FREE INTERNET!!

Here's a crazy addition, I complained to my ISP about my woes (which i have found were MOSTLY to do with my computer breaking) and they have decided to give me FREE INTERNET till its "fixed" I shall probably keep quiet about that for a couple of months before i tell them it's fine

My Internet (Yesterday)

Unlucky Gamer ALMOST plays DayZ - DayZ Diary part II

PLEASE NOTE! May contain spoilers!!

Okay! Let me point out right now, I finally got DayZ working, it took a LOT of messing about, I can really understand casual gamers, Let me get this straight, i really WANTED to play DayZ, and it took me 4 days to get it even to work, There is nothing wrong with sticking a game in your console, whirring it off, and playing bang! okay maybe an "essential" update, and a 2 hour wait while it "installs" okay, there really is no such thing as casual gaming unless you count playing Bejewelled Blitz on facebook, or whatever game you do play on Facebook, I won't judge you, Bejewelled Blitz is my poison, I love it... and I will make no apologies for it, but, I digress!

WHEN IT'S DARK, IT'S NOT FUN (DayZ Yesterday)

I finally got DayZ to work, to say it has a hard learning curve is an understatement, It's not curved Its a brick wall, it hits you in the face, and shouts "FUCK OFF!!" right in it... till you give in and go away, but as you may or may not know by now - I'm not built like that! oh no! I'm a tenacious little bastard... After playing for nigh on 3 hours and not finding ANYTHING i mean no loot AT ALL, no gun, no weapons of any sort I was getting a bit jaded with this game, I was thinking my hours of installing, re-installing, paying money... just were NOT WORTH the hassle... but when i found a smoke grenade and an extra bandage, I was feeling pretty good about myself, i decided i would trot over to the local petrol station, and see what was in there... I could see a zombie in the shop, but i thought i stayed out of his way, but oh no, from 20 feet away, he saw me, chased me, at his point i hear a "vrooooooom!!" sound, and i get hit by what (I think) was a van... I am dead! from a van! Gutted... The screen faded to grey, I was dead once more...

THE ACTUAL VAN THAT KILLED ME (Yesterday)

After another couple of hours of play, I keep dying, I can't go near a town without getting eaten, I have not found ANY loot at all, and I am wondering what I am doing wrong, I hate spoilers, but i decide to go on you tube, and see if i can get any hints, and i found some!!
First off, the 3d setting in your options, I didn't read the manual, this means THIRD PERSON! nothing to do if you have a 3d monitor, whatever res this is set to, when you switch from FIRST to THIRD person view, the res changes too, that would explain why when I am playing, most of the time the game looks like shit! FIXED! next... When I am watching a video i lose my wireless AGAIN, the SSID vanishes, and the video stops, this has been happening a while and a cause of a few horrible deaths, and probably the reason my Steam download failed!
I finally work out what I was doing wrong, never stand up! Where did it tell me that, in the manual? there isn't one! Stand up, the zombies can see you, 2 days, I had no idea, and now with the new super no weapons and loot patch, they can see you from ANYWHERE! unless you're on the floor, then they can only see you from 30 feet away, unless its pitch black night time, and you can't see them, and then its 20 feet away...
I finally work out what I am doing wrong, and I get my internet actually working (for the moment) DayZ is working, lets fire it up and play!! Loading... black screen... loading.... nothing is happening! What?? Oh people are talking, but nothing, I check the forums, but they are a mess, no servers work! I follow the games devs on twitter and FINALLY find out the reason the game isn't working is because some Russians were banned from the game, and decided to DDOS the main server and make it so NO-ONE could play, they were no happy bunnies! this went on (all told) for about 2 days, I hardly got a game, when i did they were laggy and unplayable, yet i was coming back for more!!
It's like crack this game, I warn you, the tension for one thing, the music builds it, the fact that when you find a weapon, the game usually gives you about the time it takes to whoop!! with glee before it kills you AGAIN! I can feel the muscles in my shoulders ache from the tension of playing this game, you really feel invested in your character, even though (lets face it) he pretty much looks like everyone else in DayZ except he might have different glasses on..
Weird thing that struck me as well during the server "downtime" in the lobby of the game voice and text chatting with all the other people, they are lovely, and funny, full of really good advice, you know we're all in the same boat, but in the game they are a shower of cunts who'll kill you as soon as look at you for a tin of beans or that pistol it took you three days to find, my advice, if you see another player somewhere and you didn't arrange to meet them HIDE or kill them (if you have the means) if they have the means to kill you, you're dead!

YOU ARE DEAD! (Yesterday)

Get used to seeing this screen too, you'll see it a LOT when you start, You'll see it a lot anyway, the way the Zombies are in DayZ they are hard to lose, they do a SHITLOAD of damage and finding someone who'll give blood? if you can get the hospital without getting sniped? good luck! I crawled 2 hours on my belly to get to the hospital, injected myself with morphine, stood up, said "whooop!!" and go shot in the head...

Now I may as well go into the debacle of the last few days of my internet being up and down like your mums pants, I finally found it was my PC, having fitted another Wireless card, It had the SAME problem - so i took it back, finally my 1s and 0s are travelling down the houses powerlines, and they are doing a grand job, and after a blue screen and finally reinstalling my network drivers to get Dayz and Steam and everything else to work, I am finally online and playing, only its dark on all the UK servers, and I can't play in the dark, I have tried! trust me, and I can't - it's too hard, Tried playing on a US server but my ping is too high, so i climbed a building in Electro and logged out... I shall return

To sum up, don't play games in Alpha, especially when your computer is playing up, and if you must play a game, avoid this one, as a plea from your loved ones, it will destroy your life, you will dream of zombies, and you'll be itching to play it, you won't think of anything else - there's never been another game like it, I love it, but i hate it, I hate how it makes me feel, I hate how unfair it is, I hate how difficult it is, but I love it, I can't stop playing it! one day I hope to meet someone who will share beans with me, and not kill me for them, till then... I'm just another dead body!

Anyone in Cherno?

More internet woes...

SHITTY INTERNET (yesterday)

My rubbish internet woes continue, the SSID on my new router constantly vanishing, and coupled (again) with bobbins speed, i have no idea WHAT to do, apparently the ISP technician tells me there is 40Mbit link to the next "point" my aerial is pointed at, So I SHOULD get perfect internet all day, every day... but no..

Unlucky Gamer ALMOST plays DayZ - DayZ Diary part I

I don't have much luck with computers or games, I have played every major MMO and never got a good item, I have bought lottery tickets in games, and never won - The jackpot spin on Bejewelled blitz has only ever popped up twice, All the games I play are beset by technical problems, and finally My ISP is rubbish - All of them, without question are rubbish, I have horrendous lag and black holes and have since the days of ISDN - indeed these were the only times my connection actually worked as it should (although it automatically cut me off every 24 hours - and I always forgot, and it was usual during a particularly hairy game of CTF on Unreal Tournament or something) Anyway, unlucky from DAY ONE since i bought a Cyrix 166+ loaded up Quake and was met by a frame rate of 3fps, and then shortly after a blue screen, and having to buy a new processor and motherboard just to play, its always been like this! Nothing EVER works for me Diablo III was (and indeed still is) and immense cluster fuck that i can't even be bothered to play anymore - and if i did, i would get no decent drops, and lag would kill me and cost me valuable coins, so no! that's it, no more Diablo III...

Now i have a new ISP, and for the first week or so, it was excellent, second week in, i began to feel hopeful, sub 150Ms pings, and a connection (in no small part to a mate supplying me with a lovely old clunky router) that lived, all of the time! brilliant, I had been watching DayZ videos for months, drooling over this game, it looked EXCELLENT! just the sort of game I love to play, If you have no idea what it is, its basically a survival game, You spawn with nothing save a torch, a bandage and box of paracetamol, and you're dropped into the zombie infested world of Cherno, where all the signs are in Russian, and everything will kill you... and i mean EVERYTHING - players will kill you for a tin of beans, Zombies will kill you to eat your brains, and Bandits will kill you, because well, that's what they're programmed to do! Not only that, The environment will kill you, get wet and cold, you'll die... fall off a mountain, you'll die... Get too close to some walls, you'll die.. use a ladder... you die... You get the idea?

I really wanted to play this game, more than anything, to join in, become part of the community, join a group, scavenge a town, maybe fix up a car, and make a tent... Survive! and by golly my internet was working, SO I thought, sod it, lets buy this game, and saddle up!

Well that was my first mistake....

Arma II - (yesterday)

To play DayZ the game, you need to buy Arma II and Operation Arrowhead, An ultra realistic military simulator and the expansion pack, the price? a cool £24.99 off steam, don't look for it cheaper anywhere else, you won't find it! trust me, i spend DAYS looking for it, I bought it on steam, at 4pm, and sat and watched as Steam downloaded the game, looking forward to kicking zombies bottom! Oh i was excited!! anyways, As it was downloading I read the installation guide on PC Gamer, this told me the extra files I would need, and how to install them (the guide is here) - I got the DayZ files I needed over uTorrent and after a couple of hours flicked back to Steam to see how my Arma II download was going, Not well it would seem!
For some reason my ISP decided instead of my 5-10Mbs download speed, i was going to have 200k/s downloads instead (for the main program and expansion) which although doesn't sound TOO BAD you have to realise that both games weigh in at a massive 8 gig EACH, which i know by todays standards is pretty small potatoes, and most of you with your fancy fibre would be able to grab these games in seconds, it would seem, for me it was not to be! By 9pm that evening the Arma II game had download but the expansion pack had crawled to 100k/s it was really making me sad... I decided to drink wine and watch tele, until something better happened, but when i returned to my surprise both files had downloaded, and i was ready to go!!

Now if you edit the launch options in steam for Operation Arrowhead you can launch the DayZ mod directly, and play the game straight from there, but i decided that I wouldn't do that, I had never played Arma II and I had NO idea how to play the game, and as a military simulator its BOUND to have bit of basic training (like the quake based game the army released) so I thought I would give that a go first... Launched Operation Arrowhead and waited, the screen flashed, and up popped an error! Typical!!

ARMA II Error (yesterday)

This wasn't the error I was getting, but it was similar, basically ALL my Arma II files were corrupt, I validated them in steam, waited a moment..  It scanned the files, and started downloading the game again, but it started at 31% so THAT was alright!! *sigh* I went to bed, for now, it had beaten me, maybe I would have more luck in the morning...

I slept that night, and dreamt of Zombies...

The next day I woke bright and early, not really refreshed, I was crumpled and my face was swollen up like it is every morning now I'm old, I look like a worn out old cushion in the morning, its a not a good look.. Anyway! hair all over and face all mashed, I didn't care! my download was finished, the CRCs all checked out, I was good to go! I launched Arma II OA and it loaded! i was met by military music, brass bands and I think an aircraft carrier, i wasn't really awake, and not really paying that much attention! I didn't care, let me find single player... check! basic training! check!! there it is.. Loading!! JOY! I am in...

The graphics were horrible, all blurry, and data, it kinda reminded me of this..

Delta Force and Voxel "technology" (yesterday)

That was on FULL graphics too, I had seen videos on You Tube, and it didn't look that bad on there, anyway after a fiddle I found a setting called "3d resolution" i never read manuals, and have no idea what it does, but once i had ramped it up to match my actual resolution all was good! it actually looked quite nice, basic training consisted of some rudimentary first aid, running round a rather rubbish assault course and then some driving, by this time i was bored, and all I could think about was zombies, So i quit, and went to load DayZ!

Now I went into steam, added the launch code for the mod, and clicked Run! just as the instructions had told me, and... Nothing! errors.. and then death.. it won't work, at all :( I checked my install twice, tried it again, still said all the files were missing and bombed out, I deleted all the DayZ files, redownloaded them again, copied them to correct directory, and NOTHING! Still would not load.. by now I was getting annoyed!

Anyway, as an alternative to installing the mod manually, there is a progam called "Six Launcher" which can be found here... http://dayzmod.com/su.php if only I had found this HOURS ago, I'd have saved myself about 3 and half hours of pain, You download it, You launch the "updater" program, and then find the DayZ mod in the list of Mods, click "update or install Mod" and off you go! at least that's what the website led me to believe, but realistically, that's not what happened!  oh no... it's never that straight forward for me is it? Every time i went in the server browser for DayZ game, and tried to launch it i got.. six launcher unhandled error during checksum update...  ARGH! dammit, I uninstalled all the files I had installed manually, ran it again, and eventually IT ACTUALLY WORKED!! I got into a game, and died instantly, when i was eaten by a zombie, I had pretty much no idea what I had to do, but I couldn't get back on the server, every time I clicked "respawn" my dead counter went up by 1, and the came wouldn't even launch again, I quit the game completely, Closed down Six updater, and wandered off for something to eat, at least i had beans in the house...

I'm on holiday

I am currently on the final day of my weeks holiday (it was brought forward due to the lack of work commitments) and I must say its been lovely...

Nothing...

Chris Cornell FTW

Chris Cornell (yesterday)

I just got back from Manchester today, after the shock of losing my job, Luckily I had booked tickets to see Chris Cornell at the Lyric Theatre in Salford, Staying in a very very posh hotel (and god was it expensive, A full English breakfast was £19.99 PER PERSON, and didn't even include Burnley FREE with your breakfast..) I stayed at the Lowry Hotel in Salford, I wouldn't recommend it, the concierge was dressed like Dr Evil, and as i say was VERY expensive too...

Anyway, on with STUFF, i went to see Chris Cornell doing his Acoustic Songbook tour, where basically he just strums along his guitar and blasts out his hits, all on his own, to a very very appreciative, and very intimate audience - A member of the audience, James, held up a sign asking Chris if he could play a guitar on stage with him, Chris made a joke about it (His interaction with the audience was superb, his joke about his real life voice being all muffled and nasally was amusing) and he asked what James would like to sing, one of those songs was "Fell on Black days" and the other was something else, I forget, I had had a lot of wine by then, but it was such a great vibe, it really didn't matter..

Is it Jesus? let's all stand for the last 4 songs! 

Anyway, later on he calls up James, who was in shock, gets another guitar going, and off they go, James is on stage playing with his idol, it was brilliant... I mean to watch, that someone like him would do that, but the fact that here is someone playing on stage with an artist he clearly admires, and the fact he does it, well here is a video from last night, its one i pulled off you tube, i never filmed it, loads did, ignore the noise about 1/4 of the way in, the levels were broken, but still it was magical...

The video, as you tube is being a knob

Shiraz (yesterday) - This wine will is lovely

something I also found was this wine! it's usually £8.99 but its currently half price at Sainsbury, i have two bottles, which i can see being no bottles fairly soon! Also i typed "bobblers" instead of bottles, and I have not even had a drink yet...

Sides, brilliant night, one of the best gigs i have ever been to, all the better with a lovely woman to share it with, Its been the best end to probably one of the shittest weeks of my life.. but I shall survive! onward and upwards as they say...

New ISP

Further to the Age old story down at the bottom you may have been reading, I had tried to get a B.T. line in Hull and failed, well living down the Avenues in Kingston Upon Hull (as i do) I had go Nextgenus as my ISP they supplied "over the air broadband" basically this..

Stuff on the roof (yesterday)

...Anyway, Nextgenus decided to go bust! Thanks guys, And the nice guys at Quickline took over, and said, "look mate, your signal, right? yeah? its shit, its the trees basically, but its winter right? so look, probably in spring, your internet will die horribly right? yeah well if that happens, we'll give you a refund... so yeah let us know" - Nextgenus had a terrible capping system which basically slowed your bandwidth down thinner than Hank Hills urethra if you went over their (I think it was 5 gig a day cap) - made it un-usable, well Quickline is unlimited, its speed was (supposed to be) 5Mbits up and 5Mbits down, it was to begin with, when Diablo III came out was about the time i got into trouble...

The error people fear most (Yesterday)

I didn't have the terrible error problem, I had a whole shed load of problems (which i tweeted at the time) basically the game was unplayable because of lag, okay - single player game, keep dying with lag, which fucking genius thought that was a good idea? I kept getting disconnects, the game was basically unplayable! and its a SINGLE PLAY GAME right? okay rang my ISP (which is now Quickline) are you following? they said, after some umming and aaahing, "Yeah mate, we can't supply your internet! the signal is too bad, but we can pass you on to one of our competitors, they should be able to sort you, yeah?" and promptly, cut me off THAT DAY! - So i got home, no Internet - I rang the company who took over Nextgenus, said "can you connect me again?" and they said, "No mate, we lost the node when we took over, there is no coverage in your area, its the trees mate... sorry bye!" and hung up... So anyway, the competitors rang, they turned on my internet, and now I have internet! the company is Citylife Now! some sort of international space landlords who also run an ISP? it seems very weird, but I'm okay with that! because look!

The speed of things in the air (Yesterday)

Now it's not the best speed, but its not dropping out, My ping in Diablo 3 makes the game playable but only just! more on that, I might review it actually, not that everyone else hasn't already... but it's only £19.99 a month, and its got a cap yeah, but its 100 gig a month, which is not terrible, and none of my money goes to K.Com (which i wasn't officially allowed to slag off because my ex employer is apparently in cahoots with them? although You have to be careful what you say..)

So i have internets now, they are not brilliant, but they will do for now, and for the price, I am not complaining! and I shall now commence job hunting if you excuse me! I have a Chris Cornell gig to pack for..

Well Hello there! I am back again, Not really had much time to write anything here because I have been pretty busy being part of the corporate machine (that got more and more corporate than anything had any right to be) and having annoyed some of the bigger wigs.. they decided to eject me onto the heap, So, what's next? I really have no idea! Updating my CV, cracking out my Wacom tablet, and seeing what i can do next I suppose, expect some updates along the way, I am writing some new stuff, don't know where it's going to end up yet, but we'll see!

No-one will probably even know this has appeared, but we'll just keep it between you, me and the spam bots shall we? shame they linked this to Google + though, that place seems deader than my career prospects at the moment!

...oh the web comic I had on the back burner is returning, link coming here soon, so look out for that! Bet you can't wait, sneak preview should be up by Wednesday! maybe! bare in mind i have not drawn properly for a very long time, and in my old job (and I quote) "A sense of humour is not required"