The Mind Of OverlordTomala

Ruining It For Everyone Else Since 2004
The Mind Of OverlordTomala
All in an Overlord's day / Gaming

A cable has been cut

For about a year now we have been thinking of doing something we never thought we would do, we cut our TV cable service and upgraded our internet connection to a business one. It wasn’t something to over think really considering we only watched TV for a handful of things, and really most if not everything we watch can be found online pretty easily. One thing that I do notice is that it’s much quieter in the living room now at night. I had to go out there and stream some Bioshock Infinite and Mortal Kombat just because I felt like it.

We also upgraded to business to strengthen our dedicated servers. We even have a static IP address now! Which means I can add my servers to my favorites on steam and not have them vanish every other month. If anyone is interested in checking out my servers feel free to look on the group page. Joining the group is optional but anyone can play on the servers (unless you’re an asshat). We currently have TF2, TF2 MvM, Gmod Sandbox, CS:GO, and L4D2. I’ll look into fixing the Serious Sam servers sometime in the near future, and also look into starting up Elevator Source again. Elevator Source will be the ultimate bandwidth test. Another thing I’ll look into is getting Replays working on MvM and regular TF2.

Gaming

Obduction for Linux? Yes please!

The Unreal Engine is getting Linux support (as of version 4.1) which means companies and groups who choose to develop with it will be able to make their games available to not just Windows and Mac users, but to the Linux platform as well. Cyan is developing Obduction under Unreal Engine 4 so it would only make sense for a couple people to ask about it. Cyan answered via Kickstarter today… sorta.

Linux support

Epic has announced that the Unreal 4 engine will have Linux support. We would love to support Linux and we are currently evaluating what it means for the scope and cost of development.

I hope they go through with it (especially since it would mean more copies sold to pure Linux users). Gaming under Linux is in still a young idea that’s still getting better, and I’d like to see Linux someday with a nice library like Windows has of equal RPG/MMO/FPS instead of the FPS’s being outnumbered by RPG’s and simulators. There needs to be more versatility, and with companies like Valve, Unreal and Croteam already switching to OpenGL that’ll set an excellent course for the future of Linux! Now if only the neckbeards could cooperate better…

All in an Overlord's day

Open Thread

Cleaned and rearranged my closet finally. Managed to get rid of a few things too (or plan to). A pair of jeans, some really old worn out sneakers (two pairs), a pair of boots and a mini kimono robe I never wore unfortunately. Beautiful thing too, but too small for me. I know someone at work though that might be able to give it a good home possibly.

I did find my small collection of red kimonos that I hadn’t seen in awhile. Plus I found my old gi from when I did Judo. Also managed to rearrange my World War 2 chest of shoes and my epic trouser collection. I keep forgetting about all the shoes people gave me that I haven’t had a reason to wear. I mainly wear sneakers and boots.

It’s supposed to be even nicer today. I think I’ll just enjoy it. Give myself one day to have a little fun. Maybe do some online shopping.

Uncategorized

Letterman retires and Colbert takes the reigns.

So I read some surprising news. In fact I didn’t believe it at first! I even had to look at my calendar and remind myself that it wasn’t April Fools Day. David Letterman is retiring after his long run, and has selected Stephen Colbert to be his replacement. I saw it on one blog and thought it was some kind of prank until I saw it in my many RSS feeds and began following links to official sources. Then when I walked out into the living room I saw it on the news. This is an actual thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17G5bTlVXqc

I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. Granted it’ll be a good move for him no matter which way you look at it, and he is hilarious. Still, I’ll miss the character that he plays. He was a great inspiration even while growing up. He taught me the value of keeping a straight face while saying and doing the most profound things. Which you would know if I had one. 😛

I do look forward to seeing how this turns out. If anyone is insanely unpredictable it’s him.

Computing

Fact: Video capture hates me.

I learned something tonight. I seem to crash on any video capture software. ANY. First FRAPS, then liteCam and anything else I throw at it (including MSI Afterburner which wouldn’t even record anything). I uninstalled afterburner and sure enough I haven’t crashed since.

Now I’m starting to think that the VRam on the card (Elpdia) might be an issue. After some more research I’ve found that cards running Elpdia RAM are more likely to have issues (not all of them, but a lot) whereas cards with Hynix RAM are less likely to have this problem. Unfortunately this isn’t something you can choose yourself with any card (including NVidia), it’s all luck of the draw.

There’s a few more things I can try. Reinstalling FRAPS and making some tweaks in Catalyst Control Center (or just uninstalling it and leaving the base driver) are options I can try. But I have a bad feeling it’s the VRAM that’s plaguing my computer.

Computing

The post I was too tired to title.

I’ve run the computer for the last 3 days without a crash. I think tomorrow I’ll add FRAPS back then and only run it when it’s needed as opposed to letting it run at all times. That should be fine until I find a more up to date alternative that I can use.

I looked into liteCam and I have to say I wasn’t really impressed with the trial. It crashed mumble constantly, wouldn’t exit games properly and even in one case fucked up texturing in a DOS game (Tomb Raider). If they improve it down the road I might look at it again. It has a lot of nice options and potential there that could be used, but at present it’s not what I’m looking for.

I might look into using MSI afterburner again and see how that goes.

Computing

FRAPS and my R9 290 might need to get a divorce (plus some PAX drivers).

Despite the reinstall I managed to get more black screens of death yesterday. I was ready to RMA my card in, but then I decided that since it was a fresh install of Windows 7 and I had only so many things installed I could do a process of elimination. What was one of the last programs that I installed? FRAPS.

I uninstalled FRAPS and left the computer on all night without any crashes. I’m even on the winter drivers for AMD which are more sensitive to crashing and nothing has happened. Could it have been FRAPS running in the background causing me grief the whole time?

It wouldn’t surprise me actually. I’ve been back to their website a few times to see if they’ve pushed any updates. Their last update was back on February 26th… 2013.

I find that odd considering in the past they pushed out updates more frequently. In a years time there have been a lot of new video card releases and driver updates, plus games update a lot which require outside companies to fine tune their software in order for it to work with the latest bleeding edge tech. I remember an issue I had with filming any newly updated Source game, and I had to update my copy of FRAPS in order to start filming again. But now, since it looks like the beepa team has fallen off of the face of the earth pretty much, I’ll have to look into something like liteCam.

Update

It seems another possibility for crashes might be the latest PAX audio drivers. Removing FRAPS stopped the lockup’s but continued to fall in and out of black screening and fractals. So far it’s much more stable on an older set.