Showing posts with label DX10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DX10. Show all posts

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Vacation time again

Well, I will be out of town starting Sunday afternoon for several days. Gametime will be at a minimum, and posting any goodies, probably not happening.

But, who knows. I do have some good pics of my various raids and dungeons and may do a screenshot diary....those are fun and easy...and look good.

I am gaming like a monster though. I started a new character in AoC (and still enjoy Tortage, especially if you have done it, leveling goes fast) and it rocks. A Herald of Xotli, who has the capability to breath fire, and uses a two hand sword. The class may be weak armor wise, but death comes swiftly to those who fight me. As an added bonus, this class happens to be a massive fatality hog. I have maybe done 4 times as many fatalities as my other melee based classes I have tried.

As to Amatheon, he is on retainer waiting for another raid. But, after my last attempt Friday evening, I am not sure if I want to go that route for endgame. I know it may be the only way to get tiered armor, but fun is not how I would describe the raid. As long as I am not in tiered armor, I get to be the "Fight the adds" kinda of raider.
I stand back a lot and watch for extra mobs attacking. Hooray.
I need to investigate if any dungeons offer a tier to do, as I much prefer the smaller groups to the 24 mass zergs.

Finally, I fixed another DX10 issue for AoC in Windows 7 . I have been sharing my reports with Funcom, and they actually rewarded me with 2 weeks free game time. How awesome is that? I am thinking of changing my tagline (to make sure to honor the tech support...but, I am still out on the development team).
As to that development team hate, there are rumors that the next patch could take a while to release. This does not bode well for customer retention. But, Craig has Twittered that this may not be the case, but has no clear release schedule for Patch 1.05.
Discussion is that players would be happy if it releases by the beginning of July. I agree with that sentiment. If the patch hits by the first week of July, I think that would be great. Any later, and people are going to start saying goodbye, as they continue to max characters...very quickly.

Anyways, this week I also got my copy of Prototype. With similarities to Crackdown, and the open world Spider Man games, I am having a blast. This is a perfect single player "Hop in and play" sandbox style of game. It was available for the xbox 360, but I found the PC version for over 25 bucks less...wow.
Graphics are not awesome, but has some cool moments (standing on skyscrapers and looking over Central Park is pretty cool), and at first the story seems blah, but the underlying conspiracy is starting to get interesting. The upgrades system is awesome to play with to see what powers you can get, and the unlock missions as you accomplish things is a cool mechanic. Mini games galore also work in the games favor, that you can just jump in, get some upgrade points for doing quickies, and get out.

I like it a lot.

Finally, I am goofing off again with a demo for a game called Drakensang...a single player RPG, that may be fun for myself and the wife to play. It is stat heavy with a lot of babysitting, which we like to do in RPG's, and the place where I got Prototype has it on sale now.
If you are missing some Final Fantasy turn based gaming fun, maybe look at this. It is like Neverwinter Nights, but I think it has better graphics and controls...and more ways to upgrade.

Ok...well, I am chatted out here. This will be my last post until I return. But, Twitter may get some love still, and I need to get back to the games.

Have a good week folks.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

You don't know what you got...

Until it's gone.

Seems starting last night, I am having server issues in Age of Conan. I seem to be alone as well.
I have checked with my ISP, and done tracerts with no issues showing.
Basically every 30-60 secs I get a lag spike pulse. The game is then unplayable at that point. Red bar for the latency meter, and nothing happens...no movement, rubberbanding...you name it.

Is this Funcoms way of kicking me off the game now that I hit 80? Do they have personal issues with their endgame?...lol

Anyways, I have entered a ticket, so this left me time to go and sign up my 30 day account for Dungeons and Dragons Online. Still had that sitting around, and with the news of the freemium edition, figured I would see how far the game has come.

This game presents all sorts of new issues. From mouse and joystick control problems. Weird bugs in the game itself (inventory errors for example), and the DX10 LCD bug (which is not their fault...definitely a Microsoft issue).

Good thing the AoC LCD tricks works for it.

But, other issues abound with launcher errors (Vista/Windows 7?), launch problems, where the screen goes black and drops me back to dekstop.

Man...what a pain.

Well, today my copy of Prototype arrives, which my son notes as "Awesome", and we have been playing a new Xbox 360 live game called 1vs 100, a simple trivia game against other players using your avatar...comes off like a Deal or No Deal/Who wants to be a Millionaire game.

Should keep me occupied until AoC is fixed, as I am ready for a Raid this weekend.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Age of Conan - Amazing weekend

Ok, first off. No matter how many may feel about Age of Conan. Let me get this straight. These servers are NOT dead.

I was amazed at how many people were playing. The multitude of raids, dungeons, etc. It was mind numbing.

Anyways, so much this weekend, it is going to take all week to tell ya.

Just a little checklist
  • Leveled to 79
  • New Helmet bought
  • Advancement in my resource gathering
  • Two raids ran (and downed)
  • New dungeon found.
  • New story line started...
  • Reset my skill tree
Needless to say. A long and fruitful weekend.

Oh to top this all off? The LCD TV issue for AoC DX10...100% solved.
Yep, got that sucker figured out.

Seems both Vista and Windows 7 are guilty of this. I have discussed this previously, but, Age of Conan in DX10 wants to scale weirdly and just does not work well with mice...and only on an LCD TV (some clues lead to the HDCP issues, and good ole copy protection being the culprit).
But, I decided to look at the options available to the excutables when you right click directly on the files.
Under the settings for "Compatibility" is the standard "Run in "Windows xxx version" for compatibility (which would drop DX10 if I lowered it to XP...duh)..but, also are two other items. "Disable desktop composition" and "Disable Display Scaling in high DPI settings".
Both of these intrigued me, due to the fact that display scaling is actually one of the major issues I had (since switching to Windows 7, I had to run the game in 1920x1080p to get it to display 1280x720p in the game...weird).
But, as well, desktop composition attempts to use Windows built in capabilitites to display all items in the same manner as the desktop.
So if the user scales fonts and icons for example, other programs and games will play well with the desktop and try to do the same.
With both of these disabled, I can suceessfully run AoC in any resolution, with no mouse issues (the mouse is actually not even off center, which was a concern as well, as some scrollbars would not work unless the mouse point was off center).

Problem solved...wow.

(PS: Funcom says they still have not figured out the issue, and cannot replicate it...yet, cannot tell me which TV they are working on...go figure).

I also am not alone as more of these issues are popping up on the support forums, and I have had several people stop by complaining of the same thing...they all thought they had computer issues.
Like me.

Going to post this as a help on their forums for others who exhibit this problem. Hope to help someone!

Ok...better run...cya all soon, with juicy photos and stories up the wazoo.

Stay tuned. And most likely the special event...Level 80... should happen this week...!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Windows 7 installed

Makes Vista look like Windows ME!

I have yet had an issue running anything. AoC runs a 100 times better, in DX10 with my ATI 4870 card (which seems to perform better overall in Windows 7 than my Nvidia 260GTX), and does not crash on exit anymore.
The system just feels peppier, and things run faster to my naked eye (sorry, I will cover it up now..).

Looks like when this is released, it is a BUY!

Cheers

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Age of Conan - Before I leave...

Hey...you know that issue with Age of Conan, DX10 and an LCD TV..that the mouse does not work, and certain resolutions are broken if you use just one cable for display?
(The only way it would work is if you had two cables hooked up to the same LCD TV)

Did you know that on Windows 7, this issue does NOT exist? Also, the issue where AoC will crash sometimes when exiting from a DX10 session? GONE!!

When I return from my hiatus, Vista is going Bye, Bye...a Memorial Day Project if I ever saw one!!

Say Hello to Windows 7 (and...anyone using Vista should do the same!!)

Cheers

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Age of Conan - DX10 Goodness

Well, after my hard work troubleshooting these past weeks, it really paid off.

DX10 is working, and after some finagling, I have some decent framerates in Age of Conan, and have been playing quite a bit this weekend.

The video card I got (the Nvidia GTX260) overclocks nicely as well, and has really ramped up my performance (not to mention fixing a few issues with video playback that the ATI cards are experiencing due to a driver flub on their part).

Here are some nice little images to whet the appetite showing some of the cool DX10 effects..enjoy!

Fatalities look really cool now thanks to the motion blur effect..





Distance soft focus..



Glistening snow



Soft glow on attacks with power



And just awesome vistas!!


Lovely stuff. Well, I hope all you "Muthers" are having a good day
(get it?...huh, huh?)

As Samuel L. Jackson once said "Look at all these Muther Freaking Muthers on this Muther Freaking Plane..."

Ok, he really didn't, but man, Muther jokes are hard on this day? Geez...tough crowd.

I better go before I wear out my welcome...cheers!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Age of Conan - DX10 is Official

Do not expect prerformance wonders, but some visual quality to blow away any other MMO on the market.
AoC becomes the first 100% DX10 client for an MMO.

Cool.
More information and actions to take to activate it...good luck