Solus

Well since this is a gaming forums, I'm interested in seeing how far people have gotten with gaming? Have you won a local tournament before or perhaps an online one? Been apart of a popular team that went far?I'm more or less curious to hear about some other peoples stories of their gaming hobbies pushing through to win something ;)Myself? I never really took notice of gaming until I got broadband (around June last year). I would just occasionally play when I got home from school instead of watching dull after school TV shows. One day while playing "Natural-Selection" someone commented that I was doing well and soon after I was asked to join a clan. Most of these clans died and around September last year, I joined up with a few other people I knew and we formed a clan.Since then, we've won two tournaments in Australia (There have only been two since September) which also had teams competing from New Zealand and Singapore. I also managed to win $100 with a small online solo competition (Getting 21-0 in a pub game on demo with a restriction on certain weapons/upgrades and strict rules).With the NS clan scene becoming dorment, I have moved over to CS. The first thing I noticed is that there was a VERY large community compared to NS. The other thing was that I was no longer one of the top players... and this excited me I love competition and improving (For almost everything in life) and CS seems to provide another chance to do that. Hopefully I'll be able to work my way up into a decent clan and perhaps pull off some victories before the Uni holidays are over. Once they hit, I'll just return to casual gaming here and there with some matches alongside some mates.Does anyone else have any similar stories of semi-success?

Well simply, I am wondering how people have gone about getting their "perfect" sensitivity. I would like to think mine is close but I still have a fair way to go before it feels "right" for me.Coming from Natural-Selection (Fast-paced FPS game where you need a high sensitivity) to Counter-Strike, I had to lower my sens by a lot. How much does that mean? Well, I would measure my mouse sensitivity by putting my wrist centered on my mouse pad and then turning it in one direction (usually right) and from there, guess the degrees turned. For NS, it was 300 degrees in a single wrist turn (From center to right). Now it is about 120 degrees. This is a huge difference and took a while to get used to but just thinking about it, how did everyone else come across their sensitivity?

This game is awesome. When I first heard about this game, it was because the Singleplayer demo was just released. People were saying it was out and to get it so I listened. There aren't many demo's that I play over and over or that are enjoyable 2 or 3 times. This one though, seemed unique and there were different approaches every single time.Probably the one thing that really caught my attention was the cinematic feel it had. When going into slow-mo, you decide how the battle unfolds.Just an example of one battle. I would open the door and sneak inside. One enemy begins to walk past a fire extinguisher and at that moment, I put one bullet into it. *BOOM* At the same moment I hit slow mo and run towards where the enemy was. Another soldier then spots me and dives through the window. I proceed to do a fly kick in the air (Still slo-mo) and connect with his body half-way through his dive.It's the creative side of this game that I like and the fact that you can solve a fight several ways. Also, the fact that the AI communicates and comes across as intelligent adds to the environment.The last thing I REALLY liked about the game was those huge firefights. You shoot a few bullets and they respond in kind. Grenades are flown, sparks and rubble fly around and smoke fills the air. The only way to spot your enemy is by the muzzle flash glistening through the smoke and debris. The sounds and effects really liven up any firefight within this game and for me, that's a winner.Not only is the combat really explosive and fun, but I couldn't wait to unfold the next part of the plot. Bought the game and I wasn't disappointed at all. Infact, writing this makes me want to run through the singleplayer again :)If you haven't bought this game yet, I urge that you try out the Singleplayer demo and decide for yourself. The only problem I've heard is that to get the most out of the game, you need a moderately high spec computer.

What you should also do, which I've seen is common practice is when asking if the client likes the layout, show the layout on your webspace as a .jpg. That way he can't make a site out of it.Secondly, when testing on his webserver, put a watermark on ALL major graphics on the site. Just a 50% transparent watermark that covers the entire contents (Perhaps containing a link to your website or your own name and a date). This way, if in the future someone steals your work, they are stuck with graphics that show it is a test template and that it is infact your creation.If they then try to edit the graphics and remove the watermark, the site will look rather hideous. Just another tip. Don't put the watermark on a big open space of the same colour as that's easy to photochop out.Once your client pays, simply hide a single layer on photoshop or whatever graphics editing program you may have used and upload the graphics over the watermark versions. You won't even have to change any HTML if you keep the filenames the same and it should help prevent this from happening in the future.One final tip. You could simply e-mail yourself to use as an effective timestamp, since it would pass through your ISP and get the time from them and not your computer clock which can easily be forged.

Some of these are legit, but because of that, you'll have to worry about the scam ones designed to be legit. I would probably have created a new hotmail, yahoo, etc. specifically for the purpose too for signing up with them as you are guaranteed a bit of spam if it weren't for the fact that these deals are only available to US residents.Also, it's not really a pyramid scheme since they are actually offering products/services. The short version of how this works is as follows...You sign up for some offers, which you do not have to follow up on. You then have to sign up X amount of friends to the free iPod deal, where X is usually 10 - 15. The people giving you the free iPod for doing this get money from referred people following up on advertisements/offers. The advertising markets win too because it is a much cheaper form to sell their products/services, compared to say, advertising during Prime time TV. On top of THAT, they also bypass a lot of the people who don't pay attention to the TV ads as you seem like an interested customer if you click or follow up on their offers. Because of this, the people offering the free products can afford to give you an incentive (iPod, X-Box, etc) and still have extra money on the side. Advertisement companies win. The free sites win. You win. Just watch out for the scammers and possibly do a google search of the site to see if there are any people claiming they got scammed or got free stuff.All in all, while it is free in a way that you don't pay money for the product, you pay with time (Probably 30 minutes - 1 hour for a $200 product), which is alright value (Especially if you don't have a job, but then you most likely won't have a credit card either ) and spam mail.

I would either recommend Visual Basic or Java.Visual Basic: A good simple Object-Oriented programming language to start with. You can add the images you want and just add bits of code to them. Of course, games created in this won't be anything flashy, but the experience is useful.Java: It's what I learnt at uni for first year. It's pretty handy and very useful when being taught a lot of new concepts as they are easier to test out and try. The coding is fairly easy to grasp and resembles C++ heaps, which is good for me I guess as I hope to pick up that language somewhere along the line.Still, it's up to you what you try, but these two languages are good to start with. If I were to recommend one of these over the other, I would say Java if you are willing to put in some time to learn about programming and produce better games or Visual Basic if you are after more immediate results. The quality of games made in visual basic probably wouldn't compare to GameMaker though (Based on it's screenshots), but I don't know much about it so I'll leave the decision up to you

Probably Deus Ex. This game was one of the first to allow so many choices for completing missions. You could go in the front door with all guns blazing, sneak in through vents and stealth your way through a building, while using quiet close combat weapons to dispose of your enemies, or possibly hack the security, let yourself through a side door and turn the turrets onto your side and let them massecure the enemies inside.Also, it added some really nice RPG elements to the game (Yes I am aware that the System Shock series did this too <3 Those games would probably be my second choice) and I was addicted to this game from just the demo.To top it all off, the story line and the length of the game were VERY professional and involving. It had so many twists and plots, the maps and areas you use, the locations you visit. New York, Hong Kong, France or Paris or something, taken hostage in military bases. For it's time, it also had some nice graphics and the marble floors which reflected everything were a nice touch.If you haven't played this game and graphics don't bother you too much, give it a try. Also just a note, do not judge this game based on Deus Ex 2. I played a bit of that game and was very disappointed :DPS. System Shock 2 is really fun and has a great story line too. I recommend getting the patch and playing the game through with Co-op The atmosphere developed by this game for it's time was really good as well... the spiders scared the <Something> out of me many times :DBut yeah, as you can see, what I think makes the best FPS game is a great involving story line and gameplay and some unique elements.

My GeForce FX 5600 has 256mb of video ram and it is running fine for me. While the clock and memory speed is lacking, the textures never really end up using all my ram space. After playing games like Planetside, which lets you use VERY high detail textures and is a very ram hungry game, I'm sure that 512 won't make much of a difference, if any.

I LOVED this game when it came out. It seemed to be such a unique game and it steered away from general linear gameplay which seems common among so many games. This game really was superb in many areas and had so much to do OTHER than just missions and shooting. Among the fighter ships you could buy, there were also large cargo ships with heaps of space, sometimes making these more viable as you could carry lots of commodities to a system where the item is worth more, sell it and get lots of credits.I had a plan at one stage to play this online with a few friends with some of us using cargo ships and getting lots of credits while the others guarded from people trying to loot you but we never got around to it. In terms of single player, the game is very fun but once you've finished the story line, there isn't a whole lot more you can do. In the starting systems, you instantly kill those enemies you might have once struggled with and the only goals left is to make LOTS of credits, find the best of everything (There were a few REALLY powerful weapons hidden around the system) and start thinking about multi-player. Also, at the time I had 56k so the MP side wasn't a large or appealing option for me.

I hated this game. Sorry to be so blunt, but the camera is the worst I've ever seen in a game before. It's irritating and gets stuck on objects, the graphics, to some extent, are average but mostly outdated and the gameplay didn't really strike enjoyment into my heart.I tried this game during the free promotion they had going on, but to be fair to them, I did not play this game for long so I have little idea about the entire game. Unfortunetely, with so many other choices, if attempting to play the game twice ends up irritating me (The camera really was poor), then I'll find something else to play during my spare time.So far that is Natural-Selection, Guild Wars, Planetside, The Specialists and Star Wars Academy which is fun for random lightsabre fights :DJust my two cents.

Although Tekken 3 for the Playstation 1 is close on my lists, shortly followed by DBZ Budoki 3, I would have to say my favourite is Dead or Alive 3 for X-Box. I like how you can easily counter someones moves so you don't get stuck in an endless loop of counters, but you can still dish out damage fast. The characters aren't too bad and you can also change and use the stage to your advantage by smashing people through walls or falling down to a lower section :DLittle Figher 2 was also fun to play during school :>

The time it takes for them to complete a map doesn't seem that outrageous.From what I've seen, a new map seems to come out around every month.The maps, although sometimes based upon the official 1.6 maps, are totally different. New textures are created to fit the map design properly, new designs to prevent some of the common issues with the 1.6 versions (Making the map for source gives them a perfect opportunity to polish up on the flaws in the 1.6 versions). From what I have seen, there has been a lot more balance with the maps that are re-created by Valve and they do fit better into their geographic location.While the attention to detail may not be so crucial for the clan scenes, the opening for different and more versatile strategies sure is.I should also add that they then have to test the maps they create thoroughly and making sure that there are no clipping issues or glitches.

Garry's Mod (GMod) You will find this mod priceless while working with HL2. It let's you pose characters in any direction, weld objects together to create stuff (LIKE ROCKET BEDS and houses made of matresses and wood). Even if you don't use it to create a Machinima with, you'll have hours of fun just mucking around with stuff I still haven't been able to find the mod I was talking about. It had a lot of features and was being created specifically for the purpose you are after. But still, give GMod a try and with the help of some other people, you should be able to make a start and have some fun at the same time.

I used to play Kings of Chaos until I found out the many flaws in the game. Basically, once you hit a certain limit of spys and spy level, it was impossible to do any spy activities such as intel or sabotage on that person. Further more, anyone that DIDN'T have this invulnerability would get slapped by those who could.A few other things I didn't like was that there would always be those few thousand above you that go out of their way and spend entire days on end to get thousands of clicks (Some ways not legit) and you would be unable to touch them.It was fun for a while, but the flaws sort of killed the fun I had with the game. That and the fact that one person decided to destroy everything I had simply because someone I attacked had a friend of a friend of a friend who knew someone highly ranked and he took it upon himself to target me... repeatedly.

Wow, some of those screenshots are amazing. I agree though, the rendered X-Box 360 screenshots don't look as good. I don't like the shaders they used for a lot of those. Also, PS3 will probably extend the Final Fantasy series and I like how it supports up to 7 blue tooth controllers.The thing is though, X-Box 360 will be coming out far earlier than the PS3.