Ok, it’s late, but I can’t stop playing. I’m getting scared out of my socks at every turn, but it’s so much fun…

I need a new video card..
About a year and 1/2 ago when I was planning out my system specs, (fully expecting Doom 3 to release on schedule) I got the best bang-for-the-buck hardware I could find and proceeded to overclock the crap out of it. Now it’s a little over a year later, I’ve got Doom 3, and it’s good, but my graphics card needs a little help. Everything looks incredible with 4x AA/8x AF, but the framerates are horrible. To get it playable, but still run at 1024×768 I had to turn it all off. It still looks great mind you, I’m just being a perfectionist.

There’s a couple of reviews over at [H]ardOCP with good information on configs as well as what you’ll need to really see this game in all it’s glory. Thankfully Id designed their game to be playable on modern hardware. So, in a way.. it’s good that they waited this long to release it. However, only the absolute latest cards from NVidia seem to be able to get Doom 3 to the next level of graphics quality. Oh, and if you do decide to buy a hot new card, make sure you upgrade your PSU to compensate for the added power drain. Ok, ok.. enough writing.. time for some more gaming..

Doom 3 is out!!!!! Hehe.. I know what I’m doing this weekend. 🙂 Well, maybe not the whole weekend… nah, who am I kidding!

DooM ]|[
It’s been a long time coming, but Doom 3 is finally here on store shelves. I picked up a copy and though the game definitely lives up to the DooM legacy, the software leaves something to be desired. The first problem I encountered was with the included Macrovision copy protection software.

There are several references to this issue online (such as this one, this one, or this one) as well as one reference to it on Activision’s support site that didn’t help. Ultimately I ended up getting the no-cd crack from game burn world. Of course this is only a temporary fix until Activision/Id come out with a real patch for the game. All this time in development, you’d think they’d have tested the copy protection software a little more rigorously.

With little else to do today, I remembered that the next LAN party is only 2 weeks away. If you’re in the greater Charleston area and you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. It’s only $10. (pre-pay, $20 at the door) As with most LAN parties, this event is BYOC. They even have drinks and snacks to keep you going for 10+ hours. (and Bawls, for a $1.50 if you need that extra boost..)

Jan. DTDM
Joe posted his pics from the last DTDM event on the forum site. I archived a few of them here in a more compressed form for those without broadband. The last event was a lot of fun, as I’ve mentioned here before. Looking forward to the next one. Thanks to Joe and the guys at DTDM for putting this event together!

UT 2004
The guys at EPIC/DE/ATARI have released the beta demo of the next chapter in the Unreal Tournament series, UT2004. The demos for PC, Mac and Linux are all available, so if you haven’t downloaded it yet, you can get it here. If you don’t have high-speed internet access, get a friend to burn you a copy.. it’s that good.