The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

man rich when ever i ask you to play u dont respond

 

You can hear the tank breathing before you encounter it and the music starts playing - listen out for it, especially if you're expecting one.
On one occasion in the Dead Air crane level when you go through the office building, the tank was in one of the little cupboards to the right. We walked past it, all of a sudden, tank music starts, door is blown off its hinges, and we run to evade the tank.
The location of the level 2 weapons changes each time, but there are only so many particular locations where they can be. Know where they all are, and it's hard to miss them.
The upper floor building on the No Mercy - Gas Station is familiar to us, we stopped using it for versus due to the smoker threat and the number of attack angles. We now use the corner by the lift, underneath the roof of the building you later clamber across. There are only two attack angles, and no matter how many boomers come your way you can keep fighting the zombies off almost indefinitely.
The rope is another tactic we tried for Dead Air. Ultimately we don't have a foolproof solution for that section as they don't often spawn behind the rope but unless you keep an eye out they can sneak round there from the left hand side of the map where the baggage carts are. The other areas we have tried are the corner right over the other side, and on the white plane (two on one wing, one on the top of the fuselage, one on the tail)
NEVER heal once the finale vehicle has arrived - Just GET THERE. Helicopter in No Mercy, Boat in Death Toll, Plane ramp dropping in Dead Air, APC arriving in Blood Harvest. Odds are good, even if one dies, the others will escape.
The C key by default is your voice chat link Rich, might want to rebind that.
Vocalize Playerdeath is the funniest with Zoey, the scream is painful to listen to. I have that bound to 6 on my keyboard. As I always use a backlit keyboard it's no issue finding buttons, but in any case, the light from the screen is sufficient to see the keys regardless.
In general I will avoid using any form of health until my move speed is sufficiently impaired, at which point I will usually try and find a suitable spot to stop and heal, if I don't find one, I will probably go down, or eat pills. If I do go down, same philosophy, heal if time, if not, pills. By going into black and white then healing, then going down and then eating pills you can extend your life twofold.
Ultimately, I doubt I'll switch the 4870X2s for the MARS295. As awesome as the card is, it will cost more than I will get for selling the X2s, especially since they've been price dropped 30% recently, and come July/August there will be a new generation of cards which will do the same job as the MARS without the absurd price tag, rare status, and with mainstream hardware support.
Crysis at Very High is playable at 2560 with two GTX285s, at least for the island section. I have my doubts about the second half of the game, and I don't think they'll manage Warhead, but it'd be getting there. Realistically, we want AA as well though, so we haven't truly cracked Crysis yet. I think a Triple or Quad SLi combination of the 2009 generation nvidia cards will be very close to achieving even that lofty goal, perhaps not Warhead with AA, we'll see. I don't see ATI hardware achieving it until the 2010 generation with Quad CF, as the scaling for Crysis is much worse.
The GTX285 SLI pair will beat two 4870X2s in some titles. More than not, the 4870s will win the day, but you must surely be aware that there are several games out there that only really run properly at all on nvidia graphics. Ironically, two GTX285s in SLI is now actually the same price as 4870X2 Quad crossfire, £495.
My comment about the GTX295 was that in raw performance, the 295 beats the 4870X2 in most games, but due to nvidia's lacking memory optimisation, and the lower amount of memory on the GTX295, when you use max detail at 2560x1600, the 295 falls to pieces in several titles. We're not talking falls behind, we're talking completely unplayable, or crashing. Quad SLi works with 295s and provides substantial benefits in some games. It does not, however, work properly in Left 4 Dead. One 4870X2 will match Quad SLi in Left 4 Dead - Given that's the only demanding game I play more than 6 hours a week, I have no interest in Quad SLI. Not to mention, it also requires an i7, or a terrible nforce chipset.
I didn't find Portal too easy at all. Short, yes, but I do wonder how long a game like that can be before it starts to lose its five star appeal.

Dragon Naturally Speaking doesn't work that well for me, as I don't have a US accent, the nail in the coffin for every voice rec program ever made.

Estuansis: Your image hasn't worked. I think imageshack is down today.
Ultra-high AA performance was a selling point of the 4800 series. It is a new feature of the R700 series architecture.

 

Dragon naturally speaking is highly adaptive. It even learns southern/texan/new york accents. Or so it claims. I dont doubt it, because you can teach the program to respond how ever you like. I understand what you mean though. English is darn near up and ready after install. After a couple of tests, within 10 minutes(with a good mic), your speaking a text document, surfing the web, etc. Haven't fooled with windows 7 that much yet. But its source responds almost identically. It wouldn't surprise if they ripped it off LOL!

 

Jeff - yeah really glad you jumped in on Left 4 Dead. It was great!

I cheated and played several Advanced hours yesterday - it's supposed to be just Wednesdays - after writing that long post, and after wanting to change my finger positions back to 4 and 5 for health and pills - which worked really well.

I got with a team that uses the top of the wing defense on the tipped over plane, for runway finale - and we all got out several times. I saw what you said about the plane, Sam, but these guys all get high up on the wing. One guy looks right, the other left, the other two lower right and left. They said that's the best defense by far, and you can do most of it with dual pistols! Smokers try to pull you down all the time but the team explodes the smoker before anybody gets pulled. Then on tank time, one guy whom I followed a couple times with my molotov, just in case, charges toward the tank spawn area - going up the stairs of the passenger ramp adjacent to that plane - and he runs out with molotov and lights the tank - his specialty. Very smooth and we did it with nobody disabled - so I picked up the Standing Tall achievement.

Wow, estuansis, your description of Dragon Valley makes me want to pull out my Battlefield 2. That map had impressed me a couple years ago as one of the most beautiful areas I had ever seen - how dare those Americans try to invade such a special place, haha. It sounds like you are one helluva sniper and a complete thorn in their sides - go grasshopper!

(I didn't know the snipers had ghillie suits and all - wow! BF2 for me is waiting for the new build - my 1 gig of system ram is holding me back - I get 5 second pauses on those maps.)

Kevin, now you defeat the horde single-handedly even on Expert? Oh, you found the nuclear bomb glitch. Yeah, works good. What the hell? Playing on a 50" plasma - great!! I presume 1920x1200 (or 1080) which is about what I'm playing it at on the Dell 30". Very nice! We did a little Expert also - barn finale - very tough! I discovered the laundry room defense inside the house - I think I like it better than top of barn for Expert! We had no problem with the horde, but our roof-top tricks for tank didn't pan out - needed more working on.

But laundry room - very effective! Remember that Sam for your next Expert achievement!!

Bummer! I wanted to get on a team with you yesterday. Hopefully next Wednesday, man.

Shaff, sorry, I never got your messages. Shouldn't they pop up in-game? Yeah, late yesterday I tried to jump in with you and I opened the dialog box and found several invites that you had sent me, but I never got them. Nothing popped up in the game - how is it supposed to work?

The game had told me that you were on-line, earlier. Clue me in Shaff, Sam, Jeff. How do I keep that dialog box active to get those invites when I'm in a game? How were you able to get my attention on Wednesday, Jeff?

Sam I didn't quite follow that - yeah go into black and white then heal - okay. But going down, then pills. What do you mean?

Regarding the 295 - yeah now I remember - the memory limitation. The most exciting thing you said was something about new ati hardware coming in July/Aug timeframe! Great!

Yeah, but not the Queen's English - so doesn't work for Sam, lol!

Rich

 

Actually, What I mean by that, is beating them off with the gun handle. Hmmm, LOL, perhaps I should reword that. Beating them with the butt of the gun, will push them away enough, for your teammates to defeat them. I just hold the button down(even on expert), and they usually only get a shot or two in. Ive survived at least 20-30 zombies with this tactic, while only suffering a 13 health points loss! While it doesn't seem 100% full proof, it is close.

Unfortunately, I haven't got to play with the 50" plasma yet The darn family screwed with my plans LOL! Nah, my brother came up from town(200miles away), I dont see him very often. And I wont get a chance during the week. So now i'll have to wait on that one til next weekend. Im betting its resolution is that of a 16:9 or 1920 x 1080. Typical blu-ray resolution. Which im sure will make my monitor look like a kids toy LOL!!!

 

http://kotaku.com/5274389/left-4-dead-2-features-melee-deeper-coop

Just thought i'd interject with this, in case you haven't seen already

Microsoft gave an amazing E3 Keynote, by the way (curse them).

 

Well...thats friggin awesome!!! I haven't even beat the first one, and now im gonna be itching for the second one

 

They also put this article up a little after my last post.

Is it just me that only likes the guy on the right? Maybe cos he resembles the scout from Team Fortress 2

 

Maybe because he looks like one of your buddies. I said the same thing to Miles (Left 4 Dead animator) when he showed me the new group of survivors about a month ago. (Remember when I had to keep the Big Secret - I sent an email to Sam and told him not to tell Shaff, hahaha.)

Hey, speaking of Shaff - (just kidding by the way, bud) - Jeff, how do I get Shaff's invites when I'm in a game? Like how did I get your invite last week? Wednesday is coming up fast! (By the way - did some more cheating and got on again Saturday night, showing up at Miles' little party with only 3 hours sleep, duhh - I'll show you guys what real addiction is, lol.) Guess what - #1. airplane wing absolutely doesn't work with two bots, and #2 hill is better if the team is not used to holding a position like airplane wing.

And finally, screw Rock - back deck or inside upstairs rules!

But if everybody wants to do Rock anyway (Sam's in charge for example) but you find that you alone are going to have to hold out down below 'cause you forgot how to get up on the goddamn thing, another half hour of practice taught me exactly what to do to climb the Rock: Listen up! (I died of course.)

A. not only do you have to jump about 3 feet ahead of time (just like melee works at a distance) but B. starting all the way to the right, run and keep your cursor on the highest point of the rock that you can see - which is in the back - which will move you slightly to the left and keep you out of the corner - the little incline you jump on is not in the corner.

I was at Miles' house yesterday - his daughter's 3 year old birthday "Princess Party" hahahaha. They had a professional Snow White there who looked like she stepped out of the streets of Disneyland - pretty talented artist too drawing little butterflies and other little animals on Josette and all her little buddies.

In the midst of all this exciting action, lol (not exactly, but Snow was HOT) Miles grabbed me and we went into his room and he cranked up the big Dell. He showed me Nick - the guy to the left on Shokz' link - the model looks really good. I said "Is that the photo still, or the model?" It was the model. He showed me a new Nick tweak - slightly different from what is being presented at E3 - a little reduction of cheek bones, etc., to more closely match the actual live person they used.

THEN he sat me back, put the headphones on me, and hit me up with the new trailer WOW!!!!! Here it is in High Def at 52mb if you can get it to stream, unlike me - Miles has it on his hard drive. One of the featured zombies looks like Angelina Jolie - except for the blood smeared all over her mouth - and then she gets her head blown off - lol. I said to Miles - "wow, she's really pretty!" He laughed - "Well, that's our movie department!"

For Kevin, who just learned to RULE WITH MELEE ATTACK (you're right, dude, you can almost defend better sometimes with melee than with bullets - and by the way - take note that melee works from about 4 feet away which I think actually is a game flaw - but that's how it works - get them before they can claw you - which also they can do from about 4 feet out) notice that just for you there is a chainsaw you can fire up, an axe, a baseball bat, and a frying pan, which Nick handles pretty nicely at the end of the video.

You're looking at Nick (gambler in the white suit) the Coach, the girl, Rochelle I think, and the Mechanic - the guy Shokz likes. Rochelle looks interesting in the trailer and you can see her fun baseball-bat-to-ya-mofo-head personality. Miles is modeling her too, and as she rotates, the physics engine swings her front locks from side to side in an attractive way. He said it wasn't quite right, but I told him it looked perfect to me! That reminded me of Louis. I asked him if Louis' red tie moves from side to side which I have always wondered about but haven't had time to notice with horde attacks from front and back at the same time! He said "yes it does." (By the way, speaking about hordes, other than the finales, chapter 4 in Toll Road, where you start out on top in the sniping loft, has to be the hardest level in the entire game. Next time I'm up on top lookin out, team and me are gonna have are-you-sure-you're-ready-for-this-shit chat, lol.)

I asked Miles why New Orleans - he said they wanted to do South. They've done Europe with Half Life 2, and Philadelphia with L4D. I said, "Well, it sounds like Zoey has a New York accent to me - like that part about 'Hey molotovs ova heeuh." He said, "Well, maybe she was just trying to say that kind of funny - like as you were sayin 'Get your hotdogs ova heeuh' because she really doesn't sound like that in the rest of her dialog." I guess he's right.

So, more exciting stuff to come. We've got a six month wait. Plenty of time for you, Shokz to get back into the game, and for you Kevin, to start getting online with all that amazing melee talent, lol.

Rich

 

Im sure there are a few people who will appreciate this No offense rich, NONE WHAT SO EVER LOL! I have a lot of respect for you This video is STRAIGHT to the point

Left 4 Dead 2 E3 2009 Teaser Trailer HQ

 

Yeah, I began to discuss some of the things you mentioned to me with my mates once they told me about the Left 4 Dead 2 info that was put out. I'm keen to see L4D2 be a bigger title than the original, else there's little to justify another sequel so soon, as technologically it will likely be very similar.
If somebody sends you an invite over steam, press Shift+Tab to bring up the Steam community menu and click the 'click here to join' link that appears in a chat window.
As for being upstairs, whenever we play Versus we stay upstairs in the house. The rock is still the best trick for the campaign though as AI zombies aren't smart enough to realise. Of course, neither are AI survivors, it has to be done with 4 humans.
I can clearly see that all the models are just that, models, but they are among the best I've seen in a game (that goes for the original L4D too)
The fourth level of Death Toll (The Streets) is an amazingly long level for a start, and is indeed particularly difficult as the survivors.
So far the best I've been able to do for the L4D2 teaser trailer is a laggy 540p quicktime video from Gamereplays.

 

Kevin, I somehow didn't see your post - yeah that's it! Go back to the bottom of the last page for Kevin's YouTube link, or in the next paragraph in this post, is the FilePlanet link where you can download the 118 mb high def trailer, if you want to see it in all its beauty! (It's worth downloading IMO, lol.)

Hey, go over here, guys, and download the high definition L4D-2 trailer, which they posted yesterday. FilePlanet has fast servers - this is 118mb and I think it's the same movie miles played for me - I played it on the laptop, but not yet on the big dell. (I downloaded it on one of the free servers and I waited about 10 minutes. The new download manager doesn't require you to be there to press the button like they used to do - just come back later and you'll have the file.)

That part I know, Sam, but my problem is that when I'm in a game - I don't see the invites. So I don't know anybody has sent me an invitation. Am I turning something off that I shouldn't be turning off - like "inform me in-game when I have an invitation" or something like that? Do you guys get invitation announcements in the middle of playing a round?

Yeah, "The Streets" is hard hard hard. It's mostly the hordes coming from all directions - they just wear you down so you're not doing so well by the time the tank shows up. Yes you do get health packs for the mini gun defense, but we had trouble getting that far. I am wondering if A. ducking into doorways is the best strategy, or B. if the 10-foot rule works best - nobody goes 10 feet away from the team.

Edit: Wow! Over there at FilePlanet just now, getting the Cod Modern Warfare 2 trailer - I noticed a crysis 2 trailer! Hey hey hey! Downloading that too!

Rich

 

right now there are 3 games im looking forward to, God of War 3 http://uk.ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/8..._gmp_demo_60209.html;jsessionid=8g7gc8ek8dem1

Crysis 2 and MW2

 

Shaff, I'll be on tomorrow. Nobody has told me how to get your invites while I'm playing, so I'll try to do shift tab each time I get to a safe house, I guess, to check "my messages" lol.

Otherwise - tell me how to get your invites while I'm playing!

Yeah Sam, they said they were going to have MORE CONTENT in Left 4 Dead 2 than in the first one. I guess sales of the first one went pretty well, from what I read, with all the advertising bucks they put out there - more bucks than they had ever done before! The loyal Valve base chipped in, so now more great stuff is on the way!

Edit:
By the way, Shaff, the God of War looked gayish. (just kidding.)

No, actually it looked okay. If you're into gayish things like flying people and mythological monsters, lol.

Sorry, I'm just into realism - things that really exist. You know, like zombies!

How do I get your friggin invites when I'm playing? Hahaha.

Rich

 

The Crysis 2 teaser literally tells you nothing - It's gunna be designed using CryEngine 3 and will be for PC, PS3 and 360 - Loads of people are worried the PC version might suffer because of this, but Crytek have always developed for the PC in the past and so I think they'll put that version first.

Don't get me started on everything I'm looking forward to after E3

BTW, Nintendo's press conference sucked so unbelievably bad (they did redeem themselves a tiny bit at the end but not enough) Anyway, in no particular order:

On PSP - DIRT 2, Little Big Planet, Gran Turismo 5 Mobile, Resident Evil Mobile, Jack and Daxter, Motorstorm Arctic Edge, Fat Princess, Metal Gear Solid, Socom Fireteam Bravo 3... Maybe a couple more I can't remember.

On PS3 - Sony Motion (un-named), God Of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, Fat Princess, Ratchet and Clank, MAG, Agent, The Last Guardian, Uncharted 2 and finally the two new Final Fantasy games (not played any of them before and would like to see what all the fuss is about)

On 360 (I don't actually own one of these yet, but I'm entertaining the idea, at least) - Project Natal, Alan Wake, the two new Halos, Metal Gear Solid, Forza 3, 1080p streaming of films and Sky, Facebook and Twitted integration (you might have just about noticed that these aren't games )

On PC - DIRT 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Bioshock 2, Crysis 2, Need for Speed Shift, Mass Effect 2, Modern Warfare 2, Half Life 2 Episode 3, Dead Rising 2 and Portal 2, if Valve ever decide to make one

On DS - Golden Sun.

On Wii (Don't own one of these either, never will, but still, they look good enough games) - Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid M, Dead Space Extraction.

Anyway, as you can see, Nintendo were rather rubbish overall and I feel, at least, that Sony stole the show on the game front. Microsoft clawed back a lackluster exclusive games list with Project Natal - If Microsoft can pull it off then they have something huge on their hands. Sony's Motion technology still looks great, especially the amazingly low lag with movement being transferred to onscreen, it doesn't seem as deeply involving as Microsoft's could be, but it has more real use in game.

 

Shokz I take back everything I said about you getting back into L4D. You obviously don't have ANY TIME in the day - look at how many goddamn games you are going to be buying!!! Hahahaha.

Single-handedly you are going to get the world economy back on its feet!!

(Episode 3 is coming, finally? Yay! Life after @%#$@ @#%#@ - play the game and you'll see - @%#%@ @%#@%$

Why oh why oh why did that happen??? It's all Dog's fault!)

 

I for one, am excited to see how they further improve the Source Engine for Episode 3. They'll have it perfected I think It can't help but look better than Left 4 Dead, and as for performance, LOL bring it on. It's gonna be an awesome end to the story arc and I bet it'll be longer than Episode 2. IIRC it didn't take nearly as long for Episode 2 after Episode 1 was released, so they must have put some work into it

 

Yeah, either that, Jeff, or they had to drop every other goddamn thing they were working on and clean up the mess that was Left 4 Dead when they took over the project from Turtle Rock!! The vision and the essential framework were there - but some of the programmers Booth had helping him were not quite up to the very high standards of Valve in terms of how the coding was handled. From what I heard, some of the Valve guys couldn't believe the game actually ran at all. A lot of feathers got ruffled when the Valve guys jumped in to get the project packaged up and out the door for Christmas - those Turtle Rock people who started flaming their critics didn't stay with Valve when Orange County was closed down.

But in any case, gotta give him major major props, Turtle Rock founder, Mike Booth, who was cashed out very handsomely and is now full-time Valve (working like Miles out of LA - that's where Miles got the idea to ask Gabe if he too could do that) had a brilliant vision for a game that I saw being developed, and which I have to admit I was very skeptical about. That just proves that I don't have the kind of vision Mike has - the game never really appealed to me in very early playtest - or messing around on Miles' computer by myself with some helper bots - and now of course I'm addicted to the brilliantly executed final product.

Mike's vision came from this: Mike developed the bots for Condition Zero after Valve had several false starts attempting to create a single player experience for Counter Strike that would let players develop their skills before they jumped on-line. The Lost Episodes that used to ship with Condition Zero was a whole set of campaigns using Counter Strike weapons. There was a campaign in Vietnam for example. Another somewhere in snowy Russia. But Valve didn't like it - they paid off that third-party company and never released the material. Mike had some good contacts into Valve, and he had achieved some recognition for strong programming skills - he had developed some early games, I understand, that had gained him wide respect.

He said "Why don't you guys just let me do this project for you?" He said his idea was just to take the 1.6 maps and add player bots that would play so well you couldn't tell them from real players. He did just that - they actually had some people trying bots, versus trying real players, and nobody could tell whether it was the bots they were fighting, or highly skilled players. Those Condition Zero bots also became the Counter Strike bots that you see when the server doesn't have enough real players. Booth's AI is first rate, and I believe he also originated the idea and initial programming for The Director, another brilliant AI concept, which creates L4D gameplay that is unique and different every single time, and ended up saving a ton of programming, because it is no longer necessary to pre-set when all the zombies will spawn on every single map - just create the spawn points and let the director handle it, and make necessary tweaks only to the director itself, not to every map.

Some of that is discussed in the Developer Commentary.

Of course, as Sam recently mentioned, AI is not quite as good as human, when it comes to things like knowing to jump up on the rock and stay there - or as I found out - jump up on the airplane wing and stay there. But in terms of moving around, shooting, no friendly fire at which they excel, healing everybody (love those bots for that!) and performing quite well, it's usually not critical when somebody goes idle for a smoke break!

Some of this following info also is shared in the Developer Commentary:

In developing the bots, Mike and his buddies used to like to divert themselves by populating the map with 50 terrorist bots armed only with knives, versus Mike and a couple of his coworkers. Have you guys ever done a round in Counter Strike where everybody agrees ahead of time: Knives Only!! Anyway, they found THAT gameplay great fun - and from that was born the idea of battling zombies.

So maybe Episode 3 took so long because it is SUPER good, or just because there were other priorities. In any case, even if L4D was the reason everything else was put on the back burner, if that's what happened, obviously I love how they tuned up the game. As far as EP3 goes, if they kill off any more of my favorite characters - like Barney, or Gman, or the old scientist with the little pet headcrab, or Alyx herself - then I'm not signing on for Half Life 3.

I'm just kidding of course!! LOL (But losing @#%^@#%@%$@ @%@%@%@% - play the game - @%@%@% #%^#@$@% didn't set right with me. Damn Dog!!) hahahaha

Rich

 

I dunno if I'll be around tomorrow for the usual L4D though. I have parties to attend and possibly another graduation. Everybody in my extended family is graduating high school this year it seems

 

Rich - you need to be a paying subscriber to access FilePlanet files without a 10-11 minute wait. Much like most files, if it's on fileplanet with wait, it's on filefront for free.
As for the Steam invites, you will hear a noise much like when you get a message, and when you shift+tab it'll be there, no more complex than that. If there's nothing there, the invites aren't getting through.
Yeah I remember hearing about Crysis 2, well, if we can't run the original properly yet, I dread to think what that will be like.

If there's a Super Mario Galaxy 2, I will definitely be buying it. The original was an absolutely incredible game. A Dead Space game on the Wii though? No thanks. Bugged control and all, I'd still take a PC version.
Ultimately none of the games on the PS3 really excite me much apart from GT5, as has always been the case with the PS3, no change here.
Rich: If anyone who intends to play Ep2 and hasn't, that's the biggest plot spoiler of all in that post. Probably ought to remove it