6 pubs, 4 clubs, 12 DJ`s, 9 live PA`s, 13 outfits, 8 pairs
of tights, 2 cans of mousse, 1 tube of lipstick, 23 phone
numbers, 2 blokes and 1 bird, 23 shots of vodka, 17 shots of
Archers, 13 shots of Baileys, half a dozen Metz, 18 hours on
the dance floor and £200 in my pocket, it is well and truely
over.... Thank god.
Happy New Years to you all, hope it takes you longer to
break your resolutions than it took me.
With the blur that was New Year's Eve slowly draining
itself from my short term memory, I find myself ill, run down
and extremely tired. The perfect opportunity to blag a couple
of days off work methinks, and catch up with the organized
chaos that is BarrysWorld. J
My first surprise, after a fortnight of internet starved
masochism, is that the all new, all singing and dancing
Winamp has allowed
Durzel to finally realize his DJ fantasies, much to the
horror of the listening public. (You know I love you really
Durz J ) Now I'm not entirely
sure how it came to happen, Pixie or NatRat would prolly be
better people to ask, but b0rkfm is the result, a completely
independent, (and entirely illegal... koff, can you say
"copyright infringement?" J )
radio station, broadcasting it's wares over the net. Virtual
stations aren't really a new thing, the difference here is it
happens to be so close to home. Before, the stations available
over RealPlayer were all
Stateside and usually very low quality, constantly split and
lagged by the 30 odd routers between the listener and the
server. (Including the several thousand miles of string
between two plastic cups either side of the Atlantic.) B0rkfm
sets a new standard, (when it actually works
J ) and it's proximity to the
BarrysWorld network allows any and everyone to tune in whilst
slating the DJ real time on IRC. This level of accessibility
between both friends and strangers isn't sommit to be laughed
at, as the two extremely high power US mirrors go to show.
Hopefully, this is just the start...
And a shout out to my darlin star DJ, Alek aka [sAn]Tempest,
who can pretty much make a girl famous now in an hour.
J Nice tunes precious...
(Finally, a man with taste! J )
My second surprise, which came early yesterday morning, is
the
MacWorld footage of Quake3:Arena. Surprise I say, simply
because I really didn't expect it. Having been in the know for
almost a year now, I was a bit shocked when a contact of mine
popped up in IRC with the url. I wish I still had the log of
Tasan and I on first viewing it, but needless to say, at the
time we were both pretty impressed. J
(Tas honi, just how many ways can you abbreviate
Oh-my-god? J ) Now I say at the
time, as I`ve since had a chance to mull over it...
My problem you see, is just how familiar it all
seemed. Okay, so the graphics, (despite being the net
optimized, lower detail version of their next gen
technology...) were simply to die for, including revolving
mirrors, volumetric fogging, animated scenery, curved
surfaces, portals, and proper, fully functional player models.
But it all seemed a tad too, um... predictable. And I think it
was the swanky new Quad Damage pickup model that did it for
me. When the guy picks it up in the video, as pretty as it is,
(with it's orbital arch`s and it's UV glow) it just does
exactly the same thing it used to. Nothing new. No image
warping aura, no model transformation, not even a particularly
impressive glow, just the same old, dumb blue polygon wrap
around. Now I know id aren't stupid, and they're not gonna
give away there latest and greatest secrets with so many of
the competition's titles being released about the same time,
but let's face it, id Software's style of play really
hasn't changed much since Doom. Death Match, the id way, is
still very much just death match. And having seen the
video, with it's pretty new fog, and it's pretty new portals,
it's hard to see them having included anything but the same
old
just-as-it-was-in-doom-but-with-a-pretty-new-quad-damage-icon
game play.
And where is id Software's answer to Dynamix`s
StarSeige
Tribes? The first steps toward multi-player, first person
shooter Command and Conquer... And that's surely what
StarSeige Tribe`s D&D mode is. Multi-player that requires a
level of co-operation and co-ordination between clients that's
never been seen, (or I might add required) in a game
before. Tribes just doesn't work without people who
know what they're doing, who can talk to each other and think
as a group rather than as an individual, and isn't that what
internet play is about? For once we have a game you can't win
just by killing people. Frags rarely has anything to do
with map completion in Tribes, unlike most Quakeworld TF or
Quake 2 CTF servers, and the high time limits force players to
eventually get off their arses and learn to work together if
anything just to see new terrain. Having had so many Quake
clones come and go, each proving that the most successful
players will always have the swanky new machine and the
fastest connection, isn't it time id learnt the same lesson,
and started following Dynamix' lead toward a more fulfilling,
and longer lasting internet experience?
I hope, for id Software's sake, that Carmack's new haircut
isn't blinding his vision... To hold anyone's attention for
anything more than 3 or 4 months,
Quake3:Arena will
have to be something more than just the Extremities pack with
a nice new graphics engine at the core... Unreal, I think,
taught us that.
But enough cynicism. It'll prolly rock just like the others
did, and the hordes of baffled newbies will more than likely
drown Tribes into obscurity, allowing id to spend another year
at the top. But I must say, it's been nice to have something
like Tribes come along and make me day dream again...
Speaking of which, shout out to fellow Tribz types, Skummy,
Locutus, Hilts and all the usual suspects, including Tas,
Sephy and RobJ for some giving me the chance to play Dynamix`s
gem with sommit other than those of the 6am brainless
addiction persuasion. People who take every loss and every
frag to heart... Time guys like you stopped drinking coffee to
stay awake methinks... L
Thought for the Day:
Wasn't it always Turkey that everyone had loads of after
Christmas was over? If so, wtf am I doing with all this
bloody chocolate? Someone trying to say I need to gain
weight??? grr... J
