News from Great Castle Wilson

Good news: I picked up my new computer today.

Bad news: It doesn’t have the right graphics card in it.

Basically, the story is that the cards are in very short supply, and this store is not at the top of the list when it comes to getting them. It now sounds like I’m still a couple of weeks away from getting it, so they gave me a loaner in the mean time. Unfortunately, the loaner is a 6600GT, which is actually a step down from my old card. And a slightly faster processor, a better graphics bus, and a much faster disk subsystem does not make up for it. Oh well, WoW is fast, even if Oblivion is not.

Besides, I’ve got enough configuration steps to finish that I can go a week or two without getting too stressed about it.

It’s friday.

Last week, I was so tired and stressed that I took Wednesday to Friday off as holidays and just chilled (hence the reason why I am >40 hours into Oblivion now). I actually lasted until Wednesday of this week before I started feeling totally stressed again, so I guess that was a win.

This was a bit of a stressful week though. I did three interviews, spent five hours with my boss’ boss’ boss, and we’re doing our RC0 milestone. bleh.

I also didn’t get either my new computer or my new glasses. I guess they’re both something to look forward to for next week (he says, desperately looking for a silver lining).

Oh, and I decided that April Fool’s Day was a good choice for when I would start my diet, so as they say, tonight I’m going to “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet”.

Peace.

All parts are in except the graphics card. I suspected this was going to be the biggest issue, since the card is only just becoming available in Canada. In the mean time, they are putting the machine together with a spare 6800 they have in stock, so they can get the OS and drivers all installed and set up.

Oh well, at this point, I’ll be able to finish Oblivion with the current machine and then install it on the new one and start over.

From the Oblivion FAQ:

Input Problems

Keyboard input problems could be the result of a control peripheral. Editting the Oblivion.ini may correct this issue. The Oblivion.ini file is located in the My DocumentsMy GamesOblivion directory. In the [Controls] section, change the “bUse Joystick=1” setting to “bUse Joystick=0” or simply disconnect the peripheral. Make sure the settings are saved. Note, changes to the Oblivion.ini file will not be saved if Oblivion in running when the changes are made.

Frequent Crashing possibly due to old system file

Some users may experience frequent crashing due to an older system file. These crashes may be attributed to the ‘mpeg2dmx.ax’ file. Simply renaming the file to “mpeg2dmx.ax.old” may correct this issue.

Frequent Crashing possibly due to connected HP printer

A program related to HP printers may cause Oblivion to crash.
Before running Oblivion: Press Ctr-Alt-Del to bring up the task manager. Go to the Processes Tab. Right click on any process starting with the letters HP and select End.
Running Oblivion at this point may have this issue corrected.
Note: The PC will need to be restarted to reinitialize printing or imaging.

I verified that I do not have either of the first two issues, but I do have an HP printer. I’ll try disabling that and see what happens.

Update: *doh*. I just found an mpeg2dmx.ax in an old DVD XCopy directory. I’m going to rename it and see if that helps; killing the HP driver threads did not.

Once again, Bethesda has managed to build a brilliant, breathtaking vision, which may be ultimately irrelevant because it’s too buggy to play.

This is easily the most strikingly beautiful realistic game I have every played. The direct manipulation of things in the environment to use either as traps or weapons is awesome. And for once, sharing the development between consoles and PCs has actually improved the gameplay: they have continued to refine the gameplay in ways that make it essentially completely intuitive, once you learn the keys.

On the down side, the game really is a pig. It’s playable on my current machine, but I’m glad I’m getting a faster one.

I also hate the character customization gui. It has about 50 sliders that all seem to be randomly connected together, which let you configure combinations of facial structures. This would be incredibly good, if I had any idea how to construct a human face, but I don’t. I frigged with it for about 2 hours trying to get a “pretty” woman to play, then gave up and took a male. Sheesh.

And finally, oh the crashes. Bethesda has had a grand tradition of building games that take multiple patches before they are playable, but I had hopes that, since the game was going to come out for a console at the same time, this one might avoid that. Apparently not. I’ve had at least five crashes in the four or so hours of play I’ve put in. Todd tells me that he has had three, one of which hit before he even made it into the game! I think I may wait and just install it on my new machine instead. Maybe by then the first patch will be out.

Note: There is apparently an NVIDIA graphics card patch coming out this week that is supposed to be specifically for this game. That may help. Unfortunately, I know that’s not the root of the problems, since Todd has an ATI. 🙁

Oh well.

After work today, I went down to the local clone shop and ordered a new PC. I didn’t go for a high end CPU — I just couldn’t justify the price difference given the relatively small performance differential. What I ended up with was:

Motherboard	ASUS P5N32-SLI-DLX
CPU	Intel P4 D 950
RAM	2 x 1GB DDR2-667
Graphic Card	nVidia 7900-GTX 512M
Hard Drive	WD Raptor 74G (10K RPM)
Sound	Creative X-Fi Extreme Music

The CPU definitely isn’t the most high-end thing on the planet, but it should be a step up from what I currently have. The graphics card should also be significantly faster, so between the two of them I’m hoping this will be a satisfying upgrade. Mostly though, I am just looking for a replacement for my current, aging gaming machine. It has been through three previous upgrades, and it’s really starting to get tired.

In any case, over time, adding a second 7900, a second raptor (raid 0) and one of the new hyperthreaded dual core chips (or whatever succeeds them), will incrementally get me to close to double my performance yet again. Woot!

It should be ready in 7..10 days. Unfortunately, not quite in time for Oblivion, but close. That will be my first real test.

Some obvious bugs that definitely should not have made it past the beta:

• When you perform an action that causes a progress bar (like opening a lock), you can wait until the progress bar is filled, and you hear the lock click, but if you start moving then, the action still fails. You have to actually wait until you see the change occur on screen (i.e. the chest door opens). That’s just pathetic. Guys: If you are going to give us both visual and auditory feedback that the action is completed wait until it actually is.
• When you open a vendor window, if you click on “Sort by value”, then close it and open it again, “Sort by value” is still checked, but the items aren’t sorted. You actually have to uncheck it and then check it again to get them sorted.
• The gui sometimes forgets what state it’s in. Similar to the previous problem, but with much more drastic consequences, I can sometimes get the GUI into a state where it thinks I’m in auto-attack mode, for example, but I am not. This leads to wild thrashing of the keyboard, and then dying. You have got to fix this one soon. It alone will convince me to stop playing this game. Soon.
• When you zone into a new area. If there are a lot of toons nearby, it needs to send you the images of them. If you try to start moving before they all appear, you get this bizarre, speed-of-light fast warping effect for several seconds. To say that this breaks the immersiveness of the experience would be an understatement.

I’m sure I’ll think of more of these as soon as I stop writing. I’ll update this regularly with the latest things I find.

Not sure if this came through in my last post, but one of the things that I really like about DDO is the fact that your individual skill running the gui significantly impacts the outcome of a battle.

In a one on one battle, it’s possible to be out of range of the thing that is attacking when it swings at you, then dart in and attack it and dodge out of its way again — not guaranteed, but possible. You also need to maintain a defensive stance (i.e. block with the shift key) unless you are attacking, to raise your defence and reduce the chance of creatures hitting you with special attacks. Because of this, I have found that after a weekend of playing I can get through a battle with much less loss of HP than I could when I first started.

Now, at one point on the weekend, I was in a party of six and we were fighting as many as eight things at once (in the Butcher’s Way, in case you were wondering). It’s clear that there are similar lessons to learn when fighting in a group, but it will take more practice. The battles are quite frenetic.

Speaking of grouping, what happened to the rest of you who said you were going to try this game? Todd said he’s probably going to give this one a miss, so in retaliation I re-created Baiserdmort. I have to tell you being a rogue is tough in this game, although I did (once) manage to do an effective backstab and did 89HP with my 1D4 weapon. 🙂

So far at least, playing Gimlit the dwarf paladin is much easier. With about six hours of soloing, plus one good group, I managed to make it to level 2 (real level 2, not the first mini-ding). For comparison, Baiserdmort in 4 hours of play hasn’t even gotten to the first mini-ding yet.

Unfortunately, I’ll be at the arts center tonight, so I won’t be on. I would like to pick a day when we can all play though. I can do Monday or Wednesday easily, and could probably do any night on the weekend, with a bit more effort. Let me know.