Tweak Crysis 2 Options Without .ini Files


If you're a buyer of Crytek's newest release, Crysis 2, you might have felt a little let down by the lack of options when it came to optimising your graphics.

For a lot of people, this one size fits all graphics interface meant fiddling about with the .ini files to get their preferred set up, but no more!

A guy over at the incrysis.com forums called wasdie has created a helpful little tool which makes the process a lot easier, though still a far cry(sis) from what should already be in-game (sorry). The tool, and further instructions can be found here.

Remember to spread the word if the tool is of any help to you!

Sunday edit: According to some sources, the game will get DirectX 11 support and advanced graphics options in-game in a patch tomorrow. There has been no official press release yet, but you can read more here.

The DirectX 11 patch has now been debunked.

Minecraft Marathon for Japan Aid


If the notion of donating through Team Fortress 2 isn't for you, then perhaps this might pique your interest!

Right now over at Extralives.org, a Minecraft marathon is in progress with the goal of raising donations for Internation Medical Corps, an organisation dedicated to saving lives and responding to tsunami affected countries.

There is apparently no set end time for the marathon, but the stream is said to be lasting around 36 hours.

If you want to play on the server where the marathon is taking place, which as I write, has nearly 400 viewers, all you have to do is donate $20 (£12) and you can play for three hours. You can donate more to play longer!

If you can't tune into the marathon but are still thinking of donating, the marathon is being recorded, so you won't miss out!

A repeated argument I see about this type of fund raising is that they should be helping physically instead of playing games - having started today and already made nearly $3,000.00 for the relief fund, I'd say they are proving it's well worth it.

Click here to watch the stream!

Donate to Japan through Team Fortress 2

The guys over at Valve are using their hat selling skills to donate to the Japan relief fund at the moment, so if you're a Team Fortress 2 player who is itching for a new hat, taking a look couldn't hurt.

The three new hats available in the Mann Co. Store are the "Humanitarian's Hachimaki" ($7.99), the "Benefactor's Kanmuri" ($19.99) and the most prestigious "Magnanimous Monarch" ($99.99). All proceeds going directly to the fund! The hats can be equipped on any class but aren't usable in crafting and cannot be traded. The hats won't be available after April 6, so if you're a collector, now is your chance!

While purchases from Valve's in-game store aren't tax deductible, donations here are. You can find the official post from Valve here.

Duke Nukem Forever Delayed

In line with tradition and legend, Duke is still preparing for his long awaited come back. 
Due to be finally released internationally on May 6th, it seems that a little more work is still in order before the gum chewing hero hits our screens again. 

There's no information at the moment as to what they're still working on, but we can only hope that the game will be more than a lot of the generic shooters already available to us. Replacing nostalgia with something better isn't an easy thing.

Dukes new release date is June 10th internationally, this year... we hope, as shown in this very special message from Gearbox Software:

In case you didn't know, Duke Nukem Forever has been in development since 1997, 14 years.
Duke Nukem Forever has been through many changes in that time, so the outcome of the game is still unknown until we get some real reviews or our own hands on the game.

For a good look at the stages of development Duke Nukem Forever has gone through over time, the best place to look is: The List.

Left 4 Dead 2 Voice Commands


Spamming of voice commands has always been one of my favourite pass times in the Left 4 Dead games. If you can't annoy the fuck out of someone in a game, then something is very, very wrong. Remember though, practice discipline when annoying your friends in a game, or they will hate you forever.

This brings me to Left 4 Dead 2 voice commands. If you played the first game and were like me (read: annoying), you probably spammed Zoey's death scream over and over because she sounded so... special. Not to mention being able to spam the elevator conversation on any map and force your friend's characters into talking because of the flag it set off.

I couldn't go by without having the same pleasure on Left 4 Dead 2, so I looked up the new commands. There is an awesome list right here.

With classics such as:
Ellis: I love you. (Sadly I didn't get to play Eliss, this would have been awesome to spam)
Ellis: They figured out how to stop going to the bathroom? That's AMAZING. Ohhhh. No, wait, I just got it. Shit, that's gross as hell.
Coach: MOTHERF- *snort* (this was awesome to spam)

If you need to know how to use the commands, enable console in options and bind it to a key. Once in game, open up the console with that binding and type 'vocalize *command*', for example:
vocalize C5M3Jets2

Make sure you're on a character that uses the command you're inputting too, otherwise you won't hear anything
.
If you want to bind the command to a key, type 'bind *key* *"command"* in console, for example:
bind v "vocalize C5M3Jets2"
Don't put any of the *s into the commands.

Fair warning, when I was playing with friends the other day and spamming 'mother-', I "miraculously" died on the spot. I wasn't black and white or near death in anyway, and I was surrounded by other survivors. Death by admin I think. I wouldn't be surprised if my friends shot me dead though, but apparently they didn't.

Spamming "TIME TO DIE" on Diablo 2 is also awesome.

Prototype Lag Fix

I wrote this guide on how to fix lag in Prototype a few years ago, back when I was suffering the wonderful OS that is Windows Vista... If you're still using that OS, this could still be of help. Luckily I'm suffering Windows 7 at the moment and I haven't had any lag running Prototype on that so far, but I'm sure there is enough lag to go around.

I wanted to put this here because I had trouble with Prototype, and finding a solution for the lag took me a good few hours of searching.

Hopefully you'll find this post before you have to do the amount of searching I did.
Prototype is a pretty awesome game, but I've noticed a lot of people on forums complaining that it lags on their machine, usually machines that can run other high spec games with no problem at all.

The high end specs for Prototype aren't extremely demanding, and on my average machine (laptop) I can run it pretty well. I only get hiccups of lag when I have 4 or 5 tanks and the whole army up my ass (god bless being able to punch a helicopter out of the sky).
However, when I first got the game I had a number of problems; the cut scenes were skipping, I had to run the game on the lowest settings and also had to run it on it's lowest resolution. It was still very laggy even when I did that.

This fix obviously won't work for everybody, it's a good idea to take obvious steps first, scan for viruses, make sure you have the correct specs and clean up your computer (I would suggest ccleaner for cleaning up all the random stuff on your computer and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Malware check-up, I've used them both often).

Something else I would suggest to do on Ccleaner (or Run -> Msconfig -> Startup) is to change which applications run on windows startup. I had a huge amount of things clogging up my memory in the background. You can see what is running by going to the task manager (CTRL + ALT + DEL) and then going to the processes tab. You can also close them here, but be aware they will all reappear if you restart windows. To edit which applications are enabled on startup, just go to tools in Ccleaner. Be careful with what you disable, make sure to only disable the things which you know you don't need on start up. For example: things like Winamp, Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger and any other application like that.

Another thing which I did was to turn off Vista's desktop window manager, this takes up quite a significant amount of memory in the background. DWM is what gives Vista windows 3D affects and transparency etc - it's basically just for show and you don't really need it all, especially when playing a game. If you like some of the shiny effects on vista I would suggest not disabling this, here's how you can disable it:
  • In the start menu, type "Services.msc" into the search box, without quotes.
  • In the list that comes up, scroll down until you find "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager"
  • Right click, and then select stop.
  • If you'd like to disable it permanently, right click again and go to properties.
  • Click on the general tab and change the start up type to disabled.
 If that doesn't work, here's another thing that you can try (this worked really well for me):

Go into Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager (this is on the hardware tab in XP).

Obviously, this is all the hardware installed to your computer. Click on Human Interface Devices. This is stuff like your mouse and keyboard... and anything else you might have plugged into your computer.

The goal here is to get rid of all the stuff you never use... Personally I deleted them all and if I accidentally deleted the mouse/keyboard driver, I just unplugged and then plugged them back in. Vista automatically reinstalls the driver and lets you use the device again - I assume the same happens with XP, but be careful.

I had a good 5 or 6 HIDs installed that I didn't use, and upon playing prototype again I was able to set at maximum graphics, the cut scenes didn't skip any more and there was no menu lag at all. A huge difference. No more lag.
This is might not work for all your prototype problems, but it's worth a go if you're careful, and if you've tried everything else. If it did work, enjoy the game!
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Old posts

Transferring over some posts from my old blog as I am moving from Wordpress to Blogger, so incoming information dump! I'll probably close the old Wordpress blog so I don't have to deal with any duplicate page problems - please take note eye in the sky :)
 
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