d6Amefath3r Takes #15 in Guardian of Light "Belly of the Beast" Speed Run

15th in the world; out of 7649 official times!

That's right... that's my son!  15th in the world for Speed Run record time on "Belly of the Beast" boss in Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

Congrats!

If you haven't played it already, it's a fun Tomb Raider game with a different view angle than its predecessors.  It also allows co-op play both network and at the same machine.  It's got a nice $14.99 price point on Steam too!

Split/Second Mayhem

Atholon, Thundr and myself played tonight in some grueling matches of Split/Second.

The starts of the races are hilarious, because whoever is in last place when Thundr is playing, gets shoved back by the other cars due to a game glitch that we believe has to do with load times and how fast/slow one connects to the race.  I'll be sure to capture the shove-back phenomenon with FRAPS next time we play, it's pretty funny; and gives everyone else a 10-20 second handicap, for the win!

We played several rounds of Survival, including an epic run where I was able to pass 10 trucks before a wreck, then another 11 during the end of the round and sudden death.

Keep those multipliers comin'!!!

After that we ran several races, racing nearly every track before it was time for us to start dropping off for the night.

We had a great time, and hope we can get more FNGers to join us so we can get a full game of humans and see what kind of explosive mayhem we can cause then.  Join us will you not?!

And don't forget to score Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit... we're planning some epic Cops and Racers fun on Christmas night!

Mistral and Varsity - Two FNG TrackMania author faves; and MCM2 on Windows 7 a reality?

Thundr, Beuchety and I raced tonight on the Mistral World Selection server.  

DirtyDan, Thundr and I had played that server last week with about 50 other people and had a ball!  Even the server host (and excellent track author) raced with us that night.  We had so much fun we had to run it again this week.  The server had less than 10 people for most of the time, but they were cool racers and we didn't have any repeats of the tracks from last week.  All were fresh and fun.  

We snagged from TMX a Mistral track called "On the Edge" that we couldn't finish during our first round playing it, but are looking forward to playing it more with FNGers (Thundr spent a few while I was crafting this email and finished the track.)

When I looked through my browser tabs to see the other tracks I'd queued for download after our session (there were four of them) ... I discovered that two of them were from the same author; named Varsity.

We enjoyed Varsity's tracks so much tonight, that we downloaded the two we played, then found two more on TMX that were his highest awarded tracks.  I'm thinking we should put up our own server next Friday and run those (among others we've newly downloaded.  Some would make great tournament material.

So join us next Friday for some fast/frantic Mistral and Varsity tracks.

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In other most excellent news.  I figured out a way to get Motocross Madness 2 to run for those that have Windows 7 machines that will only do Software Rasterization in MCM2.

The problem is, it requires an XP license.  :)

VMware has released a new version of their free Player software that does two very important things:

1. Supports DirectX 9.0c with a virtual 3D adapter.

2. Allows you to create your own Virtual Machines.

I tested on my i7 laptop (ATi Radeon 5870, 8GB RAM) by creating a Windows XP VM, installing MCM2 and played at 1920x1080 @ 30fps!

Note, there are still some visual anomalies in the menus, but we were all getting those in XP as well, so we'll suffer through them.

I would like other FNGers to please try this, if you have an XP license to spare on a VM and see if you get the same mileage out of this solution.  This may very well help us bring MCM2 back into FNG play!

EA Sale Fail

Free shipping on digital downloads... how generous!

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit - the Next Big Team FNG Racing Game?!

We've all been waiting years for a good racing game where we could play the cops as well as the racers.  Now it seems we might have the perfect mix, with Criterion Games, makers of the excellent Burnout series creating the hottest new Need for Speed game, Hot Pursuit.

After seeing tons of screenshots and videos, I'm drooling and waiting to get my hands on the games, though my wife put a stop to game purchases until after Christmas.  So you know what I've got on my list!

BomaJoe and Dragonflye already got their hands on it... Ender has ordered it, other Team FNGers are contemplating... so I'm hoping come Christmas day we can fill a 10-player game and have a blast.  (Unfortunately all of Team FNG will be way ahead of me on it since they'll all have played it early.  hehe!)  No worries, I relish the challenge.

This Need for Speed provides both racers and cops with weapons to enhance the pursuits, including EMP shockwaves and the ability for the cops to call in helicopters.

There is the new Autolog feature that allows us to compete with each others' records and what not, like TrackMania offers.

Be warned though.  Their licensing touts 5 activations, like unto Split/Second.  The difference is... the key has to be tied to an EA account and only one activation can be logged in online at a time... meaning you can't get all 5 activations in an online game together.

Dragonflye informed me there is no LAN play, so you're pretty much one license per person that wants to play online.  The 5 activations WILL allow all 5 to be playing offline at the same time.

That said, it still looks to be a killer game, and I'm really looking forward to getting to play it.  BomaJoe says it drives like Burnout, but in the Need for Speed atmosphere.  Sounds like a winning combination to me.

So for now, go get your copy or add it to your Christmas list... I'm hoping we can all get online Christmas night and play some Hot Pursuit!

Hopefully it will find itself ranked up there with FNGers along side the Motocross Madness series and TrackMania series; and find us playing it for a long time to come.

Split/Second DLC Exclusivity Fail

Chalk another point for bad video game business.  Today Black Rock Studios announced new DLC for Split/Second called "Survival at the Rock".

It looks to add a new track and new Survival Race mode.

On gaming news sites and the facebook page, it is mentioned that the DLC is only available to the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms, and I saw no sign of PC availability on the official website or in-game.

Now, I took a screenshot from the trailer I saw, and you tell me, is this false advertising?!?!

Sure appears that PC is the FIRST platform listed...

I added the yellow circle to do a sanity check... Now tell me, and maybe things have changed and I need to return to school for a higher education, but is it not true that PC is the first platform listed underneath the phrase:
"SURVIVAL AT THE ROCK AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD OCT. 12th"?


So where is it?!  Why, on 13 October 2010 do I not have access to this, nor is it mentioned anywhere else, except for Xbox 360 and PS3?

I'm so tired of companies pulling this B.S. I could scream... If you're not going to fully support a platform for the entire game's lifecycle... DON'T FREAKING RELEASE ON IT TO BEGIN WITH!!!


And seriously, if you're not going to release ridiculous DLC for a given platform... DON'T FREAKING LIST IT AS ONE OF THE AVAILABLE PLATFORMS!!!


No GG on this one guys; as PC Gamers once again get the shaft... unless someone can correct the error of my ways and link us somewhere that we PC gamers can go acquire said content.  If someone can, I'd be very appreciative.

Portal 2 Release Date Announced

It's official (for now)...

Steam has Portal 2 on their store, with a release date of 09 February 2011!
There is no option to pre-purchase yet; but they do have some really sweet videos and screenshots.

Valve also has an official Portal 2 website with some awesome long and high-quality videos and wallpapers to make you drool while you wait in anticipation for this seemingly-Valentine's Day release (something to do with the Weighted Companion Cube and the hearts on its sides?!)

The extended co-op video, Portal 2: Cooperative Testing Initiative, has me stoked.  I'm very excited to see where they go with that campaign.  It appears one bot gets the blue/orange portals and the other gets red/yellow portals.

Other extended videos, like Meet Wheatley, show the innards of Aperture Labs and all the mass-manufacturing GLaDOS is doing.  The lighting looks amazing and the full ambient creepy atmosphere looks more gorgeous than ever.

I can't wait to see it for real.  Look at me still talking when there's science to do...

Does Starcraft 2 Contain a Diablo 3 Easter Egg?

I was playing the Starcraft 2 single player campaign and was exploring "The Devil's Playground" mission.  In the bottom-right hand corner of the map, I saw what looks like a Diablo III easter egg.  You can decide for yourself.

Potential Diablo III Easter Egg?
(click to enlarge)

I'm thinking so...

It's cool that Blizzard does fun things with their games that reward players for expanding their horizons and checking out all the details of their maps.  Can't wait to see what other fun things we'll encounter.  I've probably already missed some, so now I'll have to go back and play the prior missions again.  :)

Now, I spent some time trying to figure out how to get some Reavers over to the sucker and try to take it on; but alas, there was a big rock in the way on the one path they might have been able to rocket jump over to him.  I also tried landing a Command Center on it, but of course it wouldn't land.

If you've had better luck getting some Terran units over there, please let us know!

"Epic" Win for GEEX!

Epic Games signed on as a sponsor for GEEX 2010!
More details can be found at the GEEX website.

I'm stoked to see big names like Epic, Intel, Nvidia appearing at our event; and look forward to seeing what they bring to the expo.

I have to do a shout out to Geekbox Computers who has been busting butt to sponsor the LAN Party and some of the tournament prizes.

We hope the show will be a smash hit this year and even more fun than GEEX 2008 was.  Team FNG had a riot at the first GEEX, and we'll looking forward to some serious good times at this one.

We'll see you all there...

GEEX 2010: TrackMania Tournament Dedicated Server is Live!

The Team FNG practice server for the GEEX 2010 TrackMania United Forever tournament is officially live, and will remain so until GEEX is over.

Play TrackMania on the Team FNG Server

(up until 16 July 2010)

Mind you, it's still a test-bed for the tournament tracker app I'm writing to keep score during the GEEX tournament.  This won't affect your gameplay, except for seeing scoring at the end of each race (and being able to type /rank at any time to see your current tournament standings.)  Note that this will only work when I have the tracker app running... which will only be when I have time to work on it. 

We may or may not run some mock tournament runs with the app if I have time to do so; but most of the time when you see it running, I'll be making tweaks and fixing defects with it, so you'll have to bear with me when the scoring keeps resetting, etc.

Tonight, I'll be making the scoring reports show the players' aliases instead of their logins and working on a couple other things.

Feel free to practice on the server whenever you wish.  If it's not up, come back here and leave a comment so I can be notified about the outage.  I'll get it fixed as soon as I can.

I look forward to seeing you all at GEEX and spending some time racing with you before the tournament.
Register for the GEEX LAN Party
Register for the GEEX TrackMania United Forever Tournament

I'll hopefully be getting the in-game news submitted this weekend.

So go practice away and let's make this a spectacular tournament!