DayZ the Spectator Sport

I've been playing a lot of DayZ this weekend, so much so that the wife likes the tension of it and comes to watch... Making this the only spectator sport currently in our house - at least until the paralympics start.

Now, I started out Friday as an utter noob, and I've seen so much stuff going on, I thought I'd share some of my tips for playing as a utter noob.

1. Don't rush into towns, move up slowly, look for log cabins or open doors and then crawl in.

2. Don't loose guns by trying to put them into starter bags, they don't fit and just instantly disappear.

3. Pistols need to be swapped with the torch to use it, to swap the pistol into a bag takes 5 bag slots, plus 1 slot per magazine, if you don't have the slots the gun and or ammo will disappear.

4. Get a hatchet, this is the best way to sneak up behind zombies and kill them in the early game, its silent and the zombies often have food or drink on them.

5. When you get scared, and can't aim any longer, food and drink calm you down.

I'll post more as I get on with the game, I'm still very much a beginner, I've not even survived a whole day through yet... My problem is I am often very careful, until I get to have some kit, then I seem to get impatient, so rather than going slow still I get up, or I'll try to eat or drink or some stupic thing that gets my character stood up or crouching, rather than prone... I must remember to be more patient and take it slow.

A lot of players seem to like to take their utter started character to the city, tool up and go out into the wilds, where as I seem to be prefering to stay in the wilds.  The problem with their approach is, you become a huge target and often don't get back out the city with your loot, my problem is that I'm often hungry and thirsty as I'm grubbing around finding nothing but empty tins...

Ding Dong the Dog is Gone... Briefly...

I'm going post it here... The numpty at number 9, has made an effort to contain the dog... He, according to others; I was at work; spent a lot of time yesterday banging and hammering, when I came home and went to check our guinea pig I saw he'd put up a limp sagging set of camouflage netting.  Very fetching addition to the garden, I did think this was a bit pointless because, yes the dog does jump up and out and over, but its prefered method of escape is by pushing the wire aside and just legging it...

We've all seen the great escape, they send Steve McQueen and Angus Lennie over the top of the wire as a distraction for weeks on end, whilst really they're going under.  This is what the dog is doing, a clear warning we should all be wary what we let our dogs watch on tele, it's clearly only giving them ideas.

Anyway, the dog is gone, how do I know?... I just saw a couple, a new couple... "Enter player four stage left"... whom have found the dog to be straying, have they called the dog warden?  Have they just left it? Nope, they've done what I did and tried to bring it back.

I've stayed well out of this one, I don't even know this couple, I did notice them however as they tried to bring the dog down my side alley and through my back garden, rather than walk all the way around... Cheeky of them, not least because I have my door open and my dogs free to walk in and out, and I'd not like them to meet this dog from number 9, its vicious with cats and two of my dogs are about cat sized... Luckily I've locked all my gates, so problem averted.

But it is getting on my wick now that I have to conform, my wife and I have to watch everything I do, going out, coming back, gate security, door security and dogs uniformly out and straight into the car, rather than this one numpty get his act together.  And what's more galling, his dog is the one at fault, he is the one at fault, and yet others; primarily us; are being affected.

He's made thick friends with the scum already living in the area, the gobshite old bat across the road, and the new scum renting down the way and gobbing off.  There are also always a stream of people coming to the front door of a Saturday morning, knocking waiting and then pacing up and down on their mobiles waiting for him, but he's gone out of a Saturday morning.  The guy has no car, so he's like out and about of his own two feet and buses I think... But the behaviour is very odd.

Now, my wife's ill today, she's really hurt herself and is not a happy bunny as she was meant to be at work and she's had to call in sick.  I've got to go out and sort a bunch of legal stuff out for us without her and without knowing she's safe... Do the police care?... Right now no...

The local Policing Pledge point 4 states, "Respond to every message directly... within 24 hours" I send them an e-mail last week, heard nothing, and I've sent an e-mail today, lets see what I get back, if nothing I'll be phoning them up.

Hammer and Hifi

On a different note, the numpty from down the way has been playing his music loud and has been witnessed hammering... Seems he may actually be accepting that "the pen which was perfectly adequate at our last house" is actually more of a joke than a deterent to the dog escaping.

The dog itself is back.  It got out yesterday, was missing most of the day, and as of just now (noon) its back... Maybe its longest roam to date, which may have made the moron act, who knows.

I do also love how the guy is currently marching up and down the road (which he's lived on for like a fortnight) like he owns it, dog at his side, living it up... Probably looking for customers for his infamous "eighths"... 

Glad I'm going to go see a new house to buy later today... Huzzah!

Arma2, DayZ & Juggling Real-Life

So, I bit the bullet and I've bought Arma2 & the Operation Arrowhead, just to play the DayZ mod, I'm still sold on watching all the videos being uploaded by RedReloadedHD on youtube... Check out his channel here.

Now, this is a bit of a secret purchase, I'm going to be a very good boy this weekend, I'm going to take the wife to see a potential new house tonight, and get on with sanding the new filling in the woodwork under the stairs.  Tomorrow the wife is at work, and I'm going to see a financial guy, but I might get up and do some cutting in around the under stairs area, so I can come later and do a big swathe of painting with a roller...

And then in the evenings, when the wife is home, its going to be sitting with a take-away tomorrow, she'll insist on X-Factor being on... Lets home this weekend we don't get the ass hat from number 9 kicking off again, I suspect we will, or at least hear him on his mobile on the back again talking about delivering eights to people (Yes, I know what you sell in measurements of eighths)...

Anyway, after all that I might get some time in the evening to try downloading the games to my steam installation on my machine upstairs, and I might also get to play some on my funky laptop (which its currently downloading on).

DayZ... DayZ... Give me your answer do....

I'm so crazy, all for the love of you.... *cough*... Sorry....

I've found DayZ, a mod for ArmaII, which seems amazingly interesting... I'd not even seen ArmaII... I've had my head well out of that combat sim genre since I bought and didn't really play Operation Flash Point : Dragon Rising last year.

But, this DayZ seems really interesting, the desparation, the challenge, the free for all aspect.  It actually seems far more interesting than the original ArmaII game.

However, before I rush out and spend £40 buying the ArmaII game, I decided to get the ArmaII Operation Crossbow demo on Steam and try out the controls.  My conclusion, there are a few bugs.

First of all, this is a demo, it might be early code, but its an old (2 years released) engine, which shouldn't have these sort of bugs, I saw - Vehicles sliding side ways - like a jeep just moving left instead of being sat still... And I don't mean steering left, I mean floating left of its own accord.  I saw the shooting mechanic show lag - I'm running this on a Core i7 950 with 16gb of RAM, and dual SLi nVidia 470 GTX cards, but the bullet physics were being lagged out... I'd fire with a rifle from around 50 feet from a target, only to see the target run around in a circle, then get his, then go into a really slow looking rag doll drop to the ground.

I did also see some long range shots hit a target in the face and the model just rag doll instantly, but this was at long range, fairly low LOD.  When the target was really close, full LOD then the rag-dolling was seemingly delayed.

Anyway, I'm intriguied by DayZ... I'm watching hours of video of people just running around in the game, its almost like the perfect mix of "The Hunter" and Zombies and PVP...

R I P Tony Scott - By Tweet of course....

I've just heard the news about Tony Scott, I await to find out why he has seemingly committed suicide and can only say it is a sad day for both his family and the movie world at large.

But I must also ask, when did it become acceptable for a reporter, specifically the hacks at the BBC to just make a trifle comment and then quote over a half dozen tweets, why is that journalism?... Why is just quoting what a load of other people, on a very informal system, have said news worthy?...

I find the messages themselves fine, but why quote Stephen Fry, Robert Rodriguez, Duncan Jones and all the other peoples from their twitter accounts?... Is it just to name drop?... Something I believe is very much frowned upon in social graces, and this is my problem with it seeing so many tweets reguritated verbatim simply seems like bad form to me, bad social style.

And as much as tweeter seems to be de rigueur at the moment I think we'll one day look back on these reports and it'll sadden us that our news, solid real history happening around us, is being recorded in such a hap hazard, low brow, fashion.

Wireless... Was that A, B, G or N?

I've got a wireless router which supposedly supports N class wireless signals, I have wireless cards, which supposedly support N class wireless signals... And after all the faffing this last few days I've updated my driver on the PC to the latest (from the manufacturer) and noted something odd...

My signal strength is low, and signal integrity is poor... I am finally connected, but this is nowhere near as good as before... so, running netsh a little to show all the info "netsh wlan show all" and low and behold I see the problem...

The bloody driver might very much be called "802.11n", but the fucker only has "Radio Types Supported: 802.11g 802.11b" listed... Bastards!