With the steam summer sales in full swing I've gotten alot of cool deals on what is my favorite platform of this generation. However I found an old page in my notebook thats basically a quick retrospective on how the valve company and steam came to be.
When Gabe Newel released half-life in the 90s. the game's "goldsrc" engine was said to be "a heavily modded quake engine". and it indeed looked like it. Eventually one of quake's most popular mods "quake: team fortress" was ported over as a stnadalone remake call "team fortress classic". Later there was also a tribute to the popular game (Quake) itself, and it was called "deathmatch classic". While using the goldsrc engine, it had most of the weapons from quake and almost the same game mechanics. THe only difference by defaut was some added half-life weapons such as the crowbar and a different move speed (depending on the server settings). Valve never tried to pretend that it wasn't heavily inspired by other games that inovated before them, and most of thier other on half-life games were based off user created mods, such as counter strike, a terrorist vs counter terrorist team/strategy based FPS, ricochet, a multiplayer tribute to the movie TRON's lightdisk battle scene. These days however there seems to be a problem with developers that copy other games. The main problem is that while not citing your sources of inspiration is downright rude, failing to add any innovation to customize your own product and expecting the group to pay for it is downright degrading to the gamer themselves. The gamer in my opinion deserves the most respect out of everybody, as they are the ones funding the game industry themselves. Sure there may be a new coat of paint, but the problem is its always the same old crap at the core, and no one wants to pay 60 dollars for a rehash of crap. At least not this gamer. I refuse to encourage this practice.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Crude Update time
So I should probably update this, as i didn't mean to start it up only to ignore it agian. PAX east was wonderful despite the facts that there was a few but there were a few bumps. Though overall everything was great. I re met up with my online pal Misty, and we went out to south station, which about a mile from the back bay convention center. The pizza business there was awesome and the employes was very down to earth, nice people. More to come in an edit later.
Also this next part is from a notebook I wrote in earlier this year or late last year:
So many people think its lame to visit old folks, but I disagree there foolish to miss out some of the happiest times in my life have occurred there. There is more knowledge in one nursing home then you could read or hear in a month from books check out from a library.
One Last thing, please excuse the crudeness of this journal because tab isn't letting me indent things either.
Also this next part is from a notebook I wrote in earlier this year or late last year:
So many people think its lame to visit old folks, but I disagree there foolish to miss out some of the happiest times in my life have occurred there. There is more knowledge in one nursing home then you could read or hear in a month from books check out from a library.
One Last thing, please excuse the crudeness of this journal because tab isn't letting me indent things either.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
March 19th 2013:
It's almost spring, yet a big snowstorm is going on in Derry, NH as of the time I first wrote this is my journal an hour or so ago. PAX East is mere days away and yet this two round storm is ****ing up the roads. While I'm not happy a bout it at least it didn't hit during the weekend, as that would have thrown a monkey wrench into things for convention day on Saturday. I know that i'll once again meet up with friend mistyolr and alphacanaogram. If they are not here then they are most certainly on their way via train from st Louis Missouri and little rock, Arkansas. Meanwhile a friend from Toronto has vanished into thin air, and he wont respond to my many diverse attempts to contact him. One of his closer friends doesn't even know his current number. Unless a miracle happens, I guess I wont be meeting up with him unfortunately.
In other news Google has announced that it RSS feed service Google Reader will be being discontinued, with a three month period to transition posts to another RSS feed readers. Personally I am disappointed because I've been a user of the service for years, and me and my in real life friend erik robokun williams have used it for the random insanity series of weekly gaming podcasts. Google claims it was due to declining usage, i find this hard to believe. Also i concerned because of the trend Google seems to be doing over the last few years. Ever since Google labs was shutdown, they have been working on consolidating services or discontinuing. In 0000 Google wave was the victim, and now Google reader and god knows what else will follow that path. Thats all for now. I'll be sure to post an update after PAX east is all done with.
Later, Evan "GoldAnthro" O'Sullivan
It's almost spring, yet a big snowstorm is going on in Derry, NH as of the time I first wrote this is my journal an hour or so ago. PAX East is mere days away and yet this two round storm is ****ing up the roads. While I'm not happy a bout it at least it didn't hit during the weekend, as that would have thrown a monkey wrench into things for convention day on Saturday. I know that i'll once again meet up with friend mistyolr and alphacanaogram. If they are not here then they are most certainly on their way via train from st Louis Missouri and little rock, Arkansas. Meanwhile a friend from Toronto has vanished into thin air, and he wont respond to my many diverse attempts to contact him. One of his closer friends doesn't even know his current number. Unless a miracle happens, I guess I wont be meeting up with him unfortunately.
In other news Google has announced that it RSS feed service Google Reader will be being discontinued, with a three month period to transition posts to another RSS feed readers. Personally I am disappointed because I've been a user of the service for years, and me and my in real life friend erik robokun williams have used it for the random insanity series of weekly gaming podcasts. Google claims it was due to declining usage, i find this hard to believe. Also i concerned because of the trend Google seems to be doing over the last few years. Ever since Google labs was shutdown, they have been working on consolidating services or discontinuing. In 0000 Google wave was the victim, and now Google reader and god knows what else will follow that path. Thats all for now. I'll be sure to post an update after PAX east is all done with.
Later, Evan "GoldAnthro" O'Sullivan
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Restoration
Its 2013 and I have and over the past 7 years i have used google online documents to write a lot of things, but there were always things that i didn't feel had a use laying around as files to merely view in the future. These are the more time sensitive posts. I should explain my interests. firstoff,I am a video game fan, furry, and anime lover. I'm also a person that refuses to take sides with the two political parties of the us of a. I try to be fair minded, though alot of times I will get out of hand and need to reel myself in. This has gotten me in some trouble in the past. I live with O.C.D, short for obsessive compulsive disorder, and sometimes the littlest thing will bother me till i freak out or panic. I've also been depressed on and off, ad my moods are bipolar alot, which means sometimes ill feel on top of the world and other times ill feel like i don't want to do anything or talk to anyone. I now have an xbox 360 console and ive enjoyed the last 3 years that I have it, however the quality of xbox live has been getting worse, with increased fees for online play and more ads on the dashboard while logged into xbox live.
I now have been playing on the steam client for PC as well as 360, since steam has alot more sales and I've been able to get games for a fraction of the cost during all those events, sometimes too many to all play at once, which I find funny. This last Christmas, the valve complete pack 2012 edition was on sale for 50 dollars, instead of the normal list price of 100 dollars. The pack included every valve game out so far, including the newly released DOTA 2 and counter strike global offensive. The only downside is that there is a lack of giftable game copies for games you already own, though it was still worth it for everything else included in it. seeing as how I've been trying to get my younger sister into gaming, it was a bummer info on what currently in the pack can be found here:
The odd thing is how many multiplayer games/apps valve has released. As most people know, there were two official versions of half life made for PC, 1 made in valves goldsrc engine, and another made in the newer source engine, with somewhat improved skyboxes and textures, as well as improved pshycis, which is good seeing as how some of the puzzles in the game rely on physics. this remake was titled half-life:source. However alot of people didn't like the remake, and were aggravated that valve didn't put more work into making it look like the sequel game in the same engine called source, and thus there were attempts by fans to make a true source remake of the game. For about 7 years black mesa: source was in development, and just late this past year, a 75 percent complete prototype came out, bringing the game up to par with it direct sequel. ive had half life 2 for years, and on a separate steam app, hl2 deathmatch, a multiplayer arena of free for all killing with weapons from the story line, and its still populated up to today.
The game still receives bug fixes as current as this past week of this post. It also usually adds bug fixes to day of defeat source, which came out on the same version of source engine around the same time, and minor changes to crash bug in team fortress 2, leaving the rest of updates for major things to the team fortress 2 dedicated team. In addition to hl2 DM, there is also a deathmatch built in to half life 1 and all the expansions, in addition to a deathmatch app for the half life source remake, which are pretty much low populated (or in the case of hl deathmatch source) dead due to redundancy.
My grandmother is now in a nursing home because of dementia, and it is tough to see her emotionally, but I do it out of respect for her. It also helps that the nursing home is right in my hometown of Derry. I have lived in derry, new hampshire most of my life, and its currently another month or so till spring, I cant wait to get back to the warmer weather. That is all for now
GoldAnthro (formerly goldbanjo) Signing off.
I now have been playing on the steam client for PC as well as 360, since steam has alot more sales and I've been able to get games for a fraction of the cost during all those events, sometimes too many to all play at once, which I find funny. This last Christmas, the valve complete pack 2012 edition was on sale for 50 dollars, instead of the normal list price of 100 dollars. The pack included every valve game out so far, including the newly released DOTA 2 and counter strike global offensive. The only downside is that there is a lack of giftable game copies for games you already own, though it was still worth it for everything else included in it. seeing as how I've been trying to get my younger sister into gaming, it was a bummer info on what currently in the pack can be found here:
The odd thing is how many multiplayer games/apps valve has released. As most people know, there were two official versions of half life made for PC, 1 made in valves goldsrc engine, and another made in the newer source engine, with somewhat improved skyboxes and textures, as well as improved pshycis, which is good seeing as how some of the puzzles in the game rely on physics. this remake was titled half-life:source. However alot of people didn't like the remake, and were aggravated that valve didn't put more work into making it look like the sequel game in the same engine called source, and thus there were attempts by fans to make a true source remake of the game. For about 7 years black mesa: source was in development, and just late this past year, a 75 percent complete prototype came out, bringing the game up to par with it direct sequel. ive had half life 2 for years, and on a separate steam app, hl2 deathmatch, a multiplayer arena of free for all killing with weapons from the story line, and its still populated up to today.
The game still receives bug fixes as current as this past week of this post. It also usually adds bug fixes to day of defeat source, which came out on the same version of source engine around the same time, and minor changes to crash bug in team fortress 2, leaving the rest of updates for major things to the team fortress 2 dedicated team. In addition to hl2 DM, there is also a deathmatch built in to half life 1 and all the expansions, in addition to a deathmatch app for the half life source remake, which are pretty much low populated (or in the case of hl deathmatch source) dead due to redundancy.
My grandmother is now in a nursing home because of dementia, and it is tough to see her emotionally, but I do it out of respect for her. It also helps that the nursing home is right in my hometown of Derry. I have lived in derry, new hampshire most of my life, and its currently another month or so till spring, I cant wait to get back to the warmer weather. That is all for now
GoldAnthro (formerly goldbanjo) Signing off.
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