Yodasplat

Excellent. Thanks!

Hum, ok, so if I have the US version, this is the patch I should get? 1.07?

http://www.laserwar.co.uk/ That looks like funnnn!!!

Half life 2 is still the best game ever in my opinion. Love the whole HL series from the beginning. Who can forget the first time I faced one of those crabby thingies coming out of a dark corner in HL1? It was right after Black Mesa blew to $hite and I had been going from room to room looking for an exit from the core. I knew that this being a FPS game, monsters a-plenty were waiting for me and sooner or later I was going to dispense violence upon them. So the fact that it had been now a good five minutes of me going further and further away from the initial level, and that I had been unable to find a gun … a slingshot, anything at all yet, seriously worried me. Then I round a corner and I am STILL without a weapon and the first crabby thing squeals and jumps at me. I squealed in return, jumped on my chair and spastically jerked the mouse around and pounded on the keyboard squirming my way away from the hellish beast all the while screaming in a shrilly girl-voice: “Get the f#ck away from me! Don’t touch me!†Ah … memorable moments. Then HL2 came along and City 17 and the giant tripods just blew my mind. Then HL2 Episode one came along and … well … I am still 1/3 of the way through it but I am already utterly impressed by the attention to details these guys have put into the game. Specifically I was impressed by a few incidents that really caught my attention. In one specific incident, after an horrendous train wreck (train of which me and Alyx were passengers), I notice something weird on her face. I thought it was a graphic glitch but then zooming on her face … I notice it’s not. It’s a cut. She cut her eyebrow in the train wreck. So what’s the big deal you ask? It’s the attention to detail that really strikes a chord with me. A cut … a small cut on an eyebrow. It didn’t take them long to do it I bet but it’s a nice detail that definitely increases immersion and gives a nice touch to the whole story. Somebody did spend the time and the attention to come up with it. The other incident happened when we were in a section of the underground that was utterly and totally BLACK. Pitch black. Couldn’t see in front of your nose and those crab zombies were coming from every direction but Alyx (and me obviously) could shoot only at what I could shine my portable light on. We were getting attached from the back and sides too and I have to say .. it’s a bit disconcerting getting hit but the side, whipping around only to shine the light on the face (err … whatever) of a zombie, so close to you, it could practically kiss you. After a few minutes of this uncomfortable situation the whole scene falls in one of those quiet, spooking moments HL is so good at rendering. You go from a feverish battle to quiet in the space of few seconds and now, fresh after an insane gunfight you jump at every shadow. I see a room on the wall and light is pouring out of it. Some health packs are inside and I badly need one. So I walk in. As soon as I step in, I hear Alyx’s voice uttering the grunt and growl of one of the head-crab zombies. It sounds EXACTLY like a head-crab zombie … only with Alyx’s voice. First off I would feel sorry to see Alyx go … I kinda like her. Second, I now have a head-crab zombie right behind me … So I whip around, expecting to see her struggle with a head crab or to see her pretty face already hidden and half eaten away from one of the head crabs. Instead … there she stands. Grinning from ear to ear … She chuckles and she says “Gotcha!†I stared at the screen for a good 10 seconds thinking two things … 1: “You stupid b1tch!! I was a tenth of a second away from blowing your brains out†2: I just love the HL developers. How do they come up with this crap? It’s insane to see them play with jokes like these and pull them off so smoothly. This joke totally worked on me I have to say … I did think about blowing her head off anyway … just cause she did scare the crap out of me!!! Yeh … the HL series is still the best.

I think this is a great idea buddhiraja73. I am sure it's unlikely it will ever happen but an open-ended military shooter, with maps as big as OFP and a world environment structured like Oblivion (or Grand Theft Auto for that matter) is an excellent point for replayability. After all I am still firing up Oblivion or GTA from time to time even if I am not actively following any stories or quests. The point is, when you have an open world to play with, you can go back to the game 3 months later and pick it up and just roam around and make a mess of things .. and then pick up any open quests just for the heck of it. Granted, military action is structured: you go in, you shoot things, you get out. The end. There is no roaming around generally ... unless you are Spec Ops, dropped behind enemy lines and you need to survive and often wait around and try to either avoid contact or find food or catch drops from air support, etc. in between missions. Until somebody assigns a mission (quest) to you and you gotta carry it out. IMO that’s not that different that Oblivion/Morrowind in a sense. Oblivion is the story about a spec-ops guy isn't it? But that’s probably just me seeing the similarities … since I like both GRAW and Morrowind.

it would have been nice to have a practice mission with no enemies and just a range to shoot stuff at different distances to practice. It seems to me that there's il logic behind the way the grenades (launched or hand grenade) work but it takes practice to grasp what that logic is. A range "training" mission would have helped this greatly but in the absence of that I took the time to practice in a "quiet" moment during mission one and kinda got the hang of it. The only solution to this is really just to find a spot where there's no baddies and then practice against cars and develop some sense for where the grenade is gonna hit (then restart the mission so you have full ammo again). That's what I did and I generally have no more problems handling grenades..

Same here. Installed the patch, game now doesn't start ...

If you mean Falcon Allied Force, yes you are probably right. I did hang out in the Falcon forum for a bit and I played it (and still play, of course).

the SCAR-L is pretty much my favorite gun to this point. I used a lot the under-barrel grenade launcher in old GR but in GRAW I am noticing that the launcher is reducing accuracy a bit too much. It's certainly useful but in close combat it gets in the way. Are you guys equipping/using the grenade launcher at all?

I was actually about to start a topic about HL2 vs GRAW but not regarding the technical aspects or graphic differences. I am more interested if anyone noticed similiarities between the "creepiness" factor of GRAW and HL2? In the demo (it's the only thing I have played so far ... I don't have the game yet) I definetly got some HL2 flashbacks ... Creepy empty urban environments. Far away, inexplicable echos and sounds that seem anything but friendly. Then all of a sudden you round a corner and you find yourself face to face with ... well more than a couple of times I totally expected to see one of those tripod-thingies squatting to take a dump, swivel around startled to look at me, then rear up, roar and fire that disgusting gun of his at me. Instead I found myself facing mexican soldiers, but yet ... the adrenaline dump was there all the same. Did anyone feel the same sense of "the next corner we turn we are getting hammered?" The passage between spooky empty streets and a plaza or an alley where they are shooting at you from every direction is a real rush and I loved each one of them. Yes ... technically GRAW and HL2 might be different but what about ambience? creepiness? excitement of the hunt? the rush of going from silence and quiet to a full-fledged storm of bullets??? I think that GRAW conveys "the hunt" (who's the hunter and who's the hunted) feeling damn well! What do you guys think?

That was a load of fun guys. Thanks! You'll surely see me again!

Cool let me know how it goes Well ... I installed the patch and now I can hear breathing, steps, gunshots .. the works. But no voices. Is that normal? I am actually thinking it is normal ... You know how in OFP you would hear a voiceover saying "enemy soldier at 2 o'clock" or some such? Is VBS1 supposed to do the same? Unimportant to me ... just curious. Just wanting to make sure I got at leat this problem fixed.

Thanks! I'll try to install the patch. See what happens. You guys play online a lot? PS: flying is going good. Been pretty busy with that lately. About 2/3rds done with my Instrument Rating ... flew yesteray in the clouds for the first time ever. Pretty freaky not to be able to see your own wingtips. I can't believe how thick clouds are. You really can't see squat in them.

Howdy-doody folks. Long time no see. I finally got off my ###### and installed VBS1 after a few months it's been sitting on my desk doing nothing ( ). Yes you can call me a dummass ... I don't mind. I am too busy to pay attention to what I buy. Game is installed (ALMOST all of it) but I have a bunch of pbo files that are not installed and I don't really know what to do with. I really just want to play online with you guys. I don't particularly care about special goodies or funky mods. Whatever i need to get online, is all I care about. Let's start with a couple of examples: hummer files and fast rope files. Do I need those? There's no readme file or installation instruction so I am a bit at a loss about what I should do. Also, I am experiencing a "funky" problem: I installed (among the other 20 things) the USMC mod. Then I tried one of the USMC mission and while the mission played smoothly and I had no sound other than ambient sounds. I could hear the wind, the rain, far away sounds like roosters, crickets, leaves whistling ... you get the point. But no gunfire, no voice overs, no steps. Any idea of what could be causing this? Thanks! Hope to be able to see you online someday!

Ya better not be afraid now. ← That's what my wife said: "No more excuses buck-o. You went on that Death Trap, you are taking me on Medusa next."

Actually I am terrified of roller coasters. This is more dangerous than a roller coaster ... and yet, I was completely unfazed. Go figure.

Aerobatic planes anyone? Marco walks to the instructor and introduces himself. Marco is already out of his mind with terror. Rationality left the premises a long time ago. The instructor has fangs and horns and a red tail and smells of ozone and sulfur. He snaps handcuffs on Marco and drags Marco kicking and screaming towards the "torture plane". Two demons, called Joe and Moe (Moe is wearing a Nascar T-Shirt with the picture of Jeff Gordon on it), grab Marco by the arms and legs, stuff him in the cockpit of the plane while Marco is now screaming like a girl, and tie him down. Marco is only aware of the fact that the plane smells of sulfur and makes noises from hell. The instructor takes off and flies into a loop. Marco screams but his vocal cords are now rotting. His skin peels off his cheeks, the insane instructor pulling 11 Gs. Marco can feel his eyes collapsing into his eyesocket, his raucous voice, now reduced to a whimper, gurgling while he throws up. Blood comes gushing out of his eyes and ears, while his spine is crushed. Marco utters one last gurgle before decaying in a pool of blood and guts while the instructor laughs his infernal laugh "I will see you in hell!!!" ... nah. ... I went to wings field KLOM, in PA on Sunday. I took a ride in the Pitts. The instructor's name was Bruce Everett.. The only noises you could here in the cockpit were the engine ... and me whooping through every loop screaming "MORE MORE!!! I WANT MOOOOOOOORE!!!" Yep. I thought I was gonna be scared. Nope. I thought I was gonna get sick. Nope. Nada. Nothing. It was joyride. Before climbing in the plane, Bruce (Everett) explained the manouvers we were going to try. Knife edge. Loops. Hammer head. Basic stuff. We did a manouver where the plane goes banked 90 degrees to one side, then inverted, the banked 90 degrees the opposite side, then straight. Can't remember what that's called. After an uneventful flight to wings field (yes, I flew there), and a bit of trouble to find a parking spot for my Cherokee, I sit with Bruce and we go over what we are going to do. Bruce is a calm looking guy that radiates a sense of ... confidence. He looks bored more than anything else. After one hour in a Pitts ... I'd be bored too, on the ground. Nothing could get me excited again, other than flying inverted all the time. We have a conversation about safety and envelopes. According to Bruce the plane will be safely within the envelope and won't buffet or stall if handled properly and all i have to do is just pull the right amount (he shows me how much) and the plane will stay away from any stall risks. We walk to the plane, fully expecting my fears to overwhelm me at some point. Any point. But nothing. I was starting to wonder if I had turned into a block of ice. I never felt so indifferent to something as radical as this. I was excited but even digging deep down I couldn't feel one hint of nervousness. NOTHING AT ALL. We have a few discussions about safety, parachutes, how to bail out, etc. I pay attention and run the scenarios in my head, fully aware that if we get to the point where we need to bail out, chances are we are in deep ###### and we are going to die. This thought is leaving me completely indifferent. Somehow I hear the words and picture the events in my head and can't ... get scared. Or even nervous. Some apprehension starts creeping up when I realize that this plane is cramped as hell and getting in will be one hell of a ride all by itself. I am more nervous about getting in than flying it. But after some contorsions (ouch I gotta lose a few pounds) and after getting strapped in real tight, I feel really comfy. Incredibly I have more legroom here than in my piper ... same goes for the hips. I am incredibly comfortable in fact. I just can't see ###### in front of me. The nose of the plane is gigantic and sticking up right in front of you. The wings don't help either. I am sitting front seat. The instructor is sitting back seat. He's got it even worse than I do. But if he can fly it ... I am fine with it. Bruce warned me that the plane was going to be noisy. And indeed it is noisy but it's not the end of the world. Just a tad noisier than many other planes I have been into. Bruce lines up for takeoff and starts increasing power. When we reach full throttle ... wow. This baby's got some pull. The plane has a shorter takeoff roll than the Piper (big suprise) and it just doesn't change attitude. It starts the roll, noses down a bit ... but the nose is still up, and the plane is off the ground all by itself in a matter of seconds. At 1000 feet Burce hands me the controls. The plane feels a lot more stable than I thought it would. Sensitive yes (I giggle the stick a bit and the plane giggles with it instantaneously). But quite stable. On the way there I ask Bruce if I can do a couple of steep turns just to feel how the plane handles. Bruce says "Of course" ... what else was he gonna say? So, when we reach the aerobatic area, I start one turn to the right. 45 degrees and I pull ... The plane responds so docile and easy that I am wondering if I am even turning. So I steepen the turn ... more. To 60. More ... to 80, almost to 90 and I pull and pull and pull even more on the stick. I roll out of the turn (a 360 turn) and my head almost hits the canopy. Woah. gotta be careful with these ailerons. Wow. That wasn't hard at all. Fun and this thing can turn in a dime. I don't know how long it took me to turn but I can't think it was more than 20 seconds. Hard to say ... time has a tendency to compress when you are having fun. Ok, cool. Let's try the other direction. This time I throw the plane in an 80 degree bank with no esitation. And I pull even harder. I feel a bit of a tug in my guts but ... is this all there is to it? I glance at the G-meter after I get out of the turn. 3.5 Gs. I blink stupidly for a sec. Did I just pull 3.5 Gs? I didn't feel anything. Not even a tickle. Next is a loop. Bruce demonstrates first. We reach 160 knots (yes 160 ... and to me it's just a number on a dial. It doesn't feel like 160 at all). Then Bruce pulls up ... hard. Here I do feel some tug. In fact the pull is so hard my head comes into contact with the seat and I can't lift it. I can feel my cheeks pull down ... I can feel my ears pull down. I am looking straight up when the ground comes in sight ... and Bruce relaxes the pull a bit ... and this is a beautiful moment. This is one of those moments where you just go "WOW ... I didn't think you could see this ... you could feel like this". For 2-3 seconds I feel suspended. We are probably still doing 2 Gs or so ... but being upside down, staring at the ground trough a clear canopy, staring at fields and rooftops, 3000 feet below, suspended at 2 Gs after pulling real hard ... I don't know how to describe it. Sitting on a cloud in the sky maybe? Well ... there were no clouds that day... unless you consider a little monstrous 260 hp plane ... a cloud. The top of the loop is the best part. The energy of the plane, spent on the climb .. but not enough to let you stall. Just enough to slowly and gently pull through and start the descent ... you just need to let the nose drop down. then the nose comes down again and here comes another pull harder than the first ... and we are out of it. Straight and level again. Wow. Amazing. This is my first loop. I was supposed to be sick. I was supposed to be scared. I am whooping like a madman instead. Bruce asks me if we are ok. I say yes. He will ask that question once more but that's it. After all the whooping and yipeeing it's pretty obvious I am doing ok. In fact ... he joins me. 'Isn't this fun?' he screams 'YEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH' ... is my obvious answer. Yeah, we are having fun. so ... this is what it was all about. I didn't learn to fly ... to fly a plane. I learned to fly ... to get here. Now. To fly a Pitts. To do loops. Everything else is not flying ... it's just Department Of Transportation. Bruce tells me to try one myself. I try the first one and I try to do it the way I learned how to do it playing IL2 Sturmovik, back in the day when I was addicted to videogames. I pull (following his instructions to pull harder) and the plane goes up. It's so easy. Lemme tell you something about this plane's controls. It's a stick. But you don't need much to yank on it. In fact, throughtout all this flying, I have been using two fingers to move it. I rest my right forearm on my right thigh and I simply use my wrist and my finger to move the stick around. Pulling on the stick is simply a matter of moving it back. It goes back with little resistance but with incredible effects on the plane. Regulating and measuring how much to pull back is very easy. You just feel it. A bit more and you can feel your guts drop down on ya. The exilarating part is the ABSOLUTE control you have. You wanna pull more? Easy. Move the stick back a little. So I start pulling up and since there's only sky in front of me now, I glance left and right quickly to make sure I am not rotating or banking, until i reach the top ... and again I get that wonderful feeling of sitting on a cloud. Now i know why all these crazy guys wanna do aerobatics. Once I see the ground over my canopy, I simply select an imaginary line connecting points of reference on the ground and drag the nose of the plane over them, until I am out of the loop. Oustanding! I just did my first loop ... and there was nothing to it. I wouldn't think I pulled more than 4 Gs to do it. I glance to the G-Meter. 5 ... and change. 5? 5Gs???? I just pulled 5 Gs???? From that moment on ... it's all downhill. We do a bunch of other manouvers. We do rolls. I try them by myself and those are one hell of a blast. The first time he tried it, it felt weird being inverted ... but when i did it myself ... when I rolled the plane inverted, it was a whole different story. It is incredibly different when you are at the controls and you are snapping the plane around. I can totally see how I could like this ... and still hate rollercoasters. It's totally different. Apples and oranges. I am doing this. I am controlling this. I am whipping the plane around. I am not getting whipped around by a mechanism on a wildly colored train full of screaming kids. I ask Bruce to let me do some more loops. And he agrees to it. Yeah .. that's right. I asked for MORE. And I got it! I just couldn't stop having enough of loops. I do a couple loops on my own and I would go on all day if I could. We do a few more things ... including going inverted. Which was the last manouver and it was incredible. Again you get to stare at the ground in a way ... not many people do. Hanging upside down directly on top of somebody's crop. I can see pieces of straws and grass fall off from my shoes towards the canopy ... it's so wild feeling the pull of being upside down. The way back is uneventful and if anything ... i feel full of regret. Regret i have to leave this. I have to go back to the ground ... to my slow life. To my slow, un-loopable, plane. End of the day? -2Gs, +5Gs. I didn't come apart. There's nothing to it ... just pure, unadulterated, brilliant fun. This was one hell of a great day to fly. And in case you are wondering what a Pitts looks like ...

Wow there's a whole crowd of recent additions to VBS1 here ... Do you guys have a regular server going or something?

Yep, Alyssa Milano ... do you get "Charmed" in the UK Rocky?

I was about to ask if that was the case. Damn ... Yeah, frequent DB backups and file backups too ... Some people out there have time to waste on their hand they'll sure use it to force you to waste YOUR time, don't they

Made a little movie: watch out! BIG movie. this is more than 7 minutes long. 75mb and it's even shortened up. Movie link I purchased the 727 Captain Sim last week (I saw somebody mention it here in a post from October). Great plane I have to say. No fancy electronics in it. Back in the day they used to fly stick and rudder and the instruments weren't much more complicated than what I have on my Piper nowadays. Kinda scare if you think about that ... in the 70s airliners didn't work much different than little pipers ... they were just bigger and faster. This 727 is particularly tough to handle. This is perhaps the toughest plane I ever landed in flight sim. Aside from the fact that at slow speed it's a bear, the engines have a reaction time that is abysmal. At slow speed the adverse yaw is awful. The plane has a lot of momentum and the controls tend to get very mushy. The engines react VERY slowly to throttle inputs. With this plane you need to think ahead a lot. YOu need to know what to do to be were you want to be at least a full minute before you get there. While that's true for every plane, for this one, there's no room for error. If you come in too slow or too low and you are only a bunch of seconds away from touchdown you are going to have to torch the engines to get out of it and chances are your approach is toast. There ain't no recoveries at the last minute with this bird. You sure sweat every second of that landing wtih this puppy. This is actually my 5th landing. the first 2 didn't go so good (smoke and fire and loud crashing noises are not my idea of a "good" landing). The 3rd one was on the grass ... only in real life there's the NJ Turnpike overpass where that grass is in Flight Sim ... so in real life this would have been "itchy". This fourth one was a tad slow and i dropped it on flare a tad harder than I liked. But at least it was down the centerline. This fifth one is my best yet. Which is in the movie ... http://www.captainsim.com/727/727english.html

I don't know if you guys are aware of this, or if somebody already posted this here. If so, apologies. If not, heads up. This virus attacks and defaces PHP forums ... and the IPB forum (like GR.net) is PHP based ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6742668/ I'm glad I got rid of PHP for my board ... I'll say.

Interesting! In the UK "not equal to" is expressed by <>, at least I think it is, it's been a long time... *Yoda appears from the shadows* Actually, it's not a regional "standard". It's a programming language standard. Visual basic only accepts <> C#, C++, Javascript and others accept both <> and != they are interchangable. *Yoda disappears in the shadows*

Thank you!

Thank you!!