What can I say. The demo has been released and I had to play it before posting about it.

They capture it. That’s all I really need to say. It feels like I just played Red Alert yesterday (I promise I didn’t!) and then melded right into this demo. As I said before, the cut scenes are exactly the same feel as Red Alert ones, just better quality and a lot more familiar faces.

The graphics are perfect. I’m not going to say “stunning” or breathtaking”, they just feel like a awesome upgrade to the C&C line. Gameplay also follows suit. I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding as if it’s just “more of the same”. The only thing I can say about that is I did not really enjoy Command & Conquer: Generals very much. It felt like a hasty addon with blah gameplay, but purty graphics. This C&C3 demo showed that the story and gameplay and graphics have all taken a big, but even step forward.

As usual, I got the demo from fileplanet, as they seem to always have the exclusive demos and betas.

I tried a bunch of combinations of key presses in-game to take screenshots, but apparently they didn’t accomplish anything, so here’s some stock shots that definitely capture the look while playing:

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Now that the forums are at another lull, since most of us kinda dropped out of Urban Dead, I have been trying to decide what to do about the forum software.

PHPBB2 was a good product and was the top of the line free foum software for many years, but:

• the control panel has always left much to be desired
• mods are pretty difficult to accomplish and have to be redone at almost every update
• spamming is easily accomplished and the registration hurdles do virtually nothing to keep spammers out

Of course, I looked for free versions of forums. I had a friend try punBB, and while it is elegant, it is a little more simplistic than I’d like. I also checked out MyTopix and Phorum, but ended up falling for Simple Machines Forum.

It is very robust, has a pretty good converter, and is easy to update and modify. Best thing is that users are very easy to monitor and moderate.

The converter looked great but it failed in a few areas. Smilies didn’t get converted, and some people’s signatures and images had the first letter of the URL stripped off, making them just show the text of the link.

Otherwise, it seems to be working well. I’ll be tweaking it the next few days, and I already have a dark purple theme that I’m eyeing. But for now, for those that still peruse occasionally, just try it out and let me know if you see anything that isn’t working well.

The link to the forums is the same. But, I still have the old forums languishing around, so if there’s something that didn’t get ported over that you want or need, I can dig it up for ya.

Cheers!

Red Orchestra was born a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. I played it quite a bit back then, when the total numbers of people playing per night was less than a hundred. But, as I’ve said before, I’m a glutton for obscure mods.

The game came out of obscurity somewhat when they worked a deal with Valve to develop a standalone version. The new game was called Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45. I didn’t purchase it when it was released, but I did participate in the beta before. The addition of vehicles, and improved physics were nice, and the gameplay only got better. I can’t remember exactly why I wasn’t interested enough to purchase it, so I will blame it on a random MMORPG.

About a year ago I was goaded into finally picking up the game by some CoFRs. While my heart belongs more to PRMM, I have varied my gaming diet with influxes of RO.

As usual, I don’t get to the point of the post right away. Here it is: The Red Orchestra team hosted a contest for custom maps, and the result is a new map pack of 32 maps approved and released. I got mine from fileplanet but the main Red Orchestra site lists some alternative download sites. Fileplanet does have a great writeup on each of the maps in the pack.

These maps look great and the fact that there are so many probably means I will spend time that I should be using to study or code to play all of them.

The Power of the Dark Crystal is the name of it, to be released over 25 years after the original was, back in 1982.

John Henson wanted to make an epic “muppet” movie, mixed with live actors, and did so in the original The Dark Crystal. I have only watched it once since my childhood, but I watched a ton of times then. It was a great movie with a very good story. After all this time, I had no clue that a sequel was in the works, this time fronted by Jim’s daughter: Lisa Henson.

The new writing credits still list Jim among them, so apparently he did have an extended story. Here is a plot summary as listed on the movie’s production blog site:

Power of the Dark Crystal is set many years after the events of the first movie. Jen and Kira, the gelflings, are older and are reigning as king and queen in the Castle of the Crystal. After the Gelflings welcome a fiery. and unexpected visitor. to their castle they learn that the very existence of the U-mun people, who live in the searing heat in the center of the planet, is threatened by the death of their sun. There is apparently only one thing powerful enough to heal the dying sun - a shard of the Crystal.

The Gelflings refuse the request for a crystal shard, as breaking the crystal would disturb the peaceful surface world’s balance. But the desperate visitor takes matters into her own hands and steals a shard, making a hasty escape through tunnels deep in the bowels of the castle. The surface world once again falls into darkness - as the UrSkek split into Mystics and Skeksis. So begins the adventure of Thurma, a girl “made of fire”, who bands together with Kensho, an outcast Gelfling, in an adventure in the “inner-world” over the fate of the planet.

The movie is slated for release in 2008. Some rumors went around that it was being cancelled but they were recently dispelled on the blog:

“The Jim Henson Company remains committed to producing Power of the Dark Crystal. The film has not been “cancelled” or “put on hiatus” or any of the other rumored status changes that have been floating around. This film is an ambitious undertaking for us and it continues to move forward…We are grateful to the fans who support Power of the Dark Crystal and we are excited to make this new chapter in the Dark Crystal story a reality.”

– Lisa Henson, co-CEO of The Jim Henson Company & producer of Power of the Dark Crystal

Trailers and cutscenes aren’t my bag, with very few exceptions. I think it stems from the relatively older days of PC gaming, where cutscenes meant waiting for the CDROM drive to spin up and spit out some horribly drawn and/or acted scene that took you away from the game and didn’t really add much to it. And in later games, I would immediately start hunting and pecking for the right key combination to end any video as soon as it started.

The most notable exception to this is the Command and Conquer series, especially the Red Alert saga. I feel that those cutscenes and trailers were stylistic and came up at ideal moments in the game to fill and color the story. Plus, when you heard that CDROM rev up, you knew some serious crap was about to go down! The way I remember, it was a feeling akin to when you first watched Wargames (at least, if you watched it first as a kid, as I did).

Today, I come across the official release of the C&C:TW trailer, and I downloaded it from fileplanet.

I already knew that the original actor who played Kane, Joe Kucan, would be reprising his role. But I was really happy to see other familiar faces in this trailer. Grace Park and Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica, Michael Ironsides, and even Billy Dee Williams… Lando himself.

Here’s the list of the cast in the game:

• Michael Ironside / Top Gun, voice of Splinter Cell’s Sam Fisher
• Billy Dee Williams / Empire Strikes Back, Colt .45 Spokesperson
• Josh Holloway / Lost, CSI
• Tricia Helfer / Battlestar Galactica, CSI
• Grace Park / Battlestar Galactica, L.A. Law: The Movie
• Ivana Bozilovic / Wedding Crashers, Van Wilder
• Shanon Cook / CNN reporter
• John Huck / Las Vegas Fox News anchor
• Shauntay Hinton / former Miss USA
• Joe Kucan / Command & Conquer series

and here’s the official website.

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I wonder if kids in high school, or even college, that play World of Warcraft would have any idea what’s going on here.

I know what’s going on: AWESOMENESS!

I don’t feel bad about posting this (and going against my general theme) because it’s technically software!

I almost feel sorry for Vanilla Ice. I wonder how many pesos he got for this:

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Well I, as anyone that has played the new version of the mod, noticed the weird lag that seemed to come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. The officer kit limits was also really annoying when you’d die as an officer. I don’t understand why they can’t just allow you to pick the officer kit before you spawn if you are an apporpriate team leader?

So, the team is a good one and readily acknowledge mistakes and bugs, and here’s the prompt post about them working to stamp out the bugs:

Right now I find v0.5 unplayable due to “lag”.

We do a huge amount of server side calculations on a bunch of stuff. I am 99% sure that the lag players are experiencing is server side lag and has nothing to do with player numbers, vehicles, objects, view distances etc.

We’re going to look into all probable / possible causes of server lag and fix those.

We also have a known cause of server crashes identified. It’s an easy fix and was simply an oversight we didn’t catch in testing.

The “timer restriction” on the availability of Officer kits was a bad design decision and we’ll be removing that.

We’ll evaluate the MinDistance parameters for Rally Point proximity to CPs and consider altering the value.

We’ll evaluate the timer for setting Rally Points and possibly consider lowering that.

We need to determine what is sometimes rendering flags uncappable and the vehicle limiting systems inoperable.

==

As with the v0.4 release, where we encountered some issues with the Kit Limiting system and needed a few days to resolve those, we’ll be doing a v0.507 server only update once we sort out these critical issues.

If any of you were around for the v0.4 release, you’ll remember that kit limiting basically didn’t initially work at all or was sporadically working. And after the server side update we had fixed all known issues and the system worked very well after that. Hopefully we’ll get to the same state with the current v0.5 issues in just as timely a manner.

==

Quite frankly, this stuff just never came up in testing. We’ll evaluate an Open Beta program for the next major Project Reality release in order to do a better job of finding these issues before release.

Both client and server files for Project Reality .5 are out! This release has a huge upgrade in features including dozens of new kits and enhancements to the game.

The main Project Reality site is being hit hard (as with every release) but I found the files here on fileplanet.

NEW FEATURES AND GAME MODES:

-Forward Spawn Points
The default Battlefield 2 spawn system has been completely overhauled and reconfigured so that you will now have to rely on your squad leaders, the newly added “Rally Points”, and APC’s for forward spawn points on the battlefield. You heard right, spawn points have gone mobile!

-Vehicle Damage System
Another major feature included in PRv0.5 is our revolutionary new Vehicle Damage System, which has been implemented on almost all vehicles currently available in PR. This new system affects vehicle mobility and/or operational status once they become damaged. If you are in a tank and take damage from an anti-tank round, you may loose the ability to rotate your main turret or one of your tracks may become damaged rendering you immobile. This new system is not limited to just ground forces, as aircraft (including helicopters) are just as vulnerable!

-Tank & Pilot Kits
Building on top of our “Kit Limiting” system in the v0.4 release, we have included a new “Pilot” and “Crewman” kit that must be requested and obtained before a player can pilot an aircraft or operate a tank. Don’t worry though, some vehicles, including light jeeps, are still operable by players without a specific kit.

-Destructible Environments
Included in this release is our first map with a fully destructible environment! All the buildings in Helmand Province can be destroyed with explosives, such as an RPG round or C4 charges. While this map is relatively small, we will expand on this concept in the future!

-Advance and Secure (AAS) v2
In this game mode, each team battles over a “group” of control points (flags) at any given time. A team must capture the entire group of control points before moving on to the next designated group of control points. A “group” of control points can have as little as one control point in them, or as many as 5. One should expect fierce battles erupting over those flags, with very concentrated action where you get both a lot of attack and defense!

NEW WEAPONS AND VEHICLES:

-Chinese QBZ Rifle Series
The Chinese forces have received a much needed upgrade and are now armed with the powerful QBZ-95 rifle series. There are two variants of the rifle, the QBZ-95 “Assault Rifle”, which has a 4x optical sight, and the QBZ-95 “Iron Sights” variant, which is the standard, non-scoped version of the rifle. The version equipped with a UGL will be seen in a future Project Reality release.

-USMC M-14 Marksman Rifle
After many requests from players, the US faction is now armed with the highly coveted M-14 Marksman Rifle. This gas-operated, 7.62mm rifle packs a powerful punch with amazing accuracy and is sure to make any Battlefield 2 sniper jump with joy.

-US AT4 (Anti-Tank)
The US faction has received yet another new weapon to its arsenal, the AT4 Anti-Tank system. This relatively small, but extremely powerful, anti-tank system has been used by the US military for years and now is included in the Project Reality mod as the USMC light AT weapon.

-British Merlin HC3 Transport Helicopter
We have continued building on our foundations of the British Armed Forces in the last release and have included the Merlin HC3 helicopter. This mammoth of an aircraft can transport up to 6 players and includes a fully functional rear loading ramp which is opened and closed by the co-pilot.

-British Land Rover
The British forces have finally been blessed with the addition of the Land Rover. This light jeep is armed with two 7.62 calibre GPMGs (General Purpose Machine Guns) and can carry up to 3 players.

All of these new game play changes combined with the addition of new vehicles, weapons, and maps, promise players the most realistic gaming experience available for the Battlefield 2 platform. The Project Reality Player Guide will be updated with change logs and other important content within the next 48 hours, so keep a close eye on the Project Reality website for more detailed information on v0.5’s features.

Here are two great videos that detail the changes and how to recognize and use them in the game:

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