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i8 Rumblings (from quakenation)
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To help us look into the LAN's of the future, by a couple of weeks anyway, MPUK have spammed out an update on i8. With BlueYonder now set as the main sponsor and WCG qualifiers happening at the event you may well expect it to be booked out by now, but the update says it isn't. This is not to say it isn't pretty full (say compared to the CPL London BYOC by all reports), but they are still around 100 short of the 850 capacity, and that's only in sign ups. The real crunch is when it comes to forking over the £70, which over 500 people have already done. If I recall correctly, i7 was sold out at around two weeks before the event, though if this is true the lower signups may just be indicative of the season.
The seating plan has also been announced, and the i8 webby has had a bit of an overhaul. Finally, for those looking to qualify for the free flight and board to the World Cyber Games, i8 is where you can book your place in:
Quake 3 solo - 3 seeds available
UT solo - 3 seeds available
Age of Empires 2:The Conquerors Solo - 3 seeds available
Fifa 2001 solo - 3 seeds available
Counterstrike 5v5 - 1 clan seed available
Of course, further information, sign up details and more can be found over at the official site
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The end of wireplay (from quakenation)
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Well tbh I thought this had already happened a while ago, but read the official announcement here.
"To the best of our knowledge, this Friday (10th) the net feed to Wireplay will be switched off. This means that ALL game servers, IRC server and forums will cease to exist. "
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Duck Shoot Q3 Conversion
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Coda pointed this one out. Its a simple map where you have to shoot airborn bots with the rail. Quite challenging to get all three also release times are affected by hitting one over and over, so you can make it easier on yourself. You can grab it here.
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My experiences with my everglide
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Well after coming back from holiday I couldnt get used to the mouse again. Something was wrong. I decided the most likely cause was the mousemat being dirty. In the process of trying to clean it I used:
Water
Soap
Washing up liquid
Lynx
Shampoo
Bubble bath
Ariel
A suede brush
RS Solvent spray
Now convinced it is clean, I have decided the friction difference on one part of the mat is mostly down to wear and tear. :( This is supprising after 3 months only, but I guess I have been using it a lot.
I have placed my order for another which hopefully should be with me soon. In the meantime I have turned my mat through 90 degrees so I am now using a fresh bit. The underside seemed to be less textured than the surface. I can only put this down to the texturing on the press used during manufacturing. I did consider having it repressed here in the department since we have that kind of equipment available, but I will leave this until after I have a replacement.
Also recently I have noticed a few of the old/newish ps2 mice I have bought before not doing anything. I am considering taking one of these and trying to customise it a little. It would be easy to include a pressure sensor instead of mouse buttons. This good gain a few fractions of a second (of the order of 1/100th) in reaction time. Of course there is the possibility of actually getting the signal directly from my finger thru an electrode although this is something I will consider later on. :)
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OdB Productions CPL London Movie
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OdB Productions have released their latest movie - coverage of the ELSA CPL European Championships, held in London last weekend. The high quality DIVX file is 190MB, while the WMV version weighs in at 43MB. If you haven't watched one of the OdB movies before, be prepared for something a little off-the-wall. Interviews include Clan Unreal, Unmatched, iCE cLIMBER, Armateam, Ninjas In Pyjamas and Griff.
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Djuhn and Surg
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News is that exams seem to be going well and we're looking forward to seeing the return of Djuhn and also Surg (who we haven't seen for a while) soon after Friday. It also looks as though we will have a strong and numerous EK presence at i8.
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EK Freezetag Ownage
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Yesterday saw our second victory in an official match vs TFB, which puts us in 7th place. GG All.
Clanbase is proving to be superb for organisation and actually getting games. We had a few teething problems with some of the games as there are not many freezetag servers out there. This obviously would not be the case for tdm.
There are a range of skills separated, not by the vastness of being in another division, but by the gradual continuity of the ladder ranking. This allows newbie clans, if they so desire, to practice against more skilled clans, who in a division structure, they might never get to play against.
Clanbase also allows us to do something which is important for our clan as a whole, that is to be able to afford to lose games. The timescale of the leagues and the importance placed on a few points difference meant that every game we had to be at our best, denying some clan members regular practice. In hindsight we should have joined a long time ago. :/
In summary then freezetag is going well, and so too is clanbase. :)
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Russia recognises Gaming as a sport
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According to Pro-cybernews, the Russian Ministry of Sport recognised Computer gaming as an official sport on the 24th of July. It's claimed that this makes Russia the first country to do so. What I'm interested in is whether this was a result of a campaign by computer gaming bodies (such as the TPF campaign in the UK) or if it was a simple decision by the Ministry. There isn't much information available, but if anyone in Russia can comment on this it would be appreciated.
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GeForce BIOS Editor
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Just got an email from a friend which I thought might be worth repeating here:
BTW, I've found a permanent way to overclock the MX. There is a programme called GeForce 123 BIOS editor. It can read your exisiting video card BIOS and display its settings in a windows based application. You can then tweak your clockspeed there and flash the BIOS back using NVFLASH. Sideband addressing can also be activated. The changes are permanent. No need to overclock in the display settings or by using anything else ever again. Also, I flashed mine using a Quadro MXR BIOS. It works and the bootup screen now says that its an MXR. :) There is then a programme called SoftQuadro that enables the quadro features in the drivers. I can email you the progs if you want them...
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Carmack on Doom
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John Carmack has made two postings on Slashdot with some info about the Doom engine:
"There are several more Q3 engine games in the works that will continue to run great on existing systems, and Doom is still a long ways off in any case, so there will be a lot more upgrades and new systems. We are aiming to have a GF3 run Doom with all features enabled at 30 fps. We expect the high end cards at the time of release to run it at 60+ fps with improved quality. This is an intentionally lower average FPS for the hardware cross section than we targeted for Q3, but still higher than we targeted Q2 and earlier games (before hardware acceleration was prevalent)."
The original Slashdot article that Carmack comments on is about ATI's 'smartshader' technology.
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