I have been somewhat silent as of late, mainly because life has seemed unbloggable. Things are starting to return to normal, however, and I'm trying to resume my old habits.
I did something I've been kind of wanting to do for, like, years now and bought a new graphics card a number of weeks ago, which was exciting because it has its own RAM and its own fan and it's just cool looking. The problem was that after I tore my computer apart and installed the card and messed around with games I hadn't been able to run previously, my computer seemed to slow down significantly. After banging my head against the virtual wall of hardware trouble-shooting for a good long while, (and updating drivers, flashing my BIOS, cleaning up my registry, scanning my entire machine for spyware/viruses) I took the card out again because things had gotten so sluggish as to be unbearable. Except taking the card out didn't help. When I discovered this I gave up, and mostly left my desktop turned off for a number of weeks except when I absolutely couldn't avoid updating client's websites.
Today I finally returned to the problem, and after some more frustration figured out the hitch wasn't with the graphics card, but one of the drive emulators I installed to test some new game I was apparently excited to try out a few weeks ago. Gurgh. Anyway, I removed the emulator, put the graphics card back in my computer and now things seem hunky dorey.
But this episode has forced me to face the fact that my current installation of Windows is just getting beat up and sloppy (I'm a little hard on operating systems...). I've known in my heart for a while now that I need to do a clean wipe of my hard drive and reinstall everything, (something I used to do once a year, every year, around Christmastime, in my energetic youth) but now that my computer is larger and more vital to my livelihood than ever before, this just seems like a daunting task. So I've been putting it off, kind of hoping I can make it to the release of the new Windows 7 in October. Except I refuse to install a new OS within six months of its release to avoid the bugs, which means I'm looking at a really long span of sub-par operating.
So, we'll see if I can make it. And in the meantime I must admit that the games I've been daydreaming about being able to play for the last two years are a universal disappointment and not even worth one good binge. Oh well. I suppose I should count this as a blessing, be grateful that Photoshop is running faster, and use the saved time to do things like go outside and enjoy my life.
3 comments:
I'm curious as to what games you were so excited about. I've been pretty remiss on playing video games lately (which is actually a bad thing for me), and, for purely scientific reasons, am always interested to know what people like and dislike about video games.
Well, I am pretty behind on my games. Even these that I tried aren't exactly new anymore. But I will share, if you're curious. :)
I enjoy city-builders, and the latest round that came out a few years ago started getting way into 3D effects, which my machine couldn't handle. So, Caesar IV was on of the ones I tried, and I found it insufferably boggged down by the graphics. Not that my machine was running poorly, just that the gameplay itself was too excited about showing off at every opportunity to give the experience much continuity. They also sort of dumbed it down a lot, taking away a lot of the subtler controls from previous versions in the series and I found it frustrating not being able to manage the game as much as before. But the thing that really got me was the size of the maps. They were just too small, and by the end of each scenario I was having to knock some things down just to build things I needed to advance to the next level. So, I gave it up before long.
The second big disappointment was Heroes of Might and Magic V. I was a big fan of several previous generations of this game, but I gave up on this edition in short order. The things I used to like about this game were leveling up my heroes, exploring, and the strategic side of things. I will admit the graphics were improved, but once again the designers seemed so excited about the graphics that they forgot about the game. The adventure map is slower to navigate - everything, in fact, is just slower. Again, not because of processing time but because of the graphic transitions that take place between every click. The biggest turn-off for me was the battles. I don't like slow, graphic, bloody battles, and even with as much of of the animation turned off as possible, the battles were just interminable. I don't want to waste 10 minutes every time I come across a handful of belligerent peasants, but I also don't want to turn off the battles entirely because the computer never fights well on auto and always loses me troops. So, I gave up on this one before I even got through the first scenario. A pity, too, because some things about it looked cool.
Do you have any suggestions on the game front? I don't like first-person shooter style games at all, and have never really taken to RPG's, but to be fair have never really tried very hard. I really like to build things. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
You might really enjoy Spore, although some people have had problems with the heavy DRM (no one I know has tho). Really anything from Will Wright might interest you (SimCity, SimAnt...some other too I think).
Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will both be out soonish (for Blizzard tho, this could mean up to a year or so). If you haven't played original Starcraft you might look in to that. Diablo is more of an RPG, but is probably the best RPG out there (even tho it's old). Also the old Warcraft games (before the MMO) are pretty fun. (Yes, I'm a big Blizz fan.)
It does seem that many games these days are heavy on graphics and sweeping cut scenes, but poor on gameplay. The big push in my game design education is to focus on gameplay first, and everything else should support that. This is a lot harder than it sounds tho...but yeah...anyways.
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