidentally disabled one of my teammates late this evening on Dead Air at the finale with a shotgun blast, and then I tried to cover for him until I would have time to revive him and get him on his feet - I think it led to the death of the whole team, lol! We played that finale a bunch of times, meaning we died a lot!! hahahaha

Krj - sure, add me to your friends list for Left 4 Dead - we'll get on a server some time. I play Wednesdays, all day. My user name is the same as my name here, but not missing an a - the school name spelled out correctly. (I dropped the "a" on this forum because After Dawn only allows up to 9 characters for a user name.)

Rich

 

I never played the tutorial, didn't know there was one, just leapt into a server. Disappointing to see it's not your thing.
Agreed Rich, you really need to work on friendly fire, I'm not great especially when Boomered, but well, frankly, you have no sense of direction or sense of occasion!
We're halfway along the map and hear "wait, where are you guys?" and find you trapped in a window, or cupboard!
The irony was, I later played a No Mercy VS game and as a hunter, managed to get stuck in the exact same window you did!

 

getting L4D tommorow

 

I'm also guilty of friendly fire on occasion. I try my best not to though.

Rich, take the extra split second to aim before you pull the trigger. And make sure you watch what's behind your target!

And Sam is right, we're trying to get moving and you are still searching for stuff. Or something is obviously right there but you can't find it. Take a split second to just make a full 360* turn and check the walls and look for weapons. Just sweep each room quickly and move on. Everything will usually be on a table or shelf in plain-sight. Nothing in the game is that well hidden

Look forward to doing it again guys.

 

Agreed! It was great fun! Fantastic game! Great team mates!

Good move dude! Many memorable moments in that game - intense! I can't say enough good things about it. Well worth the $40, or in Kevin’s case, the $30! (Good for Wal-Mart!)

But, because of the verbose guy that I am, in trying to say MUCH MORE about it, lol, this post, is based on 20 exciting hours of L4D game-play yesterday - my first major on-line L4D Playathon!

Hahaha - that was funny, Sam, you are VERY articulate (... you sob - see! - you got stuck in same window! Lol) Well, Sam is spot on. I am Mr. Uncoordinated for at least the first two or three hours each week when I start gaming. Then I'm decent for the next 12 hours, all the fingers are working, then I get tired and keep playing anyway, and I'm half-ass the last 5 hours - I'm more experienced and know what to expect, but the reflexes slow down and the fingers don't work as well, hahaha. I had to reduce my mouse sensitivity way down also - zombies coming from all directions and my head was spining too fast - I WAS losing sense of direction in those woods on whatever campaign that was!

I have to start at 8:00 in the morning to catch Sam and Shaff or Shoaib at London 4:00 PM tea time, but next time I'll start at 5:00 in the morning, and get loosened up before Sam and Estuansis join, hahaha. I played from 8:00 am to 4:00 am - but I probably won't do that EVERY Wednesday.

So, Kevin and Keith, make a note. Jeff and Sam are right. For sure, being a few steps behind can spell disaster, especially if the guys in front assume you are keeping up and aren't slowing down to make sure the team is all together! You have to keep up - especially when you team up with guys like Sam who have their track shoes on! Hahaha. Sam's only thing is, he is absolutely fearless - he charges off without any health and Jeff has to keep reminding him to grab the health pack. But then, again, Sam plays Expert, so Advanced is a piece of cake!! LOL

But actually, I learned why Sam likes to move so fast - if you really want to get to the campaign finale in a reasonably quick time period - you need to get a move on!

Sam, regarding the Colt, your math and my math seem to disagree. The colt empties 50 rounds in 6 seconds, not 5, and not 4 like the Uzi. I clocked it several times on single player. Simple math says 8.33 rounds per second, unless you Brits have non-metric seconds that are a bit shorter - lol!

But in any case, Sam, I'm perfectly fine now with Colt! I remain an Uzi-loving guy, but I love the Colt too. And it was interesting because at one point a guy was saying “ Who has Uzi?” because almost everybody else had shotgun. He was the only other guy with a mic, team leader, and I had jumped into the game in progress. I said, “I have Uzi – where do you want me – out in front?” He didn’t seem to care, but he did like that somebody had Uzi. Interesting! I’m not the only one who sees the value of that weapon!!

Getting back to Colt, versus Uzi, I have to say, unlike the post of a couple of days ago, I have finally officially broken my Uzi-only Advanced finale escape by getting out of Dead Air and also Death Toll with the Colt!

The Uzi remains my Blood Harvest favorite - and it's on the table when you arrive at the farm house. But it's not on the table when you get killed in the Dead Air finale and return to the last safe house. We successfully defended the hill on Dead Air, and a strategy that worked killer was to switch to Sam's favorite tank buster, the auto shottie, after vanquishing the horde, and switch back to the Colt and race to the top of the hill, (I switch to pistols to run faster since Sam says you run slower holding Colt) after killing the tank.

I had the auto shotgun one time, with only 12 life, and I realized that with my life so low, I could not outrun the tank, even switching to pistols. So I stayed way out of his way, shooting from 30 yards when he was chasing somebody else. He hadn't been set on fire.

If he's not on fire, you have to shoot and shoot. But auto shotgun seems to work pretty well up to about 30 yards or so - I could see the blood popping on him with every shot. We all got out okay - another guy also had only 12 life!

I started to get better coordinated - my problem is not so much getting stuck in windows - but getting flattened by tank-throwing-concrete chunks, or in one case, the entire luggage cart!

However, I guess I still have some coordination problems - that is one reason I hate Prince of Persia, lol. On Death Toll the guys wanted to defend at the rock. I said "Rock?" So I went over there. It took me 30 tries to jump up on that goddamn rock. I said, "I'm up here and I'm not getting down - I won't be able to get back up again." So they said "Pistols only!" We all used double pistols on the horde, the guys in front crouching down, and then we stayed on the rock and used Colts or shotguns on the tank. A couple of the guys actually did hop down for the tank and jump on a smaller rock. Anyway, we all got out alive.

On Dead Air we tried a few other locations, including the closet. The closet is absolutely killer for hordes - it also works on the earlier level in the construction area with the ladder to the top platforms, where you burn down the fence to get through. I haven't had much of a problem before just holding out on the top of the construction area, but one guy said "let's try closet." Worked like a charm. Later I told some guys about it and we tried again - I told one guy who was really low on life, to get in the back. I crouched down in front with Uzi. One guy kept running out - why I don't know. I yelled "Get back in here!" We all did pretty well with little loss of health.

For Dead Air, a guy named Rob and I tried closet with two bots, but the bots won't stay in the closet, lol, and they stand right in front of you so you have to shoot through them to kill the horde, lol. Still it worked very well with both of us crouched down with Colts. Rob told me that it works so well that even if you run out of ammo, just melee attack, and it will push the horde back without you suffering any loss of life, while the other guys behind you take them out until there is a short breather so you can reload. We did closet, defeated one tank, didn't have time to change weapons and got back to closet with auto shotguns, defeated the horde, but then got trapped by smoker while working on the second tank, lol. That's one reason to stay close to each other, which we didn't do. I was left alone and didn't know he had died, and I was back-pedaling with almost full life auto shotgunning Mr. Tank, and then suddenly taken down by smoker. I think both bots who hadn't stayed in the closet were dead. Rob laughed as he said goodbye for the night "Good try, hahaha. I was wondering if the smoker who killed me would get you!"

The guys also said that closet works well also for No Mercy! But not with bots!!

What a great game! Keith you will love it! And you'll make good friends. I think it's well worth it to have the mic working - and I like open mic, but of course one doesn't want to overdo the chatting, or screaming, on open mike!

By the way, Sam, you have that funny as hell thing you love to yell all the time, especially in the safe house: "Owwwwww!" I asked you for the bind and you said it's a custom mod. Well, you've probably heard this, but some Zoey was screaming some really weird sh*t in a safe house - a guy mic'd "what the hell is that?!" It was unreal - hysterical. Turns out it's dying sounds, and I copied and pasted within the console and binded it to the L key. I think Zoey does it the best. I believe it's the "getting burned up alive" sound you hear when somebody is disabled and gets nailed with a molotov! Hahahaha!

Rich

 

If that's the case Rich, then Left 4 Dead is vulnerable to one of the most common shortcuts in games - the ammo counter does not tick down at the same rate the gun fires.
Heh, the infamous rock in Death Toll is the very reason why I have passed that campaign on expert but none of the others. I've tried numerous times to do them, but never succeed
Keeping a molotov for the tank is absolutely essential and should always be practised in any game, campaign or Vs.

The mod I use to scream OH! specifically over mic is called HLDJ. In theory it can be used to play music over the microphone as well, but I had no luck trying to do so. A shame, as I was going to try getting Yakedy Sachs (The theme from Benny Hill) playing during zombie hordes.

 

Noted a few more things about the game. In windows 7(possibly vista?), when starting Left 4 Dead, the audio mixer automatically defaults to VERY low volume. So one has to open the game, and then minimize it, to control the volume level. Rather odd eh. And something really funny(to me anyway), I never installed the Graphics drivers, and have been running on the windows 7 stock driver since install ROFL! Bugs have been fairly minor during gaming!!! I'll install the APPROPRIATE driver today, and see if the bugs continue. I find it rather irritating that my partners in, "Zombie Genocide" keep stealing my kills!!! If my first shot doesnt kill a zombie, they kill it. I wish there were some kinda option, for them trusting me a little more LOL! I guess im just gonna have to bump up my kill urge a notch or three LOL!

 

Omega: That happens with a lot of programs in win7, not just L4D, seems like a bug with the new OS which is annoying.

 

Really? Thats too bad. Ehh...pretty minor one if you ask me.

I thought this was pretty funny

 

I've got loads of silly pictures about L4D lying around, I'll try and up some to imageshack later.

 

You guys are sick. (can't say that hasn't crossed my mind, lol. She's cute!)

The Rock - found out how to climb it and I'm a jumping fool!!! The model is slightly off - visually you are stopped about a foot before the rock begins. Once you see that, you just have to jump slightly sooner than you would think. No problemo, and no need to use crouch at the same time - it's not the famous crouch jump. Just simple jump - but jump about 6" to a foot "too soon."

Killer place - easy to defend!!

Ah hah, Sam, that's your Expert secret, lol - the rock!

We defended successfully - the bots and me - on the Advanced boathouse finale, also around the mini gun. I had a hard time getting them to follow me to the boat - being bots they do that badly. They always turn and fight - running like hell doesn't seem to be programmed in, hahaha.

On the Colt ammo counter - I don't know Sam. You're probably right. I just emptied the entire clip and timed how long that took. I confess I didn't have a stop watch going, nor did I have a sweep second hand. I suppose I could have put L4D in a window and used the Windows clock with sweep second. But my "One one thousand, two one thousand" historically has been very accurate. (I just checked it now blindfold against the windows sweep second - the twenty seconds count was right there!)

Speaking of timing things, I also checked the running speed on pistols versus holding the M16 - identical - fifteen seconds from corner of The Rock, to window of boat house. I checked back and forth with pistols and Colt M16 - exactly the same.

It's still not a bad habit to run with pistols - it definitely helps for Counter Strike - unless you accidentally run into a terrorist. For L4D I think Uzi also runs fast, but we do know that hunting rifle definitely slows one down, right Sam? What about the shotguns?

Edit: Wait a second! No weapon suffers any speed penalty. Read below!

Finally I want to add to this post, as I have been meaning to do for a long time: Thanks thanks thanks Sam, for letting me know about those incredible wallpapers on Interfacelift.com.

Here's a surprise. I loaded all the 60 that I picked out into webshots, and I have that "Collection" going as my screensaver and as my desktop on the laptop. The laptop displays at 1024x768 - but remember, these pictures are all 2560x1600 for the big Dell. However on the laptop, they look sharper than any other pictures I have ever seen on the laptop - and I DO have pictures that are a full 1024x768. I know that webshots is throwing out the unused pixels of course, in some fashion. But the interfacelift.com shots are utterly fantastic!!! (it's friggin' artwork - cottage on pond is a masterpiece - thanks again Sam!)

But how can those 2560x1600 look sharper than my normal 1024x768 shots, on my 1024x768 panel? Is it just better photography? I mean they look REALLY REALLY sharp!

Any ideas?

Rich

 

Rich: Exactly right about the rock, it took me a while to figure that one out, and the exact place you have to be is a bit hard to describe.

I'm not sure I agree with your theory on weapon movespeed. In my experience, you run faster with tier 1 weapons or pistols, PROVIDED your movespeed hasn't been affected by your health. When you're below 50 health, your movespeed is defined by that, not by which weapon you're carrying.

The reason why 2560x1600->1024x768 shots look 'sharper' is because the extra pixels have to be removed in such a way the right resolution picture comes out. The process by which the extra data removed is effectively anti-aliasing the image. You are not bound by what will fit into 1024x768 by the picture. The downscale process smoothes out some of the things that wouldn't otherwise work for that resolution image.

 

Some wicked looking pics there sam!
Anybody have Left 4 Dead lock up, and shut itself down? Because, before I updated my graphics drivers, it would lock up for a couple seconds, then it would be fine for a while. Now, since I updated, ive experienced the first bug. It locked up real good this time, so I hit escape, and the game shut down entirely!!! I was just about to finish an area on advanced no less! That's my luck LOL!

 

The lag is caused by multicore rendering. Disabling it lowers the frame rate, but should eliminate the stuttering. I've never had L4D close all by itself.

 

Disabling it is done within the game? I'll check it out, next time im in windows 7.
On another note, 16 Hrs logged on my wireless mouse, and still going. I imagine the batts are close though

I learned something new too! The pipe bomb attracts the horde!!! VERY useful info. Its saved my bacon a couple times now. And apparently a FACE shot with the shotgun will take down the witch. I knew there had to be a way. I guess my other witch head shots were failures.

 

I had the same bug with multi-core rendering for a long time on my Phenom II rig. The only thing that fixed it was turning off Multi-Core Rendering. I lost the quad core advantage but it played perfectly. My last reformat seems to have fixed it completely though.

 

Sam, that is absolutely fascinating. It is more than fascinating in fact - either I am being hyper like boozer claims, or just intrigued as a normal person would be, but because I like beautiful images as do we all, I find that revelation to be incredibly impactful!!

Furthermore, although I had hoped that you could give me some insight, I am actually blown away again! How do you know all this stuff!!!

However, at core, I am not sure I completely understand. Perhaps you (and/or Jeff if he wants to contribute) could elaborate more. What do you mean, "effectively anti-aliasing" the image. I am completely fascinated, as I say, because I really can't believe the quality. I know I'm not seeing more than 1024x768 - but it looks so sharp. Miles used to talk about anti-aliasing - smoothing out the jaggies - which is what graphics cards do by sampling around each pixel. Is that what you're saying? The process of throwing out the extra pixels results in a smoothing out around each pixel?

The images are indescribably sharp, and breathtakingly gorgeous - unlike any images I have ever seen before on my smaller screens!! They are almost lifelike in some way - they have a presence that is astonishing!!

I am trying to appreciate the ramifications. That would mean, I suppose, that I should store the higher resolution version of every picture I would ever want to display on my desktop and benefit from the smoothing out process!

F**king fantastic stuff - really terrific stuff!!

THAT IS ALMOST AS SIGNIFICANT TO ME AS DISCOVERING WHAT A GREAT GAME LEFT 4 DEAD IS! Two major insights within a short time period - almost too much to take. Hahahahaha.

Now, I have to take very minor issue with you on something else. I originally started out in physics. In physics there is theoretical speculation, and then there is empirical data from running experiments, not quite the same thing of course.

Sam, I ran an experiment and made a finding. If you do not agree with my conclusion, then tell me what was wrong with my experiment, and what other conclusion could a reasonable person come to?

L4D doesn't care which weapon you are holding as regards how fast you run is the finding I came to from my experiment (which by the way, is not true of another source game called Counter Strike.) Here's how I did the test:

Kevin, Left 4 Dead doesn't want you completing any Advanced sections because you're too new, which is why you got shut down, and of course the pipe bomb attracts the bastards - duhhh - that's what it's for, lol - and MY shotgun headshots didn't do sh*t to the witch on my experiment with the bots - she chased my little ass down and killed me right then and there goddammit, lol. But serially, if shotguns to the head can kill the little red-eyed bi*ch that's good to know. There is an achievement for capping a witch with a head shot - is it hunting rifle to the head - which weapon works?

Sam, on expert how did you guys take out the witch? I actually threw a propane tank at her and exploded it - that didn't seem to do shi*t!

GETTING RID OF FRIENDLY FIRE:
My god, Kevin, this is good practice: Run some Expert with the bots. If nothing else cures you of friendly fire, that will.

But what do I do, Sam and Jeff, when I am on full auto, we are all in our respective corners of the room, the horde is pouring through the door, and Francis randomly decides to wander over into my bullet stream. Is that really my fault? Goddammit Francis!!

Rich

 

Rich, consider a square block formation of an image. Say, a checkerboard pattern with white and black squares. Condensing an 8x8 grid to a 4x4 grid is easily done, you cut it in half, which is why exact doubles, such as 800x600->1600x1200 and 1280x800->2560x1600 look crisp, but still jagged.
Now imagine trying to adapt a 17x17 block to an 11x11 block. How would you do it? What happens is an approximation, the colour is neither black, nor white, something inbetween. This colour gradualisation in microcosm is what is applied to edges with Anti-Aliasing on the edges of textures. On a full scale it occurs when images are reduced in size (and is also part of the compression process) which is why downsizing a picture has the same effect as anti-aliasing an image.
Ultimately, due to the fine size of the pixels, an image mapped 1:1 by resolution of the image to the resolution of the screen is the best approach, but as you see, downsizing a large image has substantial benefits too. Seeing a 2560x1600 image on a 1024x768 screen is better than a 1024x768 picture on it, but if a screen the same size were actually 2560x1600 to take the picture properly, it'd look far better still.
I have not run any specific scientific tests on move speed in Left 4 Dead yet, this is merely on intuition, I will have to conduct some tests of my own.
I have also found that head-shotting the witch seems only to work with the pump shotgun of tier 1. Damage per second is higher with the Auto Shotgun, but damage per shell I believe is higher with the tier 1 weapon.
Usually, if with the auto shotgun, spamming headshots usually does the trick. You certainly shouldn't need all 10, certainly not unless on expert.
Agreed on the bots walking into friendly fire, it's infuriating. Still, they can never friendly fire you, that's something.

 

Left 4 dead is awesome the best game ever!

Although recently I downloaded something that competes quite closely...Big Rigs: over the road racing