Old Dnosauria

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Geeky Bits

Gaming, TV & photo stuff lies within.

(Continues...)

Gaming

BF2 is still the game for me. The Armoured Fury expansion has given the basic game a few tweaks that're more than just a few new maps. The addition of the nimble little loach helos with their mobile radar means you have to be really really sneaky when attempting a stealth approach to the enemy airfields. You also need a really steady hand when trying to take out a tank from one of the side seats and the pilot needs to be able to keep the thing stable.

The ability to request vehicle drops was made available in the 1.3 patch. While pretty handy if you're faced with a long run to your next objective, what its actually used for in most games I've been in is as 'cartillery'. It's also made newbie commanders obvious; they're the ones that give away your position by dropping a vehicle nearby, just because they can.

Oh yeah, and there's some comic relief when the game freezes...

...or you get a death message when you're clearly still alive (hope my false deaths aren't contributing to someone elses stats).

Hopefully things will improve with the 1.4 patch; if nothing else, the new map - Road to Jalalabad - should be fun.

But if you want to add some spice to your BF2 time & don't want to give EA the satisfaction of your cash for a still-flawed product, learn to love mods. I'm currently giving as much time to Project Reality games as I am to vanilla BF2 or AF games. There seems to be a better class of player in PR games; values teamwork, knows the difference in kits & how to best apply 'em and actually communicates. The new maps & kits kick ass too.

Have I mentioned the G7? Joy in mouse form. Must have if you play sniper in BF2; switching mouse resolution/sensitivity on the fly is very handy.

On the PS2 front, a guy at the office was telling me how to add a hard drive to the machine. With that and software like HDAdvance, I might be able to rig up a SingStar jukebox without having to wait for the PS3.

I picked up an EyeToy a while back too & have to say that I'm not entirely thrilled with it. It needs a lot of light and camera sensitivity cranked up to the max to be able to pick any movement up. I'll stick to jumping around on the dance mat.

TV

The housemate busted the remote & rendered the timer on the VCR useless, so I've gone for a digital solution. A $130 HD digital TV card and a 250Gb hard drive has turned the PC into a great little DVR. The Compro software isn't the best, but it's good enough to record the music docos and Montreaux shows on ABC2. All I need to do now is figure out how to convert & edit the mpeg2 files (someone's pointed me at ProjectX, but I think I'll go with these instructions) to trim out some of the tops & tails and then burn 'em to DVD.

Photography

Picked up a wide angle lens (WC-DC52) & adapter (LA-DC52C) for the camera by way of Ebay recently. It says 0.7x on the side, but I'm not sure of the mm equivalence. It does a pretty good job out in bright conditions, but casts a distinct shadow if you ever need to use the flash.

The lens adapter doesn't fit on the camera without a fight though; you really have to push down to get it to click on to the bracket & I'm not entirely thrilled with the possibility of busting my camera trying to get the add-on lenses on. One can't complain too much with a bargain though.