Category: Gaming

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Dual-Core Processors and Video Performance

I’d installed Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, a game which is a couple of years old, on my relatively new dual-core AMD Athlon machine at home. (It should run fine on both machines, and I own two copies, making it ideal for gaming multiplayer with the kids.) To my surprise, the game ran absolutely horribly—a first for this box—in fact, it was completely unplayable. The video, even in the opening movie, stuttered whenever it was trying to do a fade affect. In the mission I tried, the characters wouldn’t move, although I could pan the camera, almost like the game was trying to poll the keyboard wrongly. The video seemed far jerkier than it should have been, also.

So, I did the usual bit of updating the video driver and DirectX drivers, but that didn’t help.

After a little research, and a couple of forum posts that didn’t have the right answer, but did point to a related Microsoft Knowledge Base article, I learned the cause of the problem. With visions of having to patch my BIOS (a slightly risky operation), I wen to the AMD Web site as Microsoft recommended, and discovered a surprisingly straightforward solution:

AMD Dual-Core Optimizer – The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core’s Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized.

A quick Windows install and reboot, and the game ran flawlessly—at 1280 x 1024 with all the video and sound options maxed out. Sweet!

I believe there is a similar utility available for Intel multicore processors.

For the benefit of others:

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Life: A Quick Update

  • Nichelle’s health has been amazing. Actually, Nichelle looks amazing. She is doing Tae-Bo and weight training almost every day. She is absolutely transformed, to the point where that picture of Storm I posted for her birthday is truly not very different than reality. This is a far cry from the woman who two years ago sometimes had trouble holding a fork and knife at dinner. This is by far our biggest blessing.
  • Since Nichelle can now kill me with her pinkie, I started on the weights with her and our friend Phil about a month ago, and get in several days a week of Tae-Bo or cardio stuff as well. It’s already made a big difference, although Nichelle puts me to shame. Phil is cracking the whip on the weights and controlling our diet as well. Last night we got to eat a single piece of cheese for the first time in about 3 weeks. My doctor should be very pleased with these lifestyle changes. I will say having Nichelle working on the same things has made it immensely easier. What would I do without her?
  • As far as we can tell, David made highest honors again. Although Isaac needs to apply a slight amount of effort in math and history for the first time in his life, he did very well also. I love Isaac’s wit, and David amazes me with his insight, especially because he’s only 8.
  • Isaac bought a ball python about two months ago, which he named Knotty. Ball pythons are really cool, although we’ve learned that they really do have poor eyesight, and have become familiar with their striking distance …
  • Command and Conquer 3 and Jaws Unleashed have overtaken us for gaming, even to the point of neglecting World of WarCraft and our beloved Wii. C&C 3 is every bit the game C&C/Red Alert lovers have longed for, providing that magical balance of interesting units and fast-paced strategy for which Westwoood Studios was famous. In Jaws Unleashed, one controls Jaws himself, attacking swimmers, dolphins, boats, and other sharks and sea life. Isaac and David love it to the point of addiction, although it hasn’t received very good ratings from adult gamers.
  • We officially resigned from our old church a week ago—a decision which was clearly God-directed—although we have not yet joined a new one. We believe we will end up at Heritage Baptist in Hooksett, which we attend most, although we are checking out the Wednesday night program tonight at MVBC—Heritage doesn’t have anything yet for the kids on Wednesdays.
  • Nichelle will compete in the National Chicken Cook Off on May 3–4, in Birmingham, Alabana. I get to go with her. She is up against some tough competition, but the first prize is $100,000. That wouldn’t be too shabby.
  • John seems to be doing well for the first time since he left last June. We’ll see how things work out—he hasn’t had a very good track record—but he’s working again for the first time in months, and seems to be much more rational than previously.
  • We’re also planning a trip to Florida to attend my Mom’s wedding in June. Did I mention my Mom is 80 years old? I have a great picture with her and her fiancé George, which I’ll post shortly. The whole family is very excited.
  • NaNi is still the world’s cutest and smartest three-year-old. I had always wanted to have a daughter, but she is more awesome than I would have imagined. She has a delightful sense of humor, too. Last Saturday she woke me up by hitting me repeatedly with a chain saw, chanting, “Dad! Banana bread!” She’s also informed me, “You don’t get any hugs: Hugs are for Mommy. You get knuckle sandwiches,” and I assure you she means it. She can also locate Alabama on a map. Every time she says grace, she includes, “Thank you that Mommy is feeling better.”
  • Work has been excellent. We are winding down, mostly fixing small bugs, in preparation for the release of version 6.0 of our product. I’ve been working on the user interface revamp, which has been a year in the making, and is absolutely amazing. For the first time in years, our software will look as good as it runs. Navigation and other user operations have been dramatically improved, and everything is consistent end-to-end.
  • We finally got caught up with “Lost.” Now it’s agony to wait a week between episodes! We also are backwatching “Gray’s Anatomy” and “Smallville.”
  • Last Friday, NaNi, Isaac, David, and the Dunn children were sitting in the bleachers at a basketball game, and were all singing “Chiron Beta Prime.” I was so proud of those little geeklings.
  • Keith Lancaster’s acapella CD “Glorious God” is amazing. Thanks to Bernard Farrell for recommending this CD, as well as its predecessor, “Awesome God: An a Cappella Worship Series.” Nothing warms my heart like hearing NaNi and the boys singing “Our God is an Awesome God” around the house, and we love to listen to these while traveling.
  • After reading Michael Crichton’s Next, I’ve added about 9 books on genetics to my list of books to read near immediately. (I may never finish Mao’s China and After or The 9/11 Commission Report, but I’ll keep plugging at them.) My goal is to be able to talk the language of genetics fluently with a PhD friend of ours. I’ve already got my DNA screen saver!
  • We’re getting new carpet in the basement, courtesy of a water heater failure about two months ago. ServiceMaster came out at the request of the insurance company, and saved us from serious long-term problems from water damage. Too bad our insurance doesn’t cover the water heater itself (due to its age), but as disasters go, this one wasn’t too bad.
  • Sorry for not posting more of late. I was very busy getting my accounting caught up so we could file our taxes, and I’m working on a very long post that analyzes (refutes) a popular KJV-only tract.
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Another Novel Nightmare Treatment

Parents of small children are no strangers to the effects of nightmares. We in the Wilcox family are no strangers to unorthodox approaches to treating them. (For example, see this post, which describes how letting David watch Jurassic Park at age 3 cured his dinosaur-laden nightmares.)

NaNi had bad dreams or night terrors of some sort last night. She started crying around 1:00, and wouldn’t wake up enough to stop, in addition to putting a stranglehold on Nichelle.

We’ve been through this before. It never ends well, because Naomi ends up restless or crying in our bed for a number of hours, and none of us gets the sleep we need.

Remarkably, probably because I’d left work a little earlier and taken a long nap before dinner last night, I was more clearheaded than usual, and came up with a plan that would give us all enough sleep, if a bit strangely distributed.

I said to NaNi, “Want to play some World of WarCraft?” She agreed, so we marched off to the family room, and within a few minutes of her sitting on my lap while I played, she had woken up enough to shake off the fear, and demand that she play using her character, so I ran the mouse while she ran the keyboard, which worked very well.

I’m not used to playing a lower-level character (my Gnome is now at level 38), so at first I kept getting us into situations that led to a rapid death. At one point we were outnumbered, and nearly dead, so we ran from the bandits we were fighting—not something that always works. When the last one stopped following us, I had her turn around and I ran the “/taunt” emote, which does a chicken imitation with arms flapping and clucking sounds.

Nichelle, rather than having to try to tend to NaNi, got her own much-needed sleep.

After about 40 minutes, I let NaNi continue playing—she definitely wasn’t ready to go back to bed—and I retired on the couch. I woke up at 4:45 a.m., to find she’d stopped playing, apparently also after spending some time coloring, and crawled onto the couch with me to go to sleep. So I got up and went back to bed, leaving NaNi sleeping peacefully.

Nichelle got enough sleep to pull off our morning preparations on time; she let me sleep a little bit extra to catch up enough for me to take the kids to school and drive to work, and rather than listen to NaNi cry while trying to comfort her, we had some great father-daughter time killing Defias bandits around Goldshire.

I suppose one would have to describe that as a win-win-win.

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3-Year-Old Geek Goddess Sees Future in Competitive Halo

Just a week ago, I’d written about how the Xbox controller, with its two thumbsticks, numerous buttons, and two triggers, was overwhelming for NaNi, who is now 3.25 years of age, even though she’d had no trouble mastering a computer mouse by age 2.5, just like her brothers.

Last night David, Isaac, Naomi and I were playing Halo 2. Despite the fact that Halo was the first video game name NaNi ever learned, she normally will ask to play, then get frustrated and leave after a minute or two, because she’ll have her character looking at the sky or the ground, and not be able to get oriented correctly.

Well, that all changed officially as of yesterday. She’d been playing David’s birthday gift, “Superman Returns,” on the Xbox. Being able to fly around Metropolis gave her the space and freedom of movement to really figure out how to work the thumbsticks. I also discovered she knows the four “lettered” buttons by name, and is learning what each does in the games she plays.

So, last night we were armed with rocket launchers, and I was tracking Isaac, when NaNi blew me away! A moment later she took out Isaac. The icing on the cake was her “vengeful” exclamation to Isaac afterward: “Isaac, don’t say my Barbie toothpaste is stupid! That’s not nice!”

Then she did her victory dance (her own adaptation of the “gnome” dance from Blizzard’s World of WarCraft). It was sweet!

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The Wilcox Family’s New Look

Above (click to enlarge): The Wilcox Family has a new look.

  • Isaac is Hordhunter, a Night Elf druid. (He can polymorph into a bear at present.)
  • David is Stridar, a Dwarf paladin.
  • Nichelle plays sometimes. (She is actually afraid of becoming too addicted to the game.) She is Jassariss, a Night Elf warrior.
  • I chose to be a Gnome rogue, skilled at stealth and assassination (with trade specialties of mining and—of course—engineering. I can make bombs and dynamite now, and will progress to a host of interesting gadgets.)
  • Even Naomi has a character, Chritine, a Human rogue. (I’ll have to talk to her about that outfit, or buy her a nice dress the next time I’m in Stormwind or another big city.)

Our friend Phil Luchon convinced us to get a trial subscription to Blizzard’s World of WarCraft fantasy-based MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game). The kids had begged for months, having used his account to play when he visited and brought his computer, but it wasn’t until trying it for myself that I realized WoW (World of WarCraft) goes way beyond wandering the game world killing monsters. Approximately 7 million other subscribers (as of this September) worldwide seem to agree.

The game world itself is huge. There are two main continents at present, and an expansion is promised later this fall that I expect will make the game world even bigger, and introduce new races to play. There are eight races, each with six different class types, such as hunters, rogues, or priests. You can pick different occupational skills—I chose engineering (of course), and can now build things like dynamite and bombs. David in particular loves to design characters; I still have the first one I created, but will definitely add more later.

WoW has an excellent social aspect as well. Quite often I team up with my friend Phil, or other people who regularly game on the server I use at the time I use it, and go out adventuring. Besides teaming up for quests, there are ways to set up official guilds of similar-minded gamers within the game, including creating one’s own guild insignia.

I love exploring. The terrain is vast and wonderous, and varies as much as the terrain on Earth. There’s an underground tram that runs between two large cities, and you can rent a griffin to fly on to get between most other major locations. The game has e-mail, banking (including safety deposit boxes), an auction system much like eBay, and quite a bit of humor.

Last night I set up NaNi’s in-game button bar to include some of the commands we normally type, like “whistle,” “train,” “silly,” and “dance.” (“Silly” makes the avatar tell a joke. “Train” is one of our favorites, as it makes any of the characters pretend to be a locomotive, including appropriate gestures and whistles.) Anyway, when NaNi was away from the keyboard, David walked up and started clicking the icons I set up for NaNi. She noticed, and yelled, “Hey! That’s my character!”

I’d write more, but I’ve been itching to play, and the kids are finally in bed …

Update

After nearly a month playing World of WarCraft, our appearances have changed somewhat. On the left is Nichelle’s Night Elf character, with much improved clothing/armor, as she nears level 14. Nichelle is funny, she hates the idea of leaving Teldrassil, the island plateau on which the Night Elves live, because it’s so beautiful.

In the middle I’m wearing the goggles I made for my Gnome rogue character. (Engineering rules!) I have discovered that I really enjoy the real roll-playing aspect of the game, having been awed by a character named Sinisterlady’s excellent roll playing skills and imagination. My regret is that more players don’t stay in character or treat the game world as “real” and behave accordingly, even though the server we use is designated a roll-playing one. Our friend Phil Luchon and I often quest together, and we’re both developing consistent personalities for our characters. We do quite a bit of dialogue where we trade humorous insults—many involving size—back and forth, and that has been great fun.

On the right Naomi’s character is wearing a new dress that Nichelle purchased for her and mailed using WoW’s in-game e-mail system. I have sent her another one, but she has to get to level 13 before she can use it. The boys and I have helped level her character up to level 5, because NaNi loves to walk around the game world, and she kept getting killed nearly immediately once she stepped outside of her starting location.

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The Human You Have Reached, Doug Wilcox, Is Not In Service—Civ IV Is on the Way Here

It’s happening … The long-awaited Civilization IV is about to hit store shelves, and a special edition is available for pre-order now, probably shipping tomorrow.

Civilization IV is the latest in the wildly popular series of games from Sid Meier and Firaxis Games.

GameStop has the pre-order version with free 3-day shipping, using coupon code “CIV4.”

I have played untold hours of Alpha Centauri and Civlization III. Few game experiences are more enriching than nurturing a tiny colony into a massive, multicontinental empire—and what fun along the way! Research technology, explore, build wonders, wage war, handle diplomatic agreements, conduct espionage, or even build a spaceship to get to Alpha Centauri (my personally favorite victory condition). Civ IV promises completely reworked, smoother gameplay, a real 3D graphics engine, and a multiplayer mode that is actually playable. Civ IV also brings back “wonder movies,” which existed in Civ II and Alpha Centauri, but were not included in Civ III.

Read the detailed review at IGN, and wander over to the official Civ IV Web site. Best Buy has the system requirements, which aren’t excessive.

Once this game arrives, little is going to be able to drag me away from my keyboard. Hmmm. This will probably be a nationwide phenomenon. I don’t think it’s too late to invest in Maxwell House stock.

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Halo: Naomi, Dad, Isaac, and Peter Jackson

Naomi:

Naomi has learned her first video game name. It is Halo!
Give it a listen in .mp3 format: naomi_halo.mp3.

Dad:

Since I purchased John’s Xbox at the beginning of summer, we’ve played countless rounds of Halo 2 in split screen mode. The problem: I can almost never beat David (age 6), and can never beat Isaac (age 10). :: sigh ::

Peter Jackson / Isaac:

Peter Jackson, amazing director of The Lord of the Rings films, has been tapped to run (as executive producer) the Halo movie, coming out in mid-2007.

The photo on the left shows how Isaac reacted to the news that Peter Jackson would be involved with the upcoming Halo movie. If anyone can pull off a successful video-game-to-movie production, it’s Peter Jackson. (Arguably the only game-to-movie film to date that even bears watching is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.)

Microsoft, film studios tap Jackson for ‘Halo’

By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Oscar-winning creative team behind the “The Lord of the Rings” films, including director Peter Jackson, has been named to run the production of the upcoming film based on Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) blockbuster “Halo” video game, the company said on Tuesday.

Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, will serve as the executive producers for “Halo,” which is targeted for worldwide release in mid-2007 by Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox film studios.

Universal will oversee the film’s production and domestic distribution. Fox will handle international distribution.

“Halo” will be shot in Wellington, New Zealand, and will use Jackson’s production and post-production facilities there.

“I’m a huge fan of the game and look forward to helping it come alive on the cinema screen,” Jackson said in a statement.

The executive producers will collaborate with Universal, Fox and Microsoft’s Bungie Studios, which created the game.

“Halo,” the best-selling franchise for Microsoft’s Xbox game console, follows the adventures of the futuristic super-soldier “Master Chief” as he battles an alien onslaught.

Screenwriter and novelist Alex Garland wrote the original feature film adaptation of Halo. A director will be named in coming weeks, but the cast has yet to be announced.

And there’s another article at 1Up: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3144311.

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Online [PC/Video] Gaming: An Industry Name Finally “Gets” It

From this article at Reuters:

The new platforms are expected to offset what Florin [Gerhard Florin, Electronic Arts’ head of European publishing] sees as a disappointing early start for online gaming. The prospect of amassing a core of gamers who pay a monthly subscription to battle other global combatants on the Internet has yet to take off.

Florin attributed the slow take-up to a nagging fear that a gamer could be humiliated in challenging an unknown foe.

“We expected millions of people wanting to play the online games and we have found that, no, they don’t. There is a pretty easy reason. If you play tennis and you don’t know your opponent you are careful whether you should play against him. The same is true with online. If you go online you could be slaughtered or cheated,” he said.

Overcoming the social aspect of online gaming, he added, will hold back the market in the short term.

I think this is probably the most frustrating thing in online gaming. It is almost impossible to win (other than when I am playing with a known group of friends), because those who do game online tend to be those who spend far too much time gaming online. So it isn’t that one might be humiliated, it’s that one will be humiliated. Of course, years ago I was beaten at Command and Conquer by an eight-year-old. When one throws in “unsportsmanlike behavior”—everything from player-killers to abusive language—as well as lag time and trouble keeping a connection to many servers, the appeal of single-player games is obvious.

I do like to play against human opponents. My son John is very challenging, especially at WarCraft III, but our skills are near enough that I can beat him when I really work at it. When I play with Isaac and David we either team up against computer-AI-driven opponents or give them one or more computer partners to help balance things out (except in the Jedi Knight series, where David needs no help). Overall, though, it is rare that online gaming is very fulfilling to the average gamer.

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Dungeon Seiges the Wilcox Family

After hearing Phil Luchon tell as about half a million times, “You have to buy Dungeon Seige,” I finally picked up a copy of this $30 gem. It’s a role-playing game with an emphasis on action done by Microsoft and Gas Powered Games. David and Isaac beg to play it every day (and lament the fact that, unless they supplement their computer time with educational activities, they only get an hour of game time per day). A few screen shots are below.