Wings of the Goddess

It appears I’ve completely abandoned my site until now. Well I figure it deserves some sort of update and since they just announced the new FFXI expansion it’s worth poking fun at.

They’re calling the new expansion “Wings of the Goddess” which will probably relate somehow to Promethia or one of the other fag statues in hall of the gods. The main idea of the expansion is to go back in time or something to re-live the crystal war in reconstructed areas such Batallia Downs and Davoi. Not a bad idea except for the fact they already did it poorly and called it Dynamis.

Now this expansion might be a lazy way to throw something out for people to buy because all they have to do is take the old zones and just fix all the ruined parts. I personally want to see Garlaige Citadel because I was always interested as to who’s idea it was to build an outpost right on top of a Crystal Line formally known to possess weapons of fallen adventurers (or was that after the war, I don’t know and I don’t give a shit). Other then that I can’t honestly imagine them giving anything worth caring about, I mean look at Aht Urghan! LoL!

And for your amusement here’s some screenshots of what I think the new expansion should consist of:

Quad Core CPU

Intel just recently released there quad core cpu for the consumer market and it is officially the worlds first quad core cpu. Intel Core 2 Extreme X6700 Quad Core Processor Kentsfield LGA775 2.66GHZ 1066FSB 8MB Retail W/ HSF priced at $1300 ca. Good god thats like my entire computer.

Most people buying this thing are gonna be like “well it’ll prepare me for the future of gaming” which is probably true. But the main problem is that the cpu wont even be completely utilized years from now anyways and by then the cpu will be like $200. So my main point is that it’s completely pointless to buy this thing unless you like seeing 4 cores in your task manager. Unreal 3 is actually suppose to be the first game to completely utilize 2 core cpu’s which is coming out next year.

After reading about some tests on the internet it actually appears that 2 core cpu’s on average run better for gaming and multitasking. Why it seems to run better for multitasking, I do not know. Not to mention that the quad core gets extreamly hot quickly and consumes a ton of power.

Now should we expect 8 cores next, or 9 cores based on the idea of 3×3.

WTF!?

Video game on psp, yeah I don’t get it either.

JP Windower Experiments

Awhile ago I did alot of research trying to investigate what causes the increasing amounts of lag with more character models on screen for FFXI. Originally I assumed it was the character animations that were causing the lag and putting stress on the cpu. It puts alot of stress on the cpu, but it is not the character animations; it was actually the skins on the character animations that were causing the lag. With a program called Rivatuner I was able to disable all DXT1 to DXT5 textures (all at once, not individually). This did remove the textures on the character models, but also the environment, and made menu text unreadable. This was an advancement, but it was the end of it. I was unable to find a solution to not being able to disable only the character model textures and gave up the project.

Just recently I started using the JP windower because for some reason the NA one stopped working for me. After reading some forums I found out that an older version of the JP windower had a plugin to interact with directx api calls. Bingo, that is exactally what I was looking for. After searching for maybe an hour, I found the right version and spent four hours or so configuring it to work properly on the newest version of ffxi. This was not easy because the version of this windower was completely out of date. Anyways, with this windower I can dynamically change the way the textures are presented and actually completely remove all lag in the game.

Below is a link to a video I filmed demo’ing the JP windower. The video plays funny so you may need to disable video acceleration to fix the gamma if its too dark. The part where it actually is recorded dark is rendering Animated Pixel Points only.

http://files.filefront.com/jpwindowerdemoWMV/;6160856;;/fileinfo.html

If you want to get a version of this windower (no tparty!). You can contact me on aim(Avanarius) for it, aswell as a quick configure. Or you can click the link below to go to the page I got it from. If you use the web link don’t ask me to configure it. It took too long and I don’t remember how to do it.

http://homepage2.nifty.com/n008/FFXi/

This thing is friggen awesome for claiming, stunning, and dynamis. Check it out.

Busted!

Post Edited due to link inconsistency.

http://www.wpxi.com/news/10153966/detail.html

Now that.is.funny.ass.shit

Anyways, a real post coming soon. This should hold you off until then.

New Job

I just got out of working in the kitchen and I have to say it feels pretty good to not be a full time dishwasher anymore (I still work sundays for 2 more weeks). I started to hate my boss when he put me on sundays where he used to have two people working dishes and then it was just me, but I wouldn’t leave just because of that; I got another job!

I got a new internship position at a local volunteer facility for $10 an hour with pretty damn good hours. Basically, the facility is government funded and is aimed towards “connecting the community”. The project I’m working on with another guy is a local ebay listing section for the community. My job right now is to list the items that people bring in the facility. The process consists of: Guessing how much the item would go for, photographing, uploading pictures and resizing, then creating the html page and posting on ebay.

I think the best part is being unsupervised (writing this post at work). I also enjoy testing all the stuff that comes in (Commodore 64!!). Anyways here’s a link to our listings if could ever possibly be interested in buying something.

Comox Valleylinks Ebay Listings

There appears to be a limit on the number of items that can show on the front page at a time. If you wanna see more items, click on one first and go to the bottom of it’s page for different items.

VGR: Tales of the Abyss (PS2)

Before I write anything, VGR = Video Game Review for those slightly slower then others (just kidding!).

I was interested in renting this game to try ever since I heard about it. This was mostly due to the fact that I’ve played tales of destiny 2 and greatly enjoyed it. I still have mixed feelings about the game itself but I’m mostly leaning towards positive.

So starting up the game for the first time, I was introduced with a fairly appealing anime cutscene. Although the anime part of it was well done, the 3D seemed like it was lacking in frames per second. Really really choppy 3D animation for a PS2; looked pretty much like PS1 fps. Based on experience from playing many other role playing games, I prevented myself from getting too excited about a cutscene because I knew I would be let down for the most part. I was getting the general, “I wish the rest of the game was like this” kind of feel, even though I hadn’t played the game yet. Anyways moving on…

Game starts off with some fairly old kid looking out of a fancy house window, nothing too special, though you do get the imediate feel of confinement which is good for the story. Honestly, the opening is pretty lack luster, I prefer more epic openings. Good thing the battle system makes up for it.

Many improvements have been made to the combat system including the default “straight line” fighting combat, aswell was a free range 3D plane fighting style. Both of which are grealy utilized during combat. This game depends greatly on how you control your character in combat aswell as where you stand during certian attacks. This addition greatly reduces the number of players just mashing the X button in previous “Tales” games. I don’t know if this was included in previous games but you can also team up with a friend and have him control another one of your allies, very very fun. Even though I never buy games, I’m thinking about buying this due to the multiplayer gameplay.

The graphics are colourful and the environments are well detailed. The only thing that really bothers me is the character animations. Although there is a wide variety of animations, alot of them seem really jaged and poorly constructed. The character models themselves recreate the anime feel very well.

The real winner for this game is the voice overs. They have been done many times before and failed horribly, but this game seems to have an appealing taste. Also, an enormous amount of dialogue is voice overed, and the great part is that it doesn’t seem to shorten the length of the game. I’m sure the game has many other additions which I have not reached or unlocked due to only renting the game, but I may fix that in the near future.

Average Score [8]

Blog Stats

So apparently people like to read drama because there has been an increase in my blog stats due to the following post “Master Plan Initiate”. On average so far I get about 30 views per day, sometimes 50 at most. Well, I’d like to make a complaint that you guys viewing my site totally ruined the scale of my blog stat chart. See the results below.

I think you can guess where “Master Plan Initiate” falls on the scale.

Wow, links from particle, karasu, and vertigos. You guys really love this stuff don’t you? I guess I should post more titan related shit, I mean drama.

Edit: According to a recent update, my blog has made it on the top 100 blogs of the day on wordpress due to the single article recieving over 900 views. You can view it as #46 by the end of today by clicking top 100 blogs of the day on the wordpress.com website. Second Edit: Apparently the top 100 is constantly changing so I was pushed to #51, but it should be around that area.

White Flour! White Flour!

Master Plan Initiate!

Today the master of all drama was initiated on Titan Server. The plan was to merge two endgame linkshells: Jollyrogers and Relentless. Jollyrogers wanted to include all there linkshell members in the merger, but Relentless did not. Relentless only wanted to include specific people to a number of 25. This would mean more then half of Relentless would not be included in this merger. Jollyrogers had mixed opinions about this idea because many people believed this would just be a way to get relentless members into Jollyrogers as opposed to making a new shell. Relentless leaders insisted this was not the case and Jollyrogers went forward with the plan, but not until later this week. This ment that it would be kept secret aslong as possible.

It appeared that everyone in Relentless found about this plan when Jollyrogers made a post on there forum about it, leading to this linkshell conversation screenshot, and this post on Killing Ifrit. Oh boy are the leaders of Relentless in for a good ride. I don’t actually think the linkshell will be named PrettyPrettyPrincess although that name is pretty awesome. Looks like Jollyrogers are gonna get the easy half of this rollercoaster this time Post a comment on what you think the new linkshell should be named. Jollyrogers + Relentless = ?