DIABLO 3 HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED!!!

It turns out Christmas came early for many PC gamers today, as Blizzard has made it official that Diablo 3 is on it's way. Woohoo!!

 

www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

Posted by browncoat @ 12:05 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

So Blizzard, what's it gonna be? Plus AMD ups the game.

So Blizzard is making some serious noise regarding the "big" announcement at the World Wide Invitational this weekend in Paris.

For those who maybe don't know, they have been changing their splash page everyday this week on Blizzard.com. Each day, a little more has been revealed. There is tons of speculation out there about that the game that will be announced. Rob Pardo was quoted in GameIndustryBiz that a new game was going to be unveiled. So what does he mean by this? Technically speaking, Wrath of The Lich King is a game, but actually is an expansion. Not only that, but what is there really to announce about it? Everyone has known it's coming for quite some time. The release date is the only thing people don't know about it, and Blizzard is sure making a big fuss over a release date anouncement. A Starcraft 2 release date would be big, but why would Blizzard use it's biggest stage of the year to anounce it? This has lead many people to believe that only one announcement could warrant such a hullabaloo.

Diablo 3 is coming.

Surely this announcement would be massive, as it's been eight long years since Diablo 2 broke sales records for the company. There may be some merit to this speculation. Many are claiming that the background images on Blizzard.com are starting to show runes from Diablo 2, and the CSS from the site are starting to show names like Cavern, Icy and Tundra which are all very familiar to Diablo 2 fans. Blizzard has also yanked Diablo3.com offline, where as earlier, the site had pointed to diablofans.com. Diablo 2 was also released on June 29th, 2000, the WWI in Paris happens to run through June 29th. Then yesterday, fansite diabloii.net supposedly confirmed (via inside sources, of course) that the big announcement is in fact Diablo 3.

We've heard this song before. Over the years, it has been speculated that D3 has been in some form of production or development, but nothing has ever surfaced. However, this may be the strongest evidence yet. Blizzard has also been actively hiring for a next gen MMO that is listed as "top secret" on their job site.

At this point, Blizzard may see the publicity backfire on them if it's anything else. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

AMD also released it's video of the capabilities of it's next chip the RV770 GPU dubbed Cinema 2.0. The end result looks quite impressive, and if they can make this a reality, they may give others a good run for their money. No pricing announced of course (somewhere between an arm and a leg I would imagine). Just a straight tech demo. You can check out the quick video clip over at Engadget.

Posted by browncoat @ 4:16 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Too funny!

I've been in a few Vent servers that have been hijacked, but this one is the best. Definitely NSFW, and don't play it in front of the kids!!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1764262

Posted by browncoat @ 2:27 am EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

Electronics make a strange squeal...

Well, after braving the cold for a day and a half, and then sitting on the damn thing (not literally of course) for a month until Christmas, I finally got to get our PS3 setup. Now, being a total, complete, and unapologetic computer nerd, my first thought was, "Where can I hook this thing up where it won't overheat?".

After about an hour of fighting with my wife over whether or not the unit was going to go on top of the entertainment center (where I wanted it), I was forced to settle for it going in the bottom of the entertainment center (where she wanted it). It's not a bad choice since there is still enough room for adequate ventilation, just not as much as on top. My main concern was that the bottom of the entertainment center has two small doors on it that can shut. If this were to happen, and the PS3 was on, well, it *may* lead to overheating. I instructed everyone to make sure the PS3 was off when not in use, and to not use it when the door was closed, since the door has a tendency to sometimes fall shut on it's own due to some slightly uneven flooring.

I think you can see where this is all going.

One night, I needed to return some crappy coax cable to the store that didn't work. Before leaving though, I wanted to rip my new My Chemical Romance CD to the PS3 so I could listen to it upstairs, and keep the CD in my truck. I ripped the CD (which is just stupidly fast on the PS3) and left. My understanding was that my son was going to be playing the Motorstorm demo after I left. He never had any intention of playing it, and assumed that I had shut it off, and he went to bed. Some definite miscommunication there.

I returned the cable, came back home and went downstairs to mess with my computer. It had been a good four hours or so, and I decided it was time for me to go to bed. On the way up, I happened to hear this odd noise. I can only describe it as a cross between a tea pot whistle, and the crying baby from the movie Eraserhead. So I followed the noise to my entertainment center, and then the sudden, stark, cold and terrifying realization of what that noise was (and more importantly, what it meant), hit me.

The entertainment center door had fallen shut, and the PS3 was on. For hours no less. I opened the door, and the horror only grew worse, as the PS3 was smoking. Yes, literally smoking.

My first thought was how disappointed my son was going to be. The PS3 was a gift he never even asked for, because he had convinced himself that we were not going to be able to find one, let alone afford it. Needless to say, he was beyond excited to see that he had gotten one for Christmas. But here it lay, smoking in the entertainment center.

The TV was on as well, and I noticed that the XMB interface was still visible, although faded because the screensaver had dimmed the picture. I picked up the controller, and hit a button. To my surprise, the console responded. I thought, "Well, I should at least try to shut it off the right way.". So I hit the PS button, the option pulled up to shut the system down, and I did.

I left it off for about an hour to give the system (and the entertainment center) time to cool. I picked up the controller, and hit the PS button to power the system on. Let's just say that orchestral warm up music never sounded so good. In fact, the PS3 has worked fine ever since.

Definitely a close call in more ways than one. My wife and I have since settled on a solution to buy a rack that will sit adjacent to the entertainment center for the PS3 (among other things), and the entertainment center door has been "fixed" so it does not fall shut again. Christmas dreams saved and a house fire successfully averted. I'm not in any hurry to have that much "excitement" again any time soon.

Posted by browncoat @ 1:53 am EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

Adventures In Case Modding

Finally got around to getting my PC's innards into a new case that I got. Pretty strange how I got this case. A guy at work asks me if I want this case that he's had sitting around his house for two years. I said sure, and he gives it me. It's completely unopened. Still in the box and all. It's a no name brand case, so I thought it was going to be nothing special.

When I first took it out of the box, it indeed, looked rather plain. A standard beige case, with a plastic front bezel. I thought I'd use it as my server, so I got my Athlon XP 1600, plus mobo and RAM out to put into it. Well, when I slid off the access panel, there was one thing that I found particualrly striking. The inside of the chasis had a rather cool robotic look to it's assembly. It's kind of hard to explain, but most cases that I've worked on have had a rather machined in look. By that I mean, it looks like it started out as something else, but at the last minute, they decided to make it into a case. This one was diferent. It looked like everything had a purpose. Lost of rivets on the back plane of the case give an almost circuit board look to it.

I then removed the front bezel, and was rather shocked. The entire front end had a beautiful brushed nickel finish. It looks amazing. I removed the top of the case, as well as the back side, and sure enough, the entire chasis has the same finish! The coolness of this is that this is usually found in more expensive Lian-Li type cases (most cases are just straight up aluminum, and that's it). Anyway, this sucker is full on mod-able, and that's what I intend to do with it.

Step One: Buff the paint off the top and side panels. Under that paint has to be that same finish.
Step Two: Replace the standard power switch with a military switch.
Step Three: Find someone who can do laser cutting cheap (I'm not holding my breath). I'm looking for someone to do the "born" poster that is in Half Life 2 on one side, and the Quake 1 logo on the other. I do all my own case cutting (love my Dremel), but this would be far too intricate for me to do on my own.
Step Four: Line the inside of the side panels with high impact acrllyic, and finish it off with some blue EL Wire.
Step Five: Enjoy! (you have to add this step, right?)

I'll post some pics when I'm done. Until then, check out these very nice case mods from pimprig.com.

Picture One
Picture Two
Picture Three
Picture Four

And then there is of course the Half Life 2 case. This guy even modded his keyboard and mouse! Tight!
Black Mesa Mod

Posted by browncoat @ 12:22 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments