Detonate

Link "The world's biggest game studio has been created with the help of 20,000 volunteers." Dunno if it's already a news item, but just found it.

Nevermind, I found this topic in announcements, sorry

Something tells me that British cynicism is going to slap him down - we're not as easily swayed or told what to believe as our transatlantic cousins. He's as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool, but by all means let's see what that joker can do Bring it on

(Posted on the official AL forum) Forth install. Noticable behaviour of game - After tutorial or regular start to game, instant jump and infinite loop to squad screen continues. Changed drivers to: ATI Catalyst 7.1 - result - no change Omega 38330 - result - no change All game settings down to minimum - result - no change Resolution down to 1280 x 800 - result - no change (Using DriverCleaner 3 to rip out drivers & rebooting between each subsequent install of new drivers) Will try the demo, see if that exhibits same behaviour Will roll back ATI drivers to see if that helps, but honestly, I can't see why screen looping should be down to gfx issue, this seems more invasive, for want of a better term Additional system behaviour changes: On start up, windows fails to boot, taking me to the 'safe mode' options screen. Again it is looping in the options without actually taking me further unless I rapidly press a key to actually 'trigger' a change & allowing machine to actually boot to windows. Additional behaviour, hardware - logitech cordless keyboard behaving erratically, swithcing between shift/dual key functions, not registering return/enter key, same for using esc key for finishing tasks, ditto for windows key. Whatever is going on, it's is too coincidental to have all this weird behaviour start after installing AL -- Not much fun, by any stretch of the imagination. What I would like to see though is some response from the devs about their attempts to deal with the crashes and potential eta for a patch - I'm not fussed if they miss a deadline, what I want is feedback, acknowledgement or whatever.

Aha! the crazy link discovery continues! check this out - three legged legs: humans I've spent since Wednesday finding all these bizarre links and vids - last night I ended up watching the channel 5 prog (on youtube) on David Icke!? A bit painful in places, but interesting in the same was as rubbernecking an rta is. yeah, I keep regular viewing on the bbc news website's science & tech pages, so vaguely recall some of the stuff they've reported, like cloaking devices and near warp technology or whatever. I found out about the Z Machine via the JT sites, which is kinda mindblowing. Sandia ntnl labs has a pic of it in full 'lighting arc' mode and it's incredible to see: arcs & sparks (it's an X-ray generator trying to create a fusion reaction or suchlike, apparently) Well I hope our simulation is better looking than Spore is turning out to be! I hope God has better tech support than us, that's all I can say...

Well I spent last night and today actually reading the conversations JT was involved in and while I don't pretend to understand all of it, what I did grasp is that the infinite universes theory was 'correct'. Also, there is divergence from the original start point and the destination. However, the destination is not the actual past of the start point, due to divergence, so it's similar enough to the original point but diverse enough not to actually change the original future... if you see what I mean? Subsequently, the return trip is equally held to the divergence factor so even though it's not the original start point, it's close enough to merit calling it 'the same'. It was an interesting read, and I don't hold with either argument for it being a hoax or real, it was merely a fascinating topic to see the course of conversations and peoples' reactions. The 'reason' we aren't seeing the predictions comes back to the issue of divergence, if you wish to follow that school of thought - we don't follow JT's worldline sufficently enough to witness events unfolding as he did. I enjoyed it for what it was, nothing more, nothing less. I don't need to be converted either way and if it was true, then we'll be seeing CERN results in the near future, if they go public with the predicted discoveries. What I couldn't grasp was the destruction caused by WWIII and yet there was enough infrastructure left yet not consistent - no tv as such, everything via the web, but credit cards & taxes were still maintained. I couldn't get a grip on what that was all about and it didn't make sense to me - survival was the priority, especially with food, etc, but there were oddities in what survived economically, from a capitalist viewpoint, as well as the techincal infrastructure. And of course, there was little mention about the rest of the world's status, especially Europe despite having been blown off the face of the planet if you read into the conversations. In the same vein there is the issue of the military. It's mentioned that the military were part of the 'enemy', protecting cities, so it stand that the bulk of the armed forces would be subjected to the same attacks as the cities - remember security became the number one reason of discontent over civil liberties & freedom. There was no consistent mention of how the country rebuilt itself after the attacks, but my overriding impression is that cities are no go areas due to fall-out and disease. Well, it was more enjoyable than The Flipside of Dominic Hyde that's for sure :-)

I've spent this afternoon on one helluva weird links journey, covering things such as microsingularities, CERN and a guy called John Titor. Dunno if anyone is familiar with him, but here's a link If any of this made the news, I can't believe I missed it!

Yup, XP it is. Grabbed the latest ATI drivers for my Radeon 9800 Pro to see if that helped, so up to Catalyst 7.1 but still aint helped with the looping squad screen although I've sent a copy of my saves to support. This idiot is now in suspence

Yeah, just done it - lynx requested a saved game, so I've forwarded it to support. What get's me is that it's worse after I reinstalled than the initial installation... bizarre, eh? Bloody Cylon viruses

Well, I got further this time but the same infinite loop/returning to squad screen bug came back again. There's no way of getting out of it, the only part of the game you can go to is the help/library section, all others gets' you kicked back to the squad screen. So, is it just me or is anyone else getting this?

Installed... First of all 'wrong disc inserted message' when trying to play from icon Playing in windowed mode which was successful. Then, got stuck in a never ending loop for equipping squad (bear with me, I'm trying to figure out what everthing does so I'm using the tutorial) Then, stopped responding, crashes & wants to send error report. Hmm. Not a good start then.

Load up current mission, two parter in the military base topside and every time I get to the green square, the game crashes with an error report. Tried several ways to get to the green square but nothing is changing, still the crash. Any ideas, anyone? Patched to 1.4

LINK Tony Blair is visiting a hospital. "How are you today?" he asks the old man in the first bed. "Wee sleekit cow'rin' tim'rous beastie," screams the man at him, so he moves on. "And how are you?" he asks the second patient. "Some hae meat but cannae eat" yells this one. "Hmm," says Tony to the doctor. "Is this the psychiatric unit?" "Naw - it's the Serious Burns Unit." Heard about the Scottish Rolling Stones tribute band? Their most popular song is, Hey, McLeod, get off of my ewe.

Guess my sense of humour didn't make it to the universal translator... I was kidding, Az.

Truly, NKF, you have a warped mind! I can't imagine what that lot must taste like... not sure I'd want to either, to be honest. Well, we've got politics & religion, so what's next - a food related forum?

1999, you say? Wow, I feel very old, suddenly. I think it's a testiment to the fact that merely mentioning cheest toasties has this Pavlovian response in people :-) Reading it back though, I did have a chuckle to myself... ah, great stuff indeed. Actually, these days, I'd have to say a steak sandwich is probably the best, thanks to Jamie Oliver, but the strategic planning required means it becomes a full blown campaign, not a quick skirmish. Now I go for the Gordon Ramsay sublime scrambled eggs instead. :-) Ah, that makes me think of a googlefight - sweet or savoury! _ _ _ Psychology humour website 1-800-PSYCH Hello, Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline. If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6. If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call. If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press. If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mother ship. If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the # key until a representative comes on the line. If you are dyslexic, press 696969696969. If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone, date of birth, social security number and your mother's maiden name. If you have post-traumatic stress disorder, slowly and carefully press 000. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you are menopausal, hang up, turn on the fan, lie down & cry. You won't be crazy forever. If you have a masochistic complex, please press "0" for the operator. There are 200 calls ahead of you. If you are depressed, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.

How about Escape from Witch Mountain? That's the one with Snake Plisken in it, isn't it?

Elite ship templates I keep forgetting to print these out at work, so enjoy the link and let's see you guys in action. Some pics of the final results would be rather spiffing, methinks. Anyone up for an attempt at XCOM ships? :-) _ _ _ Psychology Humour website [Original title: "Pavlov's birds" - obviously not from a psycholgist] An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football game, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off of the field. The guy wrote his thesis on this, and graduated.

Along time ago, in a newsgroup, far, far away.... There was a discussion on the ultimate snacking experience - I've not checked here yet to see if it survived, but there were two schools of thought - the pro-dairy lobbyist versus the peoples porcine front and the debate raged on and on. Well, thanks to the link to googlefight I found here, I thought I'd see what the outcome was... First result Second result Which goes to show that syntax and the subtleties of language can tip the balance. I stand avenged - victory is MINE!

Cheers guys, it's good to be back after so long, far too long. I've been out of the loop so I'm currently catching up on some of the news round here; JA3/JAZZ, UFO and stuff, and as I mentioned previously, I've only just started playing Aftermath despite having it sitting on the shelf along with Silent Storm for years and never touching the games. To make amends, I grabbed Afterlight from Amazon today. It looks polished but I'm not sure about the look/feel of it yet - I need time to bed into the whole scene again I guess. I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed with the site and the regulars here - very articulate and good humoured, it's a credit to you all. Incidentally, how's cyke these days - is he still around? Not sure about the religion & politics forum though, that was certainly unexpected to see amongst the others! I don't have the nerve to check it out - too many hot potatoes for me, thank you. :-) Psychology Humour website "Participants" wanted A Stanford Medical research group advertised for participants in a study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. They were looking for therapy clients who had been diagnosed with this disorder. The response was gratifying; they got 3,000 responses about three days after the ad came out. All from the same person.

Picture the scene... A piano player keeps a continual soundtrack to the constant chatter of the regulars, engaged in debate, some of it more cut & thrust than mere metaphor. Suddenly, the doors to the place swing open, silhouetting a stranger and a sense of foreboding washes over the gathered clientele. "So, where's the action at?" The piano stops, mid tune and all eyes turn towards the stranger. End turn Well, it's been awhile... I actually visited last week, lurking from work, to find out about UFO AM & AS, which I've just (yes, just) stared playing and between the games and this site, it's been too damned long to be away from this! Oh, and hi - some of you may remember me from the dim & distant past, I won't hold it against you - at 42 now, I feel slightly out of the demographic, but it's good to find like minded souls here and still so enthusiastic, intelligent and with a massive dose of humour. "Nice planet. We'll take it."

Hey all, Long time no see again. Right, very simple this one... I am after decent sized images of the following; X-COM gold 'cross' badge Apocalypse 'double cross' X (as found on the apocalypse manual) in black and white (I did make one years ago, but doubt anyone actually kept a copy) Apocalyse 'alien skull' found in apocalypse manual, left hand pages, rotated through 90 degrees (can't miss it, it's next to the 'barcode' Why? Cos I intend, after many years of intending, to get myself a sh*t hot X-COM tattoo done, finally. All I need now are decent images which to adapt to start work on the final tattoo. Please contact me direct at andyDOTpurnellATblueyonderDOTcoDOTuk with links, imgs, etc, as I don't get time to visit this place (or play) that often now... cos I is 40 and that means I am an old fart and yadda yadda yadda. When the tattoo is finished, I'll be sure to show you guys - you won't be disappointed, believe me... Detonate

Forgive my ignorance, chaps, but how did the movie/trailers come about? What's the story behind them, and how do you plan your storyboards, etc? Just wondering if perhaps you would be open to comment or external influences? :-) Cheers chaps, Detonate ...suddenly yearning deeply for an X-COM fix. (incidentally, I occasionally pester Dave into the idea of an X-COM graphic novel, but so far no luck....)