I realize I just made a post about video games a couple of days ago but I am just starting to get back into them and just found out about this game and it looks absolutely mind blowing. The game is called Crysis and it is being developed by Crytek, the same people who put out the amazing FarCry a few years ago. Check out the video and be amazed.
I may have to get a new computer purely so I can play this game at the high settings.
After waiting six long years it appears as if Teamfortress 2 is actually going to make it to the stores. Word has it that it will be released with Half Life 2: Episode 2 which is due out by the end of the year. The first Teamfortress classic (usually just called TFC) consumed countless hours of my time and was amongst the most fun I ever had playing a video game. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the game it is an online multiplayer first person shooter where you play on a team. There are different modes of play ranging from capture the flag, defending check points, etc. There are many different classes that you can play such as a sniper, a scout, medic, engineer and more (they are all shown in the above video). Each class has its strengths and weakness and in general were very well balanced. My two favorite classes where the Heavy and the Sniper. I have very fond memories of playing with my good friend Jose with both of us being heavy weapon guys and infiltrating the other teams base and just plowing over everyone that got in our way.
As the video shows, the new version is going to have a cartoony look. I like it, I have a feeling that some people will have a problem with it but I find it a nice change of pace. It looks like all the old classes are back but I am not seeing any new ones. I cannot wait till it comes out, I have very high hopes for it and have been waiting a very, very long time for it.
I just learned that another game will be bundled with Half Life 2: Episode 2. This other game is called Portal and it looks pretty damn cool. Check out the video preview below.
The other day I downloaded a video file which was an .NSV file. I had never heard of an NSV but I tried playing it on my media player of choice (media center) anyway, it didn’t work, of course…. bastards. After doing some searching on the net I found that NSV is a Winamp file format. I really didn’t feel like installing winamp because I like to complicate my life and would rather spend several hours converting it to a format that my present media player can handle, I am weird like that. Anyway, I hit google and started searching for ways to convert NSV to AVI, I found some results but they all seemed far to complicated. Some of these methods required three to four pieces of software and I didn’t care that much about this video. But, I am a stubborn son of a bitch and I kept looking for an easier solution. I finally hit pay dirt.
I found a little program called MikkoNSV which claimed to do it all in one shot. I downloaded and installed it and gave it a try. It went through the conversion process with no problems but when I went to play the resulting AVI file I was only getting sound, no video. After some poking around I found that MikkoNSV was using some funky video codec, after some more poking I found that FFDSHOW codec pack can play just about anything so I decided to give it a try (I have FFDSHOW installed on my HTPC). After installing FFDSHOW I tried to play the file and bingo, success! Hopefully if anyone else has the same problem that I did you find this post useful.
The video that I went through all the trouble for ended up sucking elephant testicles.
I can’t stop watching.
EDIT: I learned a bit more about this pic. It’s from some show called “So you think you can dance?”. I found a video showing his amazing skills.
Back in early June I was stumbling around the net and came across www.robogames.net. I remember back when they showed these fights on Comedy Central and really getting a kick out of it. I also remembered that they took place in San Francisco so on a lark I decided to see if it was going to be taking place anytime soon. I was in luck, as it turned out they were happening in just a couple of weeks and they were going to take place on the same weekend that my father was going to be in town from FL (fathers day weekend).
The event took place over three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we went on Saturday. It was $20 to get in and that was for the entire day from noon till 11PM. Three day passes were also available for $55. We only stayed for a few hours but I still feel as though we got our moneys worth.
As we walked in there was a piece of the bulletproof lexan that is used to line the ring on display. This piece of lexan was half an inch thick and as I mentioned, bulletproof. The night before one of the robots had hit this lexan and put a six inch long gash in it that almost pierced all the way through it, this can give you an idea of just how powerful these bad boys are.
There are quite a few things going on. There are sumo battles where little tiny robots that are completely autonomous that try and push each other out of the ring.
There was a ton of Just display robots that I don’t have any pictures of. There was a, roughly, 6′X6′ ring for the super lightweight robots (weighing just ounces and up to a couple pounds) which were a lot of fun to watch fight and then of course there is the big ring which is the main attraction. At 50′X50′ and lined with bulletproof lexan the main ring is quite impressive. There are lots of different weight classes that fight, from bots weighing just a few pounds up to the super heavy weights that weigh in at up to 340 pounds. All of the different weight classes were fun to watch but it’s the super heavy weights that really are the most impressive.
I do have to talk about one of the lightweight bouts that we saw. The first bot was one with a vertical blade the second was a plastic buck with a stick attached to it. I am not sure of the story behind this, I have a feeling that some team just threw it together out of spare parts so that the weight division would have an even amount of contestants or something along those lines. Regardless of the reason, it was hilarious. The bucket actually didn’t do too bad in the beginning due to some good driving skills, but once the other bot started hitting him it was no contest. By the end of the fight the bucket bot was in about 1,000 pieces scattered about the ring. It was silly but the crowd loved it. Here are a couple pictures from the bucket fight.
There are also bots with flamethrowers. They look awfully cool and are crowd pleasers but they don’t really seem to be very effective. The bots are metal and metal doesn’t exactly burn, either way, they are fun to watch.
As I stated earlier the real fun is with the super heavy weights. These bots are very impressive. Watching a bot throw another bot, that weighs in excess of 300lbs, into the air a good 6 feet or striking another and sending it flying across the fifty foot ring as if it weighed nothing is really something to see. My favorite style bot was what is known as a spinner. These are just dome shaped bots that spin really fast and then strike the other bot. They can do insane amounts of damage and are really fun to watch. My favorite bot and fight that we saw was between a bot called Super Megabyte and Devil’s Plunger, Megabyte is a super heavy weight spinner and is simply awesome.
Super Megabyte
Here is a video of the fight between Super Megabyte and Devil’s Plunger. The video really doesn’t do the fight justice. No matter how you look at it, it was a one sided fight, what the video doesn’t really convey is the sheer power of Super Megabyte, it was really impressive.
Here is another video demonstrating just how strong these bots are, watch how one bot just tosses the other one out of the ring, the height that it tosses the bot is amazing when you consider these bots weigh over 300 pounds.
Here is an image that shows how big these bots are in relation to a human. The bot pictured is the same bot that tossed the other out of the ring in the previous video.
We had a great time at robowars, if you ever have the opportunity to check it out I highly recommend it. I can’t wait till they come back, I plan on spending much more than a couple hours there next time.
