I went through most of your user accounts and added (required) nicknames and validated your e-mail accounts. This was to prevent you from having to go through the "send me a validation e-mail and I'll click a link" thing. I believe that's resolved.

I just noticed that comments have to be approved before they show up. As I have no desire to police comments (except to block those spammers) I'll look for a way to auto-approve comments.

All for now.

It looks like this version of b2e (that's the blog software I use) supports subscriptions. Subscriptions appear to be a poor man's RSS. So, if you want to get an e-mail notification every time there's a new post you can click the "Subscribe" link in the lower area of the right menu bar, under the "Misc" heading.

Think of it! That might be...annoying.

I guess it all depends on how much you crave interruption from your life.

I updated the blog software today in an effort to thwart the (evil) spammers. Specifically I've got one guy who's spamming me from the same IP address. I started looking around to see how to block IP's and found that I could update my blog-o-ware.

Updating caused some problems (I know, surprise!) with my custom skin, so unless I've changed things since this post you're probably seeing a very much blue-er site than I used to run. I'm not violently opposed to it, so it might stick around. Let me know what you think. Now that the software's all shiny and new again I might browse around and see if I can find a nice skin, too.

Please also let me know if you see anything wrong. Like, not grammatically, but with the site.

Thanks, dear readers.

So, the Half-Life anthology arrived yesterday. That makes the order-to-receive time to have been about 7-8 days. Not too bad, considering the shipping was free USPS and the game was $5 less than you can get it anywhere else.

I played a bit last night and enjoyed the near decade old-ness of parts of it. The biggest technology stumbling block for me was the limited character models in the game. Because they only have 4-5 scientist types, they're duplicated all over the place, though you can tell two of them are supposed to be Dr. Kleiner and Eli Vance. I guess what feels awkward is just that these primary characters are being used to fill in the members of the crowd as well, something that doesn't happen in Half-Life 2. The generic "resistance soldier 1" face is recycled, but that feels more acceptable. That sort of thing even happens in the theatre, where a bit player might fill multiple small roles.

Another interesting item of note is that I got all intrigued that I saw a picture of a baby in Freeman's locker in Black Mesa, and started speculating on plot lines, until a few moments ago when I found that the Gordon Freeman article on Wikipedia states that it was created as an easter egg from the level designer. Doh. Poor choice to muck with something so central to a character in a game that does its character development only through the actions/environment within game.

Anyway, enjoyable so far. Let's hope the Large Hadron Collider doesn't end up producing a similar resonance cascade.

uacgames.com
Half Life 1 Anthology $10 and free shipping with google checkout

No, that's not distrubing. It's amusing if you've played the game. And, while I'm explainging things, let's do the title. As you're probably aware, my favorite deal-of-the-minute site is slickdeals.net. I say "probably aware" because it's probably also your favorite bargain shopping site.

Ah, and I didn't make the crowbar or take the picture. I just googled crowbar. Click the image to go to the original site.

I've been trolling around ebay and steam (curse them) for Half Life 1, after playing through all the available Half Life 2 material I could get my hands on and reading all kinds of wikipedia articles to get the story I missed not having played the original games.

The going price on ebay, steam, and everywhere else, seems to be $15 for the Anthology set, which contains Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Team Fortress Classic. I just found a site that has it for $10 and free shipping with google checkout. I was all impressed, so I thought I'd share. They have some other older games as well.

Granted, they look a little quirky, but who are you buying from on ebay?. And, the google checkout is quick and painless. If anyone's interested, I'll let you know how it turns out.

On a related note, I'd also like to point out that after reading all those wikipedia articles I consider Half Life 2 to be a post-apocalyptic game (post alien invasion/occupation), and that may have something to do with my affinity for it and its story line.

[Update] Had to remove all the links when turning off comments. Post editor kept telling me the URL was invalid.

So, the Unreal Tournament 3 demo is out. Interesting (to me) observations:

1. No translocator
   
   It's been replaced by this hoverboard thing. For quick forward travel, I don't have a huge problem with this. For vertical travel, this pretty much sucks. On the custom maps it's important to be able to get yourself higher than you can with simple jumping. The translocator was key to this. Anyway, I'm not too worried because I'm sure it'll be modded back in by the community.
2. VCTF built in
   
   (Well, duh.) This seemed like an obvious choice. Vehicle deathmatch is also a fun novelty that they could have added for 20 minutes of amusement. Perhaps they have, actually. The demo includes a dark walker in deathmatch.
3. Rocket launcher can throw grenades again
   
   The rocket launcher has two alt-fire modes. You can spiral your rockets or toss them like grenades as you could in Unreal Tournament (with no numbers after it). Interesting feature. Not sure that I care a whole lot.
4. Minigun gone, stinger back
   
   The returned stinger gun has a warm up time on the normal fire that makes it less useful in my book. But, the alt-fire is nice. I'd keep it in my shortlist of weapons for that.
5. Bio-rifle seems less crappy
   
   I'm enjoying the bio-rifle much more than I did in the 2000 series. Perhaps it shoots farther. Perhaps the sludge just looks cooler. I don't know.
6. No onslaught, no double domination, no assault, no bombing run
   
   Only Travis and the three other guys who played Bombing Run more than once are sad about that last one. I don't think anyone played domination, so that's no loss. It sounds like Onslaught and Assault have been combined into "Unreal Warfare" which will range over maps "potentially as big as three Onslaught maps." (Read as "HUGE.") This is not in the demo. I'm quoting from the Wikipedia article, which you could probably just go read instead of this, but you'd miss out on my subjective commentary.
7. Sniper rifle shoots tracer beam
   
   When you fire the sniper rifle it has the same delay that the 2000 series rifle did, and it also shoots a tracer beam leading everyone back to your favorite camping spot. I'm sure this will be removed by a weapon mod shortly.
8. Adrenaline gone
   
   The adrenaline mechanic has been removed, and appears to have been replaced by special powerups you can pick up that give you the same abilities: berserk (2x fire speed), invisibility, etc. Whenever I played UT it seemed like adrenaline always turned into a trick that the regular players knew and the noobs did not--not much of a skill thing. Granted, hiding special powerups on a map is basically the same thing and requires even more specialized knowledge, but it feels less gimmicky.
9. New vehicles
   
   These are detailed on the wikipedia article, and all seem enjoyable, from what I've seen. The demo includes a dark walker in the Heat Ray map, which is fun to mess with. I had trouble using the alt-fire on the impact hammer to disable it. I thought you were supposed to be able to do that, but perhaps I just can't see the results.
10. Jumping - not as high?
    
    Jumping seems toned down, which makes me sad. That was a big part of the feel of UT--hopping up fairly high and across wide gaps. Double jump also seems crippled.
11. Game speed
    
    Overall, it felt slower to me. This could be limitations of my computer and the resolutions I was running, but it didn't feel like the fast run-shoot-die-respawn-repeat from the 2000 series and before. As I say, it could be me. I'll have to experiment with it more.
12. Still fun
    
    Whatever I may grouse about, it is still a fun game. I can't wait for the map editor to get out there and let the community go crazy. The community makes UT a great game. The more game makers that realize this and package and release the tools that they use to build their levels, the better their games will be. I just wish I personally had the time to spend in their crazy complex editor.

Many thanks to Jason for downloading and sharing the demo! UT3 demo lunches will have to come soon.