Quakecon Video Update

Quakecon has past a few weeks ago and now school starts. I did take some video at Quakecon and i’m working on putting together a 3 minute video of our “experience”. Its the great idea that I wanted to do ever since I saw some other people make a Quakecon experience video. However I did get caught up in having too much fun at Quakecon and did not take all the video I wanted. Never the less I do have something I will be uploading soon! Also the gallery page will be updated soon.

Update
I have now posted the Quakecon 2010 video on Vimeo.com and all pictures taken on the Image Gallery.

2010 Quakecon Friends from Rusty Yow on Vimeo.

Quakecon Is About To Begin

We now have 1 day until Quakecon 2010. My friends and I are pumped and ready! Car is clear and ready to nom nom on some computers. Got ice chest ready for food and drinks and now a extra room booked at the hotel. Crazy town!

I have some great ideas for taking HD video this year along with pictures so plan on checking back here for updates every day with pictures and posts. When I start uploading pictures tomorrow I will create a “Quakecon 2010″ gallery on the gallery page. Check it often for the newest pictures.

Snacks for the road

How To Explain Dungeons and Dragons

I want to explain what Dungeons and Dragons is, in a very basic know it all guide.  I get a lot of questions and misguided thoughts of what or how this game is played. For starters D&D has been around since 1974 and has was taken control over by Wizards of the Coast up to this day. There have been a few modifications of the game over the years that have branched off into other types of D&D games, however they are still considered the game Dungeons and Dragons.

The first thing I would like to point out is that this game is NOT satanism. I do live in Texas with all the religious nuts and once in a while I get judged because I play this game. It is only a game, it does have demons and stuff in it but they have nothing to do with biblical information. Sometimes that means nothing to religious people so I guess maybe I do worship the devil. Who knew…

D&D is a very social game. Every thing depends on players showing up each time the game is played and having a bit of an imagination. Depending on how the group plays you might have a board on the table, miniature figurines to represent you, books to read, or maybe nothing but paper. Their are many different ways to play D&D but there are a set of rules that are more or less followed. These rules were created back in 1974 and have been updated many times. Sometimes these updates are considered different editions.

Now about the game play. If there are 5 players in a D&D group, 4 are players and 1 is a Dungeon Master (DM). The DM plays the roll of the enemies, monsters, etc. The DM also controls the campaign the group is currently playing. The campaign would be the background story of whats going on in the game. Most of the time the story line is made up by the players as each player is allowed to create their own custom character with a background, history, what class you play, or even what race you are. Each player has a character sheet that shows all the detailed info about their character. This is the one item that is required to have on paper that you will use each time you do almost anything in the game. For an example: Lets say your character was to attack a monster with a dagger you have. You would have look at your character sheet to see “stats” about your weapon, armor, ability to move, and much more. Every thing takes effect in the game either it being what type of armor you wear or if your even strong enough to hold that dagger in your hand.

This sounds really complicated but your character sheet, properly filled out makes it easy to take a quick glance, roll some dice and add. Depending on what you roll and what it all adds up to, you might do some damage.

I would like to point out that you can see some examples of my D&D group playing in my sites image gallery.

So that was a very quick, easy explanation of the game D&D. I will revise this post over time if I need to.

Quakecon Count Down!!!

Quakecon 2010 is almost here! There are 15 days and counting until the fun activities start to happen on a hot Texas August. I have almost every thing ready to hit the road to Dallas, got my hard drives empty ready for “files”, been practicing my fragging. As always I have my group of friends that are going, we will all meet at the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) line as early as we can. We might see about getting their midnight on Wed to allow us to put our computers in the BOYC and come back in the morning. This year i’m going to try hard to take alot of video and pictures while at Quakecon. My plan is to post them kind of live while i’m there. I’m still working on that detail using my phone or something. Meanwhile I have been making some game-play videos while we wait for Quakecon.

Be sure to check out the Quakecon 2010 event page for all details.

Count Down For Quakecon 2010 from Rusty Yow on Vimeo.

I Got Me A iPhone 4

So I broke down and got the new iPhone even after all the bad talk about signal problems. After reading that its “technically” not a problem and there is a software fix coming out soon to display the correct signal bars. I’m sure that the software fix is just a way to cover their ass so they don’t look like they have a completely useless product. With that said I have not had any major problems with data or dropped calls. Strangely enough I seem to have more bars often.

So there is no complaint from me about the signal, however I am a little angry with the GPS. When I had the iPhone 3g the GPS always worked with pin point accuracy. I got the 3gs and it never worked, putting me a block off or once in a while in the middle of no where when I was clearly on the highway. The iPhone 4 still sucks like the 3gs. I don’t know what they screwed up but the GPS in iPhone has not helped me in a while.

The retina display is amazing and it makes me want to go back and play more games. Surfing the web and reading text is fun again too! Camera is even more amazing with the flash and 720p HD video recording.

Using Flash at Night

Edited With PS

Edited With PS

Skyler

Google Me > Facebook

So Kevin Rose made the rumor that he had a reliable source that Google will have a Facebook competitor. I’m thrilled about the idea of Google doing something better because we all know that Google’s projects are made to work well. The problem is that no one will move over to Google Me even if it does have a fair chance of doing what Facebook can. What people don’t understand is that Facebook is broken because it has contradicted it’s self. Contradiction as in the thousand of dumb apps that have nothing to do with keeping in contact with friends. If Facebook did away with all apps it would be a better website. Of course the number of users will decline because people wont have their farms any more.

Red Dead Redemption

I have always wanted to experience the western days, riding a horse with a .22 on my back. Its kind of hard to experience that in today’s world. I do live in Texas which I thought was the number one place for cowboys, however the open land around here is not really open the way I would like. Oh about this game!

Single Player
The opening of the game looks pretty. Open land, great animation, and the option to really free roam. The missions in the game that I have completed so far are very similar to missions that are done in Grand Theft Auto. What I mean by that is if you didn’t know it was a RockStar game you would say, hey this plays a lot like GTA. Another example which is a little unrealistic is that, on the trails there is traffic of horse travelers. Back in those days I’m pretty sure that much traffic was on trails like that.

With the amount I have played so far I have done some hunting, gathering of herbs, helping strangers with small deeds, and even herded some animals. I really enjoy the adventure part of the game. I always wanted a western MMO game, this seems like the closest one I will find so far.

I have come across some strange accidents time to time. For an example I was doing a side mission where I needed to hog tie a guy. While I was tying him up a actual hog comes from some where and rams the guy killing him. This of course failed my mission and I had to go an around about way to restart it. Although it was amazingly funny, it was a set back in my game.

Multi-Player
I got to play Multi-player a little bit. I have not played all the different game types, although the free roam is fun. Again I wish the free roam allowed a lot more people in the same world like an MMO. Then to join posies might be more like a guild that you can level up with. I’m getting off topic. Once I play a little bit more and get deeper into the game I will add more to this review.

There are some server issues I have come across when playing online. I think that RockStar is aware of the problems and will have them fixed soon. For now at random times people and horses go invisible making it very hard to know what to shoot at. From what I read online there are also animals and other NPCs that are not showing up in the Free Roam multi-player.

I also keep having some problems aiming. I use the auto aim sometimes, but I keep thinking if you manually aim for the head you will kill faster. I don’t much luck with that but it takes time to get used to.

Summer Mode

This semester of school is over! How about summer classes? I hate summer classes, its too little time to learn something that you will for sure forget almost immediately. So with that in mind I still taking a “minimester” starting tomorrow. Good thing its an accounting class because when I forget every thing about accounting in two weeks (which is how long the class lasts) it will be absolutely fine with me.

After the 28th of this month I will be officially in summer mode. There are movies that will be seen and games that will be played this summer. Then just wait for Quakecon in August.

Movies To See

• Last Air Bender
• Iron Man 2
• Robin Hood
• Shrek 3
• Toy Story 3

Games To Play

• Finish Dragon Age, Bioshcok2
• WoW – Just catch up. Don’t hate.
• Bad Company 2
• Red Dead Redemption